IFP Week 3: Silk Roads & Spice Trades

Matt Price

This lecture: Spices, and some World History

  • fall of Rome & Persia
  • Origins of the Silk Roads
  • Trade Patterns accross the Silk Roads
  • Spices, Taste, and Culture
  • Spices and European Expansion

Rome & Persia: Dominant powers of the "Second Wave"

  • Persia: founded ~700BCE, became largest empire in world around 500BCE
    • established institutions of governance & technologies (e.g. roads) for managing huge distances
    • Devastatingly defeated by Alexander the Great (333-323 BCE), re-forms after period of Hellenistic control & is main rival to Rome for control of Mediterranean until
  • Rome: founded, becomes an important political state around 220 BCE.
    • Roman-Persian Wars are main global power struggle in Eurasia from ca. 46 BCE-500 CE, ending only with the partial collapse of both empires.

(Frankopan, 2016)

height-persian-empire-strayer-p109.png
Figure 1: Persia ca. 500 BCE (from Strayer, 2013, p. 109)
height-roman-empire-strayer-119.png
Figure 2: Rome ca. 200 CE (from Strayer, 2013, p. 119)

Rome: Asian and African orientation

  • In the West, we have generally understood the Roman Empire as a European phenomenon.
  • But: the western provinces of Rome were primitive. Civilization lay to the East.
  • When West Rome fell to Germanic invaders, Eastern Rome ("Byzantine Empire") – the Asian and African part of the Empire – remained a power for hundreds of hears
  • Rome was mostly interested in the great cities of Asia and Africa, which it sought to conquer and also to trade with
  • The trade between East and West would endure well past the end of the Roman Empire
silk-roads-strayer-285.png

The Silk Roads

  • Weaving of silk is at least 5000 years old and appears to have been developed in the current-day Shanxi province, well before the earliest Chinese dynasties
  • for thousands of years, silk was confined to Chna
  • And yet, amazingly, around 200 BCE silk fabrics began to appear in Rome, after the conquest of Egypt
  • how was this possible? Through the "Silk Roads" that the Persian Empire had maintained, and which survived long afte that empire fell, re-formed, and fell again.
  • for well over 1,000 years, from ~200BCE to ~1400, a vibrant trade was sustained along those trade routes, which carried gold, fabrics, porcelain, philosophies, religions, and… spices
silk-roads-strayer-285.png
Silkworms3000px.jpg
Figure 3: silkworms on mulberry leaves (Fastily, 2008)

Silk Roads: Complexity & Emergent Order

  • Silk Roads were a vast network that linked all the "civilizations" of the Eastern Hemisphere
  • Though "officially" launched by the Han Dynasty in 130 BCE, built on much older contacts, esp Persian road systems & Egyptian trading vessels
    • in general, traders on the Silk Roads were not familiar with the entire route, and would carry goods for only part of the long journey
    • the trade survived much longer than the dynasties or even peoples who carried it out in one era or another.
  • so, e.g., expansion of Islamic Caliphates from Arabian peninsula to Indian subcontinent, rise of Mongol Empire from China to Hungary: none of these stopped trade on the Silk Roads.
  • As each power faded, the Silk Road mostly endured
  • Rather than centrally organized, order on the Silk Roads was emergent and *collaborative
  • as a result, ideas and goods circulated, often without clear understanding of origins, or even of geography
  • ideas and religions too!
Buddhist_Expansion.svg
Figure 4: Expansion of Buddhism on the Silk Road (Kartapranata, 31 C.E.)

Spices!

  • definition:
    • today: plant material (seed, fruit, bark, root)used to flavour food
    • medieval Europe: any aromatic imported material, used for flavour, but also as medicine or for religious purposes
  • today, I can buy a bag of ground, mixed spices for $3.00 at my corner store, about 12 minutes of work at minimum wage
  • in medieval Europe, a small container of spices would cost roughly a week's wages
  • and yet, medieval European cuisine called for very large amounts of spices, few of which could be grown anywhere on the continent
  • the cultural history of spices in Europe is a powerful example of the interplay of economic forces with taste and utility
Piper_nigrum_drawing_1832.jpg
Figure 5: Pepper Plant (Guilding, 1832)
Cinnamomum_verum_spices.jpg
Figure 6: Cinnamon Spice (Eugster, 2019)

Spices: from India to the Mediterranean and Beyond

  • though Egyptians used cinnamon as early as 1070 BCE, the Mediterranean connaction to spice-growing regions in India was strengthened by Alexander the Great's conquest of the territory between Greece and India
  • Early in its history, Rome had direct contact with the Indian provinces of the old Alexandrian empire, but these faded over time (Pollard, 2013)
  • as experience of real India faded, imagination of India grew more and more powerful. We call this "exoticization"
  • Spices were a sign of wealth, a shortcut to good health, an opportunity for myth… and also part of cuisine.
  • These various aspects can't be fully separated!
  • as West Rome declined, Europeans had even less direct access to India
  • but silk road still existed!
  • spices, produced mainly in Indian subcontinent & offshore islands, travelled to the mediterranean mostly by land
  • Europeans had very little knowledge of spice origins, and with few exceptions, no capacity to produce spices
    • spice were expensive
    • spice also produced an intense sensory experience
    • spices are chemical and also cultural

