Pepper: an Origin Story, Chapter 3
Kirsty Hughes/Getty
This week, as we continue along with our pepper journey, we will be looking mostly at the 15th- and 16th-centuries. I also really wanted to do the East India Companies in this post, but there is no possible way to look at what caused them and the EICs themselves in one day. Of paramount importance for this post is understanding why Europeans decided they needed to colonize the world all at one time. The simple answer is “Italian cartels and pepper,” but of course it’s more complicated than that; we’re going to dig in deep here!
The Italian Renaissance
In the 15th-century, we can largely look at this period as one with great unrest over the excessive prices of pepper and other spices being charged by various Italian merchant families, an astonishing level of economic growth for the elite, social changes, the beginnings of capitalism, and technological development. At this time, the Italian Renaissance is getting going, with Petrarch, Dante, and Boccaccio from the 14th-century being the most significant authors to usher in this era. During the 14th, also there was an economic collapse due to plague, war, climate change, famine, and peasant revolts. The significant trauma of all these events triggers the intense creativity in myriad fields that launches the Renaissance. Chaucer also happens during the 14th, though obviously in England where other peasant revolts and wars and such were going on. He does some really interesting work on a lot of different topics.
By the 15th, as the plague had finally started to burn itself out, the economic sector gets into the swing of things again. It takes decades for the economy to recover. You also get a lot of insane development in the arts and sciences like da Vinci (didn’t know the Vitruvian Man was effectively a self-portrait!), Leon Battista Alberti, Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, and Botticelli; philosophy giants like Alessandro Achillini and Christine de Pizan (she did her work in France and also grew up there, but was from Italy and also was the first professional female medieval author); powerful merchant/banking families like the Medici and Bardi; nobility like the Borgia (technically Spanish) and Altoviti. None of this was possible without pepper, because the political and economic model much-of-what-happened-during-this-time rested upon was related to people buying a lot of stuff they didn’t need, like foreign spices, and also producing and exporting way more stuff than they needed. So basically like now, because these are the early days of capitalism as we exit the feudal era.
Really quickly: although none of this is possible without pepper, wool was really important here as well. Super important. Synthetic fibres didn’t exist at this time, so wool mattered in ways it doesn’t to most people these days.
This is my favorite Medici. In no fashion am I claiming that Reign is a good show, because it isn’t. Although at least in this show, you don’t want to see Toby Regbo gutted by anyone available’s sword. I am, however, claiming that it’s a perfectly acceptable guilty pleasure roughly on par with eating M&Ms while chugging soda in the bathroom so you don’t have to share with your kids (turn the fan on so crinkling packages can’t be heard as easily). You know you shouldn’t spend your time doing stuff like this, but you love to do it anyway. This clip has annoying music, but does offer up several funny scenes.
Sabrina saw this little section and said, “Um excuse me. Reign is an awesome show.” I say no, she says yes, so we’re gonna have to agree to disagree on this one! At least she and I still have The Last Kingdom. We both really do love this show, even if only one of us knows it isn’t very good. She’s watching it again thanks to this whole tangent. I’m watching The 100 so I can be ready for when the last season drops on Netflix, in case anyone needed to know that. Probably not, but just in case.
Age of Exploration
You can get a real sense of how powerful various Italian regions and families were, and in particular when you consider the astonishing number of royal families they married into, plus popes they had biological ties to. You can also, I expect, see why no other European power was gonna let this stand.
They definitely did not let this stand. They instead started the Age of Exploration/Age of Discovery.
The Turkish Empire
Right. I forgot to say something really important. Constantinople, and by extension, Byzantium, fell in 1453. This ushers in the Ottoman Empire and drives the cost of pepper up. The Venetians are still doing their monopoly of the European portion of the pepper and sundries trade, but now the Turks are in charge of the eastern side and they just really aren’t as nice as the Byzantines. The rules are different, and so is the price. This was very upsetting to the rest of Europe. Because pepper!
This is what the end of the Byzantium Empire looked like. Not pretty, mainly. The Byzantine-Ottoman wars took just over 200 years.
