Go back, back, back in time, to the era before chocolate, coffee, tea, and sugar reached Europe. For many centuries before these taste treats were available, the gustatory rage was spices, which came from the mysterious East. No one knew where spices came from, but they were highly coveted, and great efforts were made to obtain them.
This, the first is a series of six e-mails on spices, provides background by covering generalities on spices and the spice trade. The next five e-mails treat the classic 16th century spices of the East that drove the Age of Discovery. These spices, with their geographic source in parentheses, are:
- Pepper (India)
- Nutmeg and mace, which come from the same plant (Banda Islands)
- Cloves (North Molucca Islands)
- Cinnamon (Ceylon)
- Ginger (India)
Note: This and the next five e-mails are based on research rather than personal experience, and you will see an excessive number of references. Feel free to ignore them since they are not for you but are for me since they facilitate fact-checking. That is, since I am totally dependent on my sources for the material in these e-mails, and since I have no expert knowledge, it is easy for me to get facts or interpretations wrong. Therefore, before sending an e-mail, I check everything to make sure that it still seems correct. If you need to have your consciousness raised on the topic of fact-checking, see McPhee [pp. 165-95].
The Geographic Setting
Since the e-mails on spices will focus on a distant and somewhat unfamiliar part of the world, I will start by providing maps to orient you. The first map reminds you of the part of the world relevant to these e-mails, where most of the spices were grown circa 1500 in the right half of this map. Note that the Arabian Sea is between India and the Arabian Peninsula. (The red dagger marks the location of the Banda Islands, home of the nutmeg.)
The next map focuses on the East Indies and marks the locations that will be frequently mentioned in these e-mails.
- Strait of Malacca (between the Malayan Peninsula and Sumatra, and the main route through which the bulk of the spices was shipped)
- Malacca (city on the Malayan Peninsula that commanded the Strait of Malacca)
- Sumatra (the large island to the south of the Strait of Malacca)
- Java (the large island to the southeast of Sumatra)
- Batavia (the Dutch Headquarters in the East Indies, which was called Jakarta both before and after the Dutch)
- Ternate (the small island just to the west of the funny-shaped island of Halmahera; Ternate and its neighbor Tidore, just a gunshot away, were the two most significant islands on which cloves originally grew; for shorthand, Ternate and sometimes Tidore are often used to stand for the clove islands; Ternate and Tidore are so small and so close together that on a map of this scale they are in the same place)
- Ceram (the largish island south of Halmahera)
- Ambon (or Amboyna or Amboina, the small island at the western tip of Ceram; this island was the Portuguese headquarters in the East Indies and was where the Dutch relocated much of the clove production)
- Banda Islands (initially the only place where nutmeg grew). Note: The Banda Islands are too small to show up on a map of this scale.
(By the way, Batavia features in the lost verse of a George and Ira Gershwin song introduced by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Since pronunciation is important, I will spell the key words phonetically.
I say Ba-tay-via and you say Ba-tah-via,
I say Mol-day-via and you say Mol-dah-via,
Ba-tay-via, Ba-tah-via, Mol-day-via, Mol-dah-via,
Let's call the whole thing off.
Depending on the situation in which you sing this verse, you might want to substitute Moravia or Belgravia for Moldavia. Thanks to Pepe for this musical interlude.)
In the map below you can see in southwest India the Malabar Coast, the region (now state) of Kerala, and the Western Ghats, which are mountains that run down the west coast of India to the southern tip. Originally, pepper grew in Kerala on the slopes of the Western Ghats and was shipped from ports on the Malabar Coast. This map shows the pepper ports of Calicut and Cochin, and the Portuguese enclave of Goa, which was the headquarters of the Portuguese operations in the East and which Portugal controlled until 1961. At the bottom you can see northern portion of Sri Lanka (Ceylon), the home of true cinnamon.
More detailed maps and further discussion of these places will appear in coming e-mails at the appropriate places.
A term that needs some explication is "Molucca Islands" since the meaning of this term has changed over the centuries. In these e-mails I will use "North Moluccas" to include islands such as Ternate and Tidore, and I will use "South Moluccas" to include islands such as Ceram, Ambon, and the Bandas. To refer to all of these islands jointly, I will use either "Moluccas" or "Spice Islands." For more on the standard modern terminology, see Keay [p. 198] or Britannica.
Route followed by the Spice Trade Up to Circa 1500
For many centuries before the birth of Christ there was trade along the Silk Road from China to destinations in Central Asia such as Samarkand and beyond (see blue lines in the map below); the main commodities exported from China were silk, tea, and musk, but cloves, nutmeg, mace, and cassia might have been carried as well [Keay, p. 9]. There is controversy as to when spices first reached Europe, but a reasonable place to start is that, according to Pliny the Elder, the soldiers of Alexander the Great returning from India after 323 B.C. first brought spices to prominence in the West [Keay, pp. 32, 44]. The bulk of the spices came from India (pepper, ginger), with some from Sri Lanka (cinnamon) and perhaps a very small quantity from the faraway Spice Islands (nutmeg, mace, cloves).
Starting perhaps as early as the third century B.C., sea transport had improved enough to greatly cut into the Silk Road trade [Keay, p. 46]. In the time of Alexander, when mariners hesitated to sail beyond sight of land, the sea route hugged the coast and looped by sea from peninsula to peninsula. The history of the spice trade can be thought of as eliminating the peninsulas one at a time and gradually establishing an all-maritime route, which was desirable both because it was cheaper and faster and also because it avoided any land-based difficulties such as political instability, e.g., the rise of the Ottoman empire. The all-maritime route became feasible because of many innovations in maritime technology such as the backstaff, which allowed a navigator to measure the height of the sun without looking at it [Milton, pp. 53-55]. Spices provided the incentive for these technologies to be invented.
