Global Transplantation and Modern Spice Legacies

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Plus, get a free Blackstone six piece stainless steel griddle kit when you buy a select Blackstone griddle, our best lineup It is here at Lows. Valid through six hundred twenty four. Wh supplies last, seelection varies by location Hello and welcome to yourour Dead T me, the Radio four comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian author and broadcaster, and today we're rummaging in kchen cupboards and learning all about the history of spices and the spice trade. And to help us, we have two very special dining companions. In History Corner, he's a lecturer in early modern history at Banger University in Wales, where he specializes eararly modern British emmpire the East India Comp You might have read his wonderful book The Great Defiance How the World Tk on the British Empire is doctor David Beievers. Welcome David. Thank you. Thanks Ay. I'm super excited.light to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, he's a standup comedian and renowned quizzer. You'd have seen him on Taskmaster, QI. Would I lie to you and heard him on all over Radio four with this various wonderful series general knowledge, but he's surely best known as a formidable chaser on the TV game show with the chase. Yes, it's the Cinnaman himself. Paul Sinner. Welcome, Paul. It's a delight to be here. Thankk you very much. Paul, your first time on the show, but you are a professional quizzer There's only about twenty vist in the country in history, so that's a nice description. I'm proud of that one. That's a great description. Where are you with spices and spicy food? Are you a spicy food lover? On the scale of nught to ten, I'm sort of seven slash eight. That's cool. It means I don't like to show off like the drunk in the curry house. Okay making a bad decision on the Vindelu or the fl But I don't like my food too mild either Okay, spices are good. Spices are good I am not particularly good in the spices. I'm probably a kind of five to six out of ten, spicy means. David, where are you on the spice index? I'm lower. I write about spices, but I'm probably like a two. O C I need a big glass of water. Okay. This is the equivalent of me discussing keeping up with the Kardashians That's right. Yeah So, what do you know This is the So what doa know, this is where I have a go guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And you might know of course that spices famously come in five vareties. You've got ginger baby, scary, sport, Ang onone that's not right. My bad. Anyway, you've all heard of spices. They turn our food from drab to fab. They're a key ingredient in England's national dish, which of course is chicken, tika masala and every autumn pumpkin spice objects conquer the shops, from lattes to cat litter But what other uses have people found for spices? How did they make their way into our global spice rack? Let's find out. Dr. David, what is a spice? There wasn't a clear definition of what a spice was for a long time. Traditionally in medieval, early modern period, a spice is a kind of blanket term for anything unusual, expensive, smells a bit funny. So technically a spice is a part of a tropical plant like the bark or the flower or the seed and then there are some light vanilla that is actually the flower of a tropical plant. So the most common ones that we talk about really are from Asia, they're native to Asia, with a few exceptions. so saffron from Greece, for example, Chilies from South America, Predominantly Asia we're tal at, it's important that we do because the geography of spices really shapes their history and the history we've had in trading with them. So Cehrons from Greece Yes, ye. This is new to me. Did you know? I didn't know that. I always assumed it was from India, but it's Vanilla, Chile, all spice, there're South American. So we're predominantly talking about Asia, but not exclusively. Vanilla. Vanilla. Yeah. It's not Madagascan But some of these spices are transplanted around the world. Okay. Where do we start our story? if we're talking about the origins of the spice trade, Obviously spices have grown on trees for millions of years, but the spice trade, when can we date that back to? Yeah, so the trade in spices as long as human civilization. So we're talking really about a specific part of Asia, It's the Malaccas East Asia, thoseose islands exclusive were known as the Spice Islands because that's where you would find only their nutmeg, mace, cloves, those sorts of rare spices. and they were exported by locals to the Malay Peninsula and found their way out across Asia and onward. So the Spice Islands are Indonesia? theyreaster in Indonesia. One of many thousands of islands Yeah. so there are thousands of islands and just some of them will only cultivate Okay, it's an amazing place. Fantastic. Where are we back in the Bronze Age Yes. Th then from the Br It's a story about the way they're disseminating fir further outward. Paul, do you know the nineteenth century euphemism to voyage to the Sice Islands? Do you know what it means? The number of things it could be it could be an alternate sexuality. It could could fromis of being gay to voyage to the Spice islands, but it could be just doing something Unusual or exotic I. sureure. There's a whole list of things that are considered unusual and exotic that list changes O the years. Okay, in the nineteenth century, what would be exotic and unusual U