History of Spices: commerce, colonialism and culinary innovation

23:40And they take the Bander Islands too, which is home to two new spices too. Yeah. So it's the rarer. So this is the bulk of this is black peppercorns, but it's the kind of mace and the cloves and the rarer spices. And nutmeg as well, I think. Nutmeg as well. These are found on just a single island, some of these. So they are rare, you know, those few square miles of territory, sunken volcanic peaks in Southeast Asia are easily controlled. They build big forts and they coerce and force the spice farmers to produce certain quotas. And they corner the market, the European market, but to some extent as well, the Asian market as well.

24:16OK, so the Portuguese are elbows out violently conquering. I mean, this is also bad news for Venice as well, because they've lost their monopoly. Yeah. And also for the Ottoman Empire, which has become really the superpower of the early modern world, controlling those old routes, the East Roman Empire, the Sassanids and eventually the Caliphates of the Arab world. The Ottoman Empire has struck out at the beginning of the 16th century, taking control of all these territories. And there's a great leverage over the Europeans. And they've gone around Venice, they've gone around the Ottoman Empire, and now they're undermining those sources of traditional wealth.

24:53At this point, it's not an independent Italy. Venice is its own state. The reason I point it out is in 1494, the Pope divided the world into two halves with the Treaty of Tordesillas. So there's a sort of meridian that runs and sort of clips the coast of Brazil. And to one side, Portugal are causing havoc. And the other side goes to Spain. So Venice didn't get a look in. in the discussion on it was basically everything Spain or Portugal. Yeah. And so Europeans love their straight lines on map. Yes. They love carving, just put a straight line through a little bit of Brazil and the rest is to carve up the world.

25:34Yeah. And so Portugal and Spain, as you say, Paul, are suddenly very dominant by their kind of early mid-1500s. But by the end of 1500s, we get 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 1500s. think sort of 1580s that sort of you know Queen Elizabeth type era. Is that a clue? Might be. England? Yep and Netherlands? Yeah very good yeah absolutely I mean the Dutch and the English suddenly sort of go oh hang on a minute everyone else is getting rich how do we have one of these empires? Yeah let's throw some spice on this herring let's get some flavour in this stew.

26:13Yeah so it's the the North Europeans predominantly 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's this great kind of interplay between the history of something like spice, a commodity, a foodstuff with the emergence of modern capitalism. They're experimenting new ways to go thousands of miles, spend the equivalent today of hundreds of millions, maybe even billions investing in the trade, bringing it home, which, you know, in the period before steam power, you know, relying on the age of sale.

26:52It's incredibly risky. You know, entire merchants are kind of completely ruined by investment in overseas trade. Ships will sink. Ships are sinking. Pirates, corsairs. Yeah, exactly right. And so they're thinking, well, how can we do this in a way that will, you know, mitigate that risk, spread the risk, pool our resources together. And they developed a joint stock company. You know, the modern joint stock corporation comes from the Netherlands and the English developing East India companies to trade with the Indies. The first, the English East India Company on New Year's of 1600 is about 215 bigwigs, you know, aldermen, mares.

27:26They celebrate the new century by saying, well, we've invented a new idea. That's right, yeah, yeah. And so 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 modern period is ripped off from the Dutch. And so they both... It's a bit like football in the 70s. Exactly. they both head off to Asia on the Ketuz. It's the Dutch who are wealthier. They've got more sea power. They've got bigger guns and they break the Portuguese monopoly. Because they've been fighting the Spanish to the Dutch. Because they've been fighting the Spanish for about 80 years.

27:54Yeah, they're literally in 80 years war. So they're pretty good at the war thing there. That's right, yeah. And they're more urbanised. They're more commercialised. England's getting there, but it's a lot slower. It's slightly poorer. And so it's the Dutch East India Company that emerges. Really, it's the winner of the spice trade. Interesting. Are the Dutch more polite than the Portuguese? I'm guessing not. Well, not really. They're really there to take over the enforced spice monopoly. But you get these great antiques with the English and the Dutch. They are feeling their way. They're not as confident as the Portuguese.

