Spice: The History of a Temptation
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DEBATE AND STRYFE BETWENE THE SPANYARDES AND PORTUGALES
The classic account of the geopolitics of Magellan’s quest for the Moluccas remains Jean Denucé, Magellan: La Question des Moluques et la Première circumnavigation du globe. Académie Royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres et des Sciences morales et politiques. Mémoires, 2nd series, vol. 4 (Bruxelles: Hayez, Imprimeur des Académies Royales, 1908–11); see also Lach, Asia, 153–4, 226–7. Some of the technical aspects of locating the anti-meridian are discussed in A Viagem de Fernão de Magalhães e a questão das Molucas. Actas do II colóquio Luso-Espanhol de Historia Ultramarina, edited by A. Teixeria Da Mota (Lisboa: Junta de Investigaçōes Científicas do Ultramar, 1975); Lotika Varadarajan, ‘The Question of the Anti-Meridian: Economic and Technical Aspects’, in A carreira da India e as rotas dos estreitos (Angra do Heroísmo: Actas do VII Seminario Internacional de Historia Indo-Portuguesa, 7 a 11 de junho, 1996), 687–97. The text of the Treaty of Tordesillas is reprinted in European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and its Dependencies to 1648, edited by Francis G. Davenport (Washington D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917).
There are several vivid contemporary accounts of the ‘Debate and Stryfe’ between Spain and Portugal over the Spice Islands. (The phrase belongs to the Englishman Richard Eden, sixteenth-century translator of the History of Francisco Lopez de Gomara, in The First Three English Books on America, edited by Edward Arber (New York: Kraus Reprint, 1971).) The foremost are Leonardo de Argensola, Histoire de la conquête des Iles Moluques par les Espagnols, par les Portugais & par les Hollandois, 2 vols (Amsterdam: Jacques Desborde, 1707); João de Barros, Asia: Segunda Decada (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1932); Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, Historia do Decobrimento e Conquista da India (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1924–29); The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires, edited by Armando Cortesão (London: Hakluyt Society, 1944); Mansel Longworth Dames, The Book of Duarte Barbosa (London: Hakluyt Society, 1918–21); Travelers in Disguise, Narratives of Eastern Travel by Poggio Bracciolini and Ludovico de Varthema, edited and translated by John Winter Jones (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963); Gabriel Rebello, Historia das Ilhas de Maluco, escripta no anno 1561, edited by Artur Basilio de Sá, in Documentaçao para a historia das missoes do padroado Portuguese do Oriente, vol. 3. (Lisboa: Agencia Geral do Ultramar, 1954–58), 193–344. Several of these sources as they pertain to the Moluccas are compiled by W.A. Hanna and D. Alwi, Turbulent Times Past in Ternate and Tidore (Banda Naira: Yayasan Warisan dan Budaya Banda Naira, 1990). For a scholarly dissection of Portuguese control of spices see Tikiri Abeyasinghe, Portuguese Rule in Ceylon, 1594–1612 (Colombo: Lake House, 1966); C.R. de Silva, ‘The Portuguese and the Trade in Cloves in Asia During the Sixteenth Century’, in Mohd Amin Hassan and Nik Hassan Shuhaimi Nik Abd Rahman, The Eighth Conference: International Association of Historians in Asia. Selected Papers (Selangor: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1988); C.R. de Silva, ‘The Portuguese Impact on the Production and Trade in Sri Lankan Cinnamon in Asia in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Indica, 26 (1989), 25–38.
The most entertaining narrative account of Magellan’s voyage remains the first, by Antonio Pigafetta, available in English translation as Magellan’s Voyage: A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation, edited by R.A. Skelton (London: Folio Society, 1975). Francis H. Guillemard, The Life of Ferdinand Magellan and the First Circumnavigation of the Globe, 1480–1521 (New York: AMS Press, 1971), is dated but still useful. The discharge document is in Colección de los viajes y descubrimentos que hicieron por mar los españoles desde fines del siglo XV, vol. 4, edited by Martín Fernández de Navarrete (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1825–37), 247–8.
