Overall well rounded look not only at the spice pepper - first through it's botanical biology, the difference between some varieties like black verses white pepper, it's relation to betel - which is chewed extensively through Southeast Asia and India - and a focus on European trade expeditions.



Pepper moved into ancient Rome along the Arabian trade routes in continued with the addition of the Silk Roads as the preliminary ways that the spice traveled to Europe. And it was pepper, nutmeg, mace and

Overall well rounded look not only at the spice pepper - first through it's botanical biology, the difference between some varieties like black verses white pepper, it's relation to betel - which is chewed extensively through Southeast Asia and India - and a focus on European trade expeditions.



Pepper moved into ancient Rome along the Arabian trade routes in continued with the addition of the Silk Roads as the preliminary ways that the spice traveled to Europe. And it was pepper, nutmeg, mace and the other spices that pushed the explorations of the Portuguese to find alternatives paths, attempting to cut out the so-called middle-men.



Before going to depth on the exploitation of the areas, a short history of spice and pepper gardening on the islands of Sumatra and Indonesia as well as the Malay Peninsula and Vietnam.



In comes the Portuguese followed by the Dutch which conducted vicious bitter battles for a commodity limited only by the pepper gardens planted and harvested by the natives. Each European trade ship wanted priority and restricted access to various ports and their product. It was not unusual for ships to literally go to battle in order to steal cargo. If they managed to establish themselves in native villages, they bullied and brutalized the natives making high demands on pepper growth, even to the point where families didn't have enough land or time to take care of the pepper vines as well as grow food for themselves.



The phrase of forced cultivation was used but it was just a fancy term for slavery. That's if they survived the near genocide of various villages who dared to rebel against the Europeans which by now was dominated by the Dutch East India Company as well as the English East India Company.

Eventually a treaty in 1666 between the Dutch and English which had the Dutch get the island of Run (part of the Molaccas) while England got the island of Manhattan. We can look back and wonder if England got the better deal but the Dutch removed millions of tons of pepper, nutmeg and mace. The Dutch, in turn, destroyed numerous spice trees in an attempt to limit the availability of their product.



Trade in the area was not limited - literally if merchants could find a product available at 'home' that could be traded in the area for pepper and spices, it was. Textiles from silks to calicoes and cottons. Precious metals and gems. Muskets and tea. And eventually opium which opened up a whole new form of devastation on world society. By 1795, the Americans joined the purveyors of pepper and the exploitation of the islands. They were not saints either with their false weights and pressure applied against other nations ships as well as fellow American ships vying for a full cargo.

This was also the time of Malay pirates which literally would strip a ship clean if it was captured.



The book ends with various medicinal uses of pepper especially in Ayurvedic medicine centered in India and how modern scientists are investigating those claims. It has been discovered that the compound piperine (an alkaloid responsible for the pungency of Black and Long pepper) does have some health benefits. As does some of the compounds in betel. At the time of the book's publishing, there were numerous recommendations for further study into those benefits as well as the side effects.



It's an overall enlightening view of what early trade actually entailed and it wasn't pretty. You really have to wonder if the benefits - for example, the extensive exploration that connected the far reaches of the world - are worth the consequences of environmental destruction, genocide and subjugation of native peoples. And so it continues to this day - just change the item being traded.



The body of the book ends on page 228, with 2 pages of acknowledgements, over 40 pages of notes, 12 pages of selected bibliography resources and the index.



2019-150