An Edible History of Humanity

by Tom Standage

  By this time, however, the English and the Dutch had appeared on the scene. The English explorer Francis Drake passed through the Moluccas in 1579 and observed that they yielded an “abundance of cloves, whereof wee furnished our selves of as much as we desired at a very cheape rate.” Drake’s voyage inspired several follow-up attempts by other English sailors, though all ended in failure. The Dutch were more successful. For a while Dutch merchants had been the distributors for Portuguese spices in northern Europe, but they lost this privilege following Spain’s union with Portugal, so they set out to establish their own supply. Intelligence gathered by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, a Dutch expert on the Indies who had worked for the Portuguese in India for many years, indicated that excellent local pepper was available on Java; and since the Portuguese did not trade there, but bought their pepper in India, they could hardly complain if the Dutch expressed an interest in it. After a successful expedition to Java in 1595, Dutch merchants, who were amalgamated to form the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) or Dutch East India Company in 1602, began regular shipments of spices from the region, exploiting Portugal’s inability to control the supply.

  Once they realized how tenuous the Portuguese grip really was, the commercially savvy Dutch decided to try to seize control of the trade themselves, and they sent a large fleet to the spice islands in 1605. “The Islands of Banda and the Moluccas are our main target,” the VOC’s directors explained to their admiral in the region. “We recommend most strongly that you tie these islands to the Company, if not by treaty then by force!” The Dutch ejected the Spanish and Portuguese from the Moluccas, ordered some newly arrived English ships to leave, and seized direct control of the clove supply. The VOC then set about ruthlessly enforcing its new monopoly, determined to succeed where the Portuguese had failed. Clove production was concentrated on the central islands of Ambon and Ceram so that it could be more tightly controlled; the ancient groves of clove trees on other islands were uprooted, the clove pickers massacred, and their villages burned down.

  Where clove production was permitted, the growing of other crops was outlawed, to ensure that the local people would be dependent on the Dutch for their food. The Dutch sold the food at a high price and bought the cloves at a low price; even so, production of cloves declined, prompting the Dutch to order that more trees be planted. But by the time the trees came to maturity, supply outstripped demand, and the growers were told to cut trees down again. A boom-bust cycle followed as the Dutch struggled to reconcile shifting demand with the supply from slow-growing trees and reluctant growers. Cultivation of cloves outside Dutch control was forbidden on pain of death, and clandestine trading was suppressed. Makassar, a regional trading center where the English, Portuguese, and Chinese went to buy smuggled cloves, was shut down.

  It was a similar story in the Banda islands, the nearby source of nutmeg and mace. Initially the Dutch persuaded the inhabitants to sign documents agreeing not to sell their spices to anyone else. But they continued to do so anyway, perhaps because they were unaware of what they had signed. In particular, they sold to the English, who had established a base on the tiny island of Run, a little way to the west. A Dutch attempt to build a fort in the Bandas in 1609 provoked a dispute with the locals, and a party led by a Dutch admiral who went to negotiate was wiped out by the Bandanese, with the encouragement of the English. The Dutch retaliated by seizing the Bandas for themselves, building two forts and claiming another spice monopoly. Villages were burned down and the inhabitants were killed, chased off, or sold into slavery. The village chiefs were tortured and then beheaded by the VOC’s samurai mercenaries, brought in from Japan, where the Dutch were the only Eu rope ans allowed to trade. The islands were then divided into sixty-eight plots, which were manned with slaves and leased to former VOC employees. The conditions were brutal—workers on the nutmeg plots were executed in a variety of gruesome ways for the most minor transgressions—but the flow of the most valuable spices was now in Dutch hands.

  The English agreed to leave the spice islands in 1624 and concentrated on commercial opportunities in China and India instead, though the Dutch allowed them to retain sovereignty over Run, where a small contingent had held out for many years. This tiny speck of land, two miles long and less than a half mile wide, had originally been claimed by the English in 1603, just as the English and Scottish thrones were united—so it was the first British colonial possession anywhere in the world, and the first tiny step toward the formation of the British Empire. Eventually, in 1667, Run was relinquished to the Dutch under the terms of a Treaty of Breda, one of many peace treaties signed during the on-off Anglo-Dutch wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As part of the 1667 deal, Britain received a small island in North America called Manhattan.

