The Spice Route: The Trade That Shaped World Cuisines

Have you ever really looked at the jar of black pepper, cinnamon or cloves in your cupboard? Spices that cost us very little today were, for centuries, valued almost like gold. The merchants, sailors and empires that chased them redrew the map and changed the world's cuisines for good. In this lesson we take a short journey through the long story of the spice trade.

Where did spices come from?

Most of the prized spices grew in particular parts of Asia:

• Black pepper: The Malabar Coast of south-western India.
• Cinnamon: Sri Lanka and nearby (cassia came from further east, in China).
• Cloves, nutmeg and mace: The Maluku (Spice) Islands of present-day Indonesia. For a long time nutmeg grew only on the tiny Banda Islands.
• Ginger and turmeric: South and South-East Asia.

To reach Europe or Anatolia, these spices had to travel thousands of kilometres and pass through countless hands. Every hand pushed the price a little higher.

The Indian Ocean: the real stage

The heart of the spice trade was not Europe but the Indian Ocean. For centuries, Arab, Persian, Indian, Malay and Chinese merchants used the monsoon winds, which change direction with the seasons, to carry goods between East Africa, Arabia, India and South-East Asia. Even in Roman times, ships sailed to India from Red Sea ports in Egypt, and black pepper was a sought-after luxury on Roman tables.

After crossing the ocean, spices reached Egypt via the Red Sea, or Mesopotamia and Syria via the Persian Gulf, and from there travelled to Mediterranean ports. This trade enriched the great cities of the Islamic world, and cinnamon, ginger and saffron were used generously in Abbasid and Mamluk cooking.

Venice and the Mediterranean

In the late Middle Ages, much of Europe's spice distribution was in the hands of Italian maritime cities, above all Venice. Venetian merchants bought spices in Alexandria and the ports of the Levant and sold them across Europe. That profit was one of the important foundations of Venice's splendid palaces and powerful fleet.

European cooking of the time was far spicier than we often imagine. On wealthy tables, black pepper, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and saffron were added generously to meat dishes and sauces. It's often said that spices were used to hide spoiled meat, but most historians are sceptical: spices cost far more than fresh meat and were above all a sign of wealth and refinement.

The Ottomans and the eastern Mediterranean

When the Ottoman state took Istanbul in the 15th century and then Syria and Egypt in the 16th, the western ends of many spice routes came under Ottoman control. This is often seen as one of the factors that pushed European states to look for other ways to reach Asia, although historians stress that the relationship was complicated and Europeans kept trading with the Ottomans.

Istanbul's Spice Bazaar, called the Mısır Çarşısı ("Egyptian Bazaar") in Turkish, is linked to this story; its name is traditionally connected to revenues from Egypt. The Ottoman palace kitchen used black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, allspice and saffron, and we still see this heritage today in Turkish iç pilav, stuffed vegetables and aşure.

The Portuguese and the Dutch: the sea route

At the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama sailed around the southern tip of Africa and reached India's Malabar Coast. This opened a sea route between Europe and Asia that bypassed the Middle East. In the 16th century the Portuguese built a chain of ports and forts around the Indian Ocean in an attempt to control the trade.

Columbus's westward voyage in 1492 was also an attempt to reach the spice lands of Asia. Instead, it led, unexpectedly, to contact with the Americas, which is the subject of our next lesson.

In the 17th century the Dutch took centre stage. The Dutch East India Company tried to impose a tight monopoly on cloves and nutmeg in particular. That monopoly had extremely violent and devastating consequences for the people of the Banda Islands, a dark side of spice history that deserves to be remembered.

The legacy on our tables

The spice trade carried tastes as well as money:

• Indian spice blends spread to neighbouring countries and East Africa.
• Indonesian and Malaysian cuisines blended Indian, Arab and Chinese influences.
• Dutch spiced biscuits, English Christmas pudding and Europe's gingerbreads are sweet souvenirs of this old trade.
• In Turkish cooking, allspice in iç pilav, cinnamon on milk puddings and cloves in fruit compotes all arrived at the end of the same long road.

Next time you add a pinch of black pepper to your food, remember that behind that tiny grain are ships that crossed oceans, bustling ports and a story centuries long.