You're Dead to Me - History of Spices: commerce, colonialism and culinary innovation

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

Greg Jenner is joined by historian Dr David Veevers and comedian and quizzer Paul Sinha to learn all about the global history of spices and the spice trade. Nowadays, we take spices for granted, and our kitchen cabinets are full of ginger and cinnamon, cumin and coriander, pepper and nutmeg. But despite their contemporary status as a staple of diets around the world, the majority of spices are native only to Asia (barring notable exceptions like chilli peppers). In this episode, we tell the story of how spices went global, from the very earliest days of the spice trade within Asia, through the empires of Alexander the Great and Rome as spices made their way into Europe, and into the colonial period, as the Dutch and British East India Companies vied to monopolise this lucrative trade. Along the way, we focus on five of the most commonly traded spices – pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and chilli – asking how their use changed across time, and as they were traded from place to place. From pharaohs possibly being embalmed with cinnamon, to medieval kings demanding rent in peppercorns, and nutmeg as a cure for plague, we look at the varied uses to which people all over the world have put these precious and expensive commodities.If you’re a fan of food fads of the past, histories of globalisation and cultural exchange, and surprising ancient beliefs, you’ll love our episode on the History of Spices. If you want to learn more about the history of commodities, listen to our episodes on the history of chocolate or coffee. And for more on global trade, check out our episode on the Columbian Exchange. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Emma Mitchell and Adam Simcox Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

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Real Vikings. From the Noiser Podcast Network. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian author and broadcaster. And today we're rummaging in the kitchen cupboards and learning all about the history of spices and the spice trade. And to help us, we have two very special dining companions.

In History Corner, he's a lecturer in early modern history at Bangor University in Wales, where he specialises in the early modern British Empire and the East India Company. You might have read his wonderful book, The Great Defiance. How the world took on the British Empire is Dr David Vivas. Welcome, David. Thank you. Thanks to having me. I'm super excited.

Delighted to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, he's a stand-up comedian and renowned quizer. You'll have seen him on Taskmaster, QI. Would I Lie to You and heard him on all over Radio 4 with his various wonderful series about general knowledge. But he's surely best known as a formidable chaser on the TV game show The Chase, Yes, it's the Cinnerman himself. Paul Sinner, welcome Paul.

It's a delight to be here, thank you very much. Paul, your first time on the show, but you are a professional quizer. Literally, that is something you do in your, I mean, for a job, in your spare time. There's only about 20 of us in the country in history, so that's a nice description. I'm proud of that one. That's a great description. Where are you with spices and spicy food? Are you a spicy food lover?

On the scale of 0 to 10, I'm sort of 7 slash 8. That's quite... Which means I don't like to show off, like the drunk in the curry house. Okay. Making a bad decision on the Vindaloo or the Ful. But I don't like my food too mild either. Spices are good. Spices are good.

I am not particularly good on the spices. I'm probably a kind of five to six out of ten, spicy me. David, where are you on the spice index? I'm lower. I write about spices, but I'm probably like a two. A core mine, need a big glass of water. This is the equivalent of me discussing keeping up with the Kardashians. That's right, yeah.

So, what do you know? This is the Sawadia know. This is where I have it go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And you might know, of course, that spices famously come in five varieties. You've got ginger, baby, scary, sport. Hang on, no, that's not right. My bad.

Anyway, you've all heard of spices. They turn our food from drab to fab. They're a key ingredient in England's national dish, which, of course, is chicken tika masala. And every autumn, pumpkin spice objects conquer the shops, from lattes to cat litter. And even pumpkin spice lube. But what other uses have people found for spices?

How did they make their way into our global spice rack and why shouldn't you wear a hat in front of a clove tree? Let's find out. Right, Paul, you are incredibly brainy and famously knowledgeable, so presumably you can define for us what a spice is. What is the technical definition? That's a very good question to start off with. I mean, it's got to be savoury rather than sweet.

Interesting. I mean, but what's the difference with a spice and a herb? Is it a pH thing? Is it a spice? You're going chemistry, okay. Is it a spice more acid? or even more alkaline and a herb is the same.

No, that doesn't make sense because citric acid is not a spice. I think we might need to turn to our historian, Dr. David. What is a spice? There wasn't a clear definition of what a spice was for a long time. I mean, traditionally, medieval, early, modern period. A spice is a kind of blanket term for anything. It's unusual, expensive, smells a bit funny.

Technically, a spice is a part of a tropical plant, like the bark, the flower or the seed. And then there are some like vanilla that is actually the flower of a tropical plant. So the most common ones that we talk about really are from Asia, they're native to Asia, with a few exceptions.

So saffron from Greece, for example, Chili's from South America. But it's predominantly Asia we're talking about. And it's important that we do because the geography of spices really shapes their history and the history we've had in trading with them. So saffrons from Greece?

Yes, yeah. This is new to me. Did you know? No, I didn't know that. I always assumed it was from India, but it's... Vanilla, chili, all spice, they're South American. So we're predominantly talking about Asia, but not exclusively. Vanilla.

Vanilla. Yeah. It's not Madagascan. No. But some of these spices are transplanted around the world. Yeah, we'll get to that later, won't we? Because obviously, that's the whole global story that we'll be rummaging in. Okay.

Where do we start our story? You know, if we're talking about the origins of the spice trade... Obviously, spices have grown on trades for millions of years, but the spice trade, when can we date that back to? Yeah, so the trade in spices as long as human civilisations. So we're talking really about a specific part of Asia. It's the Malacca's in East Asia. Those islands, exclusively were known as the spice islands because that's where you would find only their nutmeg, maize, cloves,

those sorts of rare spices. And they were exported by locals to the Malay Palinina and found their way out across Asia and onward. So the spice islands are, what, Indonesia? There is an Indonesia. Okay, one of many thousands of islands. Yeah, and so there are thousands of islands, and just some of them will only cultivate nutmeg and clothes. Okay, it's an amazing place.

Fantastic. So they were brought to Malay Peninsula from there into wider Asia, and where are we? Back in the Bronze Age? Yes, yeah. So around there, and so they're a staple of that particular region, but I think it's then from the Bronze Age, it's a story about the way they're disseminating further outward. Paul, do you know the 19th century euphemism to voyage to the Spice Islands? Do you know what it means? The number of things it could be

That perhaps I should keep clean You don't have to It could be an alternate sexuality Could Euphemism for being gay To voyage to the spice silence But it could be just doing something Unusual or exotic, I suppose

Sure There's a whole list of things That are considered unusual and exotic And that list changes over the years Okay, in the 19th century What would be exotic and unusual? Reading Now according to Susie Dent

The lovely lexicographer it meant going to the toilet. But what does Susie don't know? Across this period then, we see it being traded across the Malay Peninsula over to India. Malabar then has its own pepper and spice cultivation in south-east India. And then it crosses the Arabian Sea into the Persian Gulf, into the Red Sea, and then across the Levant and North Africa and eventually the Mediterranean as well. And we know the Egyptian pharaohs are trading for them in the Arabian Peninsula.

