Spice: The sixteenth century contest that shaped the modern world
Roger Crowley
Columbus did not seek to discover the Americas. Magellan never intended to circumnavigate the world. Their ill-defined goal was the Indies – heavily influenced by Marco Polo’s travels - the aim to track spices back to their source and cut out the Islamic middle man. Spices were the engine of the world economy, the most extensively traded of all commodities. For Europeans they represented riches on an unprecedented scale. By 1511 the Portuguese had identified a group of tiny islands in the Malay Archipelago – the Moluccas – as the only place on earth where the most highly valued species, cloves and nutmeg, could be found.
The Moluccas were destined to become the focus of intense rivalry for the spice trade – first between Portugal and Spain, later with other European maritime powers, that led to contests with the Ottoman empires and contact with China and Japan.
The competitive attempts on the spice islands, driven by sophisticated sailing ships, increased skills of navigation and information gathering, and fast-firing cannons, gave a definitive shape to the planet’s seas and continents. In the process Europeans proved that the world was spherical, spanned the Pacific Ocean, created Manila, the world’s first global city, and linked up the oceans – ‘the world encompassed’ in Drake’s phrase. While the great land empires of China and India remained aloof, the spice voyages created maritime empires across distances unmatched in human history and gave birth to world trade. It shifted Europe from the margins to the centre: its maritime empires would dominate the planet for half a millennium.
Spice is the story of six crucial decades, 1511-1571, from the Portuguese conquest of Malacca to the founding of Manila – a defining moment, when the world ‘went global’. It is a narrative of epic sweep that now defines every aspect of our lives, and the relationship with the great empires of the East, particularly China, that has returned to obsess us. It is big history in the fullest sense of the word.
The book encompasses a huge geographical terrain – from the coasts of Spain and Portugal to the vastness of the Pacific void, Macau, Nagasaki, the spice islands and the Arctic seas and provides multi-dimensional narratives: the fierce competition between European states, anthropological encounters between different peoples, extraordinary maritime feats, brutal sea battles, sieges and shipwrecks, personal tales of endurance, the growth of European capitalism, scientific developments in navigation, ship-building and cartography.
Spice builds on Roger Crowley’s strong reputation for writing gripping, well -researched narrative history of the highest order.
Book Details:
- Author: Roger Crowley
- On Submission
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Rights Sold
- United Kingdom: Yale University Press
- Portugal: Presença
- Korea: Cum Libro
- China: Social Sciences Academic Press
- US: Yale University Press
- Spain: Atico
- Indonesia: PT Pustaka Alvabet
- Taiwan: Marco Polo Press
- Hungary: Park
- Croatia: Srednja Europa
- Russia: Alpina
Roger Crowley
Roger Crowley was born in 1951 and educated at Cambridge University. As the child of a naval family, early experiences of life in Malta gave him a deep interest in the history and culture of the Mediterranean world. After finishing school he spent his summers pottering in Greece; after university the Mediterranean bug took a more serious turn with a year spent on and off teaching English in Istanbul, exploring the city and walking across Anatolia with friends and donkeys. In recent years he has made return trips to the Greek-speaking world, including two visits to Mount Athos, spiritual hom...
More about Roger Crowley
Book Reviews
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"Brilliantly researched and beautifully written. A compelling account of a desperate and often violent struggle."
Giles Milton, author of Nathaniel’s Nutmeg -
"An eminently readable account of a thrilling historical moment that transformed the world – and shaped it to become the one we live in today."
Zoltán Biedermann, author of (Dis)connected Empires -
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An extraordinary voyage through the sixteenth century with a master storyteller. Spice is a rollicking historical tale wherein incredible seafaring adventure collides with the geopolitics of the first global supply chain."
Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret.), 16th Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and author of To Risk It All -
"Roger Crowley is a great narrator, matched here to his greatest theme: the circling of the planet to create for the first time a truly global economy. A heart-pulsing story of terrifying hardship and inspiring courage."
David Frum, Senior Editor at The Atlantic -
"A terrific story packed with powerful characters and transformational moments in history, one that explains how and why the global world was created, and at what cost."
Andrew Lambert, author of Seapower States -
"A spirited account of the brave, greedy, brutal and often foolhardy incursions of Spanish-financed adventurers into what is now Indonesia and the Philippines."
Michael Krondl, author of The Taste of Conquest -
"Crowley tells a fine story, capturing the shockwaves that rippled across European politics while remaining grounded in historical resources."
Telegraph -
"Crowley has the knack of turning fragments into a mosaic, and his latest book is another colorful, sweeping saga."
Kirkus -
"If you’ve ever found the story of the European conquest of the new world a little drab and undramatic then Roger Crowley’s rollicking, blood-soaked account of the race for the Spice Islands of east Asia is the book for you."
Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times -
"An engaging new look at seasoning’s long ago seasons, nutmeg and cloves would have effects far beyond the kitchen, kindling revolutions from mapmaking to spycraft."
The Economist -
"Crowley's propulsive narrative is as full of storms, privations, enslavement, piracy and blood as the heady whiff of spice."
New Statesman -
"Roger Crowley’s new book should be required reading for those commanding future conquests of resource extraction. Written with the verve of a detective novel, Crowley charts a 16th-century version of the ‘moon shot’ to the fabled ‘Spice Islands’ of the Moluccas."
History Today -
"Each of the episodes Crowley covers are fascinating stories, drenched in gothic detail and pushed through with frenetic energy...Crowley’s prose barrels forward, which is wonderful."
Daily Telegraph -
"a rollicking, blood-soaked account of the 16th-century European conquest of the new world… a story of tremendous verve and scope."
Times