28:23They're both rocking up at the city of Banten, which is the main spice hub after Malacca. They're trying to kind of like get the spice concessions out of the Sultan. He's only about 13 years old. and they turn up and they're in line to see the Sultan. And the English are sort of going, oh, you know, out loud, the Dutch don't even have a king. Can you fancy that? The Dutch are calling James I King of Fishermen and no more than a fart. And there's all this kind of like putting each other down and it's the ceremony, the circumcision of the boy Sultan. And the English are in line queuing up and they realise that a great faux part is that only women can present gifts to the Sultan.

29:06So they quickly run around the port and they can't find any women. So they dress up 50 Chinese boys in the clothes of women and put them in a procession and they present some kind of rattan display that they've cobbled together, almost like a homemade DIY project. And it's really embarrassing and the Dutch absolutely written for it. And it's a great faux pas and they go away and the Dutch get the trading concession and the English are left looking embarrassed. Oh, that is embarrassing. The first, for example, of true cultural appropriation. Yeah, exactly. All right, so the Dutch get the dominance really in that sort of area.

29:38And the Dutch are violent. They are killing the Bandanese islanders. Again, this is colonialism. This is not sort of fair trade. No, it's not fair trade. This is the age of mercantilism. It's, you know, resources are finite. We need to control them, take them from our neighbours. The Bandar Islands are on the wrong end of this because that's the collection of islands that really have the rarest spices like mace and clove and nutmeg especially. Nutmeg is the most valuable here. There's a tactic the Dutch subsequently use to restrict the trade and to keep spice prices high. Paul, do you know what it would be?

30:09No, 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? Store it away. Store it away as sensible or you could destroy it. OK. So, I mean, David, I mean, back in Amsterdam, they're just burning... Yeah. ..just burning tonnes of this expensive stuff that they've imported in. Yeah. Oh, no, we've been too successful. There's too much and the prices are dropping and we're losing money. So to keep the value of it, they're literally just setting fire to it. Yeah. Is that the reason for the distinctive smell of the streets of Amsterdam? Yeah, I think that might be a different smell.

30:44But yeah, and it's about controlling the market and monopolising it. And, you know, when the English bring back tonnes of pepper, the Dutch brought it back first. They get to a depressed market. Right. And it sits in the warehouses in London for about seven years before they can shift it and they do it at a loss. 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 Christmas markets of nutmeg and cinnamon, that's just the smell of violent colonialism. It is. The smell of violent colonialism in the morning.

31:11What a cologne that would be. OK, so empires are going to empire. And the English and Dutch... Maybe that's where the word cologne comes from. It's short for violent colonialism.

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32:09So the English and Dutch, they're becoming more powerful with the 1600s and they're fighting each other, but they're also fighting the people they're trying to conquer. I mean, we get more horrible violence here. Yeah, it's kind of that 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 massacre the Bandanese living on these nutmeg plantations. So hang on, in collusion they join forces? Yeah, so essentially a war between the English and the Dutch East India companies doesn't go very well for the English.

32:45And there's really a kind of almost a corporate merger. 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 company. But the victims are the indigenous people. And so what happens is, yeah, the Dutch, once they're in position, the Bander Islands, thanks to England's weakness, is that they exterminate the people living there and instead turn the entire islands over to plantations to control very tightly the COP.

33:18And they often bring in slave 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. Shall I just say Alexander the Great put the mace into Macedonia? Thank you. Thank you for bringing us the levity. Yes, absolutely. But it's not a nice history. We often forget that we celebrate Spice and this wonderful kind of multicultural culinary. But it has a lot of the things we enjoy here in the West in the early modern and then the modern period, chocolate and sugar as well. It has a dark history and that's often because of Europeans.