This is sort of 2,800 BCE. So it's a long history. It's a long time ago. And there's even evidence that Mesopotamian civilizations were trading for spices with the Indus Valley. Yeah. A kind of vast expanse across a long time. Yeah, I think archaeologists, when we did an Indus episode, this is going to listen to, but I think archaeologists have found, you know,

they scraped the bottom of bowls and they found sort of herbs and spices in those bowls. So people were clearly enjoying that back in the Indus in, what, four and a half thousand years ago. And not washing their plates. Oh, clearly. No dishwashers back then, sadly. So Europeans, of course, would have got involved eventually because eventually this stuff is going to spread. Paul, which spicy conqueror connected his new empire

to North India in the 4th century BCE? I imagine that's the one, the only, Alexander the Great. Absolutely, yes. That's a very impressive knowledge. I suppose he's famous for charging into India trying to conquer it on his quest to conquer everything. Alexander the Great's conquest, he storms through Persia, he storms through Egypt,

he storms into North India with his army. Does he therefore sort of connect up this Asian trade into a European world? He does. He sort of consolidates that link across the Hindukhush, across the kind of Indus Valley and connects it into a network that connects Egypt to the Indus Valley that connects the Greek world. And so he consolidates those trade links. And when it's spice is a big part of that story,

there's a really interesting anecdote with Alexander, with the reputation he has. and his tutor Leonidas chastised him for just absolutely lashing his food with expensive and rare spices so that after his conquest of some of these spice-producing regions he sent tons of spices back to his old tutor just to kind of rub it in his face. He does strike me as a guy whose army would be the ones boasting about how much spicy food they could eat at the end of evening. Yes. I'm sure there was a lot of visiting the spice island on those campaigns.

He literally put the mace in Macedonia. Hey, there we go. Paul, have you ever held a long petty grudge for 30 years like Alexander? Not 30, but at 15 or 20, and I can't say it because it will end up in the tabloids. We call this the Ptolemaic Empire, right? Alexander dies and his successor is Ptolemy in Egypt. So that connection stays connected, right? When Alexander dies, the whole thing doesn't just collapse.

Yeah, I think we often think that, you know, with Alexander's death, it does all just collapse. and you have this struggle of the success of states. But the thing is when you establish lucrative trade routes and spices being so covered as they are, these things endure. And so we get the city of Alexandria becomes the hub of the spice trade for the sort of North African Mediterranean axis of that network. And it flourishes partly on the back of lucrative trade and spices. Then later on, obviously, we get the Roman annexation of Egypt.

And that only sort of further enlarges the spice trade, especially across the Roman Empire, you know, which really eventually will go all the way to Scotland. So you've got the border there. This is like the new spice frontiers, Hadrian's war. And it separates those that, you know, will enjoy their column against those who are deprived of it. And that's really what all those walls were probably fought over that chance

to get to Britain and the spices. But obviously, eventually, as all empires do, the Western Roman Empire falls. Does it fall or was it pushed? It was it falling with the push. It's a good question. That's probably another show. It's a different show, yeah.

qualified to say, but we know that does disrupt, obviously, access to spices across Western Europe with the fall of that empire. That's in the sort of late 470s, but the Roman Empire continues in the East. Do you know what it's called in the East? The Byzantine Empire. Yeah, very good, yeah, Byzantine Empire. So they consider them still Romans. So they are there for another thousand years. You know, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine world. They're continuing that trade with, I guess, what is the Arab world by this point? Yeah. Yeah. Becoming Arab. Well, you've got a couple of big players. Arab merchants, Persian merchants, are kind of filling that that power vacuum that's starting to

emerge. But yeah, the East Roman Empire, I mean, you think about it's the most glittering, the most ostentatious empire, you know, it's all draped in purple, they're using cutlery and, you know, the barbarians in the Western Europe are still picking it a food with their hands. So, yeah, and naturally it's a big

consumer of spice and, you know, the imperial dining table is just replete with all various spices. You should fly the way the Himalayas to Southeast Asia. And so that with that, but it's really the Persian, the Arab merchants are acting as intermediaries between Asia and the dining rooms of the East Roman Empire. And they're the ones who are essentially keeping that trade route alive. And we get connections into China as well, I suppose.

They presumably are through that sort of network. Yeah. So it's not just going sort of Southeast Asia into Europe. The Chinese are coming to, in quite large numbers, into Southeast Asia as well, and establishing their own trade links. So they're kind of going in all directions. Amazing. Okay. So we get a big increase in maritime trade in this period. And when I say this period, I suppose we are in what we call latent antiquity, early medieval period.

It's that sort of 700s sort of space. One of the reasons big expanses is technological innovation. There are three major developments. Do you know what they might be, Paul, around this time? Technological maritime expansiony things. Sextant. Oh, that's a good guess. So a navigation aid, do you think?

Yeah. Sexton's a good guess. Give me two more. Astrolabe. Yes, absolutely. Yep. Compass. You've got two out of three and sexton's a good guess.

I think sexton's a bit later. So it is. It's astrolabe, David. Yeah, yeah. It's astrolabe. That's a really good guess. Magnetic compass. Yeah.

That's the next one. And the other one is the, it was known more commonly as the triangular cell, but the Latin cell that allows you to kind of tack into the wind and challenge the elements to go in any direction. I was never going to get that one. So I'll tell you that. I felt that was the obvious one, Paul. No.

The Latin. Latins there. Yeah. Are you not a sailor pool? You're not out on the water every weekend? No, no, no, no. It's a very different part of my life. Yeah.

So the sail allows you to sail into the wind, which means you can still navigate through the trade winds. Yeah. If they're blowing against you, you can still... Yeah, of course, we're pre-modern navigation. It's all about the wind. And this allows the trade to essentially run on its own rhythm rather than be dictated by the element.

So, yeah, the Latin sales is a massive one. Absolutely. So it's important to have wind. to drive your spice sails and then you eat spices and then you have wind. And then you have wind. It's the circle of life.

The circle of life. As Elton John famously sang. Okay, so Magnetic Compass, astrolabe, Latin sale. We get the Sassanid Empire. They always sound very saucy, the Sassanids. It's just a good name for an empire. It is especially like an empire

that really gets rich off the back of spices. These are the successes of the Persian Empire. You know, it's really about geography as we said at beginning. They're occupying a space between East and West. And so the overland route. And also the Sassanidima is also the maritime routes coming through the Persian Gulf. And their successes would do the same. Control the Persian Gulf is one of the main arteries of the spice trade from Asia into Europe.

