Ginger, cardamom, turmeric, saffron, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon and cloves -- these and more were the driving forces of an enormously lucrative trade. Black pepper dominated, and had done since Roman times. It was such a common ingredient of Roman cooking, Keay speculates, that only its ordinariness can account for its otherwise inexplicable absence from a Roman list of tariffs on goods imported via Alexandria, a key port for commerce to and from the East. (Goods were carted the short space between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean for millennia before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869).
Spices were originally traded between Asia and Arabia and the Mediterranean using a combination of sea and land routes. Goods were characteristically brought by sea to the Malay peninsula, carried on mules across it, then taken by sea to southern India where they were transported overland again before being put back on ships and taken to the Middle Eastern ports. But the arrival of transport wholly by sea once the route round the Cape of Good Hope had been pioneered by Vasco da Gama in 1497 changed everything.
"When performed in a single vessel [the trade was] quicker and substantially cheaper. Bulk shipments meant economies all round. They eliminated the exactions of middlemen -- carters, cameleers, customs posts [and] less bellicose competitors and so ensured the lowest possible purchase price and the highest possible resale value."
And the Europeans were bellicose indeed, possibly to a degree previously unknown in Asia, despite the tales of horrendous Asiatic cruelty so popular in the West. Vasco da Gama, "burning-eyed and black-hearted," shot, burned, mutilated and raped his way round the globe. The Portuguese may have been the first to employ his brutal methods but the Spanish, Dutch and English were not far behind, and thought nothing of committing equal atrocities -- hands, noses and ears lopped off, captives fixed in the rigging for "cross-bow practice," ships burnt and their crews casually killed in the water with spikes and spears.
With its combination of historical detail, broad scope, intelligent appraisal, engaging narrative style and fascinating color illustrations, this is a wonderful book. Indeed, it's hard to see how it could possibly be bettered.
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