Kristin Collins
Dr. Tirado
April 1, 1996Spices and the History of the Spice Trade
Spices have been important throughout history as a means of prestige as well as for flavoring and preserving foods. Their value can be seen as early as 408 AD, when a ransom was given to Alaric the Visigothic of three-thousand pounds of pepper, along with thirty thousand pounds of silver, five thousand pounds of gold, and four thousand silk tunics (Wernick 129). I plan to discuss the qualities of the most popular spices, the history of the spice trade, as well as the involvement which men such as Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus had in the making and support of the spice trade. Spices are defined as "derived from a variety of plant parts" including the flower, root, bud, secretion, seed, fruit, or bark of certain plants (Dziezak 102). They grow in primarily tropical or semitropical climates, as opposed to herbs, which are usually found in temperate climates. The most popular of the spices include pepper, cloves, mace and nutmeg, cinnamon, thyme, anise seed, bay, coriander, and marjoram. The many spices mentioned above have many discerning characteristics to describe. Pepper vines are most commonly in India and the West Indies and peppercorns can be found in green, white, or black depending on the time of harvest. Columbus had this spice in mind when he set out for the Orient in search of valuable commodities (Hudson 23). Cloves are picked as the unopened buds of the flower, which dries to about one-third of the size it was when picked. They are harvested in Indonesia, Brazil, and Madagascar, as well as many other places (Dziezak 108). Mace and nutmeg are one of the few sets of spices which come from the same part of the plant, in particular the ripened fruit, which grows in the West and East Indies, as well as Indonesia. Nutmeg is the inner section of the fruit which is covered by a thin red covering, which is the mace. Although both have a similar taste, the nutmeg is stronger. One of the oldest known spices, cinnamon (Dziezak 108), is the dried bark of an evergreen laurel which grows in such places as Indonesia, Taiwan, and Ceylon. Coriander, which happens to have been one of the first spices ever brought to America (1670) is used for its leaves as well as its seed. Also known as cilantro, it is found in Romania, Morocco, Mexico, and the middle east. Bay leaves are the foliage of the laurel that were once made into wreaths to set upon the heads of honored Romans. Grown in India, Spain, Germany, Mexico, and Russia, but originally from the Mediterranean anise seed tastes like black licorice. Marjoram and thyme are both leaf spices. Said to cure the damage done by Cupid s arrow, marjoram is grown in Portugal, Greece, Rumania, and France. Thyme is found as a crop mostly in France and Spain. The history of spices goes back as far as 2700 BC, when a man in China named Shen Nung wrote a medical discourse including uses for the spice cassia, which is in the same plant group as cinnamon (Dziezak 104). As early as 600 B.C a trade system was set up where the Arabians took control of the spice market, which was even then very lucrative. Then, around 40 AD the Romans became the principle traders of spices until the fall of the Roman Empire. Many in the Mediterranean believe that there was a special route set up between Africa and Asia for the acquisition of cinnamon from overseas, and then there was a chain set up between the Han dynasty in China and the Romans over land for the precious cargo ( Ee 20). At this time trading was done in small quantities, and such things as spices and the textiles and metals that were also traded were primarily luxuries. Then, at the fall of the Roman Empire, spice trading slowed down considerably until the 1100 s. As the spice trade again began to pick up speed, a different group took over the monopoly. The Venetian became the most important force in the spice trade in the 1200 s and up to the "age of discovery". Marco Polo was sent on a journey in 1271, which would last him twenty-four years, to explore the possible markets throughout Asia. While there, he visited cities where "each day there were some four tons of pepper consumed" (Burland 130). The venetian continued to trade with Kublai Khan and China prosperously until the late 1400 s, when others began to dream to of finding better trade routes to gain some of the profit of the increasingly prolific spice trade. It was in 1484 when Christopher Columbus first decided to search for these new trade routes, and in August of 1492 he set out to find what would be the West Indies. Columbus made a horrible mistake on his first voyage; he failed to bring with him anyone with the knowledge to identify the spices and riches which he had hoped to find. To quote Kirkpatrick Sale, no one had "even the most rudimentary knowledge of flora and fauna, much less any ability to describe, record, analyze, or preserve any of the new specimens of life that might be found . . ." (12). While Columbus searched and discovered a plant which natives called "agi", which had little in common with black pepper, other explorers made their way around the tip of Africa to find a large supply of pepper on the Malabar coast. In fact, it seems that as time went on Columbus s passion for spices lessened as the prospect of gold continually presented itself to him. Michele de Cuneo wrote "[The Indians] presented our captains with a certain amount of gold which included three big pieces . . . With this he and all of us made merry, not caring any longer about any sort of spicery but only of this blessed gold" (Sale 143). Although Columbus did help Spain to become part of the spice trade, in the end it was Portugal who would become the leader of the market for over 100 years (Fenner 14). There were many uses for spices throughout the history of the spice trade. There was a time when spices were used in place of money. Pepper, in particular, was used for this purpose. It was convenient because it was much smaller and lighter than metal. In the Middle Ages one pound of pepper was worth one sheep (Wernick 134). Pepper was also a status symbol, as everyone who was anyone seasoned their food with pepper. Also, in ancient Greece, to say "You smell of thyme" one would be paying the highest of compliments. Due to the bland food of the Middle Ages, spices became very important in preserving foods that could not be gotten fresh, as well as seasoning them to cover up the taste of food which was often diseased or slightly rotten. Spices were not only put on meats, but also used on fish and in jam, soups, and drinks. They also were said to have many medicinal properties "to treat any disease medicine might diagnose" (Lunenfeld 42). Garlic, one of the more "common" of the spices, was known by doctors in the 1200 s as an antidote to snake bites. The spice trade has played an important role in history in that the discovery and use of spices has led indirectly to the "age of discovery" as explorers set out to find new ways to get to the precious commodity. Spices have helped to make the life of the average person more enjoyable by flavoring tasteless foods and by preserving foods that would otherwise be unavailable during certain times in the year. Also used as symbols of wealth or prestige, spices have been influenced history for over four thousand years.
Bibliography Burland, Cottie A. The Travels of Marco Polo. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1970.
Dziezak, Judie D. "Spices". Food Technology Jan 1989: 102, 104, 108, 110, 112
Ee, Khoo Joo. "The Life of Spice: Clove, Nutmeg, Pepper, Cinnamon". UNESCO Courier June 1984: 20-21
Fenner, Louis. "The Spices of Life". FDA Consumer July-Aug 1983: 14
Hudson, Selma. About Spices. Chicago: Melmont Publishers, 1971.
Lunenfeld, Marvin. 1492: Discovery, Invasion, Encounter. Toronto: DC Heath and Company, 1991.
Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Colombian Legacy. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1991.
Wernick, Robert. "Men Launch 1,000 Ships in Search of the Dark Condiment". Smithsonian Feb 1984: 129-130, 138-139