33:50And so we get the then, once the Bandanese have been exterminated, the Dutch and the English carpenting together, managing the trade. The Dutch are very jealous. They've given the English a third, but they don't really want them to have any. They want sole 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 and to take over the spice monopoly. So in 1623, the Dutch seized the Japanese and the English and they interrogate them in these sorts of torture methods, waterboarding, hanging them upside down, pulling their fingernails off to extract confessions of conspiracy.

34:38And they ended up executing 10 of the English and a number of the Japanese mercenaries. It's known as the Aboyna Massacre. The English were outraged. And for decades, there was litigation by the families of the English against the Dutch states. for compensation for the death. Wow. I didn't know you could sue a state in the 1650s or whatever. Yeah, and essentially King James and then his successors had to sort of mediate between the families. And eventually the families are compensated, but almost no one is left alive that was involved in that. And eventually the British, rather, by this point I suppose, it's a fusion, the Stuarts obviously rule Scotland and England, so I guess we're calling them kind of British.

35:15They gave up the Spice Islands in favour of a new colony. Do you know what they got 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. Oh, New York. New York, well done. I could see the cogs were in there. The future James 2nd. Yeah, exactly. Very briefly. Very briefly. So they swapped the spice trade for New York. For Broadway. Yes, exactly. Is that a good deal, Paul? That's a fantastic deal. Would you? Would you take New York? I've been to New York this year, and I've got to say, there's a lot of very good spice restaurants there.

35:48So you've got the whole deal. The sort of spice trade is the Dutch monopoly in the East. Do they hold it for long? I mean, we don't really think of the Dutch as a superpower in the 19th century, do we? You don't, but they are. They are a colonial power. They're definitely not at the top of the league for European superpowers, but they are. They do continue right up until beyond the Second World War with interludes. They're not exclusively in control of spices because they're grown elsewhere, like in India, and that's the English Eastern Company in the British Raj eventually that takes over spice production in India.

36:23There's an occupation by the British during the Napoleonic War of the Dutch Spice Islands, of Dutch Indonesia, and briefly Britain takes over that. So 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 as well during the war itself. So yeah, it's a long and violent monopoly that carries on there. and over that time it's eroded by other Europeans taking spices from that region and then transplanting them. Yeah, so we're back to, you made the point earlier, Paul, about transplanting of these spices into new places.

37:00So do you know what gets moved where, by whom? Well, I'm guessing that vanilla gets moved to Madagascar. Yeah, vanilla's a good one. Brazil becomes the great place of the Portuguese colony for everything from cinnamon to cloves, black pepper as well, of course, the British take close to the Caribbean as well. Right. Any kind of tropical, similar tropical environment with good conditions. By about the 20th century, you can find a lot of these spices being grown elsewhere, often to an industrial scale. And we can mention France as well. Paul, have you ever heard of the Frenchman Pierre Poivre? And do you know what he planted in Mauritius?

37:34Pears? That's a good... Well, if I give you a clue, Poivre means pepper in French. Oh, not pear, pepper, yeah. What does he plant in Mauritius? No. You'd think it would be pepper. It's not pepper, which feels like a real nominative determinism fail. Yeah. It's Peter Pepper and he plants... Clove nutmeg. I believe they were his middle names. Peter clove nutmeg pepper. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so he smuggles these out. And, you know, the Dutch did guard them jealously. We're talking sort of late 18th century, 1770s, 80s. And he smuggles them to a series of French possessions. And the first one is Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.

38:12They go on to Madagascar. And eventually East Africa, Zanzibar, the coast of East Africa. Zanzibar becomes in the 19th century kind of what 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 is, isn't it? Yeah. To move it to East Africa. Yeah. OK, so we've done the global spice trade. It's been brutal and, you know, conquest trade, colonial rivalries, corporations fighting each other. It's not very fun. Let's talk about the actual spices, how they were used and understood.