There were two routes for getting spices across the Arabian Sea, which lay between India and the Arabian Peninsula, and to the Mediterranean. Spices could go via the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf (see map below). If they went via the Red Sea, the spices would land at an African port, be carried in a caravan of perhaps 500 camels across the desert to the Nile, and then be barged down to Alexandria on the Mediterranean, which was established as a hub of spice trading under the Ptolemies and remained so for seventeen hundred years. If the spices went to the Persian Gulf, they would be shipped up the Euphrates and Tigris and carried by camel across the Syrian desert through Palmyra or Aleppo to a Levant port on the Mediterranean such as Tyre or perhaps to the Black Sea. [Keay, pp. 15, 107, 47, 48, 49, Turner, pp. 103-104]
The role of Palmyra (see map below) in the ancient spice trade is discussed by Watson [p. 26]:
One of the most important nodes on the caravan routes across the desert connecting Mesopotamia with the Mediterranean was the city of Palmyra. According to Jewish and Arab traditions, the 'City of Palms,' or Tadmor to give it its Semitic name, was founded by Solomon (II Chronicles 8.4).... The growth of Palmyra's economic power in the first two-and-a-half centuries of our era was based not, like most other cities of the ancient world, on agriculture, but on commerce. The spice routes from the [Persian] Gulf and the Silk Road coming overland from China via central Asia had for centuries passed directly through Palmyra. From here they went either north-west via Antioch to Asia Minor or south-west via Damascus to Tyre and Egypt.
Palmyrene merchants did very well out of this trade, but it was above all in providing protection to the caravans as they crossed the dangerous desert trade routes that the city earned its fabulous wealth. with this wealth the aristocracy of Palmyra adorned their city, The tangible evidence of which can still be glimpsed in the impressive ruins.... The most striking of these is the magnificent temple of Bel [or Baalshamin], which together with its surrounding colonnade were on a scale, in both size and workmanship, to rival the greatest temples of the ancient world.
In short, Palmyra, despite its seemingly unfavorable location in the desert, was one of the richest cities in the ancient world because it lay astride ancient trade routes. Located at an oasis about 125 miles northeast of Damascus, its ruins, well-preserved in the desert environment, are an archeological site of great interest, and it is a UNESCO World Heritage site. See this New York Times slide show on the ruins of Palmyra.
THIS JUST IN! The BBC reports that on 23 August 2015 the Temple of Baalshamin (pictured below), the oldest parts of which date to 17 A.D., was blown up by the Islamic State. In addition, after a month of torture, they beheaded the 81 year-old archeologist who had watched over the site for four decades because he would not disclose the location of hidden treasures. The BBC further reports, "The Islamic State group has destroyed several ancient sites in Iraq. The militants believe any shrines or statues implying the existence of another deity are sacrilege and idolatry, and should be destroyed." CNN reports that many think that the Islamic State destroyed the temple to gain notoriety. One reporter states, "They will destroy anything and kill anyone to show that they are more Muslim than anyone else."
One of the momentous discoveries of the age occurred in the first century B.C. when the wind pattern of the Arabian Sea became known; in May through August the summer monsoon was a southwest wind and in November through March there was a northeast wind [Turner, p. 60]. This discovery and its importance is explained by Keay [p. 15, also see pp. 56, 62].
... the winds of the Arabian sea, it was learned, conformed to a consistent and extremely congenial pattern. According the the season, or monsoon, in summer they would propel a sailing ship from the Red Sea straight to the Malabar coast and in winter they would propel it back again. A voyage that along the coast had taken months now took a matter of weeks. Traffic increased dramatically. Spices became big business, and for the next two centuries the Red Sea was the West's undisputed gateway to the East.
Keep in mind that until about 1400, the West did not know where spices came from. In large part this was because the Arab traders exaggerated the remoteness and inaccessibility of the sources to encourage demand and boost prices. In short, to protect their monopoly they used obfuscation, just as in later centuries Europeans would protect their spice monopoly with superior gunnery [Keay, p. 44]. One of the laws of history and economics is that one will use whatever weapon is at hand to protect a profitable monopoly.
From about the 10th century on, Italian city-states led by Venice held a near-monopoly on distributing throughout Europe the spices reaching the Mediterranean or Black Sea, and they grew rich on this trade [Keay, pp. 16, 108, Turner, p. 104, Krondl, p. 46, 47, 52]; Venice had attained a monopoly by the early 15th century [Krondl, p. 76]. To ensure safe sea passage, rather than using the lumbering ships of the time, Venice employed heavily armed, oared galleys that were swift enough to outrun pirates [Krondl, pp. 46, 50, Turner, p. 105]. As the later Medieval period progressed, economies improved, the spice trade revived (in part due to the Crusades), and spices began to play a larger role in European cuisine [Krondl, p. 57, Turner, p. 105]. In the 14th century Venetian galleys sailed through the straits of Gibraltar and delivered spices by water to Antwerp and London [Keay, p. 16]. This was the first alteration of the spice route that Europeans had known since the time of the Ptolemies [Keay, p. 48], though a much bigger change was on the horizon. These were the last years of Alexandria's long reign as the spice capital of the West [Keay, p. 48].
The Silk Road enjoyed its last years of prosperity in the 13th and 14th centuries under the pax Mongolica before the sea route made it obsolete as a way to get spices across Asia [Keay, p. 113-14].
