History of Spices (Radio Edit)

Russell Cain

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Greg Jenner

Hello and welcome to youo're Dead To Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we're rummaging in the kitchen cupboards and learning all about the history of spices and and the spice trade. And to help us, we have two very special dining companions in History Corner. He's a lecturer in early Modern history at Bangor University in Wales, where he specializes in the early modern British Empire and the East India Company. You might have read his wonderful book, the Great how the World Took on the British Empire. It's Dr. David Beavers. Welcome, David.

Fred's Appliance Voiceover

Thank you.

Dr. David Beavers

Thanks for having me. I'm super excited.

Greg Jenner

Delighted to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, he's a stand up comedian and renowned quizzer. You'd have seen him on Taskmaster qi, Would I Lie to youo? And heard him on all over Radio 4 with his various wonderful series about general knowledge. But he's surely best known as a formidable chaser on the TV game show the Chase. Yes, it's the Cineman himself, Paul Sinner. Welcome, Paul.

Paul Sinner

It's a delight to be here. Thank you very much, Paul.

Greg Jenner

Your first time on the show, but you are a professional quizzer.

Paul Sinner

There's only about 20 of us in the country in history, so that's a nice, nice description. I'm proud of that one.

Greg Jenner

That's a great description. Where are you with spot spices and spicy food? Are you a spicy food lover?

Paul Sinner

On the scale of 0 to 10? I'm sort of 7. 8.

Greg Jenner

That's quite.

Paul Sinner

Which means I don't like to show off like the drunk in the curry house making a bad decision on the vindaloo or the phal. But I don't like my food too mild either.

Greg Jenner

Okay.

Paul Sinner

Spices are good.

Greg Jenner

Spices are good. I am not particularly good on the spices. I'm probably a kind of five to six out of ten. Spicy me.

Paul Sinner

That's right.

Greg Jenner

David, where are you on the spice index?

Dr. David Beavers

I'm lower. I write about spices, but I'm probably like a two corma. I need a big glass of water.

Greg Jenner

Okay.

Paul Sinner

This is the equivalent of me discussing keeping up with the Kardashians.

Dr. David Beavers

That's right, yeah.

Greg Jenner

So what do you know? This is the Siwaddya know. This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And you might know, of course, that spices famously come in five varieties. You've got ginger, baby. Scary sport. Hang on then. That's not right. My bad. Anyway, you've all heard of spices. They turn our food from drab to fab. They're a key ingredient in England's national dish, which of course is chicken tikka masala. And every autumn, pumpkin spice objects conquer the shops, from lattes to cat litter. But what other uses have people found for spices? How did they make their way into our global spice rack? Let's find out. Dr. David, what is a spice?

Dr. David Beavers

There wasn't a clear definition of what a spice was for a long time. Traditionally medieval, early modern period. A spice is a kind of blanket term for anything that's unusual, expensive, smells a bit funny. Technically, a spice is a part of a tropical plant, like the bark or the flower or the seed. And then there are some, like vanilla that is actually the flower of a tropical plant. So the most common ones that we talk about really are from Asia. They're native to Asia, with a few exceptions. So saffron from Greece, for example, chilies from South America. But it's predominantly Asia we're talking about. And it's important that we do, because the geography of spices really shapes their history and the history we've had in trading with them.

Paul Sinner

So saffron's from Greece.

Dr. David Beavers

Yes. Yeah.

Paul Sinner

This is new to me. Did you know?

Greg Jenner

I didn't know that. I always assumed it was from India.

Dr. David Beavers

But it's vanilla, chilli, allspice. They're South American. So we're predominantly talking about Asia, but not exclusively vanilla. Vanilla, yeah.

Paul Sinner

It's not Madagascar.

Dr. David Beavers

No. But some of these spices are transplanted around the world.

Greg Jenner

Okay, where do we start our story? You know, if we're talking about the origins of the spice trade, obviously spices have grown on trees for millions of years, but the spice trade, when can we date that back to.

Dr. David Beavers

Yeah, so the trade in spices as long as human civilization. So we're talking really about a specific part of Asia. It's the Malaccas. In East Asia, those islands exclusively were known as the Spice Islands because that's where you would find only their nutmeg, mace, cloves, those sorts of rare spices, and they were exported by locals to the Malay Peninsula and found their way out across Asia and onward.

