Smuggling

In Smuggling: Seven Centuries of Contraband, academic Simon Harvey presents a captivating exploration of the hidden transactions that took place in the shadows across seven centuries. Rather than treating smuggling as a minor criminal activity, Harvey demonstrates its profound impact on shaping global economics and international borders.

Across eighteen chapters, the book traces high-value contraband throughout various eras: spices, silver, and silk during the Age of Discovery; gold, tea, rubber, and opium during the height of Western empires; and modern-day illegal trade in drugs, weapons, art, and even revolutionary ideas. It offers readers a compelling narrative on how illegal commerce continuously redefined human history.

Because it offers a unique perspective on world history, showing how illicit trade, contraband, and underground networks actively formed global markets and geopolitics.

Readers of world history, economic historians, students of international relations and geopolitics, and anyone fascinated by illicit global trade networks.