Constantinople had that name from 330 CE to 1923, when the Ottoman Empire dies. Before that it was called Byzantion, but it was first called Lygos. Some people speculate that it was originally a Thracian city. Then it gets a couple of short-lived names, then Constantinople, which it’s had the longest. It’s now called Istanbul. Both before and after the fall, Istanbul was commonly used locally, although generally just in reference to the walled in portion of the city. İstanbul (the proper spelling) means “to the city.”
This is my favorite video for this song, which comes from Tiny Toons. Song is by They Might be Giants.
Moral of the story here, though, is that because there was a new cartel on the block, prices went up a lot.
Age of Exploration, Continued
Where we are right now is that everyone west of Italy is mad. That’s the sum of it, anyway. So they do what anyone would do: look to cut out the middle man and save a few dollars! (I feel like I’m writing a Geico commercial right now). They do a great job of this, because although millions upon millions of people die or worse as a result of the Age of Exploration, the price of pepper not only comes down, low pepper prices ultimately becomes such a thing that we can toss those packets away. Crazy!
In the mid-15th, Portugal really did have the superior fleet. We tend to think of early exploration of the Caribbean and Americas as being all about Spain, but the reality is that Portugal made that possible. Mostly because everyone had missed that the Vikings had hit up North America almost 500 years prior. Vikings didn’t seem to bring anything back from Canada other than the knowledge that grapes were growing there at the time. Well, they didn’t bring anything back that was recorded, at least, so it makes sense that no one knew.
This is the Vinland Map, presumed to represent what Leif Ericsson was up to, and this journey presumably was based on another prior Scandinavian adventurer’s journey. That guy was named Bárdi Herjólfsson, and he sighted mainland North most peopleno one seem not to know his name.
As we mentioned before, Isabella gets all excited to send people west to get east, and she does that as she’s purging anyone who made her feel oppressed in the past. Not necessarily the people who did whatever to her, but definitely as many of their people as possible. And here we get Columbus.
Columbus was Italian, by the way; from Genoa. By the time he nags Isabella into funding his journeys across the ocean, it’s 1492 and we all know the rhyme. The only reason the crown wanted to invest in this crazy and unlikely-to-succeed journey is because they were broke from all the warring and really needed that pepper money in their hands instead of Italian hands. We still don’t know the Pinta’s real name, and the Niña’s real name was Santa Clara. I’m not sure if that gets taught in school or not, but I think no.
He makes 4 trips, in reality, and took peppercorns with him to show the indigenous inhabitants what he was looking for (he returned with chiles, which no one knew about or wanted). It’s during the second trip that he brought the military with him. We are still not really sure which island in the Bahamas he landed on that time. During that trip, he goes to Hispaniola, Cuba, and Haiti. He started a colony in Haiti, which of course is where the real trouble begins.
When he got back to Spain, he had a bunch of indigenous captives with him, and also chiles. No one was growing pepper where he’d been, of course. That said, he still named in inhabitant Indians because he absolutely could not accept that he never made it all the way to India. That’s what we need Vasca de Gama for, per our last post.
By 1500 CE, Columbus’ relationship with the crown is so bad that he gets arrested in Hispaniola and deported back to Spain. There are a bunch of these Conquistadors who wind up getting arrested after they get rich and powerful enough to try to buck the system. Anyway, none of that goes well for Columbus, and there are lawsuits and all kinds of other crazy things that happen.
This was de Gama’s route, and it took from from 1497-1499 to get there.
In the middle of all of that, the Taino people were nearly eradicated, and a number of other indigenous peoples were similarly harmed both by disease and brutality. We know with certainty that Columbus participated in sex trafficking young, indigenous women. I’ve linked the letter from Michele de Cuñeo to a different friend, wherein he describes his assault of a woman who was gifted to him by Columbus. I don’t think it’s appropriate to paste a quote of the translation for our purposes, so the above link will have to suffice.
In the third voyage, Columbus discovered that the rumors of South America were true. There was also a mutiny, because those sailors felt they’d been duped about the great riches they should’ve been earning. Some sailors were hanged. A lot of slaves also were taken and sold. This all went so poorly that he lost his governorship, had to make peace with all the colonists who hated him, and so forth.
/professorhat
We need to talk about what we mean when we say, “Columbus did…,” in a critical way for a moment. When we say that, sometimes we really are talking about Columbus. The stuff he did absolutely falls under the “war crimes” category. But in a lot of instances, we’re talking about all of the guys like him. These were some hard, determined, brutal, money-and-danger-loving men. They could not possibly have survived these early journeys otherwise. We’re going to let Mr. Ollivander explain this. The relevant part of this clip starts at 2:34.
