This one’s for the foodies amongst us. Did the know Lisbon was once the hub of the planet’s spice trade? The city’s role in the famous Age of Exploration saw Portuguese adventurers sailing back into port laden with exotic spices and other exciting ingredients, fast becoming the source of the Western world’s culinary variety. Next time you enjoy something supremely flavoursome, give Lisbon a nod of thanks. And next time you take a medicine, remember how these precious spices were often used in the drugs of the time.
Lisbon spice stories – The good, the bad and the ugly
The spice trade itself wasn’t new by the time it began to change the fortunes of Lisbon. It already went back at least 3000 years, a brisk exchange between ancient civilizations. Spices originally came to Europe via the Middle East using land routes like the famous Silk Road.
In the 1450s the Ottomans took control, closing some of the most important land routes for spices into Europe and making new sea routes more important than ever. Explorers like Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama were tasked with finding time-saving maritime routes between Europe and Asia. Columbus went west and found a new continent. Da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope, sailed the coast of East Africa and across the Indian Ocean to India, helped along by the powerful, reliable Trade Winds.
From 1500 onwards Portugal and wider Europe were determined to control the supply, prices, ports and ultimately the countries where the spices were grown. You could say the spice trade kicked off centuries of Western empire-building, giving our spicy Saturday night take-out curries a sinister tang!
Importing spices by sea proved much faster and cheaper than by land. The explorers also brought back new knowledge about the faraway lands the previously-mysterious spices came from. India grew black pepper, Sri Lanka focused on cinnamon, sandalwood came from Timor. China and Japan were importing cloves, nutmeg and mace from several different sources including the Spice Islands. This knowledge made controlling the trade even more attractive.
Not a story to be proud of
The Europeans had their hard-won maritime routes and their worldwide monopoly. But they soon found nobody wanted to trade with them. Exporters in India and Muslim countries didn’t want the goods Europeans wanted to trade. They were already immensely rich, had everything they needed, and were perfectly happy with the regional trade network that had served them so well for so many centuries. So the Portuguese decided to take things into their hands with their superior weapons and ships. Because Indian and Arab trading ships were built for speed not war, the Europeans won.
It didn’t stop there. Europeans sent fleets of warships around the Cape of Good Hope, built forts everywhere, blasted rival ships out of the water and shot resisting towns to pieces with their cannons. They confiscated traders’ goods, forced them into bad deals, and eventually King Manuel I of Portugal declared a royal monopoly on the spice trade. In 1505 they appointed a viceroy of India just so they could control its coastal trading centres. Goa was originally Portuguese, Malacca in Malaysia was taken over, Hormuz fell victim and the entire Persian Gulf followed in 1515.
In an effort to control this vast monopoly affecting a third of the planet, the Portuguese set up strict rules. Private traders caught with spices were arrested and their ships and cargoes taken off them. Muslim traders were often executed. European sailors were allowed to take spices in lieu of pay, a good deal since a sack of the right spice could buy you a house. Ships were banned from some ports unless they had a royal license. Ships had to have a special passport and were forced to pay customs duties. The list goes on in a slice of history that is just as shameful as the British Empire.
What were spices originally used for?
In the Middle Ages you’d eat spices to detox your body or balance your ‘humours’. Medicine-wise spices could be taken on their own or made into pills and potions. Black pepper was meant to cure a cough and treat asthma, heal small skin wounds and act as an antidote to poisons. Cinnamon got rid of a fever. Farting died right down thanks to a decent dose of nutmeg, and ginger got you going. At a time when they thought disease was spread by smells, they burned ambergris – a sort of fatberg expelled from the intestines of a living whale – which really didn’t help when the Black death came along.
In the 21st century we don’t classify gems as spices, but they did in the 1500s. Topaz was good for piles, lapis lazuli was used to treat malaria, and they mixed real powdered pearls with a host of costly spices to ward off old age and senility.
Delights like cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, star anise, clove and turmeric were bought and sold, loved for their flavour and desired for their fashionable rarity. Some were turned into sweets in their own right, an exclusive way for the rich to enjoy exotic treats. Sacks of the stuff added scent and taste-appeal to elaborate royal banquets. In the 1400s the Duke of Buckingham’s cooks used 900g of spice every day, including large amounts of the big favourites of the time, pepper and ginger.
At the time a healthy diet meant food that wasn’t too hot, cold, dry or soggy, and spices were meant to help balance meals. Fish, for example, is cold and wet so they added spices they felt would make it warmer and drier. It sounds crazy now, but ideas like this helped turn the spice trade into an international powerhouse of profit.
People burned spices like incense to cover up nasty niffs. They scattered them generously around to fragrance the smelly floors of their homes and public buildings. They even smothered their skin with spices to hide body odour and as beauty treatments. Only the super-rich could afford expensive frankincense, myrrh, balsam and sandalwood, plus the popular pungent secretions of civet cats, beavers and deer. Disgustingly, one of the most expensive and exclusive ‘spices’ of all was the aromatic stuff scraped off ancient mummies.
A short-lived trade built on greed and corruption
From end to end Portugal’s coup on the spice trade lasted a century, and the end came quickly. Asian merchants quickly turned their backs on Europe, trading only with the countries they knew and trusted. At its height Europe only accounted for 25% of global spice sales. Too many Portuguese officials were corrupt tax evaders. The ancient Middle East land and sea routes soon started to prosper again, killing off the Cape of Good Hope route, and from the 1550s onwards the spice trade took on a new face.
When Francis Drake circumnavigated the world, stopping off at the Spice Islands to bring cloves on board, the Portuguese were worried. They were even more concerned when the Persians took control of Hormuz in 1622 with English support while Hindus were busy taking over southern India and Gujarati traders had control of the Bay of Bengal. 1596 saw the Dutch taking a slice for themselves, fearlessly attacking the failing Portuguese forts. By 1663 they had full control of the Spice Islands, Malacca, Colombo and Cochin and were soon importing three times as much spice as the Portuguese ever managed.
In the following centuries sugar cane, cotton, tea, opium, gold, diamonds and slaves would replace spices, which were no longer as profitable. But the marks left by the spice trade can still be traced through Lisbon’s old districts, with treasures from the era to admire in Lisbon’s Oriente Museum.