So they become powerful and rich off the back of this spice trade. And for those of us who know, the Quran, the prophet Muhammad was a spice trader. And his family were involved in the spice trade. As many well-to-do families were in that region, that particular period of time. So we know it's kind of one of the more elite occupations. And then following the Arab conquests of much of the Middle East, North Africa, even up into the Iberian Peninsula today, Spain and Portugal, they kind of bring the spice trade almost kind of to the extent that the Romans had,

pushing it well into Europe and beyond. And you see this great expansion with the Muslim conquests. Yeah. So the Arabs became the new Spice Supremos. They're the kind of the gateway into Europe, I suppose. there is then a major medieval event which brings medieval Europeans back into the trade. You know what that would be?

Crusade. Yeah, it absolutely is. Crusades horribly violent as they were. They did increase access to spices in Europe and, of course, broaden tastes. They reintroduce Western Europe to these spices that everyone has been enjoying for a long time over in Asia and in North Africa and so on.

So, you know, what is that moment like? Yeah, I think in some ways is that resumption of those broken links that were established a long time ago, and it's not to say that Europe was completely cut off from spices, but the Crusades re-establishes on a more firmer footing the trade links through obviously the horrendous violence of the Crusades, but also the establishment of maritime and overland routes

that have become disrupted or passed out of European control. So this is kind of the re-establishment of that. And we often associate that resumption of that trade, introducing medieval Europe and it's bland and horrible food and it's rotting meat that was very, estering on, and everyone dying of the play because of it. And, you know, that big myth that spices were kind of, you know, held as this solution finally to Europe's kind of horrible cuisine and that they would just lash the rotting meat and conceal the horrible smell and taste of food. Of course, that's nonsense.

Yeah. Because spices cost an absolute fortune. Yeah. It's like putting palladium on a pot noodle. It's like the spices cost way more than the meat. Yeah, that's right. And so we know that that doesn't have it. Spices are used in flavour,

but they're not used to that extravagant extent of basically wasting them as a kind of preservative for food. But yeah, they are being used and consumed for their taste. And we know the sort of big players doing this that kind of follows on the hills of the crusading states are the Italian city maritime states. Venice is the big one, Genoa as well. Venetians are really skillful,

were establishing outpost trading factories in the Crusader estates and staying there when the Crusader states fall and creating a kind of enclaves in the Levant, in the eastern Mediterranean, and then taking control of the spice routes into Europe. And it's an incredibly lucrative route to control. And you just go around Venice today and you're marvel, and a lot of that is the direct result of the wealth

that they agreed from the spice trade. Parking is an issue, though. Parking is an issue, yeah. If only they had the foresight to think about that. So Venice becomes the kind of dominant European spice hub, I suppose, and they get very, very rich off it. And then, of course, we end up with the Italian wars in the 1400s, which is where Europe sort of rips itself apart

between the superpowers of France and Spain and so on. But by the end of the 1400s, we start to get European navigators going, I quite want a spice route. Do you know who these would be, Paul? Who would be the big players that? Well, Spain and Paul? Yeah, absolutely. Ferdin and Elizabeth.

Very good, yeah, of Castile, yeah. Henry the Navigator. Oh, this is good knowledge. Okay, and who would be your explorers? Who's getting on the ship and doing the hard? Well, Vasco da Gama. But I happened to do Ferdin and Magellan a mastermind many, many, many moons ago.

So I'm aware that the first circumnavigation of the globe was because of spices. Yeah. Many men were lost in attempt to find a cheaper trade route to the spy silas, because they didn't know the size of the earth at the time. Yeah. And they didn't know that that was not the most practical way to get to the spy island. And of course, Magellan himself was lost, right?

He died on the voyage. Yeah, well, he died in battle. Yeah. In 1521. And so never got around. The first person to complete navigation was Juan Sebastian El Cano, of whom we know very little. I think he died a few years later in a second attempted navigation.

When I did mastermind, I knew nothing about Magellan. And it blew my mind that all of that was for spices. Yeah. The entire... It had no other purpose, the trip. Miguelan actually died, was he decided on the way he tried to introduce Christianity by force for the islands of the Philippines.

But that wasn't the purpose of the trip. Yeah. And so that's when I first got interested in spices. That's fantastic knowledge. Thank you for sharing it, Paul. I mean, it's absolutely true. The spice trade is incredibly lucrative. And so you mentioned Vasco da Gama.

He is probably the first big name. I mean, Columbus would be the other one. Columbus obviously goes, he's aiming to go east, so he heads west, bumps into Cuba, thinks it's Japan, gets very confused. They're both very good at baseball. But it is the Portuguese, it is Vasco da Gama, as Paul said, who sort of really is our first great kind of navigator in the Spice trade, and he's going not west, he's going south?

Yeah, he is, he's going south. I mean, we, you're heading that way because, yeah, you're sort of. Circa navigating, you know, you think you're going for India. You know, this is why Indigenous Americans are called Indians because they think they've hit India, they think they've hit Japan. But, yeah, they kind of go round South America into the Pacific eventually. I mean, you know, when the Portuguese come down the coast of Africa and round the Cape of Good Hope under Vasco da Gama and into the Indian Ocean,

this is the sort of first recorded European entry into the maritime route around the Cape of Good Hope. And it's in 1498, they hit the Malabar Coast, India, which is, if you're looking for spices, it's exactly where you want to land. A bunch of peppercorn forests surrounding you. And this is what they bring back. It's black peppercorn, which is the spice that, you know, we take for granted that spice cupboard in the kitchen. But once in the time that drove early modern navigation trade, the global economy, you know, you could find in that spice cup. So Portugal becomes a kind of dominant pepperer of Europe, I suppose.

They found a sort of fort. Is it Calicut? Yes, Calicut, which is in Karel Estate in southwest India. It's the first major city where they are, we say negotiating and buying spices, but it's the Portuguese. So they're also blowing people up and blowing up parts of it. Negotiating with grenades. With grenades, yeah, a peaceful force, that kind of negotiating tactic. And they're well suited for it.

They've got large carricks. They're a thousand tons. They are bristling castles floating on the sea. A carrick is like a large warship. It's like a large ocean-going, heavily gunned warship. But with a big hole, so you can stick your peppercorns. But with a big hole, which is predominantly giant transporting sticky peppercorns in the holes. We swap out the grenades for the peppercorns.

We've used all the grenades and now we just fill it with peppercorn. Yeah, exactly. And you can imagine what people India are thinking at this time. And they do. They use these strong-arm tactics to get the spices they want. Often in resistance, this is another way. We do it in India. You know, it's fair trade.