reading. Now according to Susie Den, the lovely lexicographer, it meant going to the toilet. But what does Suzie Den mean Across this period then we see it being traded across the Malay Peninsula, over to India Malabar then has its own pepper and spice cultivation in Southeast India. and then it crosses the Arabian Sea, into the Persian Gulf, into the Red Sea, and then across the Levant and North Africa and eventually the Mediterranean as well. And we know the Egyptian pharaohs are trading for them in the Arabian Peninsula. This is sort of twenty eight hundred BCE. so it's a long history. It's a long time ago And there's even evidence that Mesopotamian civilizations were trading for spices with the Indus Valley, a kind of vast expanse across a long time. So Europeans, of course, would have got involved eventually, this stuff is going to spread which spicy conqueror connected his new empire to North India in the fourth century BCE. I imagine that's The one, the only Alexander the Great. Absolutely is. Alexander the Great's conquest He storms through Persia, he storms through Egypt, he storms into North India with his army Does he therefore sort of connect up this Asian trade into a European world? He does. He's s of consolidates that link across the Hindu Cosa, across the kind of Indus Valley and connects it into a network, you know that connects Egypt to the Indus Valley that connects the Greek world and so he consolidates those trade links and and when a sppice is a big part of that story, he literally put the mace in Macedonia. There we go. So that connection stays connected, right? When Alexander dies, the whole thing doesn't just collapse. Yeah, I think we often think that you know, with Alexander's death, it does' all just collapse and you have this struggle of the success of the states. But you know the thing is when you establish lucrative trade routes and spices being so covered as they are, these things endure. so we get the city of Alexandria becomes the hub of the spice trade for sort of North African Mediterranean axis of that network. and it flourishes partly on the back of lucrative trade in spices. Then later on obviously we get the Roman annexation of Egypt and that only sort of further enlarges the spice trade, especially across the Roman Empire. But obviously eventually as all emmpires do, the Western Roman Empire falls was it f or was it pushed? It was it it ped. That's a good question. That's put another show. It's a different show qualified to say. But we know that does disrupt obviously access to spices across Western Europe. So we get a big increase in maritime trade in this period And when I say this period, I suppose we are we're in what we call late early medieval period. it's that sort of seven hundreds, eight hundreds sort of space. One of the reasons big expanses is technological innovation. There are three major developments. Do you know what they might be? Paul around this time, technological So it' maritime Exansiony things. Sxtant Oh, that's a good guess. So a navigation aid, you think? Yeah Sexton's a good guess. Give me two more Arave. Yes, absolutely. Yep C Cass you've got two out of three, and seeon's a good guess. I think Sexon's a bit later. So it is. It's astrolabe, David. Yeah Yeah, it's Astrolabe. that's really good guess. Magnetic compass. Yeah. That's the next one. The other one is what wass known more commonly as the triangular cell, but the latine cell that allows you to kind of tack into the wind and challenge the elements to go in We going to get that one sa t. I felt that was the obvious one, Paul there. No Latin' there Yeah. Are you not a sailor pa? you know out on the water every weekend? No, no, no, no. it's a very different part of my life. Yeah. so the sail allows you to sail into the wind, which means you can still navigate through the trade winds Yeah they're they're blowing against you, you can still Yeah, of course we' pre modern navigation, it's all about the wind. and this allows the trade to essentially run on its own rhythm rather than be dictated by the elements We get the Sassanid Empire. They all sound very saucy, the Sassanids. It's just a good name for an empire. It is, especially like an empire that really gets rich off the back of spices. to the successors of the Persian Empire. They're occupying a space between east and west. And so the overland route. And also the Sassinidpire is also the maritime routes coming through the Persian Gulf. And their successors would do the same Ch the Persian Gulf is one of main arteries of the spice trade from Asia into Europe. So they become powerful and rich off the back of this spice trade. And you know for those of us who know the Quran, often forget that the prophet Muhammad was a spice trader and that his family were involved in the spice trade as many well to do families were in that region that particular period of time. So we know it's kind of one of the more elite opations are then following the Arab conquests of much of the Middle East North Africa, even up into the Iberian Peninsula today, Spain and Portugal They're kind of bringing the spice trade almost kind of to the extent that the Romans had pushing it well into Europe and beyond. and you see this great expansion with the Muslim conquests. Paul, there is then a major medieval event which brings medieval Europeans back into the trade. Do you know what that would be? Crusade? Yeah, it absolutely is. Crusades horribly violent as they were. They did increase access