  Profits from the spice trade helped to bankroll the Dutch “golden age” of the seventeenth century, a period in which the Dutch led the world in commerce, science, and financial innovation, and the wealthy merchant class provided sponsorship for artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn and Johannes Vermeer. But in the long run the Dutch spice monopoly proved to be less valuable than expected. The garrisons and warships needed to protect the monopoly were hugely expensive and did not justify the returns as the price of spices began to fall in Europe in the late seventeenth century. The falling price was due in part to a more abundant supply, so the Dutch imposed artificial constraints on it: They burned huge quantities of spices on the docks in Amsterdam and began to limit the volumes shipped from Asia in an effort to prop up prices. But as trade in textiles became more important, spices accounted for a shrinking proportion of Dutch returns, falling from 75 percent in 1620 to 23 percent in 1700.

  The lower prices commanded by spices in Eu rope also reflected a deeper shift in the spice trade. Once the myths about their otherworldly provenance had been dispelled, spices no longer seemed so glamorous; they started to become affordable, even mundane. Heavily spiced dishes came to be seen as old-fashioned at best, and decadent at worst, as tastes changed and new, simpler cuisines came into vogue in Europe. At the same time, spices were eclipsed as exotic status symbols by new products such as tobacco, coffee, and tea. By solving the mystery of the spices’ origins, the spice-seekers paradoxically devalued the treasure they had so arduously sought. Today most people walk past the spices in the supermarket, arrayed on shelves in small glass bottles, without a second thought. In some ways it is a sorry end to a once-mighty trade that reshaped the world.

  LOCAL AND GLOBAL FOOD

  Ideally suited as they were to long-distance freight, spices led to the wiring up of the first global trade networks. The great distance they traveled was one of the reasons people were prepared to pay so much for them—some people, at least. But not everyone approved of bringing these inessential, frivolous ingredients all that way: “For the sake of this we go to India!” Pliny the Elder grumbled about pepper in the first century A.D. Today a similar argument is advanced by proponents of “local food,” who advocate the consumption of foods produced close to the consumer (within one hundred miles, say) rather than shipped in from farther afield. They decry the transportation of food that has, in some cases, traveled thousands of miles from farm to plate; some local-food fundamentalists even try to avoid non local foods altogether. Pliny thought buying imported food was simply a waste of money, but modern-day local-food advocates (or “locavores”) generally make their case on environmental grounds: Shipping all that food around causes carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to climate change. This has given rise to the concept of “food miles”—the notion that the distance food is transported gives a reasonable measure of its environmental damage caused, and that one should therefore eat local food to minimize one’s impact.

  It sounds plausible enough, but the reality is rather more complex. For one thing, local products can sometimes have a greater environmental impact than those produced in other countries, simply because some countries are better suited than others for production of particul
ar foods. Tomatoes are often grown in heated green houses in Britain, for example, resulting in a larger volume of carbon emissions than tomatoes grown in Spain, even when the emissions produced by transporting Spanish tomatoes to Britain are included. Similarly, a study carried out at Lincoln University in New Zealand found that lamb produced in that country produced far less carbon dioxide (563 kilograms per metric ton of meat) than lamb produced in Britain (2,849 kilograms per metric ton). This is largely because there is more room for pasture in New Zealand, so the lambs eat grass, whereas British lambs are given feed, the production of which is carbon-intensive. Shipping New Zealand lamb to Britain then incurred further emissions of 125 kilograms per metric ton, so that the “carbon footprint” of New Zealand lamb was much smaller even when transport was taken into account. It may be that the least polluting way to organize food production would be for countries or regions to concentrate on producing foods that can be made particularly efficiently given the local conditions, and to trade the resulting foods with each other.

  Focusing on food’s transport-related emissions may also be picking the wrong target. An American study found that transport accounted for 11 percent of the energy used in the food chain, compared with 26 percent for processing and 29 percent for cooking. In the case of potatoes, the emissions associated with cooking them far outweigh those involved in growing and transporting them. Whether or not you leave the lid on the pan when boiling your potatoes has more of an impact on the total carbon dioxide emissions than whether they were grown locally or far away. Another complicating factor is the wide variation in the efficiencies of different forms of transport. A large ship can carry a ton of food 800 miles on a gallon of fuel; the figures are about 200 miles for a train, 60 miles for a truck, and 20 miles for a car. So the drive to and from a shop or market can produce more emissions, for a given weight of food, than the whole of the rest of its journey.

  Of course, not all the arguments made in favor of local food are environmental: There are social arguments, too. Local food can promote social cohesion, support local businesses, and encourage people to take more of an interest in where their food comes from and how it is grown. But there are also social arguments in favor of imported food. In particular, an exclusive focus on local foods would harm the prospects of farmers in developing countries who grow high-value crops for export to foreign markets. To argue that they should concentrate on growing staple foods for themselves, rather than more valuable crops for wealthy foreigners, is tantamount to denying them the opportunity of economic development.