Ditto Fernald, who says, “People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”
All of this is true. Columbus and others of his ilk were both great and terrible men. They did great things, many of which were terrible. To acknowledge one part is not to deny the others, and we need to look at all of it so as to better understand what was really going on during this time.
/professorhat
During his 4th trip is when he explored central America. In the end, he never does find pepper, but he does still bring back more chiles and he also brings back allspice. That’s native to Jamaica, and this is why allspice is sometimes called the Jamaican pepper. My assumption, though, is that he really did believe allspice was pepper. This would also account for his dogmatic belief that he’d somehow reached India instead.
Allspice. You can see how Columbus could’ve gotten confused about what he was bringing back with him. Although it doesn’t look like peppercorn, a reasonable person could extrapolate that it was a different type of peppercorn.
One navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, whom I do not have space to dedicate tons of text to, also went to Venezuela, which he named. Vespucci was, as his name indicates, Italian. Venetian, specifically. Venezuela is Spanish for “little Venice.”
While Columbus’ career is falling apart, de Gama enters India in 1497. Again, he was looking only for Christians and spices. This, however, allows Portugal to colonize India, which they do for a really long time. Their principal area of occupation was Goa, though not exclusively so.
The long and short of this period, really, is that Europeans were all over the world doing great and terrible things in search of wealth, status, gold, and pepper. Although Spain and Portugal hold this for a while (in fact, they ended up dividing the Atlantic in legal documents because of all the warring over it). The French, Dutch, English, and others eventually start doing the same, each trying to eke out their share in global profiteering. It’s also during this period that England sends her first voyages to North America. Magellan happens, all manner of interesting business.
So you’ve got a visual frame of reference for what’s happening in the world, this map is just Portugal’s colonial activities from 1415-1543. Get a load of this:
This is just what Portugal was up to in the 16th. This also leaves out their exploration of Labrador and other northern parts of our hemisphere. “Map showing the various outward and return legs of the Portuguese 'Carreira da India' ('India Run') in the 16th C”
Going Dutch
What happens at this point is that Spain is doing Spain, Portugal is intent on taking over the pepper trade in India, England ditto, and ditto Holland (they weren’t called the Netherlands yet). This is all really getting settled during the 16th- and 17th-centuries, with the 16th being primarily focused on gaining that traction to be able to dominate the market. It takes time to do these sorts of large scale operations, and that’s before you account for the technological differences. Child Tester and I constantly have to talk about how technology refers to objects we use to perform tasks rather than screen time, when we’re talking about history. As you can see from the map above, in India specifically, the Portuguese were no slouch. It’s really Pedro Álvared Cabral who first gets the spices from India to Portugal by going around Africa. This was in 1501. Either way, this route of pepper getting belongs exclusively to Portugal at this point.
They could already sail around Africa to get to India, after all. No one else could really use that route now that they controlled it, so the Spanish sent Magellan off in the opposite direction. He actually was killed in the Philippines, and all but one of his ships sank. His surviving crew, however, being smart and resourceful cookies, managed to make it home with an actual boatload of the desired loot. This particular journey was labelled as a success, due to the amount of spice they were able to bring home. No matter the deaths of the four ships’ worth of crews, and certainly not any deaths of indigenous peoples along the way! All of this is acceptable losses in the quest for pepper and, most importantly, control of the pepper trade.
As a head’s up, China is who does most of the spice brokering in the vast majority of these spice-laden parts of the east. So even though we’re way after the Yuan dynasty we discussed last week, we don’t see any letting up on participating in the global trade situation. Also smart cookies! At some point, Spain really does seem to be cool with what they got in the Americas and worries less about India. That makes sense. They got chocolate and vanilla, plus a whole lot of other stuff, from those colonies. They also had nearly total domination of both of the Americas at this point.
What Holland does to get herself into this game is really interesting. They don’t make a direct bid to take over any kind of spice trade anywhere, initially. They instead sell ships and rent(???) crews to the Portuguese! Sneaky, sneaky! In this manner, they are ultimately able to dominate the Portuguese and create their own Dutch East India Company. That happens in 1609. Sneaky really panned out for them, up until the English got all English on everyone.