The European Discovery of the Spice Islands: The Spice Race
Background
When I was in the sixth-grade and my class studied world history, the text book told us about the Line of Demarcation, which was established in 1494 to divide the undiscovered lands of the world between Spain and Portugal. The book had a map something like the first map below. At the time I thought that this was a pretty unfair division. Spain got all of North America and most of South America. All Portugal got was a little nub. I thought that the Portuguese must have been real dopes to accept this. I would not have been so harsh in my condemnation of the Portuguese if the book had instead showed the second map, which makes it explicit that the Portuguese also got the Spice Islands (though just barely). We will now see how Portugal came to discover the Spice Islands, whose location was no more than the wildest surmise in 1494.
In the fifteenth century the price of spices was high, in part because of a double monopoly. In one leg of the spice trade, Arab traders held a monopoly on the transport of spices from India to the eastern Mediterranean, and Italian city-states, mainly Venice, held a monopoly on the leg from the eastern Mediterranean to consumers in Europe. This double monopoly and the resulting high prices were a central factor that led the Europeans to explore for an all-sea route to the East.
Christopher Columbus
The pitch that Christopher Columbus made to Ferdinand and Isabella was that the Indies could be reached by sailing west--this was not revolutionary but was part of the conventional wisdom of the age, though it had not been tested--and that this would be the shortest route by which to obtain spices [Turner, pp. 5-6]. Because of the high prices of spices due to the double monopoly, opening this shorter and uncontested route held out the promise of vast riches [Turner, p. 6]. Ferdinand and Isabella were convinced by his presentation, and, buoyed by having ejected the Moors from Spain earlier in the year, they approved his expedition.
Columbus duly discovered America in 1492 but was disconcerted to find no spices. Purported sightings were made of cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger, but these proved false; his excuse was that he could not recognize the spices since they were not in season [Turner, pp. 4, 8]. His repeated failures to make good on his promises to find spices (and gold) on his next voyages led to his losing credibility [Turner, p. 10]. The lust for a new route by which to obtain spices remained unfulfilled.
(My conclusion after going through a number of sources is that Columbus did not care about spices; the reason he wanted to sail to the Indies was adventure. Spices, however, were how he sold the project to Ferdinand and Isabella. As Samuel Eliot Morrison [p. 54], states:
La Empresa de las Indias, the Enterprise of the Indies, as Columbus called his undertaking in after years, was simply to reach "The Indies," that is, Asia, by sailing westward. That was the main idea to which everything else was subordinate. He expected to get gold, pearls and spices by trade or conquest when he reached "The Indies.")
Vasco da Gama
Since the time of Prince Henry the Navigator, who died in 1460, Portuguese explorers had been pushing further and further south down the western shore of Africa. A major breakthrough occurred in 1487 when Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa. This set the stage for an expedition that was designed to sail around Africa and all the way to the spice markets in India. The purpose of this expedition to India is described by the anonymous chronicler, who left the only surviving account of the expedition, as follows: "In the year 1497, King Manuel, the first of that name in Portugal, sent four ships out, which left on a quest for spices, captained by Vasco da Gama" [quoted in Turner, p. 15].
Da Gama's expedition left Portugal on 8 July 1497 and arrived at Calicut in India on 18 May 1498; the route is pictured below. To make the risky first contact, da Gama sent ashore a degredado, who was a condemned convict, heretic, or converted Jew who was considered expendable and kept aboard for such risky jobs [Keay, p. 162, Turner, p. 14]. He was able to communicate with Tunisian traders who spoke Spanish, and the following famous exchange occurred [Turner, p. 15]:
Tunisian: Why have you come?
Degredado: We came in search of Christians and spices.
The Portuguese were looking for Christians since they needed allies. There was an exceedingly vague legend of Prester John, a Christian king whose kingdom was somewhere in Africa or Asia. The Portuguese were always hoping to stumble upon this kingdom since they thought that fellow Christians would naturally be allies [Krondl, p. 148]. They never did find Prester John, but it turned out that they could find plenty of allies, as explained below.
Now that we have had half a millenium to digest the various discoveries, Columbus is celebrated for his transformative voyages, while da Gama is briefly mentioned. It should be kept in mind that da Gama really did meet his goal of finding spices, while Columbus did not (he was off by half a planet). Moreover, da Gama sailed four times as far. Finally, if we use the number of days out of sight of land as our measure of the scariness of the voyage, the longest stretch with no sight of land for Columbus was 33 days and for da Gama was 90 days [Turner, p. 13]. The spirit of da Gama must be wondering what more he needed to do.
Ferdinand Magellan
Even after Balboa had glimpsed the Pacific Ocean in 1513, the width of the Pacific was not appreciated. It was thought that the Spice Islands were close to the west coast of the Americas and, therefore, that there might be a route to the Spice Islands that traversed the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that would be better than the route using the Atlantic and Indian Oceans [Turner, p. 30]. This led Magellan, who was a Portuguese nobleman, to propose a voyage to the west to reach the Spice Islands. This was the same as Columbus's plan, except that Magellan now knew that he would have to get around or through America. The problem is that the Portuguese did not have a modern map such as the one above that shows that the Spice Islands were in the Portuguese hemisphere. In fact, because these islands were so far east, the Portuguese were apprehensive that they were in the Spanish hemisphere, and in public pronouncements the Portuguese obfuscated their true location [Turner, p. 31]. When Magellan proposed to show that the Spice Islands were close to America, his proposal was totally refused by the Portuguese king, who was afraid that it might invalidate the Portuguese dominion over these lands [Keay, p. 200, Turner, pp. 31-32].