38:45That's more fun. Paul Wigginer give you History's five most commonly traded spices. Can you guess what they are? Clove. Very good. Give me four more. Pepper. Yes. Nutmeg. Yes. Mace. No. Oh. Your nickname. Oh, cinnamon. Cinnamon, yep. And chilies. Yeah. I guess we start with black pepper because that is the one we talked about in the ancient world, David. It's originally from the Indian Malabar coast. What is it? It's essentially a long string of berries on a vine. Is it? Yeah, there are different lots of varietals of pepper. Black pepper is the most commonly traded and consumed. The kind of immature berries are picked, and then they're fermented and dried.

39:24Obviously, that gives us the peppercorn that we use, and it's Hindu colonists on the island of Java that first cultivate this a long time ago, so it's about 100 BCE. Wow, okay. And did you know pepper was particularly interesting to Rome? Do you know anything about this? Something to do with taxes and rent? I mean, is that where we get peppercorn rent from? That comes later. That's really good knowledge. That's fantastic knowledge. Yeah, no, in Rome, it is known as black gold. Oh, yeah. And they have a huge trade with India, the Romans, which I guess we probably don't really know that well here.

39:55No, it's not a big one. But, you know, we know that it's massive in value because there's an actual tax that's placed on it. Yeah. At the port of Alexandria. So you don't put taxes on commodities if they're not being widely traded. So we know the Romans love it. Yeah, it's black gold. You know, one Roman cookery, but about 90 % of the recipes have spices in them, mostly pepper. So we know that they've gone crazy for spices. And that book was written by Peter Pepper, right? Peter Pepper. Peter Mace Clove Pepper. Yes. That's right. Maximus Pepperus. In his pseudonym, yeah. But I'll just give you a quick example of a typical Roman dish.

40:28Chopped mushroom stems mixed with honey, then with a kind of a garum, like a fermented fish sauce. Pepper and lovage. I've probably had my stomach grumble. I haven't eaten breakfast, until all the moisture evaporates and is served with bread. That sounds quite nice. Would you have that, Paul? Of course. I'm not a fussy eater. So the Romans are cooking with pepper a huge amount. And that means that it's not, we used to think it was like an exotic spice that only the rich could afford. We now believe it's quite commonly through middle classes, Romans. So pepper is like a normal thing in the Roman Empire, which is quite surprising, I think.

41:02But in medieval Europe, we are into the slightly weirder superstitions. So, Paul, what weird theory did people believe about how pepper was harvested? I'm out of my depth here. I'll give you a hint. It involves snakes. That it was harvested using snakes? What did they do? What do they believe? I mean, I think in the medieval period, they're so imaginative and it shows the value they placed on pepper. They believe it was guarded in trees, guarded by poisonous or venomous snakes. and that the reason why black pepper is that colour is that the only way to get to the pepper was to set the trees on fire, to drive the snakes away.

41:42And then you've got these kind of burnt peppercorns. But they were wrong. They were wrong. They were wrong. So the belief was that you have to set fire to the whole forest and then you collect peppercorns. Only then is it safe enough. You're not going to be killed. And that's why they're black. And that's why they're black. Because they've been burnt. I see. OK, so it's all the snakey fault. Paul, you were on the money with tax and rent because in medieval Europe, peppercorns, there was a thing called peppercorn rent. Yeah, I can't remember what it is, but I know of the existence. That's right.

42:08So in Billingsgate in the 11th century, you could pay a toll to the king, King Æthelred, in your peppercorns. You could. They're saying that they used to pay their rent in eels. So, you know, whiz my man, whiz my eels, got no eels, I've got some peppercorns. Do you accept eels? Yeah, do you? No, I don't have eels. That's right, yeah. Peppercorns, yeah. Have you got the app? No, no, I don't. Ah, that's fantastic. And Paul, you're a former doctor, of course. Before you were a quizzer and a comedian, you've had multiple careers. How do you think pepper was used in medicine, medieval medicine? What are you curing with your peppercorns?