Greg Jenner

So the Spice Islands are what? Indonesia. Are they?

Dr. David Beavers

One there is in Indonesia.

Greg Jenner

Okay. One of many thousands of islands, but yeah.

Dr. David Beavers

And so there are thousands of islands, and just some of them will cultivate nutmeg and clothes.

Greg Jenner

Okay.

Dr. David Beavers

It's an amazing place.

Greg Jenner

Fantastic. Where are we? Back in the Bronze Age?

Dr. David Beavers

Yes. Then from the Bronze Age. It's a story about the way they're disseminating further outward.

Greg Jenner

Paul, do you know the 19th century euphemism to voyage to the Spice Islands? Do you know what it means, the

Paul Sinner

number of things it could be? It could be an alternate sexuality euphemism for being gay to voyage to the Spice Islands, but it could be just doing something unusual or exotic, I suppose.

Greg Jenner

Sure.

Paul Sinner

There's a whole list of things that are considered unusual and exotic, and that list changes over the years.

Greg Jenner

Okay. In the 19th century, what would be exotic and unusual reading. Now, according to Susie Dent, the lovely lexicographer, it meant going to the toilet.

Dr. David Beavers

But what does Susie Dent across this period. Then we see it being traded across the Malayan peninsula over to India, over to Malabar, then has its own pepper and spice cultivation. In east southeast India, and then it crosses the Arabian Sea into the Persian Gulf, into the Red Sea, and then across the Levant and North Africa and eventually the Mediterranean as well. And we know the Egyptian pharaohs are trading for them in the Arabian Peninsula. This is sort of 2800 BCE. So it's a long history. It's a long time ago. And there's even evidence that Mesopotamian civilizations were trading for spices with the Indus Valley, a kind of vast expanse across a long time.

Greg Jenner

So Europeans, of course, would have got involved eventually. This stuff is going to spread. Paul, which spicy conqueror connected his new empire to North India in the 4th century BCE?

Paul Sinner

I imagine that's the one. The only Alexander the Great, absolutely is

Greg Jenner

Alexander the Great's conquest. He storms through Persia, he storms through Egypt, he storms into North India with his army. Does he therefore sort of connect up this Asian trade into a European?

Dr. David Beavers

He does. He sort of consolidates that link across the Hindu Kush, across the kind of Indus Valley, and connects it into a network, you know, that connects Egypt to the Indus Valley, that connects the Greek world. And so he consolidates those trade links. And when spice is a big part

Paul Sinner

of that story, he literally put the mace in Macedonia.

Greg Jenner

There we go. So that connection stays connected. Right. When Alexander dies, the whole thing doesn't just collapse.

Dr. David Beavers

Yeah, I think we often think that, you know, with Alexander's death, it does all just collapse and you have this struggle of the successor states. But, you know, the thing is, when you establish lucrative trade routes, and spices being so covered as they are, these things endure. And so we get the city of Alexandria becomes the hub of the spice trade for the sort of North African, Mediterranean axis of, of that network. And it. And it flourishes partly on the back of the lucrative trade in spices. Then later on, obviously, we get the Roman annexation of Egypt, and that only sort of further enlarges the spice trade, especially across the Roman Empire. But obviously, eventually, as all empires do, the Western Roman Empire falls.

Greg Jenner

Does it fall or was it pushed?

Dr. David Beavers

Was it fall or was it pushed? That's a good question. That's probably another show. It's a different show, if you're qualified to say. But we know that does disrupt, obviously, access to spices across Western Europe.

Greg Jenner

So we get a big increase in maritime trade in this period. And when I say this period, I suppose we are. We're in what we call late antiquity, early medieval period. It's that sort of seven hundreds, eight hundreds sort of space. One of the reasons big expanses is technological innovation. There are three major developments do you know what they might be, Paul, around this time? Technological maritime expansion. Y things.

Paul Sinner

Sextant.

Greg Jenner

Oh, that's a good guess. So a navigation aid, you think? Yeah, sextant's a good guess. Give me two more.

Paul Sinner

Astrolabe.