For this reason, Magellan quit Portugal and went to Spain, where Charles V was quick to adopt the proposal since it would be a huge boon if it were shown that the Spice Islands were in the Spanish hemisphere [Keay, p. 201]. Moreover, he chose Magellan to command the expedition since he was best friends with the Portuguese renegade who lived in Ternate and largely controlled the trade in cloves [Keay, pp. 195, 201]. As Bergreen [p. 34] states, "On March 22, 1518, King Charles .. offered Magellan and Faleiro [Magellan's technical advisor and partner] a contract 'regarding the discovery of the Spice Islands'." In short, the official motivation for Magellan's voyage was sharply focused on finding a superior route for obtaining spices and, if possible, showing that the Spice Islands were in the Spanish hemisphere. (Like Columbus, however, Magellan's personal goal was adventure, not spices; the spices were the lure to get his adventure funded.)
Magellan's voyage began on 20 Sep 1519, and on 6 Sep 1522 a single ship limped home to Spain, minus Magellan, who had been killed in the Philippines. The map below shows the track of the voyage. The cargo of cloves that it had picked up in Ternate was sold. The proceeds covered the entire cost of the voyage, including three lost ships, and provided a small profit for the investors [Keay, p. 209, Turner, p. 36]. As it turned out, however, the route across the Pacific was too long and risky to be practical, so no more than a trickle of cloves traveled across the Pacific, and Spain never became a serious player in spices [Keay, p. 212]. Despite the success of Magellan's voyage, Portugal remained in control of the flow of spices [Keay, p. 212].
Aftermath: The Portuguese, 16th Century
Events after 1522 are summarized by Turner [p, 36]:
Columbus, da Gama, and Magellan, the three standard-bearers of the Age of Discovery, were spice seekers before they became Discoverers. Many lesser names followed where they had led. In the wake of their first groping feelers into the unknown, other navigators, traders, pirates, and finally armies of various European powers hunted down the source of the spices and squabbled, bloodily and desperately, over their possession.
At the coming of da Gama, a mix of Arab, Indian, Malay, and Chinese merchants conducted trade in the Indian Ocean. The trade was for the most part free and handled everything from spices to elephants. The Portuguese ships were not only faster but much better armed, and the Portuguese used these advantages to organize the trade to their advantage. The Portuguese, without any basis except force, claimed a monopoly on the spice trade, though it proved to be a leaky monopoly.
After da Gama first visited India in 1498, Portugal moved rapidly, and in 1503 another expedition lead by da Gama gave Portugal a foothold in India [Keay, pp. 172-79]. Portugal exploited the advantage that its superior ships and guns provided, and it took control in Goa on the western coast of India in 1512. Further battles secured Portugal's command of the Arabian sea [Keay, p. 182]. Moreover, in addition to establishing the new, all-water route to India, it needed to interdict the old, so Portugal took Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf in 1515 [Keay, p. 182, Russell-Wood, p. 44]. Malacca, Goa, and Hormuz were the hubs through which the Portuguese spice trade network operated [Shaffer, p. 54]. In short, Portugal now commanded not only the spices produced in India but also the other spices, which flowed through India on their way to Europe. It should be stressed, however, that the Portuguese fell short of achieving the monopoly that they had declared. In the vast distances involved, the smaller Arab vessels found it possible to elude the relatively few ships that Portugal allocated to enforcing the monopoly, and they conducted a significant amount of trade [Shaffer, pp. 54-55, Krondl, pp. 136, 137, 162, Turner, p. 22].
Da Gama had found the origin of pepper and ginger in India, and in 1505 the Portuguese would find the origin of true cinnamon in Ceylon. Still unknown, however, was the origin of
... the most elusive and costly spices of all: cloves, nutmeg, and mace. In 1511, all that was known by the Portuguese was that they came from the mysterious "Spice Islands," at this stage more a vague yet alluring notion than a place on a map [Turner, pp. 27-28].
As Portugal was consolidating its position in India, it simultaneously pushed on to the east. Portugal in 1511 took the port of Malacca, which commanded the Malacca Strait, through which the spices of the Spice Islands passed [Keay, pp. 184, 191]. In 1512 Portugal reached the Banda Islands, where nutmeg and mace grew, and Ternate, where cloves grew. How did Portugal, a small country, seize such far-flung territories and hang on to them? One of their secrets was to use politics to secure allies. Factional fights were everywhere, e.g., between Ternate and Tidore. The Portuguese would make a deal with a faction--"We will support you with our naval guns, and in return you will trade only with us." Deals like this worked like magic and preserved the dominant Portuguese position in spices for nearly a century until other, stronger European countries eventually became interested in the spice trade.
It transpired, however, that after nearly a century of fitful control, Portugal, a small country not rich in resources, could no longer hold their prize. The decades of warring with the Moluccan islanders and internecine strife had left the Portuguese easy prey [Keay, p. 218], and the network of Portuguese forts and trading posts was much too spread out and weak to withstand a challenge [Krondl, pp. 159, 177].
Aftermath: The Dutch, 17th and 18th Centuries
The Dutch first reached the Spice Islands in 1599 and over the next few decades largely ejected the Portuguese from the Far East. The highlights were that the Dutch took over Ternate and Ambon in 1605, Ceylon in the 1630s, Malacca in 1641, and the pepper ports of Malabar in 1661-1663 [Turner, pp. 37-38, Krondl, p. 170].
