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The spice trade was once the world's biggest industry and made merchants rich across the globe. The insatiable appetite for spices created empires, revealed vast continents to Europeans, defined international economies, and tipped the balance of world power. But the spice trade also sparked conflict and resentment. There were lots of winners, and plenty of losers.
Today, we don't think twice about flavoring our food with spices. But how did this lucrative business evolve, and why did it redraw the world map? Click through this gallery and find out more about the life of spice.
The spice trade began in the Middle East about 2,500 years ago after rumors of Arab merchants buying and selling aromatic plant-based substances started to circulate beyond the Levant.
These merchants remained cagey about revealing the origins of these exotic food flavorings, and zealously guarded the Asian provenance of their valuable sources.
To keep their secret and maintain their monopoly, spice merchants told stories of the ferocious cinnamon bird, or cinnamologus.
This mythical feathered beast gathered delicate cinnamon sticks to build its nest. The only way to collect the cinnamon was to lure the bird to the ground with chunks of oxen. Having feasted on the meat, cinnamologus would fly back up to its nest. Weighted by its catch, the roost invariably collapsed. Then, quick-thinking traders could snatch up the fallen cinnamon and take it to the market.
The fabrication was used to ward off competitors eager to seek out the source of the spice and to arbitrarily raise the price of the commodity.
Spices were an important component of ancient commerce. Besides cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, star anise, clove, and turmeric were known and used in antiquity and traded in the Eastern world.
The colorful and pungent cargo had other applications besides seasoning food. It was used for all sorts of tasks, including making perfume, preserving meat, mixing traditional medicine, and even embalming the dead.
The spice trade was initially driven by camel trains over long and often treacherous land routes.
One of the most well-trodden of these was the Silk Road. A network of Asian trade routes active from the 2nd century BCE until the mid-15th century, the Silk Road provided more than just a convenient conduit to Far East spice markets: it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds.
Arab spice merchants also used sea and river routes to ply their trade. These early sailors and mariners would often set sail from the port city of Basra and, after many ports of call, would return to sell their goods, including spices, in Baghdad.
The use of dhows and other vessels to transport spice precipitated the long-range spice trade, around 1000 BCE. The Arabs still served as the sole middlemen of the industry, picking spices up in Southeast Asia and delivering them to Red Sea ports.
While the ancient Greeks and Romans had for many years been fooled by tales of the winged cinnamologus, they eventually smartened up and demanded their own food be enriched by exotic spices.
We know this because listed in Apicius, a Roman-era cookbook, are a number of recipes that include spices among the suggested ingredients.
The world's demand for spice grew throughout the Roman era. The empire was importing pepper in vast quantities from India as well as saffron, cinnamon, ginger, calamus, several varieties of spikenard, myrrh, marjoram, and a number of other spices.
The clamor for clove, cardamon, and anything else remotely resembling spice reached a new urgency in the Middle Ages. Spices became a status symbol of the upper classes during the Crusades, their worth rivaling that of precious stones.
The medieval maritime republics of Venice, Pisa, Genoa, and suchlike held a monopoly on European commerce with the Middle East. The silk and spice trade, which also included opium and other drugs, made these Mediterranean city-states extremely wealthy. But anywhere east beyond the Levant meant following the Silk Road, which added time and expense to any endeavor.
The race was on to find a sea route to spice-rich lands. Trouble was that much of the world still needed to be mapped.
Christopher Columbus had left Castile in August 1492 in search of the Moluccas Islands (also known as the Spice Islands), but had taken a wrong turn and instead ended up in the Americas. Then along came Vasco da Gama.
Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese explorer and nobleman, departed Lisbon in 1497 and, guided by charts drawn up previously by other Portuguese navigators, sailed down the west coast of Africa until he reached the continent's southern tip.
Da Gama's fleet then rounded the Cape of Good Hope— the first westerners to do so—before sailing east across the Indian Ocean.
In 1498, Vasco da Gama landed near modern-day Kozhikode (previously known as Calicut) on India's Malabar Coast. He was the first European to reach India by sea.
Da Gama's direct route to the places where spices were plentiful and cheap would, for a while, make Portugal one of the wealthiest nations in the world and spawn the Portuguese Empire. More than that, though, the endeavor helped define global economies from India to Europe.
Portugal subsequently secured a monopoly on the lucrative spice trade, much to the consternation of Arab traders. As well as their financial loss, da Gama maintained a brutal campaign targeting Arab merchants at sea, defending at all costs the lucrative sea route from India to Europe.
From 1500 onwards, Portugal, and then other European powers, attempted to control the spice trade, the ports that marketed spices, and eventually the territories that cultivated them.
As the middle class prospered during the Renaissance, the popularity of spices increased. But so, too, did competition. Wars over the Indonesian Spice Islands broke out between expanding European nations and continued for about 200 years.
In the 1600s, the English and the Dutch fought each other over a tiny island called Run, part of the Moluccas chain in Indonesia. Carpeted with nutmeg, it was a valuable spec of real estate.
In a treaty to end hostilities between the two nations, Britain gave Run to the Netherlands. In exchange for Run, the Netherlands swapped a couple of colonies in North America— including what is now known as Manhattan.
The spice trade made inroads into the North American market in the 18th century when entrepreneurs, their eyes on a buck, created their own spice companies and started dealing directly with Asian growers rather than the established European companies.
As spices became more common, their value began to fall. By the 19th century, trade routes were wide open and monopolies began to crumble.
Spices today are no longer regarded as a luxury, with a huge variety available in stores and markets around the world and all reasonably priced.
However, if you're looking for a truly flavorful dinner, saffron is the world's most expensive spice. It's derived from the delicate red threads of the Crocus sativus flower, which must be handpicked and carefully dried to preserve their flavor and aroma.
Sources: (BBC) (Live Science) (Silk Road Spices) (World History Encyclopedia)
See also: The health benefits of herbs and spices
A taste of power: how the spice trade changed the world
How making food more flavorful affected the entire globe
LIFESTYLE History
The spice trade was once the world's biggest industry and made merchants rich across the globe. The insatiable appetite for spices created empires, revealed vast continents to Europeans, defined international economies, and tipped the balance of world power. But the spice trade also sparked conflict and resentment. There were lots of winners, and plenty of losers.
Today, we don't think twice about flavoring our food with spices. But how did this lucrative business evolve, and why did it redraw the world map? Click through this gallery and find out more about the life of spice.