THE SCENT OF PARADISE
One of the best accounts of European rivalry in the East is Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, ¡600–1800 (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minneapolis Press, 1976). John Keay, The Honourable Company (London: HarperCollins, 1991), is a rollicking narrative history of the English East India Company; see also Kenneth Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). On Drake’s voyage, see Henry R. Wagner, Sir Francis Drake’s Voyage Around the World (San Francisco: John Howell, 1926). For readers of English the classic work on the Dutch in the East remains C.R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600–1800 (New York: Knopf, 1965). Pepys’ account of a captured Dutch spice-ship is from Pepys’s Diary, vol. 2, edited by Robert Latham (London: Folio Society, 1996), 218. On the issue of Amboyna old animosities lingered remarkably long, and there has been much credulous reporting and inflation of the consequences. For a sober discussion see D.K. Bassett, The “Amboyna Massacre” of 1623’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, 1, no.2 (1960), 1–19; for a sense of contemporary outrage there were few more outraged than Abraham Woofe, The Tyranny of the Dutch Against the English Wherein is Exactly Declared the (Almost Unvaluable) Loss Which the Commonwealth of England hath Sustained by Their Usurpation … (London: Printed by John Crowch and Tho. Wilson, 1653). M.A.P. Meilink-Roelofsz, Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), is a good discussion of the consolidation of Dutch control; so too is Peter Musgrave, ‘The Economics of Uncertainty: The Structural Revolution in the Spice Trade, 1480–1640’, in Shipping, Trade and Commerce, edited by P.L. Cottrell and D.H. Aldcroft (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1981), 9–21. For an overview of the VOC’s fortunes see Bernard H.M. Vlekke, Nusantara: A History of the East Indian Archipelago (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1945).
For Western visions of the East in medieval times, see J. Le Goff, ‘L’Occident médiéval et l’Océan indien: un horizon onirique’, in Mediterraneo e Oceano Indiano. Atti del VI Colloquio Intemazionale di Storia Marittima, tenuto a Venezia dal 20 al 29 settembre 1962 (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1970), 243–64; I. Hallberg, L’extrême orient dans la littérature et la cartographie de l’Occident des XIIIe, XIVe, et XVe siècles (Göteborg: W. Zachrissons Boktryckeri, 1906); George HT. Kimble, Geography in the Middle Ages (New York: Russell and Russell, 1968). The Eastern sources give a much better sense of what was happening in these centuries: see Roderich Ptak, ‘China and the Trade in Cloves, circa 960–1435’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 113 (1993), 1–13; F. Hirth and W.W. Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries Entitled ‘Chu-Fan-Chi’ (New York: Paragon Book Reprint, 1966). References from medieval literature are from Migne; see also E. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, translated by Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953); Diccionario medieval español, edited by Martin Alonso, vol. 1 (A-C) (Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, 1986); James M. Dean, Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Western Michigan University Press, 2000); Joinville’s Vie de Saint Louis, edited by Jacques Monfrin (Paris: Garnier, 1995); Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, translated by Mark Musa (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982); Mandeville’s Travels, edited by M. Seymour (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967). The physical presence of Europeans underlying these fables remains shadowy and intriguing in the extreme. Much of the primary material is gathered by Henry Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, revised by Henri Cordier (London: J. Murray, 1903). Also good on this are Lettera di Giovanni da Empoli, edited by A. Bausani (Rome: Instituo italiano per il medio ed estremo oriente, 1970); E. Cerulli, ‘La via delle Indie nella storia e nel diritto del Medioevo’, in Mediterraneo e Oceano Indiano. Atti del VI Colloquio Internazionale di Storia Marittima, tenuto a Venezia dal 20 al 29 settembre 1962 (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1970), 3–24; R.S. Lopez, ‘Nuove luci sugli italiani in estremo orienta prima de Colombo’, in Studi Colombani, vol. 3 (International Meeting for Studies on Columbus, Genoa, 1951), 337–98. References to early spices in England are from Pamela Nightingale, A Medieval Mercantile C
ommunity: The Grocer’s Company and the Politics and Trade of London 1000–1485 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
As to how some of the wilder fancies emerging from this obscurity informed Columbus’s thinking, see Valerie I.J. Flint, The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) and Pauline Watts, ‘Prophecy and Discovery: On the Spiritual Origins of Christopher Columbus’ “Enterprise of the Indies”’, American Historical Review, 90, no.1 (1985), 73–102.