The role of Venice as the spice emporium of Europe started declining a couple of decades after da Gama's voyage, but, because of the leakiness of the Portuguese blockade, the Venetian trade hung on through the 16th century, though reduced. Early in the 17th, century, however, the Dutch completely obliterated Venice's trade not through blockade but through lowering prices so much that the Venetians could not compete [Krondl, pp. 65-66, 102-103]. Venice's golden age was over, and over the next century it transformed itself into the Las Vegas of Europe that provided the illicit excitement that a vacationer could not find at home [Krondl, p. 104].
The Dutch realized that rather than having different concerns sending out expeditions that would compete with each other, it would be better to consolidate. To organize their exploitation of the Far East, in 1601 the Dutch formed the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, which is usually abbreviated as the VOC or anglicized as the Dutch East India Company [Keay, 225-26]. Similarly, in 1600 the English East India Company was formed [Keay, p. 225]. These two companies would take on governmental functions such as having a navy and would fight it out in the East for the next two centuries, though the English would fairly quickly drop their interest in the East Indies and concentrate on India and China [Shaffer, p. 228, Milton, p. 352, e-mail of 25 Jul 2015]. This left the Dutch to systematize the trade and reduce the risk [Turner, p. 41]. To increase profits, the Dutch strove to establish monopolies in cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and mace; a monopoly in pepper was not possible since pepper grew readily in many different locales [Shaffer, p. 98, Boxer, p. 105]. Also, to service the increased shipping around Africa, in 1652 the Dutch established a colony at the Cape of Good Hope [Keay, p. 247]. As Krondl [p. 22] states, "The Afrikaner presence in South Africa, the Boer War, and even the subsequent apartheid regime would never have existed if the Dutch hadn't sent colonists to the Cape of Good Hope to supply their pepper fleets."
In light of the fact that the Portuguese had been in the East Indies since 1511, why did the Dutch not arrive until the 1590s? One reason is that the Dutch had previously built a thriving business based on the spices that they had obtained from the Portuguese in Lisbon. Philip II, King of Spain, in 1580 took over as King of Portugal as well; he got back at the Dutch, who were engaged in a war of rebellion against his rule, by closing Lisbon to Dutch traders. Therefore, the Dutch were forced by this blunder of Philip's to voyage to the East Indies to get spices, and they found that they easily swept aside the scanty and crumbling Portuguese defenses [Krondl, pp. 169-70, Bown, pp. 24, 25]. The orders to the VOC fleet that arrived in the Banda Islands in 1609 were to secure access to the spices by treaty or by force [Bown, p. 10]. In fact, one historian has described the VOC as "a syndicate for piracy" [quoted in Bown, p. 28]. Another reason for Dutch interest in the 1590s was a book written by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, who we have met in the discussion of the durian (9 May 2015). As a teenager Linschoten, hungry for adventure, journeyed to Spain, Portugal, and on to Goa, the Portuguese enclave in India, where he worked from 1583 to 1589 and collected information. Back in Holland, in 1595 he published a book that contained a wealth of information about the East Indies, including maps, sailing routes, navigation information, and details on the best places to obtain various products. It was armed with this knowledge that the Dutch ventured into the Far East, with the voyage being more of a business proposition that chance prize-taking and random blundering around the islands [Keay, pp. 222-24].
Ships could now sail all the way from Southeast Asia or even the Spice Islands to Northwest Europe without having to unload, transship, or portage. Shore need only be touched when re-supply was desired. The water route, despite being much longer, was also much cheaper and faster. Also, the water route was free of political instabilities and, for the well-armed European ships, not plagued by brigands. The oceanic islands on the route were favorite places for ships to re-supply during the nine-month voyage. Since the animals on these islands were often unused to humans, the mariners had an easy time catching as much meat as they wanted. An implication of this indiscriminate slaughter was the extinction of many animals, including the dodo on Mauritius and the giant tortoises on Mauritius, Reunion, and Rodrigues [Shaffer, pp. 200, 206-207, 210-11].
In short, in the early and middle portion of the 17th century, the Dutch assumed a large degree of control of the spice trade, and they then enjoyed about a century of golden age before spices started to decline in importance [Keay, p. 249], though they maintained their empire by replacing spices with other crops such as coffee. (Explaining exactly how this tiny country exerted such world influence is a challenge for historians [Keay, p. 221].) The VOC collapsed in 1799 due to poor management, corruption, and an inability to adapt to changing circumstances [Shaffer, pp. 166-67], though the Dutch maintained control of their Dutch East Indies colony until 1949, when it became independent as the country of Indonesia [Shaffer, p. 228]. We will pass over the stomach-turning details as the Europeans battled themselves and the natives, though some details will be covered in future e-mails that deal with specific spices. The key point is that by the early 16th century, though there was still much to learn, at least the sources of the spices were known. As far as spices were concerned, the Age of Discovery was over. It was to be followed by the Age of Heroic Commerce [Bown, p. 1].
Let's Keep Things in Perspective
There is an air of unreality throughout the previous section. It's hard for a modern reader to take seriously the claim that spices motivated the Age of Discovery. Are we supposed to believe this seemingly outlandish proposition? In the modern world we would hardly notice if cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, cloves, and ginger were unavailable. So what if we lost cinnamon toast, if our egg nog had a little less tang, if our Easter hams weren't quite so picturesque, and if ginger snaps didn't exist? Who even knows what dish you put mace into? Pepper is more with us, but it's not that big a deal. The modern reader says, "Come on. Let's get serious." As I began my reading and encountered statements about the importance of spices, I was contemptuous of these overstatements. I dismissed these claims and attributed them to the common phenomenon of an author's inflating the importance of his topic, whether spices, coffee, tea, chocolate, codfish, or salt.
