A history of the trade that controlled the world and left an indelible impression on our taste buds; a sweeping story of avarice, ingenuity and exploration, spanning the globe and the centuries in its epic reconstruction of this magnificent obsession.Spices: for centuries the staple of cuisine, remedies and ritual, they have commanded the highest of prices. To this day, saffron is, per ounce, one of the most expensive commodities known to man. For their sake, fortunes have been made and lost, empires built and destroyed, and new worlds discovered. Astoundingly, in the 17th-century more people died for the sake of cloves than in all the European dynastic wars of the period.However the spice trade dates bank thousands of years before this. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs depict a merchant fleet sailing south to the Horn of Africa and returning triumphantly with a priceless cargo of cinnamon. Only the story of mankind’s infatuation with precious metals can rival the story of spice in scope; and only the history of silver and gold rivals that of spice for its improbable and extraordinary combination of discovery and conquest, heroism and savagery, greed and violence.
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Jack Turner. Spice: The History of a Temptation
SPICE. The History of a Temptation
DEDICATION
CONTENTS
MAPS
INTRODUCTION The Idea of Spice
1 The Spice-Seekers
The Taste that Launched a Thousand Ships
Christians and Spices
Debate and Stryfe Betwene the Spanyardes and Portugales
The Scent of Paradise
2 Ancient Appetites
The Aromanauts
Of Spiced Parrot and Stuffed Dormice
Spice for Trimalchio
Decline, Fall, Survival
3 Medieval Europe
Flavours of Cockayne
Salt, Maggots and Rot?
The Regicidal Lamprey and the Deadly Beaver
Keeping up with the Percys
4 The Spice of Life
The Pharaoh’s Nose
Abbot Eberhard’s Complaint
Pox, Pestilence and Pomanders
5 The Spice of Love
Whan Tendre Youthe Hath Wedded Stoupyng Age
Hot Stuff
Spice Girls
Afterword, or How to Make a Small Penis Splendid
6 Food of the Gods
Holy Smoke
God’s Nostrils
Odours of Sanctity
Old Age, New Age
7 Some Like it Bland
St Bernard’s Family Tiff
Filthy Lucre
EPILOGUE The End of the Spice Age
SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
1: The Spice-Seekers
2: Ancient Appetites
3: Medieval Europe
4: The Spice of Life
5: The Spice of Love
6: Food of the Gods
7: Some Like it Bland
Epilogue: The End of the Spice Age
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PRAISE
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Отрывок из книги
JACK TURNER
Title Page
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Size and isolation conspired to keep the Moluccas’ obscurity inviolate. The first European with a plausible claim of having seen nutmegs in their natural state (though many have doubted his account) was the early-sixteenth-century Italian traveller Ludovico Varthema (c. 1465–1517). He found the islands savage and menacing, and the people ‘like beasts … so stupid that if they wished to do evil they would not know how to accomplish it’. Spices aside, there was practically nothing to eat. He made a similarly disparaging assessment of the northern Moluccas, where the people were ‘beastly, and more vile and worthless than those of Banda’. The Portuguese historian João de Barros (c.1496–1570) considered the land ‘ill-favoured and ungracious … the air is loaded with vapours … the coast unwholesome … a warren of every evil, and contain[ing] nothing good but the clove tree’. But regardless of their vapours and ‘rascal’ inhabitants, the Moluccas’ cloves, nutmeg and mace were sufficiently tempting to lure traders across the planet.
Portugal’s first expedition in search of the Moluccas left in 1511. In December of that year, shortly after the fall of Malacca, António de Abreu set off in charge of three small vessels. With the assistance of local guides, the Portuguese found their way to the Bandas, where they filled their hulls to overflowing with nutmeg and mace. With no room remaining for cloves, de Abreu resolved to return to Malacca with two of the expedition’s three ships, leaving behind a companion by the name of Francisco Serrão to carry on the search without him.