2: Ancient Appetites
THE AROMANAUTS
The subject of Roman traffic with India is well covered. J. Innes Miller’s The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire, 29 B.C. to A.D. 641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969) is an utterly original work. Though prone to fanciful conclusions it remains an excellent companion for the ancient geographers. On Oberaden see F. De Romanis and A. Tchernia, Crossings: Early Mediterranean Contacts with India (New Delhi: Manohar, 1997); on Vindolanda see Alan K. Bowman, Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier: Vindolanda and its People (London: British Museum Press, 1994). On trade with the East more generally see Federico De Romanis, Cassia, cinnamomo, ossidiana: Uomini e merci tra oceano indiano e mediterraneo (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1996); Lionel Casson, Ancient Trade and Society (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984); Lionel Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei, Text with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); Lionel Casson, Travel in the Ancient World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); S. Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy in the Erythra Thalassa 30 B.C.– A.D. 217 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986); Romila Thapar, ‘Early Mediterranean Contacts with India: An Overview’, in F. De Romanis and A. Tchernia, Crossings, 11–40; E.H. Warmington and M. Cary, The Ancient Explorers (London: Methuen, 1929). Older but still worth a look is M.P. Charlesworth, Trade Routes and Commerce of the Roman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926). G. Hourani, Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), provides a useful setting on the subject of ancient trade in the Indian Ocean. On the Egyptian leg of the journey see D. Meredith, ‘Annius Plocamus: Two Inscriptions from the Berenice Road’, Journal of Roman Studies, 43 (1953), 38–40; also Manfred G. Raschke, ‘New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, part 2, 9, no. 2 (1978), 605–1378. On Greek gastronomy, Andrew Dalby, Siren Feasts (London: Routledge, 1996) is a good guide.
OF SPICED PARROT AND STUFFED DORMICE
For a sober and scholarly discussion of Roman cuisine see J. André, Alimentation et cuisine à Rome (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1981), and Barbara Flower and Elisabeth Rosenbaum, The Roman Cookery Book of Apicius: A Critical Translation and the Art of Cooking by Apicius (New York: British Book Centre, 1958). On piperatoria, see D.E. Strong, Greek and Roman Gold and Silver Plate (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), 154, 179. The economic data are from T. Frank, An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome. Vol. 5: Rome and Italy of the Empire (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1940), 284–7.
The literary and philosophical setting of Roman cuisine is brilliantly discussed in Emily Gowers, The Loaded Table (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). For traditional puzzlement and disgust on the subject of Roman appetites see M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating (London: Pan Books, 1983), 32; and J.D. Vehling, Apicius: Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome (New York: Dover, 1977), 26. Some of the enduring literary echoes of the Roman taste for pepper may be found in The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick, edited by F.W. Moorman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), 293; and The Poems of John Dryden, edited by John Sargeaunt (London: Oxford University Press, 1925), 596. The purported perils of the spice trade are discussed by E.H. Warmington, The Commerce Between* the Roman Empire and India (London: Curzon Press, 1928), 80.
DECLINE, FALL, SURVIVAL
The spice trade of the early Middle Ages remains poorly understood and fitfully studied. For a sketchy outline, see Henri Pirenne, Mahomet et Charlemagne, 2nd edn (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1937); Robert S. Lopez, ‘The Trade of Medieval Europe: The South’, in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), 257–354; Richard Hodges, Dark Age Economics (London: Duckworth, 1982); Archibald Lewis, Naval Power and Trade in the Mediterranean, A.D. 500–1100 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951).
The bishops’ spices are mentioned by Denys Gorce, Les voyages, l’hospitalité et le port des lettres dans le monde chrétien des IVe et Ve siècles (Wépion-sur-Meuse: Monastère du Mont-Vierge, 1925), 54; the document is reproduced by Karl Joseph von Hefele, Histoire des Conciles d’après les documents originaux (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1907), vol. 1, 407, cited by Casson, Travel, 301.
For the economic and numismatic data, see M. Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957); Miller, The Spice Trade, 218–20. There are general discussions of the rise of the Arab trade in K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Islam and the Trade of Asia, edited by D.S. Richards (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1970); Patricia Risso, Merchants and Faith: Muslim Commerce and Culture in the Indian Ocean (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995). Cosmas’ account is translated by J.W. McCrindle, The Christian Topography of Cosmas (London: Hakluyt Society, 1847).