Turner states this paradox in the following way [p. xii]:
...the hunger for spices galvanized an extraordinary, unparalleled outpouring of energies.... Yet to modern eyes it might seem a mystery that spices should ever have exerted such a powerful attraction, however bad the food: mildly exotic condiments, we might think, but hardly worth the fuss. In an age that pours its commercial energies into such unpoetical ends as arms, oil, ore, tourism, and drugs, that such energies were devoted to the quest for anything quite so quaintly insignificant as spice must strike us as mystifying indeed.
It turns out that no historian can resist the incongruity of the significance of the seemingly insignificant. Keay writes [pp. xi-xii]:
History loves a paradox, and there can be none greater than a taste for spices being responsible for the exploration of our planet. Sovereigns pledged their prestige, and navigators risked their lives, not in the quest for gold or the thirst for power but to redirect the distribution of a few inessential and today almost irrelevant vegetable products.Whether eastward-bound like Vasco da Gama or westward like Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan, the great Renaissance pioneers invariably sailed in search of spices. The discovery of the Americas, of a sea-route round Africa and of that missing link in the world's circumference that was the Pacific were all incidental to this quest for pungency and flavour.
As I continued to read, however, my skepticism was overcome. Not only were spices mentioned up-front in every case as the rationale for the voyages of Columbus, da Gama, Magellan, and all the rest, but no other motivation presented itself. These people were red hot to get to the Indies, but there was nothing there but spices. Spices certainly provided a profit motive (see below). Even Cortes, who filled the coffers of the king of Spain with gold, wrote shamefacedly that he had not yet found spices but would if given more time [Turner, p. 10]. Nobody was thinking of founding an empire. Nobody was thinking that in two hundred years they would need a place to grow coffee. They wanted spices. Now.
One other possible motivation was to spread Christianity [Krondl, pp. 145-48]. While this always got lip service, it was mainly the religious orders who were fanatical about spreading Christianity. The rulers thought of Christianity less as the ultimate goal and more as a means of social control that would enable them to get the spices or gold or whatever. Even the hyper-religious Charles V okayed Magellan's voyage only because he counted up the vast profits to be made if a better route to the Spice Islands were found [Keay, p. 201]. This attitude toward religion is reminiscent of Gibbon's famous epigram about polytheistic religion in the Roman Empire: "The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful" [pp. 25-26].
Why Do Spices Exist? / The Biology of Spices / The First Irony of Spices / The Origin of Spices
Why do spices exist? We have frequently encountered the answer before (27 Mar, 16 May, 12 Jun, and 18 Jul 2015). The never ending summer of the tropics fosters such a riotous wealth of life that plants must devise a defense against the many herbivores, largely insects, that want to eat them. Spices provide this defense. As Turner [p. xx] observes, "In its natural state cinnamon is an elegant form of armor; the seductive aroma of the nutmeg is, to certain insects, a bundle of toxins." Moreover, cloves are an ant-repellent, and ginger is an insecticide. Pepper is a more effective insect repellent that DEET [Shaffer, pp. 221-22].
We also have the same striking irony that we observed in the case of chocolate (16 May 2015). The chemicals that were evolved to make the plant inedible and thus allow it to flourish have made it supremely edible to humans, but this edibility, which the plant strived so mightily to avoid, has led humans to so coddle the plant that it has spread far beyond what it would ever have achieved without human aid [Turner, p. xx].
The Lure of Spices
So why were the Europeans so Interested in spices? What motivated this gargantuan effort to find and exploit the Spice Islands? There are two main explanations.
First, spices were a coveted status symbol. As Keay [pp.28-29] states:
The prestige function of spices can scarcely be exaggerated. Like fine silks and acknowledged works of art, exotic fragrances and flavours lent to aspiring households an air of superior refinement and enviable opulence. They conferred distinction. It had always been so and, for as long as spices remained rare and expensive, it would remain so.
As Turner put it, speaking of Medieval times: "...much of the appeal of spices was not so much that they tasted good as the fact that they looked good. Along with the other luxuries with which they they are almost invariably grouped--pearls, gems, furs, tapestries, and mirrors--spices fulfilled a need for display, for conspicuous consumption. Spices' attraction was not so much that they were necessary, but that they were unnecessary... "[p. 130, emphasis in original].
Second, spices were a source of wealth. Suppose that one started in Malacca with a stake that was spent on trade goods desired in Ternate. By sailing to Ternate, exchanging the trade good for cloves, and returning to Malacca, the value of the original stake would be increased roughly by a factor of 10. Carry the cloves on to India, and the value would increase by another factor of roughly 6. Carry them on to Europe, and the value would increase by yet another factor of 10. This means that the original stake would increase by a factor of 600. Subtracting costs left a profit margin of perhaps 35,000 percent, which should qualify for the Guinness Book of Records [Keay, p. 201]. A specific example quoted above is that Magellan's voyage netted a profit even though three ships were lost.
The Decline of Spices / The Second Irony of Spices
If during the Medieval and early modern periods the combination of being exotic and expensive ideally suited spices to become a status symbol of the rich, and if for centuries this status was maintained and was strong enough to fuel the Age of Discovery, why did spices in the 1700s fall from their exalted place as the motivator of world exploration to just another commercial product? The answer boils down to the fact that to maintain this value as status symbol, it was necessary for spices to retain their sense of mystery and glamour and to be expensive and available only to the sophisticated few [Turner, pp. 132, 135]. That spices failed to retain these properties is explained by a number of factors.