Greg Jenner

Yes, absolutely, yep.

Paul Sinner

Compass.

Greg Jenner

Compass. You've got two out of three and sextant's a good guess. I think sexton's a bit later. So it is, it's astrolabe, David.

Dr. David Beavers

Yeah, yeah, it's astrolabe. That's a really good guess. Magnetic compass. Yeah, that's the next one. And the other one is the. What's known more commonly as the triangular cell, but the Latin cell that allows you to kind of tack into the wind and challenge the elements to get that one.

Paul Sinner

So I'll take that.

Dr. David Beavers

I felt that was the obvious one, Paul. No, no, Latines.

Greg Jenner

Yeah. Are you not a sailor, Paul? You're not out on the, on the water every weekend?

Paul Sinner

No, no, no, no. That's a very different part of my life.

Greg Jenner

Yeah. So the sail allows you to sail into the wind, which means you can still navigate through the trade winds. Yeah, if they're, if they're blowing against you, you can still.

Dr. David Beavers

Yeah, of course. We're pre modern navigation, it's all about the wind. And this allows the trade to essentially run on its own rhythm rather than be dictated by, by the elements.

Greg Jenner

We get the Sassanid Empire. They always sound very saucy, the Sassanids. It's just a good name for an empire.

Dr. David Beavers

It is especially like an empire that really gets rich off the back of spices. These are the successors of the Persian Empire. They're occupying a space between east and west. And so the overland route and also the Sassanidum is also the maritime routes coming through the Persian Gulf. And their successors would do the same. Control of the Persian Gulf is one of the main arteries of the spice trade from Asia into Europe. So they become powerful and rich off the back of, of this spice. And you know, for those of us who know the Quran, we often forget that the Prophet Muhammad was a spice trader and that his family were involved in the spice trade as many well to do families were in that region that particular period of time. So we know it's kind of one of the more elite occupations. And then following the Arab conquests of much of the Middle East, North Africa, even up into the Iberian Peninsula, today Spain and Portugal, they kind of bring the spice trade almost kind of to the extent that the Romans had, pushing it well into Europe and beyond. And you see this Great expansion with the Muslim conquests.

Greg Jenner

Paul, There is then a major medieval event which brings medieval Europeans back into the trade. Do you know what that would be?

Paul Sinner

Crusade?

Greg Jenner

Yeah, it absolutely is. Crusades, horribly violent as they were. They did increase access to spices in Europe and of course broaden tastes. They reintroduced Western Europe to these spices that everyone has been enjoying for a long time over in Asia and in North Africa and so on. What is that moment like?

Dr. David Beavers

Yeah, I think in some ways it's that resumption of those broken links that were established a long time ago. And it's not to say that Europe was completely cut off from. From spices, but the Crusades re establishes on a more firmer footing the trade links through obviously the horrendous violence of the Crusades, but also the establishment of maritime and overland routes that. That have become disrupted or passed European control. So this is kind of the re. Establishment of that. And we often associate that resumption of that trade, introducing medieval Europe and its bland and horrible food and it's rotting meat that was festering on then everyone dying of the plague because of it. And you know, that big myth that spices were held as this. This solution finally to Europe's kind of horrible cuisine and that they would just lash the rotting meat and conceal the horrible smell and taste of food. Of course that's nonsense.

Ryan Seacrest

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Dr. David Beavers

Because spices cost an absolute fortune.

Greg Jenner

Yeah, it's. It's like. It's like putting palladium on a pot noodle. It's like the spices cost way more than the meat.

Dr. David Beavers

Yeah, that's right. And so that we know that that doesn't have it. Spices are used in flavor, but they're not used to that extravagant extent of basically wasting them as a. As a kind of preservative for food. But. But yeah, they are being used and consumed for their taste. And we know the sort of big players doing this that kind of follows on the heels of the crusading states are the Italian city, maritime states. Venice is the big one. Genoa as well.

Greg Jenner

But by the end of the 1400s, we start to get European navigators going. I quite want a spice route. Do you know who these would be, Paul? Who would be the big players that.

Paul Sinner

Well, Spain and Portugal.

Greg Jenner

Yeah, absolutely.

Paul Sinner

Isabelle, Ferdinand and Isabel.