On the emergence in Europe of a ‘medieval’ view of Asia, see Georges Coedès, Textes d’auteurs grecs et latins relatifs a l’Extrême-Orient depuis le 4e siècle (Paris, 1910); J. Daniélou, ‘Terre et Paradis chez les Pères de l’Eglise’, Eranos Jarbuch, 22 (1953), 433–72; Le Goff, ‘L’Occident médiéval’, 243–64. Anthimus’ work on food is edited and translated by Mark Grant, Anthimus, De Observatione ciborum (Totnes: Prospect Books, 1996).
There are several studies touching on various aspects of the re-emerging luxury trade of the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries. See Steven Runciman, ‘Byzantine Trade and Industry’, in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 2: Trade and Industry in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952); Eliyahu Ashtor, ‘Aperçus sur les Radhanites’, Revue suisse d’histoire, 27 (1977), 245–75; ‘Gli Ebrei nel commercio mediterraneo nell’alto medievo’, Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull alto medievo XXVI (Spoleto, 1978), 401–64; C. Barbier de Meynard, Le Libre des routes (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1865); S.Y. Labib, ‘Les Marchands Karimis en orient et sur l’Océan indien’, in Sociétés et compagnies de commerce en Orient et dans l’Océan Indien, edited by Michel Mollat (Paris: SEVPEN, 1970). The early ascendancy of the Venetians is discussed by François L. Ganshof, ‘Note sur un passage de la vie de Saint Géraud d’Aurillac’, in Mélanges Offerts à M. Nicolas lorga par ses amis de France et les pays de langue française (Paris: J. Gamber, 1933), 303; see also Carlrichard Brühl and Cinzio Volante, De ‘Honorantiae civitatis Papiae’ (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1983). Abbot Mayeul’s unfortunate incident is mentioned by Richard Fletcher, The Cross and the Crescent (London: Penguin, 2003), 44. On the galvanising effect of the luxury trade, see Richard Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (London: Hutchinson, 1953), 42–3. On the subject more generally, see Georges Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century, translated by Howard B. Clarke (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1974).
3: Medieval Europe
FLAVOURS OF COCKAYNE
On the subject of European dreamworlds see the fascinating work by Herman Pleij, Dreaming of Cockaigne, translated by D. Webb (New York; Columbia University Press, 2001). The Old English poem of the same name can be found in The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse, edited by Celia and Kenneth Sisam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).
A good introduction to the subject of the spice trade in the central and late Middle Ages is J. Favier, De l’or et des épices: Naissance de l’bomme d’affaires au Moyen Age (Paris: Fayard, 1987); Nightingale, A Medieval Mercanti
le Community; Eliyahu Ashtor, The Jews and the Mediterranean Economy, 10tb-15th Centuries (London: Variorum Imprints, 1983); The Social and Economic History of the Near East in the Middle Ages (London: Variorum, 1978); William McNeill, Venice: The Hinge of Europe (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1974).
Some of the more startling references to spices in this period can be found in Etienne Baluze, Historiae Tutelensis (Paris: Ex Typographia regia, 1717), 171; The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I, edited by A.J. Robertson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925), 72–3; Ælfric’s Colloquy, edited by G.N. Garmonsway (London: Methuen, 1939), 33; Chronica of Jaufré de Vigeois, cap. 69, in Philippe Labbe, Nova bibliotheca manuscriptorum (Paris: Sebastien et Gabriel Cramoisy, 1657), vol. 2, 322; François Marvaud, Histoire des viscomtes et de la vicomté de Limoges (Paris: J.-B. Dumoulin, 1873), vol. 1, 177; Guglielmo IX: Poesie, edited by Nicolò Pasero (Modena: S.T.E.M.-Mucchi, 1973), 127, 130; W. FitzStephen, Norman London (New York: Italica Press, 1990), 54; A. Asher, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (London: A. Asher, 1840), 157; Anatole de Montaiglon et Gaston Raynaud, Recueil général et complet des fabliaux des XIIIe et XIV siècles (Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1973), 123–4.