to spices in Europe and of course broaden tastes They reintroduced Western Europe to these spices that everyone has been enjoying for a long time over in Asia and in North Africa and so on What is that moment like Yeah, I think in some ways, it's that resumption of those broken links that were established a long time ago. And it's not to say that Europe was completely cut off from spices, but the crusades reestablishes on a more firmer footing the trade links through obviously the horrendous violence of the crusades, but also the establishment of maritime and overland routes that have become disrupted or passed out of European control. So this is kind of the reestablishment of that And we often associate that resumption of that trade introducing medieval Europe and its's bland and horrible food and it's rotting meat that's festering on and everyone dying of the plague because of it. And you know, that big myth that spices What you know, how does this solution finally to Europe's kind of horrible cuisine and that they would just lash the rotting meat and conceal the horrible smell and taste of food? Of course, that's nonsense. Yeah, because spices cost an absolute for. Yeah. like it's like putting palladium on a pot noodle. It's like exactly The spices cost way more than the meat. Yeah, that's right. And so that we know that that doesn't matter. Spices are used in flavor, but they're not used extravagant extent of basic wasting them as a kind of preservative for food. But yeah, they are being used and consumed for their taste. And we know the sort of big players doing this that kind of follows on the heels of the crusading states are The Italian city, maritime states, Venice is the big one Genoa as well. But by the end of the fourteen hundreds, we start to get. European navigators going I quite want a spice root. Do you know who these would be? Paul? who would be the big players Well Sade in Portugal. Yeah, absolutely Isabell Ferdinand and Isabel. Very good. Yeah of Castille. Yeah and Henry Henry the Navigator.er Oh this is good knowledge. Okay, who would be your explorers? Who's getting on the ship and doing the hard Well Baskad de Gamma, but I happen to do Ferdinand Mcgeelum and Mastermind. M many, many moons ago So I'm aware that the first circumnavigation to the globe was because of spices. Yeah. When I did masterind, I knew nothing about McGallan. Blew my mind that all of that was for spices. Yeah. The entire had had no other purpose. But it is the Portuguese. It is Vasca de Gam, as Paul said, who sw really is our first great navigator in the spice trade and he's going not west. he's going south. Yeah, he is he's going south when the Portuguese come down the coast of Africa and round the Cape of Good Hope under Vasco de Gama and into the Indian Ocean. This is the sort of first recorded European entry into the maritime route around the Cape of Good Hope. And it's in fourteen ninety eight they hit the Madabar coast in India, which is if you're looking for spices, it's exactly where you want to land, you know, a bunch of peppercorn forests surrounding you, and this is what they bring back itack P corn. which is the spice that, you know, we take for granted that spice cupoard in kitchen, but once upon a time that drove early modern navigation trade. Your energy is gone, your hunger is loud, and your plans aren't feeding you So what are you still doing here? Get your afternoon pick me up with a refreshing large big goulf drink at seven eleven. Cold, refreshing, and made the way you like it. It's available at seven eleven and just fifty nine cents with seven rewards. Visit your local New York seven hundred eleven and satisfy that craving today. 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And that's the best part. whole crew, no plan, just moving. Good thing Niss buildils for that kind of chaos. Not just test tracks, real life scenes, late nights, road trips, all of it That's why it holds up. Nissan was rriankged number one in initial quality among mainstream brands by JD Power. Yeah, you can tell! twenty twenty six Nissan Roggue built for what really happens. For JDPower twenty twenty five US initialQality stududy award information visit JDpower dot com slash awards. Awards based on twenty twenty five model year, newer models may be shown So Portugal becomes the kind of dominant peppera of Europe, I suppose. They found well they found a sort of fort, Is it Calicut? Yes, Calicut, which is in Keral Eestate in Southwest India. is the first major city where they are we say negotiating and buying spices, but it's the Portuguese. so they're also blowing people up and blowing up parts of Negotiating with grenades. With grenades peace through force, that kind of negotiating tactic. And they're very successful brring back these, the first holds full of peppercorn and they land in Europe is almost overnight turn from mud and But Marble, its skyline rises and it becomes one of the wealthiest cities in Europe. Mly because of this spice trade. But by the end of fifteen hundreds, we got two new players in the race. They're not super renowned for their well seasoned food, who would they be So when are we now? Late fifteen hundreds, think sort of fifteen eighties, that sort of you know Queen Elizabeth type era. Exactly might be U England? Y And Netherlands? Yeah, very good. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the Dutch and the English suddenly Go hang on a minute, everyveryonese is getting rich. How do we have one of these empires? Yeah, let's throw some spice on this herring. get some flavour in this stew. Yeah, so it's the North Europeans, predominantly the English and the Dutch who are looking at their muddy timber cities going, wow, we'd love some marble And they are, They're riding on the coattails of predominantly the Portuguese, and it's really the Dutch that take the lead. and there' in a way, there's a great kind of interplay between the history of something like spice, a commodity, a foodstuff with the emergence of modern capitalism. and they develop a joint stock company. the modern joint stock corporation comes from the Netherlands and the English, developing East India companies to trade with the Ies The English Uenior compomany on New Yearars of sixteen hundred is about two hundred and fifteen big weeigks. and they're copying the Dutch, you know I'd love to say this is an English innovation but it's not Much of what made England great in the early mod appeod is ick off from the Dutch. And so they play bay football in the. Eactly they both head off to Asia. and so it's the Dutch East India compomany thaterges really is the winner of the spice trade. Interesting There's a tactic the Dutch subsequently used to restrict the trade and to keep spice prices high Paul, Do you know what it would be No I don't actually If you've got too much of something And you want to keep the value high, What do you do with it it away. Store it away is sensible or you could destroy it? Okay. So I mean, David, they they I mean, back in Amsterdam, They're just burning Yeah Burning tons of this expensive stuff that they've imported in? Yeah. o no, we've been too successful. There's too much and the prices are dropping and we're losing money T to keep the value of it, they're literally just setting fire to it. Yeah. So that is the reason for the distinctive smell of the streets of Amsterdam. Yeah. I think that might be a different smell. But yeah, and it's about controlling the market and monopolising it. And you know, when the English bring back tons of pepper, the Dutch brouought it back first. they get to a depressed market. Right. And it sits in their warehous in London for about seven years before they can shift it and they do it at a lot. So in a way, the Dutch are maintaining profitability by just burning tons of this stuff. So that kind of lovely Christmas smell when you go to markets of nutmeg and cinnamon, that's just the smell of violent colonialism. the smell of violent colonialism in the morning. What a colologonne that would be Okay, so empires are gonna empire and the English and Dutch that's where the word Cologne comes from Cologne. Colog maybe it's short for violent Cologneies So the English and Dutch, they're becoming more powerful by the sixteen hundreds and they're fighting each other But they're also fighting the people they' trying to gonger I mean, we get more horrible violence here. Yeah, it's kind of a classic imperial rivalry for the most valuable overseas trading commodity ever. It's the people of the region that suffer the most. So in collusion with the English, the Dutch essentially U massacre the Bandonese living on these nutmeg plantations. So they sang on the Inalut and they joined forces. Yeah, so a war between the English and the Dutch East India companies doesn't go very well for the English and there's really a kind of almost a corporate mergure. They agreed to share the spice trade. The Dutch get two thirds and the English a third and they're moving in the same forts and factories and manage the trade together. It really, it sounds like an alliance. It's really a kind of Dutch corporate takeover of the Ailing English compomany the victims are the indigenous people. And so what happens is yeah, the Dutch kind of once they're in position of the Bounder Islands thanks to England's weakness is that they ye, they exterminate the people living there and instead turn the entire islands over to plantations And they often bring in enslavave labour to then manage that cultivation. Sorry, Paul, it's not the funniest subject, is it? It's not I've got nothing to say. I don't think you should say anything. Should I just say Alexander the Great put the mace into Macadonia. Thank you. Thank you for bringing us the levity. So we've get the then once the Bandanese have been exterminated, the Dutch and the English carpiting together, managing the trade Dch are very jealous. They've given the English a third, but they don't really want them to have any. They want so exclusive monopoly of spices. And so they become very paranoid. and the Dutch employ a number of Japanese mercenaries in their forts and factories on the Banner Islands and they start to believe that the English merchants and the Japanese mercenaries are colluding together to overthrow the Dutch take over the spice monopoly. So in ' sixteen twenty three Dutch seize the Japanese and the English and they interrogate them and these all these sorts of torture methods, waterboarding, hanging them upside down, you know to extract confessions of conspiracy. And they ended up executing ten of the English and a number of the Japanese mercenaries. It' known as the Amboyna Massacre And the English were outraged. and for decades there was litigation by the families of the English against the Dutch states for compensation for the Wow Yeah. I didn't know that you could sue a state in the sixteen fifties or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And essentially