Indian
spices are the soul of India Cuisine. Their history dates back to 7000
years old centuries when before Greece and Rome had been discovered
when sailing ships were carrying Indian spices, perfumes and textiles
to Mesopotamia, Arabia and Egypt. It was the lure of these that brought many seafarers to the shores of India.
Long before Christian era, the Greek merchants thronged the markets
of South India, buying many expensive items amongst which spices were
one. Epicurean Rome was spending a fortune on Indian spices, silks,
brocades, Dhaka Muslin and cloth of gold, etc.It is believed that
the Parthian wars were being fought by Rome largely to keep open the
trade route to India. It is also said that Indian spices were the main
lure for crusades and expeditions to the East .
Today when spices cost so little, it is unbelievable that they were
once a luxury and that men were willing to risk their lives in quest of
them. It was in the year 1492 A.D., that Christopher Columbus
discovered the America. Five years later, four tiny ships sailed
southward from the port of Lisbon, Portugal, under the Captain Vasco Da
Gama. Like Columbus, Vasco Da Gama was also on a hunt for a new route
to the spice lands of Asia. While Columbus failed to achieve the goal,
Da Gama succeeded. In a two year, 24,000 miles round trip, he took his
ships around the continent of Africa to India and back to Lisbon. Only
two of the four ships survived to reach their homeport. These two ships
brought back a cargo of spices and other products worth 60 times the
cost of the said voyage.
The spices of the East were valuable in those times, During these
Middle Ages, a pound of ginger was worth a sheep, a pound of mace worth
three sheeps or half a cow. Pepper, the most valuable spice of all, was
counted out in individual peppercorns, and a sack of pepper was said to
be worth a man`s life. Da Gama`s successful voyage intensified an
international power struggle for control over the spice trade. For
three centuries afterwards the nations of Western Europe – Portugal,
Spain, France, Holland, and Great Britain – fought bloody sea-wars over
the spice-producing colonies.
By the year 1000 Arabians had conquered the Indus valley ,
what is now India. They brought the cumin and coriander that mixed with
Indian pepper, ginger and turmeric make up the base of so many South
Asian dishes. It was this combination of spices that centuries later
British sailors spread throughout the world as curry powder. In India,
Arabian traders got the rare and exotic spices of the Far East from
local spice merchants. India had spent the previous two millennia
spreading its culture to the Spice Islands of the east. Arabian traders
were able to make good money supplying these spices, even with the high
prices paid to the Indian middle men, not only to their countrymen back
home, but to Europe as well. These traders of spices paid for the Art
and Education for which Arabia became famous in the present day.. In
many ways the culture of Arabia loved studying and learning different
things. Many great Greek and Roman plays were translated in Arabic, so
too were the geographic writings of Pliny and Ptolemy telling of the
general location of the tabled spice islands.
As Arabian astronomers charted the stars in order to study them and
understand mans relation with them, they realized these same charts
could be used for navigation. Soon they were sailing to what is now
Indonesia and Malaysia to purchase spices directly, bypassing the
Indian middlemen. By the middle of the 13th century Arabian merchants
were regularly visiting Sumatra for cassia from the slopes of Mount
Korintje. .While travelling they would stop at little villages and
towns that had fresh water resource to refill their water supplies. At
these stops the merchants would barter their cumin, coriander and
saffron and speak and preach of their religion as well .The tropical
climate did not suit the saffron but coriander now plays an integral
part in so many dishes across Indonesia. The religion, which they
preached while bartering spices did even better than the coriander,
with Indonesia today being the world`s most populous Islamic country.
Compared to the Hindu belief in a caste system spread earlier by
traders from India, it seems the Islamic belief that all were
equal in serving God really hit a chord with the people of Indonesia.
In nutshell, the fascinating history of spices is a story of adventure, exploration, conquest and fierce naval rivalry.
The people of those times used spices, as we do today, to enhance or
vary the flavors of their foods. Spices were also flavor disguisers,
masking the taste of the otherwise tasteless food that was nutritious,
but if unspiced, had to be thrown away. Some spices were also
used for preserving food like meat for a year or more without
refrigeration. In the sixteenth century, cloves were used to preserve
food without refrigeration. Cloves contain a chemical called eugenol
that inhibits the growth of bacteria. It is still used to preserve some
modern foods like Virginia ham. Later, mustard and ground mustard were
also found to have preservative qualities. When spices were not
available people went hungry because they could not preserve their
foods to carry them over to the winter. Such was the importance of
spices those
days.
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