42:38Leprosy. Yeah? It's not a bad guess? Heart problems. Ah, OK. Sounds like it might be good for the heart. OK, well, that's not a bad shout. David, what do we know from our medical textbooks? Yeah, digestion was the big one. It was like a tonic for digestion. So, yeah, not too far off. We see this in Chinese medical treaties and texts, 17th century. that it's used for tonic. There's a French treatise, La Treza de Santé, which is essentially pepper to cure or everything. Speaking of snakes, snake bite is one of them. Yeah, my dad would appreciate this one, flatulence. Shout out to your dad. Shout out to dad there.

43:16Even, you know, in a midwife to hasten, expelling children from the womb and then purging the brain of phlegm where naturally brain... I hate a phlegmy brain. I hate that it's worse than the more. And this is quite the phlegmy season for brain. I mean, my brain is so phlegmy right now. Can I say, I said heart, you said digestion, and then you said not too far out. I could have used you as an examiner when I was in medical school. I could have really done with... It was a pity common. I'm sorry, Paul. Similar medical areas, right? OK, so pepper was the original Pepto-Bismol, right? If you've got flatulence, you've got heartburn, you've got snakebite, pop a bit of pepper, you're all good.

43:54OK, we talked about ancient Egypt earlier. Do you know why spices were so important in ancient Egypt? Not for food uses. Status? Yeah. In what way? People were sort of judged on who they were by what spices they had in the house. Nice. OK. So it's a sort of showing off, keeping up with the Joneses type of thing. That's pretty good. It's also really important in religious rituals and funerals, David. Yeah. We kind of associate that with spices and the Egyptians. So we know that there was a pharaoh that was embalmed with peppercorn shoved up his nose. Yeah. His phlegmy brain. His phlegmy brain. Yeah.

44:26Yeah, his flat chance was okay. You don't want a corpse sneezing. You don't, do you? No. I'd be worried if the corpse was sneezing. Yeah. He's probably not dead, lads. But no, no. Mummies famously do get up and get around, don't they? But Egyptologists felt that they could smell the whiff of cinnamon when they unwrap mummies. It's kind of a faint trace of... That lovely Christmas smell. That Christmas mummy smell. Yeah, I mean, cinnamon, obviously we get cinnamon sticks. That's really from the bark of the kind of an evergreen tree that is harvested when the tree's wet and then it's peeled off and then rolled up and left to dry.

45:00This is in Sri Lanka, isn't it? This is in Sri Lanka. Evergreen trees in Sri Lanka. Yeah, absolutely. And they're highly valued. We know the Roman emperor Nero, for example, always burning stuff this time. That's a myth. Mostly Christians. Yeah, mostly Christians, but a year's supply of cinnamon for his wife sooner. Yeah, it's... Someone should let Cafe Nero know.

45:23So, yeah, so it's widely used in Europe, but for different kind of rituals and ceremonial reasons. Yeah, you could use garlands of cinnamon enclosed in gold as a kind of sort of lavish. It sounds like a kind of Christmas tinsel, doesn't it? But it's more for kind of religious reasons and for sort of beautiful things. So, yeah, so cinnamon's a biggie. Frankincense and myrrh, obviously, biggies in the ancient world. Those are spices, I think, but we haven't really talked about them. And again, we've got some weird stories about harvesting cinnamon. Paul, which animal do you have to watch out for this time?

45:54Cow. Yeah, that's a good, sensible guess. Think more airborne. Bat. Oh, that's good. But no, it's unfortunately birds. So the belief here, David, is what? Not any old bird. Huge Arabian birds. Oh, yeah. That were like monstrously gigantic. Is it real or mythical? Mythical. This is the ever-reliable Herodotus with his stories of far off lands, which the moment he gets beyond the Greek islands gets a little bit wonky. So there are huge birds in Arabia that you'd have to kind of cut up the body of an animal, leave it on the floor. These gigantic birds would sweep down and then the cinnamon would fall from their giant nest.

