Spice Trade and War

Spice Trade and War
Sugar and spice not only fueled Europe’s drive to empire, they also contributed to the rise of capitalism. Beginning this modern economic system by British in nineteenth century, industrialization depended on sophisticated financial markets develop by earlier commercial enterprises. Dutch United East India (VOC), which dominated the spice trade, has been described as a multinational corporation with a sales office in Europe. Even technological structures of industrial capitalism had parallels in seventeenth-century sugar plantations, which constituted veritable “factories in the fields,” with mechanized production and tightly organized workforce, albeit using coerced rather than free labor. Until 1500, Europe had been peripheral to the Indian Ocean trade, receiving only a trickle of spices.

Although endowed by geography with a natural monopoly, the spice trade had long remained fragmented among diverse, predominantly Muslim merchants, who shared the bounty in relative peace, notwithstanding the danger of pirates. The three principal spices – cloves, nutmeg, and mace – were grown on only a handful of tiny outcroppings in the Moluccas and Banda Islands north of Australia. Javanese sailors carried them as far as Malacca, on the Malay Peninsular, to await transshipment, during the monsoon season, to south India. They joined cargos of pepper, cinnamon, turmeric, cardamom, and dried ginger and galangal heading for the Swahili Coast, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Only a small portion of the harvest passed overland to Cairo and Beirut, whence Italian and Catalan merchants distributed the spices to Europe. But the entry of Portuguese ships into the Indian Ocean began centuries of war to control the lucrative trade.

Asian spices had been prized in Europe since Roman times, but consumption soared in the fourteenth century. Whether inspired by Muslim cuisine, or as a revival of classical practices, spices-filled dishes dominated the tables of nobles and increasingly the middle classes of Italy and the Western Mediterranean. Yet growing demand coincided with the tightened supply as Egyptian Mamluks and Ottoman Turks, having supplanted the Byzantine Empire, exacted heavy tolls on trade destined for Christendom.

Responding to the market pressures, the Portuguese explored the African coats ion search of a seaborne route to the Indies. The mariners developed a lucrative trade in gold dust, malaguetta pepper, ivory, and slaves, even before Bartolomeu Dias round the Cape of Horn in 1488. But upon reaching India, they found little interest in European merchandise; they only comparative advantage lay in the use of gunpowder. From strategic bases in Goa, Hormuz, and Malacca, Portuguese caravels raided Muslim shipping, capturing the bulk of the spice trade by the 1530s. The new comers also went directly to the source of production, exploiting rivalries between the sultan of Tidore and Ternate to obtain favorable clove prize. Nevertheless, their naval presence was never sufficient to monopolize the trade entirely, and Muslim merchants skillfully redirect the traffic. A revolt by clove growers in 1570 further undermined Portuguese control.

By the turn of the seventeenth century, declining Portuguese power encourage privateers from Malay, Java, Spain, England and Holland to fight for a share of the trade, which had become more lucrative still with the closure of Middle Eastern ports. The Dutch VOC ultimately established a rigid monopoly over the spice production.
Spice Trade and War