First, once the source of spices was known and it was seen not to be true that they grew in paradise or were guarded by dragons or poisonous, flying snakes, their mystique was largely dispelled.
Second, the rationalization of production and the systematization of transport had made spices cheaper and more reliably available, so their role as a status symbol was largely dissipated. The wealthy lost interest in them once they became cheap, and their interest turned to jewelry, music, art, dress, and carriages [Turner, p. 301].
Third, other products, at first textiles and later tea, coffee, and sugar, rose in importance in world trade, so that spices were shunted to a subsidiary role as they represented an ever-diminishing share of world trade [Keay, pp. 229-30, 232, Krondl, pp. 252, 255].
Fourth, new products arose to fill the European yearning for exoticism. From the New World came vanilla (22 May 2015), chocolate (16 May 2015), the chili pepper, and tobacco; from the Old World came coffee (18 Jul 2015), tea (25 Jul 2015), and sugar. These new offerings took over the role of fueling an adventurous and sophisticated life-style. In this way the new shouldered aside the old [Keay, pp. 249-51, Turner, pp. 300-301].
Fifth, the final nail in the coffin was the spread of cultivation of spices. Pepper had led the way. Pepper was easy to grow in many locales, so its cultivation spread, which meant that its supply increased and its price declined. The result is that by 1660, pepper had become just another bulk commodity whose use conferred no prestige [Keay, pp. 232-33]. Java, which was a major supplier of pepper, provides a case study of the decline of pepper. The first coffee bushes were planted in Java in 1696. By the mid-18th century the value of the coffee exports were more than ten times that of pepper [Keay, p. 252]. The role of pepper in Java shrank into insignificance a little later when sugar became established as a staple crop [Keay, p. 252].
It took longer for the so-called finer spices to spread, in part because the Dutch were careful not to allow the export of seedlings or seeds. The first break came when France, which was late in coming to the Spice Islands, was reduced to stealing plants. In 1770 the appropriately named Pierre Poivre (which translates to Peter Pepper or Peter Piper) evaded the close controls imposed on the Dutch by purchasing a sizable stock of nutmeg and clove seedlings and seeds from a disgruntled Dutchman on Ceram (see map above). These were sent to the islands of Mauritius and Reunion off the African coast, where they were successfully raised. While these islands never produced much of a crop, they served as nurseries that later exported these plants to Madagascar and Zanzibar, where they flourished [Turner, pp. 295-96, 297]. (Recall that Reunion also played a critical but evanescent role in the history of vanilla, e-mail of 22 May 2015.) More importantly, the British occupied the Spice Islands during the Napoleonic Wars from 1796 to 1802 and from 1810 to 1816, and clove and nutmeg plants obtained were spread throughout the British Empire [Turner, p. 296]. This dispelled the last whiff of exoticism that still hung around spices.
Various authors have advanced more idiosyncratic explanations for the decline of spices such as the Protestant Reformation (the new asceticism had no truck with luxuries [Turner, p. 303]) and the rise of absolute rulers (a cook was liable to lose his head if he served to a king a dish that contained a spice transported by one of the king's enemies [Krondl, pp. 253-54]).
We are left with the second irony of spices. The Age of Discovery was launched to satisfy the status conscious by making spices more available. In the end, however, spices became so available that they lost their mystery, and the status conscious lost interest in them [Turner, p. 298].
In short, spices had now become just another commodity. Shorn of their mystique, they assumed their place in little bottles in a flimsy rack that a cook would occasionally glance at to see if there was something that might buck up a dish.
Travel Tip
To complete your study of spices, go to Venice, which built its wealth on the spice trade [Krondl, p. 47]. Engage in gastronomic time travel by eating at Bistrot de Venise, which is a five minute walk from the Piazza San Marco and which serves dishes of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries [Krondl, pp. 77-78]. You, too, can live like a Medieval nobleman as you order spiced dishes that bring the old tastes alive and you experience what it was like to have a status symbol set down in front of you so you could eat it.
Rick
Appendix: Spices in Ancient Ritual and Religion
The first user of spices that we can name was Rameses II, who died in 1224 B.C.; pepper was used in embalming him [Turner, p. 145]. For most of the next 3000 years, spices were used in embalming and other funeral rites [Turner, p. 146]. This was partly due to the fragrant smell and partly to the insecticidal properties of spices mentioned above. A well-known example is that according to John 19:40, Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus, "...took the body of Jesus and wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen cloth according to Jewish burial customs" [New English Bible, p. 140]. This example of Jesus established a fashion among Christians to be buried with spices, though the practice was denounced by thinkers such as St. Augustine and Tertullian since they considered the use of spices to smack of paganism, luxury, and vanity [Turner, pp. 150-51].
Spices were central to ancient religions. In ancient Rome, according to Turner [p. 228],
...spices were typically burned in incense or simply added to the flames in the temple brazier during the performance of religious rituals. Alternatively, they could be infused in perfumes and ungents applied to the cultic statues or the worshipers themselves. Exotic, rare, and inexplicable, they were among the most esteemed props of ancient worship.
Other uses of spice-laden incenses and perfumes in ancient Rome were to rub the aromatic mixtures on statues of heroes or on athletes seeking the approval of the gods; an athlete could blame a loss on poor perfume selection [Turner, pp. 229, 230]. The spice used in these rituals was predominantly cinnamon, which was the most esteemed spice [Turner, p. 230].