Spices in Medieval Europe

  • European cuisine is bland, right?
  • Not in Middle Ages!
  • In this period, European "high" cuisine relied more heavily on spices than chinese cuisine did!
  • spices became a sign of status and also of the kind of person you were
  • consumed for their flavour, but also for display of wealth, power, and "taste"

Patina of pears: core and boil the pears, pound them with pepper, cumin, honey, passum, liquamen, and a little oil. Add eggs to make a patina, sprinkle with pepper and serve. (Apicius & Vehling, 2006, p. 38)

The fact that a variety of spices was used, and used in significant quantities, separates medieval European taste from its modern counterpart in which spices other than pepper (and that in small amounts) have been almost entirely banished, or at best relegated to desserts… What is most striking.. is the medieval ubiquity of spices like galangal and grains of paradise that have been unknown in Europe for centuries. (Freedman, 2008)

Master Chiquart was responsible in 1416 for making a sauce for a roast lamprey for the Duke of Savoy. He required 1 lb. of white ginger, 2 lb. of cinnamon, with grain of paradise, pepper, cloves and other spices. (Miller, 2007)

Understanding "Taste"

Sensory Taste

"combination of distinct sensations perceived on our tongues, in our mouths, and in our nasal passages." (Freedman, 2007; quoted in Gentilcore, 2009, p. 126)

Cultural Taste

"How people thought about food - its ingredients, preparation, and presentation"

or

A designation ("good taste", "bad taste") indicating conformity to a social norm.

In this sense, "taste" usually carries a class connotation

"Taste", Luxury, and the Pursuit of Spices

  • for most of human history, Europe was a nunimportant backwater
  • this changes around the 15th century (1400s), for reasons that are sometimes still unclear
    • Scientific Revolution & Techological Advances
    • A Militarist Expansionism Trained in the Crusades
    • An Evangelical Religion
    • Intense Competition within Europe
  • The Quest to Control flow of spices became essential to European Expansion
    • as a valuable commodity, spices offered prospect of huge profits (Rich & Wilson, 1967, p. 288)
    • European powers competed first to control distribution and then to control production

The Spice Trade around 1400, and from 1500-1700

1100-1400

  • spices arrived in the Mediterranean mostly by overland routes, via Islamic traders from the now-asendant Caliphates that controleld much of Western Asia and the Middle East
  • merchants from the city-state of Venice traded mostly with merchants in Constantinople (Byzantium, or Istanbul, im modern-day Turkey), and Alexandria (in Egypt)
  • All o Europe had to buy their spices from Venice

1500-1700

  • Portuguese traders (Vasco da Gama) sailed around Africa to India in 1492
  • now the Porguguese had a direct line from spice producers
  • soon, they used military force to take over the most lucrative spice islands
    • this set a pattern for European Expansion in the rest of the world!
  • Dutch East India Company formed 1602 to compete with Portuguese control
    • a monopoly, an "integrated supply chain", a "megacorporation", the "first public company", "an empire in its own right"
  • British East India Company organized 1600, later modelled itself on the Dutch, and also became, essentially, an Empire of its own
  • All of this: expansion, ocnquest, slave plantations, was motivated by spices

Coming up: The Columbian Exchange

  • de Gama is les famous than his competitor: Christopher Columbus
  • Columbus also wanted to sail to India…
    • but he landed in the Americas
    • He brought back many wonders, including new foods
    • This will be thetopic of our upcoming minilectures
  • For tomorrow: read the readings and answer the questions!

Sources

Apicius, & Vehling, J. D. (2006). Apicius: A Critical Edition with an Introduction and English Translation. Prospect Books.
Eugster, S. A. (2019). Cinnamomum verum spices. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Cinnamomum_verum_spices.jpg&oldid=916175638
Fastily. (2008). Fourth Instar Silkworm Larvae. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Silkworms3000px.jpg
Frankopan, P. (2016). The Silk Roads: a new history of the world. Alfred AKnopf.
Freedman, P. (2007). Food: the history of taste (No. 21). University of California Press.
Freedman, P. (2008). Introduction. In Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (pp. 1–18). Yale University Press. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/lib/utoronto/detail.action?pq-origsite=primo&docID=3421431
Gentilcore, D. (2009). Taste and the tomato in Italy: a transatlantic history. Food & History, 7(1), 125–139. https://doi.org/10.1484/j.food.1.100639
Guilding, L. (1832). Piperaceae - Piper nigrum. Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, 59, Plate 3139. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Piper_nigrum_drawing_1832.jpg
Kartapranata, G. (31 C.E.). Expansion of Buddhism. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buddhist_Expansion.svg
Miller, H. (2007). Feasting and fasting : food and taste in Europe in the Middle Ages. In P. Freedman (Ed.), Food: the history of taste (No. 21). University of California Press.
Pollard, E. A. (2013). Indian spices and roman “magic”; in imperial and Late Antique Indomediterranea. Journal of World History, 24(1), 1+. http://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A337619914/CIC?sid=bookmark-CIC&xid=bfde5bb8
Rich, E. E., & Wilson, C. H. (1967). The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire: Volume 4, The Economy of Expanding Europe in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. CUP Archive.
Strayer, R. W. (2013). Ways of the world: a brief global history (Second edition.). Bedford/StMartin’s.