The Portuguese use coercion tactics. and they're very successful. They bring back the first holds full of peppercorn and they land in Europe. And, you know, Lisbon is almost overnight turned from, you know, mud and timber to marble. It's skyline rises and it becomes one of the wealthiest cities in Europe. Amazing. Lastly, because of this spice trade.

And then by, you know, within 10 years, the Portuguese had pushed further into Asia. They're in Southeast Asia. They're in Malacca, which is the major sultanate or kind of clearing station for spices, roughly about half of Asia spices comes through the port of Malacca and it's a great Islamic sultanate intellectually as well as commercially. And they conquer it in 1511. They take control of the spice trade from the sultanate. And it's the Portuguese who controlled access to the European trade in spices.

And they take the Bander Islands too, which is home to two new spices, too. Yeah, so it's the rarer. So the bulk of this is black peppercorns, but it's the kind of mace and the clothes and the rarest spices that the port of yeast. And nutmeg as well, I think is there. Nutmeg as one. You know, these are found just a single island, some of these.

So they are rare, you know, those few square miles of territory, sunken volcanic peaks in Southeast Asia are easily controlled. They build big force and they coerce and force the spice farmers to produce certain quotas of, and they cornered the market,

the European market, but to some extent as well, the Asian market as well. Okay, so the Portuguese are elbows out violently conquering. I mean, this is also bad news for Venice as well. because they've lost their monopoly. Yeah. And also for the Ottoman Empire,

which has become really the superpower of the early modern world, controlling those old roots that the East Roman Empire, the assassinids, and eventually the caliphates of the Arab world, the Ottoman Empire has struck out at the beginning of the 16th century,

taking control of all these territories, and there's a great leverage over the Europeans. And they've gone around Venice, they've gone around the Ottoman Empire, and now they're undermining those sources of traditional wealth. At this point, it's not an independent Italy.

Venice is its own state. Yeah. The reason I pointed out is in 1494, the Pope divided the world into two halves with the Treaty of Tordesias. So there's a sort of meridian

that runs and sort of clips the coast of Brazil. And to one side, the Portugal causing havoc. And the other side goes to Spain. So Venice didn't get a look in in the discussion on it was basically everything Spain or Portugal.

Yeah. And so Europeans love their straight lines on map. Yes. They love carving, just put a straight line through a little bit of Brazil and the rest is to carve up the world. Yeah. And so Portugal and Spain, as you say, Paul, are suddenly very dominant by the kind of early mid-1500s.

But by the end of 1500s, we get two new players in the race. They're not super renowned for their well-season food. Who would they be? So when are we now? Late 1500s. Think sort of 1580s, that sort of, you know, Queen Elizabeth type era. Was that a clue?

Might be. England? Yep. And? Netherlands? Yeah, very good. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the Dutch and the English suddenly sort of go,

oh, hang on a minute, everyone else is getting rich. How do we have one of these empires? Yeah, let's throw some spice on this herring. Let's get some flavour in this stew. Yeah, so it's the North Europeans, predominantly the English and the Dutch who are looking at their muddy timber cities going, wow, we'd love some marble. And they are. They're riding on the coattails of predominantly the Portuguese, and it's really the Dutch that take the lead.

And there's this great kind of interplay between the history of something like spice, a commodity, a food stuff with the emergence of modern capitalism. They're experimenting new ways to go thousands of miles, spend the equivalent today of hundreds of millions, maybe even billions, investing in the trade, bringing it home, which, you know, in the period before steam power, you know, relying on on the age of sale. incredibly risky, you know, entire merchants are kind of completely ruined by the investment in overseas trade. Ships will sink. Ships are sinking. Pirates, corsairs. Yeah, exactly right. And so they're thinking, well, how can we do this in a way that will, you know, mitigate that risk, spread the risk, pull our resources together.

And they develop a joint stock company. You know, the modern joint stock corporation comes from the Netherlands and the English developing East India companies to trade with the Indies. The first, the English East Indian Company on New Year's of 1600 is about 215 big weeks. You know, alderman, mayors. They celebrate the new century by saying, well, we've invented a new idea. That's right, yeah, yeah. And so they're copying the Dutch, you know, I'd love to say this is an English innovation, but it's not. Much of what made England great in the early modern paid is ripped off from the Dutch.

And so they both football in the 17th. Exactly. They both head off to Asia on the Ketels. It's the Dutch who are wealthier. They've got more sea power. They've got bigger guns and they break the Portuguese monopoly. Because they've been fighting the Spanish to the Dutch. Because they've been fighting Spanish for about 80 years.

Yeah. They're literally in 80 years before. So they're pretty good at the war thing there. That's right. Yeah. And they're more urbanised. They're more commercialised. England's getting there, but it's a lot slower.

It's slightly poorer. And so it's the Dutch East India Company that emerges. Really is the winner of the spice trade. Interesting. And are the Dutch more polite than the Portuguese? I'm guessing not. Well, not really. They're just, they're really there to take over the

enforced spice monopoly. But you get these great antiques with the English and the Dutch. They are feeling their way. They're not as confident as the Portuguese. They're both rocking up at the city of Bantan,

which is the main spice hub after Malacca. They're trying to kind of like get the spice concessions out of the Sultan. He's only about 13 years old and they turn up and they're in line

to see the Sultan. And the English are sort of go, oh, you know, out loud, the Dutch don't even have a king. Can you fancy that? The Dutch are calling James the first king of fishermen and no more than a fart. And there's all this kind of like putting each other down. And it's the ceremony of the circumcision of the boy Sultan.

And the English are in line queuing up and they realise that a great faux part is that only women can present gifts to the Sultan. So they quickly run around the port and they can't find any women. So they dress up 50 Chinese boys in the clothes of women and put them in a procession. They present some kind of ratan display that they've cobbled together, almost like a homemade DIY project. And it's really embarrassing. And the Dutch absolutely written for it. And it's a great faux par.

And they go away and the Dutch get the trading concession. And the English are left looking embarrassed. Oh, that is embarrassing. Yeah. First, for example, true cultural appropriation. Yeah, exactly. All right. So the Dutch get the dominance really in that sort of area.

And the Dutch are violent. They are, you know, they are killing the Bandonese Islanders. Yes. They are, you know, again, this is colonialism. This is not sort of fair trade. No, it's not fair trade. This is the age of mercantilism. It's, you know, resources are finite.

We need to control them, take them from our neighbours. The Bander Islands are on the wrong end of this because that's the collection of islands that really have the rarest spices like mace and clover, nutmeg especially. Nutmeg is the most valuable here. There's a tactic the Dutch subsequently used to restrict the trade and to keep spice prices high. Paul, do you know what it would be?

