SPICE TRADE

the merchandising of spices and herbs, an enterprise of ancient origins and great cultural and economic significance. Cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, and turmeric were known to Eastern peoples thousands of years ago, and they became important items of commerce early in the evolution of trade. Cinnamon and cassia found their way to the Middle East at least 2,000 years before the Christian era. From time immemorial, southern Arabia (Arabia Felix of antiquity) had been a trading centre for frankincense, myrrh, and other fragrant resins and gums. Arab traders artfully withheld the true source of these spices. To satisfy the curious, to protect their market, and to discourage competitors, they spread fantastic tales to the effect that cassia grew in shallow lakes guarded by winged animals and that cinnamon grew in deep glens infested with poisonous snakes. Pliny the Elder (AD 2379) ridiculed these stories and boldly declared that all these tales, however, have been evidently invented for the purpose of enhancing the price of these commodities. Whatever part the overland trade routes across Asia played, it was mainly by sea that the spice trade grew. Arabians were making direct sailings before the Christian era. In the Far East, the Chinese were moving through the waters of the Malay Archipelago and trading in the Spice Islands (the Moluccas or the East Indies generally). Ceylon was a central trading point. In Egypt, Alexandria's revenues from port dues were already enormous when Ptolemy XI bequeathed the city to the Romans in 80 BC. Under the Romans, Alexandria became the greatest commercial centre of the world and the emporium for the aromatic and pungent spices of India that found their way to the markets of Greece and the Roman Empire. Roman trade with India was extensive for more than three centuries and then began to decline. It had, no doubt, weakened but not broken the Arabian hold on the spice trade. The Roman trade revived in the 5th century but dwindled in the 6th, whereas the Arabian trade endured through the Middle Ages. By the 10th century Venice was beginning to prosper in the trade of the Levant; by the early part of the 13th century it enjoyed a monopoly of the trade of the Middle East; and by the 15th century it was a formidable power in Europe. Part of Venice's great wealth came from trading in the spices of the East, which it obtained in Alexandria and sold to northern and western European buyer-distributors at exorbitant prices. The Europeans knew the origin of the spices reaching Alexandria and, unable to break the hold of Venice, determined in the last third of the 15th century to build ships and venture abroad in search of a route to the spice-producing countries. So began the famed voyages of discovery. The Portuguese were first in the race and the first to bring spices from India to Europe by way of the Cape of Good Hope in 1501. In 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed under the flag of Spain, and in 1497 John Cabot sailed for England; but both failed to find the fabulous spice lands. Ferdinand Magellan took up the quest for Spain in 1519. Of the five vessels under his command, only one, the Victoria, returned to Spain, but triumphantly, laden with cloves. In 1577 Sir Francis Drake began his adventurous voyage around the world by way of the Strait of Magellan and the Spice Islands and brought the Golden Hind, heavily laden with the cloves of Ternate and other treasures, into Plymouth harbour in 1580. For Holland, a fleet under the command of Cornelis de Houtman sailed for the Spice Islands in 1595; another, commanded by Jacob van Neck, put to sea in 1598; and their ships returned home with rich cargoes of cloves, mace, nutmegs, and pepper. In 1602 the Dutch East India Company came into existence by authority of the Estates-General of the Netherlands. In 1664 the French East India Company was organized by state authorization under Louis XIV. Other European nations granted charters to East India companies with varying success. There followed struggles and conquests to gain advantage and monopolistic control of the trade. For more than 100 years Portugal was the dominant power, eventually yielding to English and Dutch enterprise and conquest; by the 19th century British interests were firmly rooted in India and Ceylon, and the Dutch were in control over the greater part of the East Indies. For mariners it was an age of adventure, risk, hardship, disease, and death; for nations it was an age of struggle, defeat, or conquest and an age for acquiring new, near-primitive lands and colonizing and gaining dominion over civilized foreign territories. For European commercial interests it was an age of rewarding success, which broke the monopoly of Venice, overcame the Muslim domination of the spice trade, created a voluminous trade in a great variety of merchandise between Europe and the Far East, and opened up a New World.