The continuance of ancient practices into the modern era is described by Turner [pp. 228-29]: "In the backstreets of Indian towns it is still possible to find workers preparing blends of incense, grinding the spices into a paste that is then rolled into cones or rubbed onto thin wooden sticks. It is a custom that has survived intact since antiquity."
Spices played a prominent role in the religions of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, but monotheists (Jews, Muslims, Christians) rejected spices [Turner, pp. 242-48]. The standard explanation is that these religions initially were surrounded by and in competition with pagans, so rejecting spices provided a way to draw a clear line between us and them [Turner, pp. 243, 246, 247]. No good Christian would burn incense since it was thought that this would nourish demons [Turner, p. 249]. When the emperors Decius (249-51) and Diocletian (303-304) persecuted the Christians, a suspect was tested by asking him to burn incense in front of a statue of the emperor. Refusal indicated a Christian and meant instant execution [Turner, p. 247]. Once the pagans had, been eliminated, however, the crowd-pleasing spices could be embraced by Christianity. "To Saint Ildefonso, Bishop of Toledo from 659 to 668, only the aroma of cinnamon came close to conveying the Virgin's odor of sanctity, 'more fragrant than cinnamon.' This was one of the most enduring conventions of medieval literature" [Turner, p. 254]. The saints also smelled of spices, and this was called the "odor or sanctity." As Turner [p. 255] summarizes, "...sanctity and Paradise were understood literally to smell of spices."
References
Note: I often use the phrase, "I had access to this book in hard copy." This almost always means that this book is in my personal library, and this indicates that this is a book that you might borrow from me. Some of the books listed below have long been in my library, e.g., the books below by Bergreen, Boxer, Gibbon, McPhee, Milton, Morison, and Watson, while others were recently purchased expressly for fruit exploring, e.g., the books by Bown, Burnet, Keay, Krondl, Shaffer, and Turner.
Bergreen Laurence, Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, William Morrow, 2003. This book describes Magellan's voyage. For me, the significance of this book is that it is not about spices, so the author has no bias that leads him to overstate the importance of spices. I had access to this book in hard copy.
Bown, Stephen R., Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 1600-1900, Thomas Dunne Books, 2009. The chapter of this book on the Dutch East Indies is almost entirely based on secondary sources, and, in fact, largely on Keay. Nevertheless, since the author had access to some books that eluded me, it did provide some material that was new to me. I had access to this book in hard copy.
Boxer, C.R., The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600-1800, Penguin Book, 1988 (first published in hardback in 1965). I only grabbed a few facts out of this book but did not read it. I had access to this book in hard copy.
Burnet, Ian, East Indies, Rosenberg, 2013. This book is a quick introduction to the struggles between the Portuguese, English, and Dutch for the trade in the Far East from roughly 1500 to 1850. The focus is on military and political events, not on spices. I had access to this book in hard copy.
Gibbon, Edward, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Volume I, 180 A.D. - 395 A.D., Modern Library, no date. The quoted passage on religious toleration is on the first page of chapter 2. I had access to this book in hard copy.
Keay, John, The Spice Route: A History, University of California Press, 2006. This book describes how the route traveled by spices to get to the West evolved from the 4th century B.C. to the 17th century A.D. Though a popular book, it is written by a scholar and is reliable. I had access to this book in hard copy. Keay, Turner, and Krondl are my three main sources on spices.
Krondl, Michael, The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice, Ballantine Books, 2007. The author focuses on the role successively played by the three cities, Venice, Lisbon, and Amsterdam, which in turn dominated the spice trade. This book is organized around the author's travels and recounts his personal experiences in the spice marts and restaurants not only of these cities but also of other significant places in the history of spice. Though authored by a chef, this book is surprisingly well written, sharply observed, wide-ranging, and reliable. I had access to this book in hard copy.
McPhee, John, Silk Parachute, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. If you have not read McPhee, I recommend that you immediately sit down and read everything that he ever wrote. Everything he writes is a textbook on good writing. I have read 27 of his books. I had access to this book in hard copy.
Milton, Giles, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: Or, The True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History, Penguin Books, paperback, 2000 (first published in hardback in 1999). This book is described in the upcoming e-mail on nutmeg. I had access to this book in hard copy.
Morison, Samuel Eliot, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, Little, Brown and Company, 1942.Though old, this is still a standard life of Columbus. For me, the significance of this book is that it is not about spices, so the author has no bias that leads him to overstate the importance of spices. I had access to this book in hard copy.
New English Bible with the Apocrypha, Oxford University Press, 1970. This is my favorite translation of the Bible. It is both more accurate and easier to read than the King James Version. I had access to this book in hard copy.
Russell-Wood, A.J.R., The Portuguese Empire, 1415-1808: A World on the Move, Johns Hopkins, 1998 (first published in England in 1992 under a different name). I only grabbed a few facts out of this book but did not read it. I had access to this book in hard copy.
Shaffer, Marjorie, Pepper: A History of the World's Most Influential Spice, Thomas Dunne Books, 2013. This book is described in the upcoming e-mail on pepper. I had access to this book in hard copy.
Turner, Jack, Spice: The History of a Temptation, Vintage Books, paperback, 2005 (first published in hardback in 2004). This is a very entertaining and extremely well written book that covers the entire realm of spices. This is the book to go to for a broad-ranging, scholarly discussion of spices. I had access to this book in hard copy.
Watson, Alaric, Aurelian and the Third Century, Routledge, 1999. I had access to this book in hard copy. All I used from this book were a couple of paragraphs on Palmyra. I did not read the rest.