No, I don't actually. If you've got too much of something and you want to keep the value high, what do you do with it? Store it away. Store it away is sensible or you could destroy it. Okay. So, I mean, David, I mean, back in Amsterdam, they're just burning, just burning tons of this expensive stuff that they've imported in. Yeah.

Oh, no, we've been too successful. There's too much and the prices are dropping and we're losing money. So to keep the value of it, they're literally just setting fire to it. Yeah. Is that the reason for the distinctive smell of the streets of Amsterdam? Yeah. I think that might be a different smell. But yeah, and it's about controlling the market and monopolising it.

And, you know, when the English bring back tons of pepper, the Dutch brought it back first. They get to a depressed market. Right. And it sits in the warehouses in London for about seven years before they can shift it and they do it at a lot. So in a way, the Dutch are maintaining profitability by just burning tons of this stuff. So that kind of lovely Christmas smell when you go to Christmas market of nutmeg and cinnamon, that's just the smell of violent colonialism. It is. The smell of violent colonialism in the morning.

What a cologne that would be. Okay, so empires are going to empire, and the English and Dutch... Maybe that's where the word Cologne comes from. Cologne. It's short for violent colonialists. I'm Ian Glenn, and this is Real Vikings. Remote Scottish monasteries overrun with pagan warriors, longboats cutting through Canada's icy waters,

Norse traders in the desert sands of North Africa. The Vikings terraces, terraces. the medieval world. Yet they beguile us today. Who were they really? Real Vikings. From the Noisor Podcast Network. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.

So the English and Dutch, they're becoming more powerful with the 1600s, and they're fighting each other, but they're also fighting the people they're trying to conquer. So, I mean, we get more horrible violence here. Yeah, it's kind of that classic imperial rivalry for the most valuable overseas trading commodity.

ever. It's the people of the region that suffer the most. So in collusion with the English, the Dutch massacre the abandonees living on these nutmeg plantations. So hang on, in collusion, they join forces? Yeah, so essentially a war between the English and the Dutch East India

companies doesn't go very well for the English. And there's really a kind of almost a corporate merger. They agree to share the spice trade. The Dutch get two-thirds and the English are third. And they're moving in the same forts and factories and manage to trade. together. It really, it sounds like an alliance. It's really a kind of Dutch corporate takeover of the ailing English company. But the victims are the indigenous people. And so what happens is,

yeah, the Dutch, once you're in position, the Bander Islands, thanks to England's weakness, is they exterminate the people living there and instead turn the entire islands over to plantations to control very tightly the cop. And they often bring in enslaved labour to then manage that cultivation. Sorry, Paul. It's not the funniest subject, is it? It's not. I've got nothing to say. I don't think you should say anything. Should I just say Alexander the Great put the mace into Macedonia? Thank you. Thank you for bringing the levity.

Yes, absolutely. But it's no, it's not a nice history. We often forget, we celebrate spice and this wonderful kind of multicultural, culinary, good. But it has a lot of the things we enjoy here in the West in the early modern and then the modern period. Chocolate and sugar. Sugar as well. It has a dark history, and that's often because of Europeans. And so we get the then, once the abandonees have been exterminated, the Dutch and the English carpeting

together managing the trade. The Dutch are very jealous. They've given the English a third, but they don't really want them to have any. They want sole exclusive monopoly of spices. And so they become very paranoid. And the Dutch employ a number of Japanese mercenaries in their forts and factories on the Bander Islands. And they start to believe that the English merchants and the Japanese mercenaries are colluding together to overthrow the Dutch and to take over the spice monopoly. So in 1623, the Dutch seized the Japanese and the English. And they interrogate them in these, all these sorts of torture methods, waterboarding, hanging them upside down, you know, pulling their fingernails off to confessions of conspiracy. And they ended up executing 10 of the English and a number of the Japanese mercenaries, as known as the Amboyna Massacre.

The English were outraged. And for decades, there was litigation by the families of the English against the Dutch states for compensation for the day. Wow. Yeah. I didn't know you could sue a state in the 1650s. whatever. Yeah, and essentially King James, then his success has had to sort of, you know, mediate between the families.

And eventually the families are compensated, but it's, you know, almost no one has left a line that was involved in that. And eventually the English, the British rather, by this point, I suppose, it's a fusion, the stewards obviously rural Scotland and England, so I guess we're calling them kind of British. They gave up the Spice Islands in favour of a new colony. Do you know what they got in exchange with the Dutch? Quite a nice city. I believe the heir to the throne was James Duke of York

Oh, New York. New York, well done. I can see the cogs wearing there. The future James 2nd. Yeah, exactly. Very briefly. Very briefly. So they swapped the spice trade for New York. For Broadway. Yes, exactly. Is that a good deal, Paul? That's a fantastic deal. Would you? Would you take New York? I mean, I've been to New York this year, and I've got to say, there's a lot of very good spice restaurants there. So you've got the whole... That's true, actually. You got the whole deal.

The sort of spice trade is the Dutch monopoly. in the east. Do they hold it for long? I mean, I don't, we don't really think of the Dutch as a superpower in the 19th century, do we? You don't, but they are. They are colonial power. They're definitely not at the top of the league for European superpowers, colonial superpowers. But they are. They do continue right up until beyond the Second World War. Oh, right. With interludes, you know, they're not exclusively in control of spices because they're grown elsewhere, like in India.

And that's the English East East India coming in, the British Raj eventually that takes over spice production in India. there's an occupation by the British during the Napoleonic War of the Dutch spice islands of Dutch Indonesia and briefly Britain takes over that so at times it's broken and they're supplanted but generally the Dutch East Indies hangs on until post-second World War after a brief Japanese occupation at 12 during the war itself so yeah it's a long and violent monopoly that carries on there

and over that time it's eroded by other Europeans taking spices from that region and then transplanting them. Yeah, so we're back to, you made the point earlier, Paul, about transplanting of these spices into new places. So do you know what gets moved where, by whom? Well, I'm guessing that vanilla gets moved to Madagascar. Yeah, vanilla is a good one. Brazil becomes the great place of Portuguese colony for, you know,

for everything from cinnamon to cloves. Black pepper as well, of course. The British take clothes of the Caribbean as well. Right. Any kind of tropical, similar tropical environment. with good conditions. By about the 20th century, you can find a lot of these spices

being grown elsewhere off into an industrial scale. And we can mention France as well. Paul, have you ever heard of the Frenchman Pierre Poivv and do you know what he planted in Mauritius? Pears. That's a good...

