Return to Amsterdam of the Second Expedition to the East Indies, by Hendrik Cornelisz Vroom, 1599. Rijksmuseum.

Trade

Volume XII, Number 2 | spring 2019

Miscellany

Ottoman humorist Yusuf al-Shirbini of Egypt railed against unfair levies, referring to them as “things being called innovation.” Al-Shirbini quoted scripture: one who brings about “an innovation or provides accommodation for an innovator, upon him be the curse of God.”

The human working stock is of interest only insofar as it is profitable.

—Simone de Beauvoir, 1970