History of Spices (Radio Edit)

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1:41Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 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 the kitchen 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 Bangor University in Wales, where he specialises in the early modern British Empire and the East India Company. He might have read his wonderful book, The Great Defiance, How the World Took On the British Empire.

2:11It's Dr David Thevers. Welcome, David. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited. Delighted to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, he's a stand-up comedian and renowned quizzer. You'll have seen him on Taskmaster, QI, Would I Lie to You, and heard him on all over Radio 4 with his various wonderful series about general knowledge. But he's surely best known as a formidable chaser on the TV game show The Chase. Yes, it's the cinema man himself, Paul Sinner. Welcome, Paul. It's a delight to be here. Thank you very much. Paul, your first time on the show, but you are a professional quizzer.

2:40There's only about 20 of us 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 0 to 10, I'm sort of 7 slash 8. That's quite... Which means I don't like to show off, like the drunk in the curry house, making a bad decision on the vindaloo or the ful. But I don't like my food too mild either. OK. Spices are good. Spices are good. I am not particularly good on the spices. I'm probably a kind of 5 to 6 out of 10 spicy me. That's all right. David, where are you on the spice index?

3:12I'm lower. I write about spices, but I'm probably like a 2. a korma, I need a big glass of water. This is the equivalent of me discussing keeping up with the Kardashians. That's right, yeah. So, what do you know?

3:31This is the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And you might know, of course, that spices famously come in five varieties. You've got ginger, baby, scary, sport. Hang on, no, 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 tikka 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?

4:00Let'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, medieval, early modern period, a spice is a kind of blanket term for anything. It's unusual, expensive, smells a bit funny. technically a spice is a part of a tropical plant like the bark or the flower or the seed and then there are some like 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 but it's predominantly asia we're talking about and 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.

4:45So saffron's from Greece? Yes, yeah. This is new to me. Did you know? I didn't know that. I always assumed it was from India, but it's... Vanilla, chilli, allspiced, they're South American. So we're predominantly talking about Asia, but not exclusively. Vanilla? Vanilla, yeah. It's not Madagascan? No, 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 civilisation.

5:19So we're talking really about a specific part of Asia. It's the Moluccas in East Asia. Those islands exclusively 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 Palimpsina and found their way out across Asia and onward. So the Spice Islands are what, Indonesia? There is an Indonesia. OK, one of many thousands of islands. Yeah, and so there are thousands of islands and just some of them will only cultivate nutmeg and clothes. OK, it's an amazing place. Fantastic. Where are we, back in the Bronze Age?

5:55Yes, then from the Bronze Age, it's a story about the way they're disseminating further and further outward. Paul, do you know the 19th century euphemism to voyage to the Spice Islands? Do you know what it means? The number of things it could be. It could be an alternate sexuality. It could. The euphemism for being gay, to voyage to the Spice Islands, but it could be just doing something unusual or exotic, I suppose. Sure. There's a whole list of things that are considered unusual and exotic, and that list changes over the years. OK, in the 19th century, what would be exotic and unusual? Reading.

6:29No, according to Susie Dent, the lovely lexicographer, it meant going to the toilet. But what does Susie Dent 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 2800 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.

7:14So Europeans, of course, would have got involved eventually. This stuff is going to spread. Paul, which spicy conqueror connected his new empire to North India in the 4th century BCE? I imagine that's the one, the only, Alexander the Great. Absolutely, yes. 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 sort of consolidates that link across the Hindu Kush, 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.

7:52And so he consolidates those trade links. And when his spice is a big part of that story... He literally put the mace in Macedonia. Hey, 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 states. But, you know, the thing is, when you establish lucrative trade routes and spices being so covered as they are, these things endure. And so we get the city of Alexandria becomes the hub of the spice trade for the sort of North African Mediterranean axis of that network.

8:26And 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 empires do, the Western Roman Empire falls. Does it fall or was it pushed? Was it fall or was it pushed? That's a good question. That's probably another show. It's a different show, yeah. I don't think you're 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.

8:58and when I say this period, I suppose we are in what we call late antiquity, early medieval period. It's that sort of 700s, 800s sort of space. One of the reasons big expanses is technological innovation. There were three major developments. Do you know what they might be, Paul, around this time? Technological maritime expansion-y things. Sextant. Oh, that's a good guess. So a navigation aid, you think? Yeah. Sextant's a good guess. Give me two more. Astrolabe. Yes, absolutely. Yep. Compass. Compass? You've got two out of three, and Sexton's a good guess. I think Sexton's a bit later. So it is.

