Spices:Dawn of the Modern Age
“For Christ and spices!”
Vasco da Gama Malabar Coast (India)
Great demand & highly controlled supply
Vasco de Gama arrival in Calecut on 1498
Ceremonial & culinary function
Inadequate food-preserving techniques
Emissaries from a fabled world
Status symbols for the ruling class
Means of separating the classes
Borrowed culture
Foreign trade was the spice trade:most highly prized luxury goods
Spice trade lucrative, complex & prone to dislocation
Venice(Venice, as rendered by Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis in his Kitab-i Bahriye,
a book of portolan charts and sailing directions produced in the early 16th century.
Change in taste signaled the end of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the modern age
Crisis!
• increased demand
• stagnant transportation technology
• spiraling customs duties
Spices lured the Old World into the New, where it lost its way