Spice Trade

ABSTRACT: This documentary response sheet contains a series of sequential questions drawn from the video, KULTUR: First Merchants (shown in-class; also available online via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjHiRCFz0Oo [46.36 minutes]).  These sequential questions aim to maximize both student attention to various pertinent points made throughout the documentary and greater retention of the materials covered by the documentary.  In addition, the documentary has been vetted for overall content accuracy (albeit updated and/or corrected in-class), and selected to provide supplementary visual aids (e.g., images of regions, sites, finds, and other materials), additional specialist views (e.g., interviews), and other data to aid in student comprehension of the course lectures and readings from the textbooks. REVISED Oct. 2023: This documentary contains much useful information for the East Mediterranean (Ulu Burun shipwreck), Ancient Egypt and Near East, and other regions (China and Central America), but does make reference to the "Cocaine mummies." I have used this opportunity to caution students about such findings, adding a side note to the question sheet (Q.26+) and a full page discussion on such assessments and indicators of long-distance trade in antiquity, including some references, web links, and other documentaries dealing with ancient trade and shipping.

This presentation compares descriptions of 2 polities foreign to the Ming, written in the first half of the 15th century by Ma Huan, a Chinese Muslim eunuch serving aboard the Treasure Fleet of Admiral Zheng He.

The polities are the kingdom of Champa in present-day northern Vietnam, and the city-state of Calicut along the spice trade on India's southwest coast (present-day Kozhikode). The presentation establishes that Ma Huan derided the near and familiar Champan kingdom, while praising the distant and exotic city-state, and aligns this with Ming state interests at this time.

The news of the fall of the Byzantine Empire by the army of the
Turks had given a great shock to Europeans. Latin Christians viewed the
fall of Constantinople as a tragic disaster. The conquest of the Byzantine
Empire by the Turks has lead to other economic changes in the
Mediterranean world. French middle school history textbooks explain that the fall of the Byzantine Empire by the Turks was one of the main
reasons for Portugal and Spain discovering an alternative route to the
land of spices in Asia. According to them, after having conquered the
Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire came to obstruct spices, silk, and
gold from Asia from being imported to Europe, and therefore European
countries tried to discover new routes to Asia to get Asian goods. This
interpretation has been still generally accepted. It presents the rise of the price of spices, caused by the decrease of the supplies of spices in
Europe, as evidence.
This article aims to rectify this interpretation by counting on specific
historical sources and data. Firstly, the Byzantine Empire was not located on the main routes of spices coming from Asia to Europe. The two Levantine ports of Alexandria and Beyrouth had been principal places for European merchants to make their purchases of spices for several centuries since Antiquity. Merchants of Venice also, who had a quasi monopoly of spice trades in the Mediterranean in the later Middle Ages, had purchased their spices mostly in Alexandria of Egypt and Beyrouth of Syria. Secondly, several historians’ works proved that spice prices did not rise in the second half of the fifteenth century. Many historical documents also show that spice prices decreased during the second half of the century. Lastly, Mehmed, the conqueror of Constantinople, never wanted to interrupt trade with European merchants. As soon as he had accomplished the conquest of Constantinople, he started conducting commercial negotiations with the Genoese and Latin nations.

There is a widespread assumption that ancient “cinnamon” and “cassia” were the same as the spices now known by those names. It is argued here that this is not the case, but that the “cinnamon” and “cassia” of ancient writers very probably came from plants native to northeast Africa, as several early writers actually state. Their principal source is identified as Cassia abbreviata. It is also argued that alleged identifications of cinnamon or cassia at archaeological sites in the Mediterranean region are questionable. Cinnamon and cassia did not figure in Southeast Asian and Chinese trade at an early period. There is no good reason to believe that these products were traded to the western Indian Ocean and beyond at any very early date.

... As a native of Peru and son of an Inca princess, he had been in an excellent position to find out about the Inca administration ... At this stage I propose a hypothesis: these details of Garcilaso's description originated with Pineda; they were told to Garcilaso by Gonzalo Pizarro, who ...