46:35So essentially it was nest line as the cinnamon would be collected, the sticks. Hang on, the idea here is you force the bird, you tempt the bird down. You tempt the bird out. You don't want to tangle with a giant Arabian bird. It picks up a very heavy bit of meat, brings it back to its nest, and the nest is unstabilised by the weight of the meat. Knocking out large cinnamon. So cow was correct? Sort of. Yeah, you would imagine there'd be cows being chopped up and involved in that. The other one is a student of Aristotle, the kind of father of botany. Theophrastus. Oh, very good, Paul. Buzz! Bing!

47:06He claimed that cinnamon came from the bushes in ravines, guarded by our favourite venomous snakes. Oh, it's always snakes. Always snakes, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Indiana Jones had it right. Why does it always have to be snakes? Okay, so we've got terrifying sort of death birds. We've got venomous snakes. I guess to a certain extent that drives the price up because people are like, oh, you wouldn't believe what I had to do to get this cinnamon. I had to fight a bird. Okay, we should talk about cloves. Any snakes involved here? No snakes. No, no snakes. Scary pregnant women, possibly. But the idea is that, well, they come from the Molucca Islands.

47:42Again, tall evergreen trees. and but they're the kind of flower buds are harvested and then they're dried and so there's quite a lot of folklore about from indigenous people over a thousand years one of them is that the kind of blossoming clothes trees were treated like pregnant women in the fact you had to be very careful around them yeah very calm don't make any silly or foolish remarks that you couldn't approach and wearing a hat. Wow. Famously, pregnant women hate hats. You can't make a noise and you couldn't have any light. You couldn't make a fire around them. Otherwise, they would not bear the precious fruit that you so wanted.

48:22Wow. Yeah, treat them with kid gloves. They're very tender. You have to cultivate them very carefully. But traditionally, to plant a clove tree, you did at the birth of a child. Oh, okay. So it's that kind of association with birth. Fertility and the life cycle. Yeah, exactly right. If the tree flourishes, so will the child. And if the tree withers, you're in trouble. So don't wear that hat. So don't wear the hat. Yeah, exactly right. So it's really India and China were the two major markets for clothes. They're the mass consumer markets in the ancient period as well. So you get mention of them in Sanskrit manuscripts and literature.

49:00They're used in Han China as kind of breath fresheners. Really? Clothes? Yeah, clothes. So let me get this straight. It's associated with childbirth And it's big in the two most populous nations in the world Yes I think that might be a strong association There might be something to say for it Some sort of correlation there Yeah So it was used as a mouth freshener in China Paul, do you know what the nickname was in ancient China for clothes then Based on this association of freshening your bread No I don't It was known as chicken tongue fragrance Of course it was Shall we bring that back? It's not that catchy, is it?

49:36I feel like I know a few people with that kind of breath. Yeah. Yeah. OK, so chicken tongue fragrance for cloves. Let's talk nutmeg. Again, more superstitions. Any mega bird, snake, pregnant women hat? Yeah, well, these are European superstitions now, so they do get a bit weird. Yeah, so we're back in the Bander Islands. Nutmeg is the dried kernel of the fruit. Yeah, so Europeans thought that whoever receives a nutmeg on New Year's Day, carried in a pocket for a year and you'd never break a bone. Are you making a stroke? No. Well, someone did. Yeah, once upon a time. So yeah, this is the European superstition that if you put a nutmeg in your pocket on New Year's Day and carried it around for the entire year that you would never suffer a stroke or break a bone if you had a nasty fall.

50:23Wow. Yeah. Also, it guarded you from hemorrhoids apparently as well. So it's just an endless benefit from nutmegs. We've been putting it in our chocolate rookie mistake. Yeah. We should put it in our pockets. Yeah, absolutely. And of course, in the 1600s, people said, oh, nutmeg could cure plague if you sniffed it in a pomanda. You pop it up to your nose and sniffed nutmeg. OK, there's no medical science on that. Please don't do that, internet. Our final spice, of course, would be the one not from Asia. Apart from vanilla, of course, the most famous one, of course. Did I give it away? Give it away?