Well, if I give you a clue, pov means pepper in French. Oh, not pear, pepper here. What does he plant in Mauritius? No. You'd think it would be pepper. It's not pepper, which feels like a real nominative

determinism fail. He's Peter Pepper and he plants clove nutmeg. I believe they were his middle names. Peter Clove Nutmeg Pepper. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so he smuggles these out and the Dutch did guard them jealously. We're talking to late 18th century, 1770s, 80s and he smuggles them into a series of French possessions and the first one is Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. They go on to Madagascar. And eventually East Africa, Zanzibar,

the island of Zanzibar, the coast of East Africa. So Anzabar becomes in the 19th century kind of what the major slave port of that particular region but also one time it's also the largest producer of clothes Wow amazing So that's a huge sort of transition of the Locust of where the spice industry is isn't it

To move it to East Africa Yeah Okay so we've done the global spice trade It's been brutal and you know Conquest trade colonial rivalries Corporations fighting each other It's not very fun Let's talk about the actual spices

How they were used and understood That's more fun Paul Wigginer Give you history's five most commonly traded spices. Can you guess what they are? Clove. Very good. Give me four more.

Pepper? Yes. Nutmeg? Yes. Mace. No. Oh. Your nickname.

Oh, cinnamon. Cinnamon, yep. And chilies. Yeah. I guess we start with black pepper because that is the one we talked about in the ancient world, David. It's originally from the Indian Malabar Coast. What is it? It's essentially a long string of berries on a vine.

Is it? Yeah, there are different lots of varieties. particles of pepper. Black pepper is the most commonly traded and consumed. The kind of immature berries are picked and then they're fermented and dried. Obviously that gives us the peppercorn that we use and it's Hindu colonists on the island of Java that first cultivate this long time ago, so it's about 100 BCE. Wow, okay. And did you know pepper was particularly interesting to Rome? Do you know anything about this? Something to do taxes and rent? Is that where we get peppercorn rent from? That comes later. That's really good knowledge. That's fantastic knowledge. Yeah. No, in Rome

it is known as black gold. Oh yeah. And they have a huge trade with India, the Romans, which I guess we probably don't really know that well here. No, it's not a big one. But, you know, we know that it's massive in value because there's an actual tax that's placed on it. Yeah.

At the port of Alexandria. So you don't put taxes on commodities if they're not being widely traded. So we know the Romans love it. Yeah, it's black gold. You know, one Roman cookery, but about 90% of the recipes have spices in them, mostly pepper. So we know that they've gone crazy for some.

And that book was written by Peter Pepper, right? Peter, Mace Clove Pepper, that's right. Maximus Pepperus. In his pseudonym, yeah. But I'd just give you a quick example of a typical Roman dish, chopped mushroom stems mixed with honey, and then with a kind of a garum like a fermented fish sauce. Pepper and lovage.

I've probably had my stomach grumble. I haven't eaten breakfast until all the moisture evaporates and is served with bread. That sounds quite nice. Would you have that, Paul? Of course. I'm not a fuss to eat. So the Romans are cooking with pepper a huge amount. And that means that it's not, we used to think it was like an exotic spice that only the rich could afford.

We now believe it's quite commonly through middle class who's Roman. So pepper is like a normal thing in the Roman Empire, which is quite surprising, I think. But in medieval Europe, we are into the slightly weirder superstitions. So Paul, what weird theory did people believe about how pepper was harvested? I'm out of my depth here. I'll give you a hint. It involves snakes. That it was harvested using snakes.

What did they do? What do they believe? I mean, I think in the medieval period, they're so imaginative and it shows the value they placed on pepper. They believe it was guarded in trees, guarded by poisonous or venomous snakes. And the reason why black pepper is that color is that the only way to get to the pepper was to set the trees on fire to drive the snakes away. Then you've got these kind of burnt peppercorns. But they were wrong. They were wrong.

They were wrong. So the belief was they just, you have to set fire to the whole forest and then you collect peppercorns. Only then is it safe enough. You're not going to be killed. And that's why they're black. And that's why they're black.

Because they've been burning. I see. Okay, so it's all the sneaky fault. Paul, you were on the money with tax and rent. Because in medieval Europe, peppercorns, there's a thing called peppercorn rent. Yeah, I can't remember what it is,

but I know of resistance. That's right. So in Billingsgate in 11th century that you could pay a toll to the king, King Ethel Red, in your peppercorns. You could. They're saying that they used to pay their rent in ills. So, you know, whizmy meals, got no eels, I've got some peppercorns.

Do you accept eels? No, I don't have eels. No, no, that's right, yeah. Pepper, yeah. Have you got the app? No, no, I don't. Oh, that's fantastic. And Paul, you're a former doctor, of course. Before you were a quizer and a comedian, you've had multiple careers.

How do you think pepper was used in medicine, medieval medicine? What are you curing with your peppercorns? Leprosy. Yeah? It's not a bad guess. Heart problems. Ah, okay. Sounds like it might be good for the heart.

Okay, well, that's not a bad shout. David, what do we know from our medical textbooks? Yeah, digestion was the big one. It was like a tonic for digestion. So, yeah, not too far off. We see this in Chinese medical treaties and texts 17th century that it's used for. There's a French treatise, Le Trezonte, which is essentially pepper to cure. Or everything, speaking of snake, snake bite is one of them.

Yeah, my dad would appreciate this one, flatulence. Shout out to your dad. Shout out to Dad there. Even, you know, in midwives to hastenly expelling children from the womb. And then purging the brain of phlegm where naturally brain. I hate a flemy brain. I hate that. It's worse than the more.

And this is quite the flemmy season for brain. I mean, my brain is so flemmy right now. Can I say, I said heart. You said digestion. Then you said not too far out. I could have used you as an examiner when I was in medical school. I could have really done with that lenient. Yeah, I'm sorry, Paul.

Similar medical areas, right? Okay, so pepper was the original peptobismal, right? If you've got flatchelins, you've got heartburn, you've got snake bite. Popper, pepper, yeah, all good. Okay. We talked about ancient Egypt earlier. Do you know why spices were so important in ancient Egypt? Not for food uses.

Status? Yeah, in what way? People were sort of judged on who they were by what spices they had in the house? Nice, okay. So it's sort of showing off, keeping up with the Joneses type of thing. That's pretty good. it's also really important in religious rituals and funerals, David. Yeah, we kind of associate that with spices and the Egyptians.

So we know that there was a fairer that was embalmed with peppercorn shoved up his nose. His flammie brain. For his flammie, yeah, his flaxen, was okay. They don't want a corpse sneezing. You don't do, no. I'd be worried if the corpse was sneezing. Yeah, anyway, but... He's probably not dead, lads.

But no, mummies famously do get up and get around, don't they? But Egypt, notists felt that they could smell the width of cinnamon when they unwrap mummies. It's kind of a faint trace. That lovely Christmas smell. Christmas mummy smell. Yeah, I mean, cinnamon, obviously we get cinnamon sticks. That's really from the bark of the kind of an evergreen tree that is harvested when the tree's wet and then it's peeled off and then rolled up and left to dry.

