Castile soap is an olive oil based hard soap made in a style similar to that originating in the Castile region of Spain. The origins of Castile soap go back to the Levant, where Aleppo soap-makers have made hard soaps based on olive and laurel oil for millennia. Early soap-makers in the Mediterranean area did not have easy access to laurel oil and therefore dropped it from their formulations, thereby creating an olive-oil soap now known as Castile soap.

In the 17th century, the soap caused controversy in England, since it supplanted the unnamed local soap after the Spanish Catholic manufacturers purchased the monopoly on the soap from the cash-strapped Carolinian government. Its ties to Catholicism caused a public-relations campaign to be established, featuring washerwomen showing how much more effective local soaps were than Castile soap. The sale of a monopoly in Protestant England to a Catholic company caused a great uproar, ending with the Castile soap company eventually being stripped of the monopoly.

Nabulsi soap is a type of castile soap produced only in Nablus in the West Bank, Palestine. Its chief ingredients are virgin olive oil (the main agricultural product of the region), water, and an alkaline sodium compound. The finished product is ivory-colored and has almost no scent. Traditionally made by women for household use, it had become a significant industry for Nablus by the 14th century. In 1907 the city's 30 Nabulsi soap factories were supplying half the soap in Palestine. Project Hope and other local non-governmental organizations market the soap in the West to raise funds for their other community projects.

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  • Venusta [any]
    hexagon
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    I still think it's bad to fall into campist tendencies of good/bad side even if having more trade options and military alliance options give some countries some breathing room, I don't know if you can really say it contributes to a decline in neoliberalism other than not having to get loans from the IMF, from vibes without presenting any statistics / hard numbers, but we'll have to see if more countries turn socdem and stay that way for more than a few years. It's also very unclear whether in the coming years China / Brics will incorporate added conditions for the actors they are dealing with, the generosity could easily start to ebb if/when they are seen as equals / preferred over the west. Also Xi could die tomorrow and be replaced by an absolute ghoul in the party, and, the future is very uncertain and it's best to take it as it goes and not get too dogmatic and judge things on a case by case basic with something like more trading / military breathing room from the west good, but not everything about / done by not the west good and based bc of that.

      • Venusta [any]
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        No you're not lol. Full stop. I wasn't saying you were.