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‘Profits sprout like tropical plants’: a fresh look at what went wrong with the Eurasian spice trade c. 1550–1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2008

Stefan Halikowski Smith
Stefan Halikowski Smith
Affiliation:
History Department, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

There has been little in the way of fresh thinking on the Eurasian spice trade since the 1980s, partly due to the crisis in economic history, although recent work has both dealt with the agency of non-European actors and started to take Chinese demand into the equation. Starting with problems specific to the Portuguese re-export trade, this article highlights the role of consumers, using research undertaken on the structures of demand to present a theory of cultural demystification. The Portuguese, it is argued, by opening direct trading links to the sources of supply, broke what amounted to a spell that had sustained the trade from the time of Alexander the Great. In concrete terms, the performance of individual spices is disaggregated, and the appearance of rival pepper products brought under scrutiny. While African peppers failed to consolidate the consumer interest they had generated over the fifteenth century, capsicum peppers rapidly spread to southern Europe, where they were domesticated and hence became invisible to international trade. The success of the capsicum pepper was replicated in West Africa, India, and China.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , November 2008 , pp. 389 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © London School of Economics and Political Science 2008

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