Spice trade

The spice trade has been of major economic importance throughout human history and it particularly helped spur the Age of Exploration. Spices brought to Europe from distant lands were some of the most valuable commodities for their weight, sometimes rivaling gold. The word spice derives from the Latin species, which in its later history came to mean goods or products, often of small volume and high value [1].

Trade in the East Indies was dominated by Portugal in the 16th century, the Netherlands in the 17th century, and the British in the 18th century.

History of the spice trade

Spices have been prominent in human history virtually since its inception. In ancient times spices were used for magical rites and spells, purification ceremonies, embalming, cosmetics and perfumes, medicinal benefits and even poison as well as cooking, preserving and flavouring food.

Spices were some of the most valuable items of trade in the ancient and medieval world. It has been claimed that this was primarily as a result of the need to disguise the taste of spoiled food (a lack of refrigeration and poor standard of hygiene meant that food often spoiled quickly), but there is no evidence to support this claim, and historians view it as highly unlikely: in the Middle Ages, spices from the East were a luxury item, affordable only to the wealthy, who certainly had unspoiled meat available as well. The actual reason for the huge demand for spices in Europe during the High Middle Ages remains a point of debate.

In the Bible, Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers to spice merchants. In the biblical poem Song of Solomon, the male speaker compares his beloved to many forms of spices.

The pepper trade reached its first peak under the Roman Empire. In the last remaining cookbook from Latin antiquity, the De re coquinaria of Apicius, pepper appears in 349 of the 468 recipes, including dormice stuffed with pepper and nuts [3]. The trade survived the collapse of the western Roman empire and, when it was revived, carried associations of ancient luxury and civility.

As with all trade in ancient and medieval times, the spice trade strongly influenced patterns of settlement along its routes. Whether by land routes or coastal sea routes, travel occurred one day at a time, with a stop for the night, resulting in a chain of settled way stations, many of which became towns or cities. (Braudel, 107)

In the Middle Ages (roughly 700-1000 AD), the spice trade was largely controlled by Muslim or Gujarati merchants, according to Abu'l Qasim Ubaid'Allah ibn Khordadbeh, with European merchants confined to trading mostly within Europe. Ibn Khordadbeh also reported that spices were brought from the east to Europe by Jewish merchants known as the Radhanites; in other sources, such as the writings of Gregory of Tours, Jews are reported to have enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the trade in Western Europe during the late Merovingian and early Carolingian periods.

The spices that were most popular with Europeans at this time included: cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and pepper. Cinnamon came from China and Burma (it was used not only for flavour but also for cosmetics, drugs, balms, oils, and perfume). Nutmeg came from the Banda Islands. Cloves came from only two islands: Ternate and Tidore in the Moluccas (south of Indonesia) - sometimes known as the Spice Islands. Pepper was grown exclusively in India, although there were inferior substitutes to be found in other places. Pepper was used extensively in cooking but was also used as a tonic, a stimulant, even as insect repellent and an aphrodisiac.

Marco Polo's expedition to China was also an attempt to open up a "spice route" with the East. Spices were the primary reason that Portuguese navigator Vasco Da Gama sailed to India. Around that same time, when Christopher Columbus happened upon the New World, he was quick to describe to investors the many new spices available there.

Spice Islands

In 1519, the Spanish Crown sponsored the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese. The goal of the mission was to find the Spice Islands by traveling west, and thus placing them in the Spanish sphere. The expedition was a success and became the first to circumnavigate the world upon its return three years later.

"Spice Islands" most commonly refers to the Maluku Islands (formerly the Moluccas), which lie on the equator, between Sulawesi (Celebes) and the New Guinea islands in what is now Indonesia. The term has also been used in reference to other islands known for their spice production, notably the Tanzanian group off East Africa consisting of Zanzibar, Mafia Island and Pemba.

Until the late 18th century, the Moluccas were the only source of economically significant spices, including clove, nutmeg and mace. Archaeological and linguistic evidence places Spice Island traders within a trading circuit reaching as far as mainland India around 200 BC. Pliny, the Roman author, described cloves not long afterwards. Javanese and Chinese merchants were heavily involved in the spice trade, and spices reached Europe only after passing through many foreign hands, with the main western terminus of the trade at Alexandria in Egypt.

For this reason, spices appeared in the European imagination as a miraculously expensive natural commodity. Their location was probably unknown to the Muslim traders of Alexandria, but wild stories were invented about the exotic conditions necessary for their cultivation, and the extreme hazards endured to harvest and transport them. This heady mixture of myth, romance and fabulous riches was the El Dorado of Europe's pre-Columbian consciousness.

Venice came to monopolize the spice trade in Europe between 1200 and 1500, through its dominance over Mediterranean seaways to ports such as Alexandria, after traditional land connections were disrupted by Mongols and Turks. The financial incentive to discover an alternative to Venice's monopoly control of this lucrative business was perhaps the single most important factor precipitating Europe's Age of Exploration.

Portugal took an early lead charting the route around the southern tip of Africa, securing various bases en route, even accidentally discovering the coast of Brazil in the search for favourable Southerly currents. Portugal's eventual success -- see Ferdinand Magellan -- and the establishment of its own absolutist monopoly provoked the other maritime powers in Europe, Spain and France, England and the Netherlands to challenge the Portuguese position.

South-East Asian countries collectively known as the Malay Archipelago (currently known as Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia) were also one of the destinations of spice traders, due to exploration efforts by Portuguese explorers. Ports such as Malacca and Singapore bloomed out of the necessity of spice export by parties such as the Portuguese. However, due to conflict between the people in the Sultanate of Malacca and the Portuguese traders, the Portuguese Viceroy Alfonso d'Albuquerque ordered an invasion of Malacca in 1511; thus strengthening their foothold by monopolizing spice trade in the Malay Archipelago.

The ideal of the Spice Islands, eventually to be enveloped by the Netherlands' Dutch East Indies empire, had led to the accidental discovery of the West Indies, and lit the fuse of centuries of rivalry between European maritime powers for control of lucrative global markets and resources. The tattered mystique of the Spice Islands finally died when France and Britain successfully smuggled seeds and plants to their own dominions on Mauritius, Grenada and elsewhere, making spices a more commonplace and much less expensive commodity.

Effect on the spice-growing regions

As Fernand Braudel points out, the Indian Ocean basin in the time between the decline of the Roman Empire and the arrival of Vasco Da Gama was highly self-sufficient: "The Indian Ocean sought only luxuries from outside." The Mediterranean region's desire for pepper, spices, and silk, was balanced by India and China's desire for silver. (Braudel 184-185) The increasing import of silver and gold from the Americas gave Europe (first the Mediterranean, later Northern Europe) increased wealth with which to buy luxuries from the East; the sea route pioneered by Vasco Da Gama was tremendously more efficient than the older land route. Between those two factors, the trade soon reached a level greatly exceeding even that of Roman times.

Production

As of the early 2000s, saffron is the world's most expensive spice (and in fact, the most expensive food by weight). Spain, India, and Iran are producers of saffron. A pound (1/2 kg) of saffron requires about 35,000–100,000 flowers.

The table below shows total global spice production in 2004:

World Spice Production in tons, 2003–2004, data from FAOSTAT
India	1 600 000	86 %
China	66 000	4 %
Bangladesh	48 000	3 %
Pakistan	45 300	2 %
Turkey	33 000	2 %
Nepal	15 500	1 %
Other countries	60 900	3 %
Total	1 868 700	100 %