Greg Jenner

Very good. Yeah. Of Castile. Yeah.

Paul Sinner

Henry the navigator.

Greg Jenner

Oh, this is good knowledge. Okay. And who would be your explorers? Who's getting on the ship. Ship and doing the hard.

Paul Sinner

Well, Vasco da Gama, but I happened to do Ferdinand Magellan mastermind many, many, many moons ago. So I'm aware that the first circumnavigation of the globe was because of spices. Yeah, well, I did mastermind. I knew nothing about Magellan and it blew my mind that all of that was for spices. Yeah, the entire void, it had no other purpose.

Greg Jenner

But it's, it is the Portuguese, it is Vasco de Gama, as Paul said, who sort of really is our first great navigator in the spice trade. And he's going, not west, he's going south.

Dr. David Beavers

Yeah, he is. He's going south. When the Portuguese come down the coast of Africa and around the Cape of Good Hope under Vasco da Gama and into the Indian Ocean, this is the sort of first recorded European entry into the maritime route around the Cape of Good Hope. And it's in 1498 they hit the Malabar Coast, India, which is, if you're looking for spices, exactly where you want to land. You know, a bunch of peppercorn forests surrounding you. And this is what they bring back. It's black peppercorn, which is the spice that, you know, we take for granted, that spice cupboard in the kitchen. But once upon a time that drove early modern navigation trade.

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Greg Jenner

So Portugal becomes a kind of dominant pepper of Europe. I suppose they found, Is it. Well, they found a sort of fort. Is it Calicut?

Dr. David Beavers

Yes, Calicut, which is in Kerala state in southwest India, is the first major city where they are, we say negotiating and buying spices, but it's the Portuguese. So they're also blowing people up and blowing up parts of it.

Greg Jenner

Negotiating with grenades.

Dr. David Beavers

With grenades, Yeah, A piece through force, that kind of negotiating tactic. And they're very successful. They bring back these, the first holds full of peppercorn and they land in Europe. And Lisbon is almost overnight turned from, you know, mud and timber to marble. Its skyline rises and it becomes one of the wealthiest cities in Europe, largely because of this spice trade.

Greg Jenner

But by the end of 1500s, we get two new players in the race. They're not super renowned for their well seasoned food. Who would they be?

Paul Sinner

So when are we now?

Greg Jenner

Late 1500s, think sort of 1580s, that sort of, you know, Queen Elizabeth type era.

Paul Sinner

Is that a clue?

Greg Jenner

Might be

Paul Sinner

England.

Greg Jenner

Yep. And Netherlands. Yeah, very good. Yeah, absolutely. I mean the Dutch and the English suddenly sort of go, hang on a minute, everyone else is getting rich. How do we have one of these empires?

Dr. David Beavers

Yeah, let's throw some spice on this herring. Get some flavour in this stew. Yeah. So it's the, the North Europeans, predominantly the English and the, and the Dutch who are looking at their muddy timber cities going, wow, we'd love some marble. And they are, they're riding on the coattails of predominantly the Portuguese and it's really the Dutch that, that take the lead. And there's, there's a, in a way, this great kind of interplay between the history of something like spice, a comm. Foodstuff. With the emergence of modern capitalism, they develop a joint stock company, you know, the Modern joint stock corporation comes from the Netherlands and the English developing East India companies to trade with the Indies. The English East India Company on New Year's of 1600 is about 215 big weeks. And they're copying the Dutch. You know, I'd love to say this is an English innovation, but it's not much of what made England great in the early model period is ripped off from. From the Dutch. And so they. They both football in the 70s.

Greg Jenner

Exactly.

Dr. David Beavers

They both head off to Asia. And so it's the Dutch East India Company that merges, really, as the winner of the spice trade.

Greg Jenner

Interesting. There's a tactic the Dutch subsequently use to restrict the trade and to keep spice prices high. Paul, do you know what it would be?

Paul Sinner

No, I don't, actually.

Greg Jenner

If you've got too much of something and you want to keep the value high, what do you do with it?

Paul Sinner

Store it away.

Greg Jenner

Store it away is sensible. Or you could destroy it.

Paul Sinner

Okay.