All this competition and warring really did cast these powers out across the globe, looking for their own slices of the pie. Really, each wanted the entire pie, but they effectively skitter about like cockroaches, taking over every scrap of land they can find that might have something valuable to sell on or in it. If I could picture things in my mind*, I would imagine a bunch of tree roaches flying in to wherever with tiny flags on their backs. Then then slamming into it once they get there, per exactly what those tree roaches do. I was going to put up a picture of one of the types, but I feel like most of y’all would be upset about that. It is, however, during this century that Indonesia (the Spice Islands) starts becoming important. The Dutch have so thoroughly pushed Span and Portugal out of India that they’re banking on Indonesia for cloves and nutmeg. Also mace, which is the red bit around the nutmeg. We’ll do a picture of that instead of tree roaches, as such:
To be honest, I didn’t expect my Getty search to do nearly so good a job at giving me the nutmeg and mace together like I asked for. This picture is done by Ian Yeo, and shows the fruit split open. That red webbing is called an aril, which is the covering of the seed. This is just like with pomegranate, where the red part is the aril and the inner white bit is the seed. Nutmeg is the seed of Myristica fragrans, and I would really like to grow this tree. I am just outside its growing zone, so I will give it 10 years for climate change to bring me the ability to grow my own mace (and nutmeg). I love love love mace, though nutmeg isn’t interesting at all to me.
*Up until a few years ago, when I found out I have aphantasia, I thought people were just saying they saw things in their heads. I had no idea people could for real do that! It’s all black screens in my corner of the minds-world, so I thought this language was used metaphorically. Yes, I dream in pictures. This is common for people who have aphantasia, including those of us on the more extreme end of the spectrum.
Eventually, the Dutch get India. They’re pretty excited about this, and make the Dutch East India Company to establish a centralized, government backed system of regulating trade in the region. This is in 1609, in case you forgot from above. I often forget dates, because what happens during them is way more interesting!
But before they do, they do some other interesting stuff! Initially, the Dutch Republic (1579-1806) uses the Long-Distance Company to get into India, which they could not initially do until 1594. They quickly overtake the Portuguese, just a year later (1595), and eventually are finally able to bring the goods home (1599). 4 ships’ worth of spice net a 400% profit (the other 4 ships were lost). Amsterdam is already big in spice by 1595, but now the Long-Distance company really is going the extra mile to fuel that! These trips, when successful, took a year round-trip. Eventually, other start ups enter the arena.
The largest vestige of Dutch colonial efforts in the region, and in particular in Indonesia, is the Rijsttafel, which translates to “rice table.” This is an adaptation of a traditional elaborate Indonesian meal structure from west Sumatra. It was used in Holland to demonstrate clearly the massive amount of wealth garnered through its eastern colonial holdings, though it didn’t gain massive popularity until after WWII. I went to a rice table restaurant once in Marin County, and it was astonishingly yes in ways that are hard to describe. The thing I loved the most were tamarind mushrooms, and I did get the recipe. I also promised not to share the recipe ever, and since I always keep my promises I ended up creating an adaptation of it in ‘08 to share with people instead. It’s not exact, but pretty close. That restaurant, sadly, closed. I was still allergic to cinnamon during that time, and although I totally got cross-contamination cinnamon omg there (it’s hard to control for cinnamon allergy when so many dishes have it, given the way restaurant kitchens tend to be set up), I still rank this meal as one of the top 5 of my life, and I felt okay with risking cinnamon again on account of how happy I was after eating all those yums. I really like to eat!
By 1601, there were 14 fleets (65 ships) held by 8, I believe, companies; the market became saturated; and the spice bubble burst. As with investors in every era with big money to harvest, they forgot that “for every high there is a low” (see below song if you don’t remember the reference), and that forgetting would be economically disastrous. Kind of like how the tulip crash was economically disastrous. Also in 1601, they do away with all the extraneous companies and form the United East India Company. That starts dragging the price of pepper back up due to eradicating competition.
This ends our tale in Holland for this week! Next week, we will be returning to England, and we’ll run through the history we missed between Henry VII up through the East India Companies. Holland will, in sections, be intertwined because England is really trying to wrest all of the monies from Holland and everyone else in our next instalment!