This is in Sri Lanka, isn't it? This is in Sri Lanka. Evergreen tree is in Sri Lanka. Yeah, absolutely. And they're highly valued. We know the Roman emperor Nero, for example, always burning stuff this time. That's a myth. Mostly Christians, but yeah.

Most of Christians, but a year's supply of cinnamon for his wife's funeral. Someone should let Café Nero know. So, yeah, so it's widely used in Europe, but for all different kind of rituals and ceremonial reasons. Yeah, you could use garlands of cinnamon enclosed in gold as a kind of lavish. It sounds like a kind of Christmas tinsel, isn't it? It sounds, yeah. It's more for kind of religious reasons and for sort of beautiful things.

So, yeah, so cinnamon's a biggie. Frankincense and Mur, obviously. in the ancient world. Those are spices, I think, but we haven't really talked about them. And again, we've got some weird stories about harvesting cinnamon. Paul, which animal do you have to watch out for this time? A cow. Yeah, that's a good, sensible guess. Think more airborne. Bat. Oh, that's good. But no, it's unfortunately birds. So the belief here, David, is what? Not any old bird, huge Arabian birds. Oh, yeah. were like monstrously gigantic that this is...

Is it real or mythical? Mythical. This is the ever-reliable Herodotus with his stories of far-off lands, which the moment it gets beyond the Greek islands gets a little bit of wonky. So there are huge birds in Ereba that you'd have to kind of cut up the body of an animal,

leave it on the floor, these gigantic birds are sweep down, and then the cinnamon would fall from their giant nests. So essentially it was nest line as the cinnamon would be collected, the sticks. Hang on, the idea here is you force the bird, well, you tempt the bird out. You don't want to tangle with a giant orangian bird.

It picks up a very heavy bit of meat, brings it back to its nest, and the nest is unstabilized by the weight of the meat. Knocking out large... So cow was correct, sort of. You would imagine there would be cows being chopped up involved in that. The other one is a student of Aristotle, the kind of father of botany...

The afreshers. Yeah, oh, very good, Paul. Buzz. Yeah, ding. He claimed that cinnamon came from... in the bushes in ravines guarded by our favourite venomous snakes. Oh, it's always snakes.

Always snakes, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Indiana Jones had it right. Why is it always have to be snakes? Okay, so we've got terrifying sort of death birds. We've got venomous snakes. I guess to a certain extent that drives the price up because people are like,

oh, you wouldn't believe what I had to do to get this cinnamon. I had to fight a bird. Okay, we should talk about cloves. Any snakes involved here? No snakes. Good. No snakes. Scary pregnant women, possibly.

But the idea is that, well, they come for the Malucca Islands, again, tall evergreen trees. And but they're the kind of flower buds are harvested and then they're dried. And so there's quite a lot of folklore about from indigenous people over a thousand years. One of them is that the kind of blossoming closed trees were treated like pregnant women. Wow. And the fact that you had to be very careful around them. Yeah. Very calm.

Don't make any silly or foolish remarks. that you couldn't approach them wearing a hat. Wow. Famously women, the pregnant women hate hats. You can't make a noise. And you couldn't have any light. You couldn't make a fire around them.

Otherwise, they would not bear the precious fruit that you so wanted. Wow. Yeah, treat them with kid gloves. They're very tender. You have to cultivate them very carefully. But traditionally, you know, to plant a clove tree, you did at the birth of a child.

Oh, okay. So it's that kind of association with fertility and the life cycle. Yeah, exactly. right. If the tree flourishes, so will the child. And if the tree withers, oh. Wow. You're in trouble. So don't wear that hat. So don't wear the hat. Yeah, exactly right. So it's really India and China

with the two major markets for clothes. They get they're the mass consumer markets in the ancient period as well. So you get mention of them in manuscripts and literature. They're used in Han China as kind of breath fresheners. Really? Yeah, clothes. Yeah. That was your

So let me get this straight. It's in Associated with childbirth and it's big of the two most populous nations in the world. Yes. I think that might be a strong association. There might be something to say for it. Some sort of correlation there from this. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So it was used a sort of a freshener in China. Yeah. Paul, do you know what the nickname was in China in ancient China for clothes then, based on this association of freshening your bread? No, I don't. It was known as chicken tongue fragrance. Of course it was.

Should we bring that back? It's not that catchy, is it? I feel like I know. few people with that kind of breath. Yeah. Okay, so chicken tongue fragrance for cloves. Let's talk nutmeg. Again, more superstitions.

Any mega bird, snake, pregnant women, hat. Yeah, well, these are European superstitions now, so they do get a bit weird. Yeah, so we're back in the Bander Islands. Nutmeg is the dried kernel of the fruit. Yeah, so Europeans thought that whoever receives a nutmeg on New Year's day, carried in a pocket for a year, and you'd never break a bone. Are you making a good. No.

Well, someone did. Yeah, once upon a time. So, yeah, this is the European superstition that if you carried a nutmeg in your pocket in New Year's Day and carried it around for the entire year that you would never suffer a stroke or break a bone if you had a nasty fall. Wow. Yeah. Also, it's got you from hemorrhoids apparently as well. So it's just an endless benefit from nutmegs.

We've been putting it in our chocolate rookie mistake. Yeah. We should put it in our pockets. Yeah. Okay. And of course, in the 1600 people, see. I'm nutmeg could cure plague if you sniffed it in a pommander. You pop it up to your nose and sniffed nutmeg.

Okay, there's no medical science on that. Please don't do that. Internet. Our final spice, of course, would be the one not from Asia. Apart from vanilla, of course, the most famous one, of course, did I give it away, give it away, give away now? Yes, it's the red hot chili pepper. Why do we call it a chili pepper, Paul?

Do you know? Because it's not pepper? No, I don't. Ah, okay. It's Columbus. He got confused. Oh, I see. He showed up on one of his jaunts.

He looked at a chili plant and went, that's probably pepper. and he took it home and went, it's pepper. And everyone went, it doesn't smell or taste like pepper. Easily confused, Columbus. We're in Japan. Yeah.

They're Indian. Yeah. This is the Indies. Yeah. So we called it the chili pepper because... Red hot chili peppers were around when Carry on Columbus was made. So they go back and give it a tribute soundtrack.

So the chili pepper, as you said, David earlier on, is native. It's indigenous to Central, South America and the Caribbean. And, of course, it was imported into Europe. And then from Europe goes to India. And when we have chilies in our Indian curry, that's the Portuguese who've done that. So Vindaloo is originally a Portuguese word, Carnade de Villa Dallos. So it's a Portuguese dish that went to Goa and then the Goan chefs then took it into Central India

and it's more spicy because of the chilies. Yeah, it's Portuguese, potatoes and chilies. Yeah, absolutely. We have an episode on the Colombian Exchange listeners can listen to that will give you more of that. So there we go. We've gone around the world. We've ended our kind of global history of spices. Did you enjoy that, Paul?