Greg Jenner

So, I mean, David, they. They. I mean, back in Amsterdam, they're just burning.

Dr. David Beavers

Yeah.

Greg Jenner

Just burning tons of this expensive stuff that they've imported in.

Dr. David Beavers

Yeah. Oh, no, we've been too successful. There's too much. And the prices are dropping and we're losing money.

Greg Jenner

So to keep the value of it, they're literally just setting fire to it. Yeah.

Paul Sinner

Is that the reason for the distinctive smell of the streets of Amsterdam?

Greg Jenner

Yeah, I think that might be a different smell,

Dr. David Beavers

but yeah. And it's about controlling the market and monopolizing it. And, you know, when the English bring back tons of pepper, the Dutch brought it back first. They get to a depressed market.

Greg Jenner

Right.

Dr. David Beavers

And it sits in the warehouse in London for about seven years before they can shift it, and they do it at a loss. So in a way, the Dutch are maintaining profitability by just burning tons of this stuff.

Greg Jenner

So that kind of lovely Christmas smell when you go to Christmas markets of nutmeg and cinnamon, that's just the smell of violent colonialism.

Dr. David Beavers

It is the smell of violent colonialism in the morning.

Greg Jenner

What a cologne that would be. Okay, so empires are gonna empire, and the English and Dutch, maybe that's where

Paul Sinner

the word cologne comes from. Cologne. Cologne maybe is short for viol colonies.

Greg Jenner

So the English and Dutch, they're becoming more powerful by the 1600s, and they. They're fighting each other, but they're also fighting the people they're trying to conquer. So, I mean, we get more horrible violence here.

Dr. David Beavers

Yeah, it's kind of that classic imperial rivalry for the most valuable overseas trading commodity ever. It's the people of the region that suffer the most. So in collusion with the English, the Dutch essentially massacre the Bandonese living on these nutmeg plantations.

Greg Jenner

So they say, hang on, they're in collusion, they join forces.

Dr. David Beavers

Yeah. So a war between the English and the Dutch, East India Companies, that doesn't go very well for the English. And there's really a kind of almost a corporate merger. They agreed to share the spice trade. The Dutch get 2/3 and the English a third. And they'll move in in the same forts and factories and manage the trade together. It really. It sounds like an alliance. It's really a kind of Dutch corporate takeover of the ailing English company.

Greg Jenner

But the VICT are they indigenous people.

Dr. David Beavers

And so what happens is, yeah, the Dutch kind of, once they're in position, the Banda Islands, thanks to England's weakness, is that they. Yeah, they exterminate the people living there and instead turn the entire islands over to plantations. And they often bring in enslaved labor to then manage that cultivation.

Greg Jenner

Sorry, Paul, it's not the funniest subject, is it?

Dr. David Beavers

It's not.

Paul Sinner

I've got nothing to say.

Greg Jenner

I don't think you should say anything.

Paul Sinner

Should I just say, alexander the Great put the mace into Macedonia. Thank you.

Greg Jenner

Thank you for bringing the levity.

Dr. David Beavers

So we get the. Then once the bad have been exterminated, the Dutch and the English cooperating together, managing the trade, the Dutch are very jealous. They've given the English a third, but they don't really want them to have any. They want sole exclusive monopoly of spices. And so they become very paranoid. And the Dutch employ a number of Japanese mercenaries in their forts and factories on the Bandar Islands. And. And they start to believe that the English merchants and the Japanese mercenaries are colluding together to overthrow the Dutch and to take over the. The spice monopoly. So in, in, in 1623, the Dutch seized the Japanese and the English and they interrogate them and they use all these sorts of torture methods, waterboarding, hanging them upside down, you know, to extract confessions of. Of conspiracy. And they ended up executing 10 of, of the English and a number of the Japanese mercenaries. It's known as the Amboynya Massacre. And the English were outraged. And for decades there was litigation by the families of the English against the Dutch states that. For compensation for the Dutch.

Greg Jenner

Wow. Yeah, I didn't know you could sue a state in the 1650s. Whatever.

Dr. David Beavers

Yeah, yeah. And essentially King James and then his successors had to sort of, you know, mediate between the families and eventually the families are compensated, but it's you know, almost no one is left alive that was involved in that.

