Histories of individual commodities and products abound these days, but Marsh’s Unravelled Dreams differs from most of them in one important respect. Rather than spinning a tale of biological and commercial success, Marsh traces how and why silk production failed in so many different places and in so many ways in the Western Hemisphere during the early modern period. Indeed, his chronicle of serial miscalculations and disappointments involving silk brings to mind nothing so much as Beckett’s famous lines in Worstward Ho: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better.”1

On the surface, the reasons for the many attempts to develop a viable silk industry in the Americas during the early modern period are understandable. The natural fiber was highly valued and much in demand at the time, and, as Marsh demonstrates in his opening chapter, it had been cultivated and processed successfully in many...

You do not currently have access to this content.