9:31It's astrolabe, David. Yeah, yeah, it's astrolabe. That's a really good guess. Magnetic compass. Yeah. That's the next one. The other one is what's known more commonly as the triangular sail, but the latine sail that allows you to kind of tack into the wind and challenge the elements to go in any direction. I was never going to get that one, so I'll take that. I thought that was the obvious one, Paul. No? The latine sail. Yeah. Are you not a sailor, Paul? You're not 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.

10:03Yeah. If they're blowing against you, you can still... Yeah, of course, we're 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 always 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. These are the successors of the Persian Empire. They're occupying a space between East and West. And so the overland route and also the Sassanidh is also the maritime routes coming through the Persian Gulf.

10:37And their successors would do the same. Control of the Persian Gulf is one of the 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, we 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 occupations. and then following the Arab conquests of much of the Middle East, North Africa, even up into the Iberian Peninsula, today Spain and Portugal, they kind of bring the spice trade almost kind of to the extent that the Romans had, pushing it well into Europe and beyond.

11:22And 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 broadened 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 is 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 from spices but the crusades re-establishes 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.

12:13So this is kind of the re-establishment of that. And we often associate that resumption of that trade introducing medieval Europe and its bland and horrible food and its rotting meat that's festering on everyone dying of the plague because of it. And, you know, that big myth that spices were, you know, held as 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 fortune. Yeah. It's like putting palladium on a pot noodle. It's like the spices cost way more than the meat.

12:53Yeah, that's right. And so we know that that doesn't have a bit. So spices are used in flavour, but they're not used to that extravagant extent of basically 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. Yeah. Genoa as well. But by the end of the 1400s, we start to get European navigators going. I quite want a spice route. Do you know who these would be, Paul? Who would be the big players?

13:30Well, Spain and Portugal. Yeah, absolutely. Isabel Ferdinand and Isabel. Very good, yeah, of Castile. Henry the Navigator. Oh, this is good knowledge. Okay, and who would be your explorers? Who's getting on the ship and doing the hard... Well, Vasco da Gama. But I happened to do Ferdinand Magellam and Mastermind many, many, many moons ago. so I'm aware that the first circumnavigation of the globe was because of spices. Yeah. When I did Mastermind, I knew nothing about Magellan and it blew my mind that all of that was for spices. Yeah. It had no other purpose. But it is the Portuguese, it is Vasco de Gama, as Paul said, who really is our first great navigator in the spice trade and he's going not west, he's going south.

14:21Yeah, he's going south when the Portuguese come down the coast of Africa and round the Cape of Good Hope under Vasco da 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 1498 they hit the Malabar 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. It's black peppercorn, which is the spice that, you know, we gave granted that spice cupboard in the kitchen. But once upon a time, that drove early modern navigation trade.

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17:04So Portugal becomes a kind of dominant peperer. of Europe, I suppose. They found a sort of fort, is it Calicut? Yes, Calicut, which is in Kerala State in southwest India. It's 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 India. Negotiating with grenades. With grenades, yeah. A piece through force, that kind of negotiating tactic. And they're very successful. They bring back the first holds full of peppercorn and they land in Europe. and Lisbon is almost overnight turned from mud and timber to marble.

17:41Its skyline rises and it becomes one of the wealthiest cities in Europe, largely because of this spice trade. 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-y 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.

18:18Let's 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's, in a way, this great kind of interplay between the history of something like Spice, a commodity, a foodstuff, with the emergence of modern capitalism. 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.

18:55The English East India Company on New Year's of 1600 is about 215 bigwigs. 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 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. And so it's the Dutch East India Company that emerges, really as the winner of the spice trade. Interesting. 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?

19:30No, 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 is sensible or you could destroy it. Okay. So, I mean, David, they, I mean, back in Amsterdam, they're just burning, just burning tons 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. So is that the reason for the distinctive smell of the streets of Amsterdam? Yeah, I think that might be a different smell.

20:06But 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 tonnes 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.

20:33What 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. So the English and Dutch, they're becoming more powerful by 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 essentially massacre the Bandanese living on these nutmeg plantations.

21:16So 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. And there's really a kind of almost a corporate merger. They agree 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 kind of, 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.

21:58And 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. So we get the then, once the Bandanese have been exterminated, the Dutch and the English co-operating 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.

22:29And 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 to extract confessions of conspiracy. And they ended up executing 10 of the English and a number of the Japanese mercenaries. It's known as the Amboigne Massacre. And the English were outraged.

23:09And for decades, there was litigation by the families of the English against the Dutch states for compensation for the Dutch. 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 it's 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 ruled Scotland and England. So I guess we're calling them kind of British. They gave up the Spice Islands in favour of a new colony.