Greg Jenner

And eventually the English, the British, rather, by this point. I suppose it's a fusion. The Stuarts obviously rule Scotland and England, so I guess we're calling them kind of British. They gave up the Spice Islands, in fact, favor of a new colony. Do you know what they got in in exchange with the Dutch? Quite a nice city.

Dr. David Beavers

I believe the heir to the throne was James, Duke of York.

Greg Jenner

Yes, James, Duke of York.

Paul Sinner

Oh, New York, New York.

Greg Jenner

Well done. I could see you. I could see the cogs wearing that Future James ii. Yeah, exactly.

Dr. David Beavers

Very briefly.

Greg Jenner

Very briefly. So they swapped the spice trade for New York for Broadway. Yes, exactly. Is that a good deal, Paul?

Paul Sinner

That's a fantastic deal.

Ryan Seacrest

Would you.

Greg Jenner

Would you take New York?

Paul Sinner

I've been to New York this year, and I gotta say, there's a lot of very good spice restaurants there. So you got. You've got the whole.

Dr. David Beavers

That's true, actually.

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You're.

Paul Sinner

The whole deal.

Greg Jenner

The sort of spice trade is the Dutch monopoly in these. In the East. Do they hold it for long? I mean, I don't. We don't really think of the Dutch as a superpower in the 19th century, do we?

Dr. David Beavers

You don't, but they are. They are a colonial power. They're definitely not at the top of the league of European superpowers, but they are. They do. They do continue right up until beyond the Second World War with interludes. You know, there's. It's not. They're not exclusively in control of spices because they're grown elsewhere, like in India, and that's the English Eastern to come in. And the British Raj, eventually that takes over spice production in India. So, you know, at times it's. It's broken and they're supplanted. But generally the Dutch East Indies hangs on until post Second World War, after a brief Japanese occupation as well, during the war itself. So, yes, it's a long and violent monopoly that carries on there. And over that time, it's eroded by other Europeans taking spices from that region and then transplanting them.

Greg Jenner

Yeah. So do you know what gets moved where? By whom?

Paul Sinner

Well, I'm guessing that vanilla gets moved to Madagascar.

Dr. David Beavers

Yeah, Vanilla is a good one. Brazil becomes the great place of the Portuguese colony.

Greg Jenner

Yeah.

Dr. David Beavers

Or, you know, for everything from cinnamon to cloves. Black pepper. Black pepper as well. Of course, the British take clothes of the Caribbean as well.

Greg Jenner

Right.

Dr. David Beavers

And the companions always produce mostly sugar at this point, but also things like ginger and that.

Greg Jenner

So.

Dr. David Beavers

So clothes is a good Kind of fit any kind of tropical, similar tropical environment with good conditions. And so. So, yeah, by about the 20th century, you can find a lot of these spices being grown elsewhere, often to an industrial scale.

Greg Jenner

And we can mention France as well. Paul, have you ever heard of the Frenchman Pierre Poivre? And you know what he planted in Mauritius?

Paul Sinner

Pears.

Greg Jenner

Well, if I give you a clue, poivre means pepper in French, not pear.

Paul Sinner

Pepper here. What does he plant in Mauritius?

Greg Jenner

No, you'd think it would be pepper. It's not pepper, which feels like a real nominative determinism. Fail. Yeah, he's Peter Pepper and he plants clove nutmeg.

Dr. David Beavers

I believe they were his middle names.

Greg Jenner

So, Peter Clove nutmeg pepper.

Dr. David Beavers

Yeah, that's right, yeah. So he smuggles these out and, you know, the Dutch did guard them jealously. We're talking sort of late 18th century, 1770s, 80s. And he smuggles into a series of French possessions and the first one is Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. They go on to Madagascar and eventually East Africa. Zanzibar. Zanzibar off the coast of East Africa. And so that they. Zanzibar becomes in the 19th century, kind of what, the major slave port of that particular region, but also one time, it's also the largest producer of cloves.

Greg Jenner

Wow, amazing. So that's a huge sort of transition of the locus of where the spice industry is, isn't it, moving to East Africa. So there we go. We've gone around the world, we've ended our kind of global history of spices. Did you enjoy that, Paul?