50:51Give it away now. Yes, it's the red hot chilli pepper. Why do we call it a chilli pepper, Paul? Do you know? Because it's not pepper. No, I don't. Ah, OK. It's Columbus. He got confused. Oh, I see. He showed up on one of his jaunts. He looked at a chilli plant and went, that's probably pepper. And he took it home and went, it's pepper. And everyone went, it doesn't smell or taste like pepper. Easily confused, Columbus. Yeah, we're in Japan. Yeah. They're Indian. This is pepper. This is the Indies. Yeah. So we called it the chilli pepper because... Red hot chilli peppers were around when Carry On Columbus was made.

51:23So I better go back and give it a tribute soundtrack. So the chilli pepper, as you said, David, earlier on, is native. It's indigenous to Central and South America and the Caribbean. And of course, it was imported into Europe. And then from Europe goes to India. So when we have chilies in our Indian curry, that's the Portuguese who've done that. So vindaloo is originally a Portuguese word, carne de vila d 'alos. So it's a Portuguese dish that went to Goa. And then the Goan chefs then took it into central India. And it's more spicy because of the chilies. But it's Portuguese. Turkeys, potatoes and chilies.

51:55Yeah, absolutely. We have an episode on the Columbian Exchange listeners can listen to that will give you more of that. So there we go. We've gone round the world. We've ended our kind of global history of spices. Did you enjoy that, Paul? I'm thoroughly entertained by that. Wasn't too violent? Sorry. Well, I was well aware of the violence of colonialism. You haven't taught me anything new there, but it is a bit bleak to think that everything we eat has a violent past. Yeah, I'm trying to think of something that doesn't. Deep-fried Mars, boss. Yeah, maybe. The nuance window!

52:30Time now for the nuance window. This is where Paul and I silently rearrange our spice racks for two minutes, while Dr 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 rarest 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.

53:03From the Moluccas to London, Tobago to Beijing, spices have permeated the history of humanity, going back millennium. From the Egyptian pharaoh in 1224 BCE, who is embalmed with peppercorns up his nose, to the UK today, where we consume well over a kilo of spices per capita every year. So how should we understand and regard spices in human history? Well, 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. South Asian families migrated to the UK following decolonisation in the 20th century, where their spice-fuelled food culture fused with British traditions, allowing the melting pot in the kitchen to become a melting pot of wider society.

53:48Spices drove currents of economic change and helped to facilitate globalisation by contributing to the establishment of long-distance trade at sea and over land. Spice roads vied with silk roads over Central Asia and across the Indian Ocean, acting as global arteries along which people, ideas, goods, disease, war and religions travelled. Spices launched Europe's overseas empires. Spices represented not just the greater integration of people separated by distance and nationality, for good or worse, But arguably, like sugar, tobacco, textiles, enslaved people, iron-manufactured goods and capital, they established a truly global economy.

54:25Today, the mass production and dissemination of spices is another facet of 21st century global inequality, where mass cheap consumption in the West is often at the expense of low-paid, exploited labour in the Global South. In that way, the history of the not-so-humble spice is a lens through which we can view the history of the not-so-humble human and the beautiful and destructive rhythms of the past we create. In that way, spices contain multitudes, and within them, the great saga of humanity. Amazing, thank you so much. I mean, having something as brilliant as that on a one-hour podcast is like putting palladium in a pot noodle.

55:01I've always said it. It is really interesting, Paul, isn't it, the history of spices, how we assume they just have always been there, but actually the story of how they got there is one of enormous change. As I said, I was totally ignorant on it until I did Magellan on Mastermind, and it blew my mind that so much happened to make food more flavoursome. It just hadn't occurred to me. It's an amazing story. So what do you know now?

