A night to remember on the Golden Hinde

Gifts and trade were the theme of the night. I set the atmosphere with a nod to my Father who had told me about the rebuilding of the Golden Hinde. I think he may have been initially involved in raising of the capital, when he serving as British Consul in San Francisco in the 1970’s. I travelled to all his postings – often by ship- those childhood years certainly had a lasting influence on the way I see the world.

Drake’s circumnavigation 1577-1580 changed Britain’s place and view of the world. The ship returned laden with precious cargo, yes, a bounty of silver and gems captured Spanish galleon but also cloves for the spice Islands of Indonesia. They were worth their weight in gold. Elizabeth I and Charles Hatton were the investors behind that first journey. The money raised cleared the national debt and allowed England to set up a new trading company in Levant, at the Syrian end of The Silk Route.

Rare materials and jewellery are often given and then the individuals or communities go on to establish a trust and trading relationship. We discussed gifts of the earliest African shell necklaces through to one simple bead necklace presented to Roddy Coleman’s wife by The Secretary of State for Washington State. On this last US trip on the ship in 1987, he was also given a gold “Pirates” earring.  Just recently, a necklace made of animal teeth was given to a protecting officer, by a Mashco-Piro man, from a closed hunting and gathering community in the Peruvian Amazon. Mauss argues gift exchange is a social process found in all human communities and some items have hardly changed at all.

I spoke on The Year of the Gift, focussing on Mauss’s idea that gift exchange generates trade. I was quizzed later about the difference between a trade and gift.  I went on about the message/spirit but really, I should have just said ‘money or commercial value’.  When we trade things without money then we swap things we feel are of equivalent monetary value.  When we give a gift, we often ‘do not count the cost’. But we do have an idea of its symbolic value. Roddy commented that pirates were said wear gold rings to cover the cost of their funerals.  Gift can have different kinds of social value – ‘tokens of love’ or ‘token of appreciation’.

John Scahill of Cuspior, focused his talk on building the trust and exchange of knowledge because they remain vital to global trade today. These intangible gifts are given alongside souvenirs usually linked to the place, local traditions and hospitality. Earlier in the evening I had passed around teacup and tea, a present from a Japanese academic after assisting her with a research project.

Melanie Woodstock of Fair to Trade talked about the joy of her work with crafts people in Kashmir and Palestine, helping them use their traditional materials and skills to produce distinctive items for heritage outlets in the UK. The handmade is valued but not exploited. The volume of work involved in say hand painting can be reduced to meet both needs of the makers and still raise money for cultural institutions here. The creative gifts are generating a livelihood locally and only briefly coming into the world of monetary exchange for long. That notion of understanding the needs of the makers was also echoed on John’s talk.

Rosie Brooks picked up on the protection of the creative, in a new world of online sales and AI. Lewie Hyde writes about the world of commerce and the gift. Agents or traders one could say being the crossing point, between artistic talents and business. Products that sell well have always been copied but the internet and technology make it easier to do so. There was discussion around the consumer being able to recognise a poor copy and then actively choosing not to buy it. Today the creative individual needs to make their mark and expose the fraud for when it is copied. I had covered the dark side of the gift in my talk and for centuries communities have found ways to deal with bad practice in a multitude of ways.

The Year and the night were about the positive nature of gift exchange and how it is integral to the way we establish and continue positive collaborations and trade successfully across the globe.

Image  Credit

Eva Pascoe