Paul Sinner

I thoroughly entertained by that.

Greg Jenner

Was it too violent? Sorry?

Paul Sinner

Well, I was well aware of the violence of colonialism. You haven't taught me anything new there. But it is a bit bleak to think that everything we eat has a violent past.

Greg Jenner

Yeah, I'm trying to think of something that doesn't.

Paul Sinner

Deep fried Mars, boss.

Greg Jenner

Yeah, maybe. The nuance window. Time now for the nuance window. This is where Paul and I silently rearrange our spice racks for two minutes. Minutes. While Dr. David cooks up something we need to know about the history of spices. So my stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Dr. David.

Dr. David Beavers

Today, almost every kitchen around the world has a spice rack or cupboard. Even the most exotic and rarest of spices is cheaply and readily available in supermarkets around the world. The truth is, however we use spices today, they've played a key role in the commercial, social and cultural lives of the majority of people on this planet across a long period of time and over a vast expanse of space from The Moluccas to London Tobago to Beijing. Spices have permeated the history of humanity going back millennium. From the Egyptian pharaoh in 1224 BCE who was embalmed with peppercorns up his nose, to the UK today where we consume well over a kilo of spices per capita every year. So how should we understand and regard spices in human history? Well, we can highlight the role they played in cultural exchange. Chinese merchants migrated to Java, married local women, women converted to Islam, all in pursuit of spices. South Asian families migrated to the UK following decolonisation in the 20th century, where their spice fueled food culture fused with British traditions, allowing the melting pot in the kitchen to become a melting pot of wider society. Spices drove currents of economic change and helped to facilitate globalization by contributing to the establishment of long distance trade at sea and over land. Spice roads vied with silk roads over Central Asia and across the Indian Ocean, acting as global arteries along which people, ideas, goods, disease, war and religions travelled. Spices launched Europe's overseas empires. Spices represented not just the greater integration of people separated by distance and nationality for good or worse, but arguably like sugar, tobacco, textiles, enslaved people, iron, manufactured goods and capital, they established a truly global economy. Today, the mass production and dissemination of spices is another facet of 21st century global inequality, where mass cheap consumption in the west is often at the expense of low paid expansion exploited labour in the global South. In that way, the history of the not so humble spice is a lens through which we can view the history of the not so humble human and the beautiful and destructive rhythms of the past we create in that way. Spices contain multitudes and within them the great saga of humanity.

Greg Jenner

Amazing. Thank you so much.

Paul Sinner

I mean, having something as brilliant as that on all podcasts is like putting palladium in a pot noodle.

Greg Jenner

It is really interesting, Paul, isn't it? The history of spice, how we assume they just have always been there, but actually the story of how they got there is, is one of enormous change.

Paul Sinner

As I said, I, I was totally ignorant on it until I did Magellan on Mastermind. And it blew my mind that so much happened to make food more flavorsome. It hadn't, it just hadn't occurred to me. It's an amazing story.

Greg Jenner

Thank you so much Paul. It's been an absolute delight to have you here. Thank you. Of course, David, a listener. To learn more about the history of commodities, check out our episodes about coffee and chocolate. Or for more on global trade, of course you can listen to our episode on the Colombian Exchange. And if you've enjoyed the podcast. Please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to youo're Dead to me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In History Corner we had the fantastic Dr. David Vevers from Bangor University. Thank you David.

Dr. David Beavers

Thank you so much. Thank you Paul.

Greg Jenner

And in Comedy Corner we have the sensational Paul Sinner. Thank you Paul.

Paul Sinner

Thank you very much.

Greg Jenner

And to you lovely listener. Join me next time as we cook up another flavoursome feast for your ears. Can you eat feasts with your ears? I don't know, but for now I'm off to go and steal some cinnamon sticks from my local supermarket and see if I can plant them in my garden.

Paul Sinner

Bye.

Russell Cain

Greetings malevolent munchkins, fish friends and devilish do gooders. Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron Evil Genius. I'm Russell Cain and I'm delighted to be steering the ship that unceremoniously wrenches historic figures from their perfect pedestals so that we can decide whether they're evil genius or a heady concoction of the two. It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Yes, it's evil. Yes, it's genius. Get on board now and listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sales.

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