Worlds Apart Trading Together sets out to replace the outdated notion of ‘Indo-Roman trade’ with a more informed perspective integrating the new findings of the last 30 years. In order to accomplish this, a perspective focusing on concrete demand from the ground up is adopted, also shedding light on the role of the market in long-distance exchange. Accordingly, the analysis conducted demonstrates that an economically highly substantial trade took place between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean in the 1st–6th cen. CE, altering patterns of consumption and modes of production in both India, South Arabia and the Roman Empire. Significantly, it can be documented that this trade was organised at the centres of demand and supply, in Rome and India, respectively, by comparable urban associations, the transport in-between being handled by equally well-organised private networks and diasporas of seagoing merchants. Consequently, this study concludes that the institution of the market in Antiquity was able to facilitate trade over very long distances, acting on a scale which had a characteristic impact on the economies of the societies involved, their economic structures converging by adapting to trade and the market.
NB: See uploaded addenda in paper below 'Worlds Apart Trading Together – addenda'
Available reviews:
—J. Simmons in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2018.09.59 (http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2018/2018-09-59.html).
—R. Tomber in Journal of Roman Archaeology 31, II (2018): 948–52.

"This book offers annotated translations of documents touching on Dutch admiral Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge and his voyage to Asia between 1605 and 1608. These translations are aimed at a contemporary English-speaking Asian readership interested in the early modern history of European trade, warfare and expansion in Southeast Asia with a focus on Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Researchers specialising in early European colonialism, international law, international relations, security studies, and diplomatic history will also find that the documents translated in this volume offer new and unfamiliar perspectives. Materlieff’s business acumen, military and diplomataic prowess as well as his vision of empire all have implications for examining not only European expansion into Southeast Asia, but also into other regions at large, including especially south Asia, Africa and the Americas.
Admiral Matelieff was a director of the Rotterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) formed in 1602. He was appointed fleet commander on one of the company’s first voyages to Asia. Matelieff’s mission was both commercial and military: he launched a major sea-borne attack on the Portuguese colony of Melaka, arranged for the signing of treaties with the rulers of Johor, Aceh and Ternate, and founded the first Dutch fort on the island of Ternate. His endeavours, however, to open the Chinese market for the Dutch company proved unsuccessful.
Following his return to the Dutch Republic in September 1608, Matelieff penned a series of memorials and letters. In these he advanced recommendations for changing the way the company organized its fleets and conducted business. More importantly he offered  his Dutch contemporaries a vision of empire in Asia. The materials contained in this volume offer important observations of a perceptive analyst who was also determined to grasp the political and economic structures of Asia, and also of inter-state relations in across this vast region. At a time of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, French and English engagement in Southeast Asia, Matelieff sought to critically assess and strategize on the ways in which Europeans were increasingly engaging with Asian polities and their rulers.

This book will be released for sale in Australasia and Europe in June 2014 and available in the Americas after September 2014
""""

MA Thesis in Maritime History (Faculty of Letters, Lisbon University FLUL, 2014) - revised version

The present thesis Shipwrecks of the “Carreira da Índia” (1595-1623) – Sources
for the Study in Portuguese Maritime History deals with factors which caused losses of
ships of the Carreira da Índia which linked the European metropolis Lisbon with its
Goa based Estado da Índia between 1595 and 1623. Although Portuguese-Asiatic
shipping was formally separated from the Habsburg Empire during the Union of the
Two Iberian Crowns (1580-1640), the European policies of the Spanish Kings,
especially towards the United Provinces and the Netherlands had its influence and
effects on the Portuguese side.
Shipwrecks, either on the outward bound or homeward bound voyages had
occurred for various reasons since the early days of the Carreira da Índia yet the
emergence of the two private European Companies, the Dutch United East India
Company (founded in 1602) and the British East India Company (founded in 1600)
were a new momentum by which’s characteristics of concurrence and struggle for
supremacy of the European-Asiatic spice trade, losses of Portuguese ships were caused
by planned and executed military operations as well.
Focusing on the geographical region of the Mozambique Channel in which the
losses have taken place, the thesis combines a historiographical approach with records
of underwater archaeology analyzing questions related to the political environment and
planed military operations in which shipwrecks have occurred as well as causes of
shipwrecks observing ship building and design modifications and effects related to
economic patterns such as the monetary flows of the Portuguese outward bound
shipping during the period of observation.

