Spices in the Indian Ocean World

Download or read book Spices in the Indian Ocean World written by M.N. Pearson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 581 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By turns exotic, valuable and of cardinal importance in the development of world trade, spices, as the editor reminds us, are today a mundane accessory in any well-equiped kitchen; in the 15th-18th centuries, the spice trade from the Indian Ocean to markets all over the world was a major economic enterprise. Setting the scene with extracts from Garcia da Orta's fascinating contemporary Colloquies on the drugs and simples of India [Goa 1563], this collection reviews trade in a wide variety of spices, exploring merchant organisation, transport and marketing as well as detailing the quantitative evidence on the fluctuations in spice trade. The evidence and historical debates concerning the 16th-century revival of the Mediterranean and Red Sea spice trade at this time, are fully represented here