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Chapter 1: What is the history of spices and their significance?
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hei, mä lähden nyt oikeesti. Mä oon lomalla.
Kappas, täällähän onkin vanhoja jätskituttuja. Ei olla vanhoja tuttuja. Me ollaan uutuusjätskejä. No siinä tapauksessa, hauska tuuttistua. Mistä ste tuutte? No tötteröö, tietysti S-Marketista.
Elämä on ruokaa. S-Market.
Hello 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. You might have read his wonderful book, The Great Defiance, How the World Took On the British Empire. It's Dr David Beavers.
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Chapter 2: How did spices influence ancient trade routes?
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 cineman 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.
There'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 fowl.
Chapter 3: What role did Alexander the Great play in the spice trade?
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 five to six out of ten spicy me. David, where are you on the spice index? I'm lower. I write about spices, but I'm probably like a two. A korma, I need a big glass of water.
OK. 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 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.
Chapter 4: How did the Roman Empire impact the spice trade?
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? 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, medieval, early modern period, a spice is a kind of blanket term for anything that'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.
So saffron's from Greece?
Yes, yeah. This is new to me. Did you know?
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Chapter 5: What was the effect of the Crusades on spice accessibility in Europe?
I didn't know that. I always assumed it was from India, but it's... Vanilla, chilli, allspice, 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. OK, 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 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 Peninsula and found their way out across Asia and onward. So the Spice Islands are, what, Indonesia? There is an Indonesia. Okay, 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. Okay. So it's an amazing place.
Chapter 6: How did the Dutch and British East India Companies shape the spice market?
Fantastic. Where are we, back in the Bronze Age? Yes. 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, a 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.
LAUGHTER Now, according to Susie Dent, the lovely lexicographer, it meant going to the toilet. But what does Susie Dent mean?
LAUGHTER
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.
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Chapter 7: What were the consequences of colonialism on spice production?
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. 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.
And so he consolidates those trade links. And I mean, spice 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 states.
Chapter 8: How do spices reflect global economic inequalities today?
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. And it flourishes partly on the back of the lucrative trade in spices. Then later on, obviously, we get the Roman annexation.
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? It was a good question. That's probably another show. It's a different show, yeah. 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 in what we call late antiquity, early medieval period. It's that sort of 700s, 800s sort of space. One of the reasons for 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? Sexton's a good guess. Give me two more. Astrolabe. Yes, absolutely. Compass. You've got two out of three and Sexton's a good guess. I think Sexton's a bit later. So it is. It's astrolabe, David. Yeah, it's astrolabe. That's a really good guess. Magnetic compass. That's the next one.
The other one is what's known more commonly as the triangular sail, the Latin 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. The Latins. Are you not a sailor, Paul? You're not out on the water every weekend?
No, no, no. That'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. 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 Sassanid Empire is also the maritime routes coming through the Persian Gulf.
And their successors would do the same. Control of the Persian Gulf is one of the... the main arteries of the spice trade from Asia into Europe. So they become powerful and rich off the back of this spice trade.
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