The Spice Trade and Old-World Exchange Routes

Long before Columbus, a vigorous trade in spices connected South and Southeast Asia to the Mediterranean world, carrying black pepper (Piper nigrum) from India's Malabar Coast, cloves and nutmeg from the Maluku Islands (the "Spice Islands") in present-day Indonesia, and cinnamon originally from Sri Lanka, through a relay of Arab, Indian, and later Venetian and Genoese merchants to European markets. These spices commanded extraordinary prices in medieval and early modern Europe, valued not only for flavoring food but for preserving it, masking the taste of partially spoiled meat, and serving as prestige goods and even currency; nutmeg and cloves in particular, grown on only a handful of small islands, were sometimes worth more than their weight in gold by the time they reached European consumers, after passing through the hands of numerous intermediaries who each added a markup.