King James and then his successors had to sort of you know mediate between the families and eventually the families are compensated, but it's know almost no one is left alive that was involved in that. And eventually the English the British rather by this point, I suppose the Stwards obviously rle Sotland and Eland so ye, I guess we're calling kind of British. They gave up the Spice Islands in favour of a new colony. Do you know what they got in in exchange with the Dutch Quite a nice city. I believe the heir to the throne was James Duke of York. Yes. James Duke of York., New York. New York. Well done. I could I see the cogs woraring. hge James S secondcond. Yeah, exactly. Very briefly, very briefly. So they swap the spice trade for New York for Broadway. Yes exactly. Is that a good deal, Paul? That would fantastic,.ould you? wouldould you take N York? Well, I've been to New York this year and I gota say there's a lot of very good spice restaurants there. So you got the whole Eeta actually, You're the whole deal The sort spice trade is this is the Dutch monopoly in in the east. Do they hold it for long? I mean, I don't We don't think of the Dutch as a superpower in the nineteh century do we? You don't, But but they are. they are a colonial power. They're definitely not at the top of the league of European superpowers Con superpowers. but they are, they do they do continue right up until beyond the Second World War. All. With interludes. you know they're not exclusively controlled of spices because they're grown elsewhere like in India, and that's the English used seem to comeing in in the British Raj eventually that takes over spice production in India. So you know at times it's broken and they're supplanted, but generally the Dutch East Indies hangs on until post Second World War after a brief Japanese occupation at well, during the war itself. So yeah, it's a long and violent monopoly that goes on there And over that time, it's eroded by other Europeans taking spices from that region and then transplanting them. Yeah. So do you know what gets moved where by whom? Well, I'm guessing that vanilla gets moved to Madagascca Vanilla' a good one. Brazil becomes the great place of the Portuguese colony you know for everything from cinnamon to cloves. Black Black pepper as well, of course, the British take cloves of the Caribbean as well.. And the Caribbeilians always produce mostly sugar at this point, but also things like ginger and that so cloves is a good kind of fit. Any kind of tropical, similar tropical environment with good conditions And so yeah, by about the twentieth century, you can find a lot of these spices being grown elsewhere off to an industrial scale. And we can mention France as well. Paul, have you ever heard of the Frenchman Pierre Pove And you know what he planted in Mauritius Hez. That's a g. If I give you a clue, Pove means pepper in orange. Not pepper, pepper here what does he plant in Mauritius Youd think it would be pepper. It's not pepper, which feels like a real nominative determinism fail. Yeah. Peter peepper and he plants clove nutmeg. I believe they were his middle names. So Peter C clove nutmeg pepper. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so he smuggles these out and you know the Dutch Gard them jealously. We're talking sort of late eighteenth century, seventeenh seventies, eighties, and it smuggles into a series of French possessions and the first one is Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. they go ont to Madagascar. and eventually East Africa, Zanzibar Zanzbar off the coast of East Africa. And so they Zanzibar becomes in the nineteenth century the major slave port of that particular region but also one time it's also the largest producer of cloves. Wow, amazing. So that's a huge sort of transition of the locus of where the spice industry isn't it? moveving to East Africa. Yeah. So there we go. We've gone around the world. We've ended our kind of global history of spices. Did you enjoy that, Pa? or was I thoroughly in the table Was't too violent, sorry Well, I was well aware of the violence of colonialism. You haven' tau me anything new there, but it is a bit bleak to think that everything we eat has violent past Yeah, I'm trying to think of something that doesn't. Deep Fred Marsbur. St' deep Yeah Mbe. But you wants window Time now for the Nuance window. This is where Paul and I sildently rearrange our spice racks for two minutes. Well Dror David cooks up something we need to know about the history of spices. So my stopwatch is ready Take it away, Dr. David Today, almost every kitchen around the world has a spice rack or cupboard. Even the most exotic and rare of spices is cheaply and readily available in supermarkets around the world The truth is, however we use spices today, they've played a key role in the commercial, social and cultural lives of the majority of people on this planet across a long period of time and over a vast expanse of space. From the Malaccas to London, Tobago to Beijing, spices have permeated the history of humanity, going back millenniums. From the Egyptian phharaoh in twelve twenty four BCE who is embalmed with peppercns up his nose to the UK today, where we consume well over a kilot of spices per capita every year So how should we understand in regard to spices in human history? we can highlight the role they played in cultural exchange Chinese merchants migrated to Java, married local women, converted to Islam, all in pursuit of spices