Book Review of Amy B. Greenfields A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the color of Desire

Content:
1. Introduction
2. A Perfect Red- an interesting and useful reading
3. Conclusion
4. Bibliography

Introduction
What colour would you use to underline the most important information in the advertisement? What colour does human eye distinguish best of all in the dark? What colour symbolises blood and passion at the same time? The most of the people will guess this colour without any difficulty. It’s a red colour. For majority it’s just one of the colours of colour palette, not worse or better than the others. It doesn’t come to our minds that the colour could be the reason of wars, the object of espionage, could cause the growth or fall or the whole Empires. Therefore these are historical facts, stated in Amy Greenfield’s historic research. The whole book is dedicated to one red colour, but it touches almost all the aspects concerning to red – its history, its use, its production, its chemical mixture, etc.
Amy B. Greenfield’s A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the colour of Desire is a perfect mixture of entertaining read you can’t get your eyes off with the informative and useful information on many fields, such as business history, chemistry, biology and even psychology and advertisement.

A Perfect Red – an interesting and useful reading
I’ve read the book in one breath. I would never have thought the history of one colour could be so fascinated, so tragic, powerful and symbolic. A Perfect Red is a story how the colour ruled people, occupied their minds, made them obsessed.
In her book Amy uncovers many interesting facts from the history of red colour and important role it has played during the centuries. For many monarchs, kings and governors this colour symbolised prestige, power and higher position. As Greenfield writes, “Elusive, expensive, and invested with powerful symbolism, red cloth became the prized possession of the wealthy and well-born.” (Greenfield, 68). Montezuma, great Aztec chief, insisted on his exclusive right to wear the brightest shades of the red as necessary attribute of his wealth and power. Such examples are multiple. The attitude to this colour could be different in different cultures and historical periods, but by major part it was the colour of the higher society, symbolising its uniqueness. The answer to the question why this happened becomes evident after we read the book. From the book we understand it was a real problem to get a red dye of high quality. The colours achieved from the plant sources such as henna or madder and insects such as Laccifer lacca were not bright enough or had some other shades. It also faded away very quickly. So those, who wanted to wear or use things of a perfect colour, had to pay big money for shipping it from other countries.
In her book, Greenfield put her detailed investigation about the export of cochineal by Spanish trades people. While making some investigations on other topic, she became intrigued by the quantity of cargo manifests of Spanish trade ships in 16-17 century. They were exporting cochineal – the basic component for the perfect red dye. After detailed investigation, Amy got an interesting history of “perfect” colour, which she presented in her book.
She centres he narration around cochineal - a product of organic origin, which was used to produce vibrant red dye. Cochineal helped to produced “brightest, strongest red the Old World had ever seen” And was praised as gold by Europeans, who hadn’t seen such a perfect red dye before. Greenfield gives a detailed history analysis of the matter, which doesn’t leave any blank sports and misunderstandings. Great research work, performed by the author is expressed in a perfect literary work, which is read like a novel. The depth of research is proved also by the list of the references at the end of the book, which gives the field for further reading or provides necessary proves, if necessary.
From the ancient time people were interested in the power the colour had on our mood and consciousness. It’s a common fact, that red colour is one of the most influential ones of the colour pallet. From the old times red served for the clothes of people who belonged to upper class and was a symbol or wealth and nobility. In this way, red colour had not only psychological impact and social importance, but also high economical value with the direct financial equivalent.
The Spanish made a great breakthrough after discovering the secret of “true red”. When conquistadors invaded Mexico, they could not first believe their eyes when saw their clothes made of materials, dyed in perfectly red colour. Native settlers – Aztecs possessed the secret of the producing of this colour and also praised it, by the way. Soon the secret of production was uncovered. The red was produced with the help of cochineal – a substance achieved from the insects which inhabited only that part of the world. These tiny insects of unknown origin (scientists spent a lot of time, debating if they were insects at all and creating of the microscope is partially explained by the necessity to uncover this enigma) could survive eating only special kinds of host plant, the nopal. As soon as the secret of the dye production was discovered, the Spanish made sure to monopolise this profitable secret, making it the prerogative of the Spanish Empire. Very quickly Spain became the dominant exporter of the red dye to Europe. Europe dyers and manufacturers had to follow conditions of Spanish tradespeoples, who posses an absolute monopoly on the cochineal production. Then Amy retells the story of struggle – struggle for the commercial secret of cochineal production, which’s kept Spain’s monopoly to this dye in the whole world. Greenfield states that this fact influenced the international trade and politics for centuries and proves her thesis with many arguments. I think that this book contains interesting and important facts from business history as it partially explains the reasons of prosperity of Spain during several centuries. “The story that Butler Greenfield tells rests on an impressive mountain of scholarship that is hidden from the reader by wavy prose that carry us effortlessly between the colonial European powers and the locales in the West Indies and the Spanish Main where the cochineal beetle was cultivated” (Liss). The story is also interested because it contains the depiction of the methods, business rivals used to uncover the secret of “mysterious dye”. Commercial espionage, private investigations, bribes and graft – all the mean were used by the rivals. Even scientists were involved into this international intrigue, as they had to guess the origin of the black “seeds” – cochineal imported from Mexico. Pirates’ attacks add to the picture of “red gold” popularisation all over the world. Pirates watched Spanish ships loaded with cochineal and robbed them. It was an object of additional national pride for British privateers to bring home mysterious red dye from the robbed Spanish ships. European countries, dependant on Spain were looking for alternative ways to achieve the dye in order to get rid of “shameful” dependence from Spain. Finally, the invention of the synthetic red dye at the end of 19the century brought to end Spanish domination on the market of dye production. After this invention, multiple farms specialised on the cochineal production became bankrupts as the technology of cochineal production was time-consuming and expansive and couldn’t stand the competition with the synthetic production. It was a hard blow for the owners of small farms in Guatemala, Mexico and Canary Islands that had to close their farms as there was no need in cochineal production any more. It’s a typical situation when changes in an important industry lead to major social and economic disruption. Modern trade practices often have similar effects in many poorer countries. I think that facts, which show how technical development and innovations can influence business, economy, and even the political structure of the world, are very interesting and edifying.
Conclusion
I think that this is the way historical books are to be written in order to attract the wide audience. A Perfect Red is “stuffed” with historic, business information, explores the whole epoch in the history of many countries, but, at the same time, fascinates us with interesting plot and subject. This book is a perfect find for those, who get bored of dull reports with much statistics and uninteresting account of the historic events. It contributes too many sciences, but, the most essential contribution it makes to the history of business, to my mind. It gives unique information about the history of discovery and export of essential component – cochineal. The chemical information for those, who are interested in the chemical qualities of the dyes, is also very interested. The language is rich but understandable at the same time, so those, who are not professional in one or another field, will also be able to get through the text without much difficulty. I would like to underline the thing I’ve mentioned before. We can count on the arguments, cited by the author as we can check them ourselves, using the rich list of references to the source used when writing a book. This information can be also very necessary for those, who got really interested in the subject or any its aspects and wants to continue his own investigation himself.

Bibliography
1. Greenfield Amy Butler (2005) A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire, HarperCollins, 338 pp.
2. http://www.amybutlergreenfield.com/
3. Liss, Barbara, Seeing red A history of the world’s fascination with the color of fire and desire