I thoroughly entertained by that. Wasn't too violent, sorry. Well, I was well aware of the violence of colonialism. You haven't taught me anything new there, but it is a bit bleak to think that everything we eat has a violent past. Yeah, I'm trying to think of something that doesn't. Deep-fried Mars, boss. Yeah, maybe.

Time now for the nuance window. This is where Paul and I suddenly rearrange our spice racks for two minutes, while Dr David cooks up something we need to know about the history of spices. So my stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Dr David. Today, almost every kitchen around the world has a spice rack or cupboard. Even the most exotic and rarest of spices is cheaply and readily available in supermarkets around the world. The truth is, however, we use spices today, they've played a key role in the commercial, social and cultural lives

of the majority of people on this planet across a long period of time and over a vast expanse of space. From the Maluccas to London, to Bego to Beijing, spices have permeated the history of humanity, going back millennium. From the Egyptian pharaoh in 1224 BCE, who is in barn with peppercorns up his nose, to the UK today, where we consume well over a kilo of spices per capita every year. So how should we understand in regard to spices in human history?

Well, we can highlight the role they played in cultural exchange. Chinese merchants migrated to Java, married local women, converted to Islam, all in pursuit of spices. South Asian families migrated to the UK following decolonisation in the 20th century, where their spice-fuelled food culture fused with British traditions allowing the melting pot in the kitchen

to become a melting pot of wider society. Spices drove currents of economic change and helped to facilitate globalisation by contributing to the establishment of long-distance trade at sea and over land. Spice roads vied with Silk Roads over Central Asia and across the Indian Ocean, acting as global arteries along which people, ideas,

goods, disease, war and religions travelled. Spices launched Europe's overseas empires. Spices represented not just the greater integration of people separated by distance and nationality for good or worse, but arguably like sugar, tobacco, textiles, enslaved people, iron manufactured goods and capital, they established a truly global economy. Today, the mass production and dissemination of spices is another facet of 21st century global inequality, where mass cheap consumption in the West is often at the expense of low-paid exploited labour in the global south. In that way, the history of the not so humble spice is a lens through which we can view the history of the not so humble human and the beautiful and destructive rhythms of the past we create. In that way, spices contain multitudes and within them the great saga of humanity.

Amazing, thank you so much. I mean, having something as brilliant as that on a one-hour podcast is like putting palladium in a pot noodle. I've always said it. It is really interesting, Paul, isn't it? the history of spices, how we assume they just have always been there, but actually the story of how they got there is one of enormous change. As I said, I was totally ignorant on it until I did Magellan on Mastermind,

and it blew my mind that so much happened to make food more flavoursome. It just hadn't occurred to me. It's an amazing story. So what do you know now? Paul, we actually had a wrong buzzer that we were going to play throughout this episode when you got a question wrong. turns out a chaser cannot be caught you haven't got anything wrong

so we've just had an entire team over there just sitting there waiting to push the button just twiddling their fingers I'm not saying I'm competitive you know we shouldn't have better dysfunctional way it was our fault

but now we will have a quiz for you so you know the pressure is on perhaps a little bit this is the so what do you know now this is our quick fire quiz to see how much you've learned and how much you've remembered My plan initially was to get you to eat increasingly spicy food with every question, but then I think we'd be sued by hot ones.

So unfortunately, I'm just going to read you some questions. Okay, all right, I got ten for you. Ten? Ten questions. Okay. Here we go. Have you taken any notes, Paul? I'm not going to look at them.

Okay. Question one. What general name was given to the Malacca Islands? Home of Clothes Islands. Very good. Spice Islands and also Home of Clover Nutmeg and a visit to the Spice Islands. Something different. Question two, name one of the three.

technological developments in late antiquity that aided the ancient spice trade in the Indian Ocean. The astrolabe, the magnetic compass and the Latin serf. Oh, I'm going to give you a bonus point for that because that's fantastic. Okay, question three. How did the Dutch keep their spicy so pricey? Destroyed it. They burned it, yeah, absolutely. Burned it in Amsterdam. Question four, which 17th century Frenchman transplanted spices to Mauritius?

Pierre Puev. It was Pierre Puev. But Peter Pepper did not pick a peck of pickle. I can't even say it. Question five. What non-c culinary. use did black pepper have in medieval England. Curing various digestive

ailments? Absolutely, and you could also use it to pay your rent maryling, which is very charming. Question six, according to Herodotus, how were cinnamon sticks harvested? Burning trees to keep the snakes away. No, that's a different one. That's pepper. We're talking cinnamon here. I'll let you have one more chance.

I've forgotten. Ah, you've got to tempt the giant birds away from their nest with the lump of cow. Okay, so that's one rule. wrong. You can play the wrong buzzer at last. The production. Okay. Question 7. What is one Molochon superstition about clove trees

involving pregnant women, perhaps? But you have to treat them like you treat pregnant women. That's right. And you couldn't wear a hat nearby. Question 8. Roman food recipes often included which spice? Pepper. It was pepper. Very good. Question 9. What nickname did cloves have

in Han Dynasty China? Oh. What was it called? I think breath. Something breath, but I can't remember. It was. It was chicken tongue fragrance. And question 10, which of the major five spices comes from the Americas, rather from Asia? The chili pepper.

It was chili pepper. Right, I'm going to give you, I think, nine out of 11, I think is where we landed on that one. So a very good score, very impressive. Are you pleased with that? That's much more than I thought I was going to get. So that's fine. You did well. You did really well.

Thank you so much, Paul. It's been an absolute delight to have you here. Thank you, of course, David. a listener to learn more about the history of commodities, check out our episodes about coffee and chocolate or for more on global trade. Of course, you can listen to our episode on the Columbian Exchange.

And if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at BBC.com or on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'd just like to say a huge thank you

to our guests in History Corner. We had the fantastic. Dr David Vivas from Bangor University. Thank you, David. Thank you so much. Thank you, Paul. And in Comedy Corner, we have the sensational Paul Sinner. Thank you, Paul. Thank you very much. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we cook up another flavour some feast for your ears.

Can you eat feasts with your ears? I don't know. But for now, I'm off to try and pay my mortgage with a sack of peppercorns. Bye! You're dead to me. It's a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4. This episode was researched by Emma Mitchell and Adam Simcox. It was written by Dr. Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, Dr. Eminigus and me. The audio producer was Steve Hankey and our production coordinator was Jill Huggett. It was produced by Dr. Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, me and senior producer Dr. Emma Noghous.

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