Cochineal and the hunt for the Perfect Red

I seem to be in disagreement with the rest of the class – at least thus far – in that I actually liked A Perfect Red. It reminded me of a book I read for another class, The Book in the Renaissance, in its extensive use of illustrating narratives to establish its point. In describing the European search for a better red dye, and combining it with the unique features of cochineal, Greenfield explains how cochineal became so important that it could help fund an empire – and how that empire kept control of the product even as its rivals attempted to acquire its secrets. Greenfield takes the reader through the entire span of cochineal as a product, starting from the history that established the demand, through the eventual decline in demand for the product as it was replaced and red dyes became less popular. The product is explored both in the element of demand and in the element of supply, which actually receives more interest as various groups attempt to establish competing supplies to undercut the existing controllers of the product. I think this is one of Greenfield’s two major arguments: that cochineal was so important and lucrative a product at one point in history that it was part of an empire’s foundation, and so men fought over it and risked death to obtain its secrets.

The second point is much less emphasized than the first, but it is still significant and it relies on the importance of cochineal as a product. Greenfield, in her discussion on the emergence of synthetic dyes that replaced cochineal’s product value argues that the discovery and production of good synthetic replacements for cochineal was one of the fundamental product discoveries that funded the emergence of a chemical industry and helped to determine where that industry was situated. One thing that I think could have used more elaboration is the exact value of the product in comparison to other elements. We are given values and amounts for specific years and transports, but the book lacks information as to how the revenue produced for the Crown compares to, say, the produced value of the silver mines in the Spanish colonies during the same year. It would have helped to establish how valuable cochineal was as a product to funding the Empire.