History of ginger

Ginger is a member of a plant family that includes cardamom and turmeric. It has been medicinally for more than 2500 years in China and India for conditions such as headache, nausea, rheumatism and colds. The Latin term Zingiber was derived from the ancient Tamil words, Ingiver, meaning ginger rhizome.

Arab traders, in search of spices, took the term to Greece and Rome, and from there to the Western Europe.  The Greeks called it dzinggiris, their version of Persian dzungebir, from Sanskrit srngaveram.

The present-day name of ginger in most Western European countries is derived from this ancient term.

Ginger is found in ancient Chinese, India and Middle Eastern literature and has long been valued for its aromatic, culinary and medicinal properties. Indians and Chinese are believed to have produced ginger as a tonic root for over 5000 years to treat many ailments.

The Persian trade mission Darius sent to India in the 5th century BC brought back ginger. The Indians used it lavishly, but it had only a limited success in Greece and Rome.

Because ginger had to be imported from Asia, it remained a relatively expensive spice. As early as second century AD, ginger was one among the very few items on which duty was levied at the Alexandria port of entry, during the time of the Roman Empire.

During subsequent periods and in the Middle Ages, ginger was on the list of privileged goods in the European trade, and a duty was levied. Nevertheless it was still in great demand. As a result, Spanish explorers introduced ginger to the West Indies, Mexico and South America in an effort to increase its availability.
History of ginger 

History of nutmeg

Myristica fragrans, of the Myristicaceae family, the nutmeg, is a large tropical tree with small yellow flowers and large, very fragrant.

For many years, this spice has been used as an aromatic stimulant, abortifacient, antiflatulent and as a means to induce menses. Nutmeg has its origin in the Spice Islands of Indonesia. Arab traders brought nutmeg to India, then to Europe, and eventually it was taken to the Caribbean by the Spanish.

Around the year 1000 the Persian physician Ibn Sina or Avicenna the most remarkable man of his time, described the muchk as jansi ban, nut of Banda.

The first really authenticated nutmegs are thought to have arrived at the Byzantine court in the 16th century, coming by way of the Bedouins; the Greeks translated the Arab word mesk, from Persia muchk, as moskhos.

The Banda Islands were discovered by the Portuguese in 1512. There, they found the the nutmeg tree on the islands. Beginning in the 17th century, the Dutch controlled the Spice Islands, and they monopolized the spice trade until British obtained nutmeg seedlings from Banda Islands at the end of the 18th century.

During the Middle Ages, fashionable Europeans carried their own nutmegs and graters to eating establishments as a status symbol.

In 1819, 100,000 of nutmeg trees were transplanted by the British Government to Ceylon and Bengal but the plantations were not successful.

References to the central nervous system affects of nutmeg appeared in the first part of the 19th century when Purkinje developed lethargy after consuming three nutmeg nuts.

Nutmeg was taken to the Caribbean island of St. Vincent in 1802, and then to Grenada in 1843 where cultivation expanded.
History of nutmeg

History of Black Mustard

History of Black Mustard
Black mustard or Brassica nigra is native to the Mediterranean region, where it is reported as a fossil from prehuman Pleistocene time. The species probably joined Neolithic agriculture as a volunteer in wheat and barley fields, spreading with those crops through Eurasia and North Africa.

Millennia later, Brassica nigra went with those crops oversea, its seeds often carried accidentally with the cereal grain. In California, for example, it was a weed during the Spanish period and remains are common in adobe bricks of the early mission.

Like other mustards Brassica nigra is used as a green vegetable and as a source of mild tasting nonvolatile oil expressed from the seed. However, its main use has been as a spice. Use of mustard seed as a spice dates from the beginning of written history in Babylonia and India and is abundantly recorded in classical Greek, Roman, and biblical sources. Although other species of Brassica were also used, it seems likely that Brassica nigra was the main source in ancient history as it has been in modern history.

Traditionally, mustard is prepared by mixing a small amount of seed of white mustard Sinapis alba, other spices, and a lot of Brassica nigra seed. In ancient times, volunteer plants wee probably more than adequate without deliberate planting. Cultivation of Brassica nigra as a field crop came after Medieval times, along with commercial production in Düsseldorf, Dijon and a few other European towns.
History of Black Mustard

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