55:33Paul, we actually had a wrong buzzer that we were going to play throughout this episode when you got a question wrong. Turns out a chaser cannot be caught. you have not got anything wrong so we've just had an entire team over there just sitting there waiting to push the button just twiddling their fingers I'm not saying I'm competitive you know we shouldn't have in a dysfunctional way but I am but now we will have a quiz for you the pressure is on perhaps a little bit this is the so what do you know now this is our quick fire quiz to see how much you've learned and how much you've remembered my plan initially was to get you to eat increasingly spicy food with every question, but then I think we'd be sued by hot ones.

56:14So, unfortunately, I'm just going to read you some questions. OK, all right, I've got ten for you. Ten? Ten questions. OK. Here we go. Have you taken any notes, Paul? I'm not going to look at them. OK. Question one. What general name was given to the Malacca Islands? Home of Clove. Spice Islands. Very good. Spice Islands and also home of Clove and Nutmeg and a visit to the Spice Islands. Something different. Question two. Name one of the three technological developments in late antiquity that aided the ancient spice trade in the Indian Ocean? The astrolabe, the magnetic compass and the latinx.

56:46Oh, I'm going to give you a bonus point for that because that's fantastic. OK, question three. How did the Dutch keep their spicy so pricey? Destroyed it. They burned it, yeah, absolutely. Burned it in Amsterdam. Question four. Which 17th century Frenchman transplanted spices to Mauritius? Pierre Poivre. It was Pierre Poivre, but Peter Pepper did not pick a peck of pickle pepper. I can't even say it. Question five. What non-culinary use did black pepper have in medieval England? Curing various digestive ailments. Absolutely. And you could also use it to pay your rent, Marilyn, which is very charming.

57:16Question six. According to Herodotus, how were cinnamon sticks harvested? Burning trees to keep the snakes away. No, that's a different one. That's pepper. We're talking cinnamon here. I'll let you have one more chance. I've forgotten. Ah, you've got to tempt the giant birds away from their nest with the lump of cow. OK, so that's one wrong. You can play the wrong buzzer at last. The production. OK, question seven. What is one Moluccan superstition about clove trees involving pregnant women, perhaps? That you have to treat them like you treat pregnant women. That's right. And you couldn't wear a hat nearby.

57:54Question eight. Roman food recipes often included which spice? Pepper. It was pepper. Very good. Question nine. What nickname did cloves have in Han Dynasty China? Oh, what was it called? I think breath. Something breath, but I can't remember. It was. It was chicken tongue fragrance. Chicken tongue fragrance. And question 10. Which of the major five spices comes from the Americas, rather from Asia? The chilli pepper. It was chilli pepper. Right, I'm going to give you, I think, nine out of 11, I think is where we landed on that one. So a very good score, very impressive. Are you pleased with that?

58:28That's much more than I thought I was going to get, so that's fine. You did well. You did really well. Thank you so much, Paul. It's been an absolute delight to have you here. Thank you, of course, David. A listener to learn more about the history of commodities, check out our episodes about coffee and chocolate or for more on global trade. Of course, you can listen to our episode on the Columbian Exchange. And if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at bbc.com or on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.

58:58I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. we have the fantastic Dr David Vivas from Bangor University. Thank you, David. Thank you so much. Thank you, Paul. And in Comedy Corner, we have the sensational Paul Sinner. Thank you, Paul. Thank you very much. And to you lovely listener, join me next time as we cook up another flavoursome feast for your ears. Can you eat feasts with your ears? I don't know. But for now, I'm off to try and pay my mortgage with a sack of peppercorns. Bye!

59:26You're Dead to Me is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4. This episode was researched by Emma Mitchell and Adam Simcox. It was written by Dr. Emmy Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr. Emma Naguse and me. The audio producer was Steve Hankey and our production coordinator was Jill Huggett. It was produced by Dr. Emmy Rose Price-Goodfellow, me and senior producer Dr. Emma Naguse. And our executive editor was Philip Sellers.

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