This is by any standards an outstanding book. John Keay is the author of a large number of other works on Asia in general and India in particular, as well as being the general editor of the UK Royal Society's History of World Exploration. His productivity, though, doesn't seem to have
affected the quality of what he writes -- The Spice Route: A History -- is an astonishingly impressive book, combining (unusually) vivid prose and scholarly acumen with a light touch that makes for easy but highly informative reading.
The subject is the European trade in Asian spices, something that goes back to Roman and even Greek times, and probably antedates even these, but which reached a pinnacle of volume and profitability in the age of European maritime expansion 500 years ago.
"In a sea of halogen clarity, turquoise depths shade to the milky ramparts of a sub-aqua wonderland where liveried fish glide and dart through fretted coral palaces."
This is an example of one of Keay's many styles. "Unlike China's tea, South America's rubber or the Middle East's oil -- all of which were first discovered, then tapped, cultivated, traded and processed, spices were first tapped, cultivated, traded and processed, then discovered." This is an example of another Keay style. And here is a third: "Geography ordained a paradise; history made it a killing-field."
Quite why spices were deemed so important, and commanded such high prices in the 16th century markets of Lisbon, Amsterdam and London, is not an easy question to answer. Keay largely discounts the old view that they were so especially valued because they preserved meat from putrefaction. This belief held that there was a European shortage of winter feed for farm animals, and so enough had to be slaughtered in the autumn to last until the early summer (non-meat-eating Lent providing a convenient respite from the crisis). Spices preserved the meat in the days before refrigeration.
Probably not, says Keay. Recent research has shown that sticking a joint of beef with cloves, say, or rubbing it with cinnamon does little to prolong its edible life, and Mrs. Beeton's famous Victorian cookbook effectively concurs. An alternative theory that the spices merely made palatable what would otherwise have been foul-tasting is also dismissed -- practical tests have suggested the resulting concoctions taste even worse.
The real reason people for two, perhaps three, thousand years were prepared to pay so much for spices originating in mysterious places far over the horizon (in reality mostly in modern Indonesia) was that they were markers of status for the consumer. You were a more classy person if you ate your food spiced, Keay argues.
"Our ancestors seemingly had no economic excuse for their pursuit of exotic foodstuffs. They, like we, craved edible spices simply because they made food more enticing and implied cosmopolitan tastes. Spicy aromas stimulated the appetite, spicy flavors excited the palate, and perhaps most important of all, spicy extravagance impressed the neighbors ... Like fine silks and acknowledged works of art, exotic fragrances and flavors lent to aspiring households an air of superior refinement and enviable opulence."
Spices were certainly widespread. The French word for grocers is still epicier, stemming from epiciers or spice merchants. Spices, in other words, became equated with food in general, and to eat at all was to eat spices.
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