ABSTRACT
The exchange of goods and services has been central to the history of human development. However, interpretations of trade have varied from the belief in such exchange as a source of economic well-being and cultural enlightenment to a far more negative focus on the exploitation and violence that often accompanied such economic change. For instance, trade underpinned the global expansion of the great European empires of Spain, Portugal, France and Britain from the 1500s through the 1800s and assisted the flourishing of the European Renaissance and the culture and wealth that accompanied the birth of modern civilisation [1,2]. From the European perspective, trade was often viewed through a romantic vision of heroic adventure and the triumph of man over nature. However, trade was also linked to the genocide and destruction of 4whole civilisations in the newly colonised worlds of the Americas, Africa and Australasia. Our conceptual understanding of trade has been similarly bifurcated—torn between the rarefied, functional thinking of economic theory in which comparative advantage and gains from trade are promoted [3,4] and the more critical insights of sociologists and political economists studying the real-world consequences of trade in the developing and developed worlds [5,6].