Naufragios da Careira da Índia (1595-1623)

The human settlement in the Inner Syrdarya delta in the second half of the 1st millennium BCE is characterised by walled sites of large sizes, containing different funerary structures like barrows, mud-bricks square mausolea and deep shaft-graves, fortified citadels and a huge number of small-sized rural sites located along natural and artificial rivers, palaeo-rivers and canals. The material culture associated to these sites attests evidences of the Achaemenid presence. Besides of the fine, wheel-made pottery production, witnessed by bowls and plates, jars and canteens of different sizes and functions, always found in association with steppe-like ceramic of rough manufacture, it must be mentioned also the presence of square-shaped bricks (about 42×42×8-10 centimetres), from Sengir Tam, with fingers imprints on their surfaces in the form of crosses, double-crosses and single lines. The most important artefacts so far collected, witnessing the Achaemenid presence, are represented by the fragments of two large vessels, alabastra, in gypsum characterised by the same Old Greek inscription on their shoulder, and by a complete canteen characterised by an Aramaic inscription on its body.

El presente estudio tiene como objetivo exponer el comercio marítimo originado en Galicia durante el reinado de Carlos I y la tentativa de establecer un emporio monopolístico en A Coruña a imagen de la Casa de Contratación de Sevilla, presentando así que el descubrimiento de América supuso unas expectativas comerciales que se extendieron fuera de su esfera geográfica, lo que daría como resultado la búsqueda del control del comercio de especias con las Molucas como principal territorio en litigio entre España y Portugal.

The Career of the Indies was the culmination and simultaneously turning point in Portuguese expansion. Indeed, the Portuguese Discoveries were started with the ultimate goal of reaching the mythical Indies, lands that have always populated the European collective imagination as a source of infinite riches, even though there was no idea of its location.
When finally the Vasco da Gama's voyage set the sea route to India, a new cycle started for the West, which ceased to be focused on itself around the Mediterranean and realized that there were other worlds beyond theirs. Portugal overcame their geographical boundaries and became a world power, and even dared to share the world with Spanish rivals.
The fact that, as early as the second trip, having given the "achamento" (finding) of Brazil, adds another important element to the Career of the Indies joining the technical innovations, cultural and mentality (to be discussed in another paper) which provided.
The aim of this work is to analyze, first, the reason why there was in the first place a Portuguese expansion when nothing would predict, explain the importance of this route for the birth of the first super power of History and with the help of a theme by musician Rui Veloso, enrolled on the album "Auto da Pimenta" edited to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Discoveries, which will serve as a guide, characterize this Career in its many aspects, from the navigation to the way it was perceived in society.
A summary of the causes that led to its decline, between internal and external factors, will complete this exhibition, which is to contribute to portray as faithful as possible the reality of what was the Career of the Indies.

communication presented at the 33rd annual conference of the Portuguese Association of Economic and Social History (APHES), Braga, Portugal, 15.11-16.11.2013

awarded with the 2013 price for the best research presented by young researchers of the year in the area of economic and social history

The Southeast Asian spice trade involved an evolving network of trade as well as the meaning of the term "spice". This paper takes a snapshot of the spice trade in Southeast Asia at large as well as specifically in the royal Johorese capital Batu Sawar around the year 1600. The backbone for this study is formed by hitherto unknown or sparsely known materials that include so-called rutters as well as the Batu Sawar factory records of the Dutch East India Company

... 28) and there are no predatory or domestic animals, simply rivers 'Of oile, melk, honi, and wine ... the first details of the garden; then the poem describes the red roses that never fade, wells of ... ships than to the Argo, the association with Luis de Camões' portrayal of Da Gama's men ...

Guest lecture at the international research training group program "Baltic Borderlands" für das Sommersemester 2014 "States, Stories, Agents and Perspectives - Bordering Spaces"

Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University, Greifswald, Germany
15.04.2014

This paper documents that the first specimens of the economically important nutmeg tree did not reach the New World until 1773, while the equally valuable cinnamon tree had been transferred to a Caribbean island by 1762. These dates can serve to interpret a recently discovered manuscript by the French botanist Jean Baptiste D’Arnault in which he claimed to have collected nutmeg and cinnamon in the Lesser Antilles or
Venezuela in 1767 (Lindorf 2001, 2002).