The demand for spices was insatiable.

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Pepper, along with other spices such as cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, were hot commodities that drove European nations to sail across oceans searching for new routes to the spice-rich Orient.

 

By 1200 Venice had become the centre of the spice business in the Mediterranean!

The sheer amount of spices traded and transported along the spice route was ever growing with profits as much as to 500-600%!

 

For around 300 years, no ruler seemed capable of breaking the strong hold over trade routes from the Venetians.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus for Spain and in 1497 John Cabot on behalf of England both tried and failed to find spice in the East! This was at the point Christopher Columbus mistakenly sailed west towards the New Worlds.

 

In 1501, Venice fell from the title of European power over the spice trade!

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 Under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral, a Portuguese expedition was the first to bring spices from India to Europe by way of the Cape of Good Hope in 1501. For the rest of the sixteenth century, Portugal dominated the naval trading routes and enjoyed the benefits held previously by Venice.

 

In 1577, the English naval officer and explorer, Francis Drake began his voyage around the world where he sailed through the spice islands, to Ternate Island, which was planted with cloves and brought them back to England three years later at the end of his voyage in 1580.

 

The seventeenth century marked another turning point in the history of the spice trade.

The Dutch took control of the East with the formation of the ‘East India Trading Company’ to rival England’s own ‘East Indian Company’ which pitched England and The Netherlands against each other for imperialist ventures in the East over the course of the seventeenth century. However, once the Dutch gained control of Ceylon and the East Indies, they became the dominant power in European trade.

 

How did Spices impact European life?

 

Not only did it made merchants rich across Europe, spices are responsible for establishing vast empires across the globe. It quite literally revealed the New Worlds to merchants who were searching for the East. It also tipped the balance of world power; over five centuries the spice trade had three different powers.