  There is undoubtedly some scope for “relocalization” of the food supply, and if nothing else, the food-miles debate is making consumers and companies pay more attention to food’s environmental impact. But localism can be taken too far. Equating local food with virtuous food, today as in Roman times, is far too simplistic. The rich history of the spice trade reminds us that for centuries, people have appreciated exotic flavors from the other side of the world, and that meeting their needs brought into being a thriving network of commercial and cultural exchange. Hunter-gatherers were limited to local food by definition; but if subsequent generations had limited themselves in the same way, the world would be a very different place today. Admittedly, the legacy of the spice trade is mixed. The great spice-seeking voyages revealed the true geography of the planet and began a new epoch in human history. But it was also because of spices that European powers began grabbing footholds around the world and setting up trading posts and colonies. As well as sending Europeans on voyages of discovery and exploration, spices provided the seeds from which Europe’s colonial empires grew.

  PART IV

  FOOD, ENERGY, AND INDUSTRIALIZATION

  7

  NEW WORLD, NEW FOODS

  The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its [agri]culture.

  —THOMAS JEFFERSON

  A PINEAPPLE FOR THE KING

  The portrait of King Charles II of England, painted around 1675, is not as simple as it looks. The king is shown wearing a knee-length coat and breeches, and standing in the elaborate gardens of a large house. Two spaniels attend him, and nearby kneels John Rose, the royal gardener, who is presenting Charles with a pineapple. The symbolism seems clear. At the time, pineapples were extremely rare in England, since they had to be imported from the West Indies and very few survived the voyage without spoiling. They were so valued that they were known as the “fruit of kings,” a connotation strengthened by the leafy crown that adorns each pineapple. In England, the pineapple’s association with kingly wealth and power dated back to 1661, when Charles had been sent one by a consortium of Barbados planters and merchants who wanted him to impose a minimum price on their main export, sugar. Charles received more than ten thousand petitions from various interest groups during the 1660s, so the gift of a pineapple, one of the first ever seen in England, was a clever move by the Barbados consortium that made their request stand out. It worked: Charles agreed to their proposal a few days after the pineapple’s arrival.

  The pineapple in the painting was more than simply a status symbol, however; it was also a reminder of England’s rise as a maritime trading power, and of its ascendancy in the West Indies in particular. Charles had passed the Navigation Acts during the 1660s, which banned foreign ships frosm trading with English colonies and so encouraged a dramatic expansion of the English merchant fleet. In 1668 a pineapple had served as a reminder of En gland’s growing naval might at a banquet held by Charles in honor of the French ambassador, Charles Colbert. At the time, England and France were fighting over colonial possessions in the West Indies, so the appearance of a pineapple as the centerpiece of the dessert course emphasized the king’s commitment to his territories overseas. One observer at the feast recorded that Charles cut the fruit up himself and offered pieces of it from his own plate. This might sound like a gesture of humility, but was really a demonstration of his power: Only a king could offer his guests pineapple.

  Portrait of Charles II accepting a pineapple from John Rose.

  Lending further meaning to the painting was the fact that the pineapple shown was an unusual fruit: It was, according to the painting’s title, “the first pineapple raised in England.” It seems most likely that the pineapple in question had been imported as a young plant and had merely been ripened in England, rather than being grown from scratch—something that only became possible later, in the 1680s, with the invention of the heated greenhouse. Even so, to have ripened a tropical fruit in En gland was quite a feat, and it signaled the expertise of En gland’s horticulturalists at a time when European nations were competing to discover, categorize, propagate, and exploit the wealth of plants from Asia and the Americas that had suddenly become available to them. In this new field of “economic botany,” the pursuit of scientific knowledge went hand in hand with furthering the national interest, and botanical gardens were being established around the world as colonial laboratories.

  The undisputed leaders in the field of economic botany in the late seventeenth century were the Dutch, who had pushed aside the Portuguese to become the dominant European power in the East at the time. The Dutch wanted to understand new plants for two main reasons: to find cures for the tropical diseases that were afflicting their sailors, merchants, and colonists; and to find new agricultural commodities, beyond the known spices, from which to make money. The Dutch set up botanical gardens at their colonial outposts at the Cape, at Malabar, Ceylon and Java, and in Brazil, all of which exchanged specimens with similar establishments back home, in Amsterdam and Leyden. These were much more ambitious than the botanical gardens established in Europe during the sixteenth century, starting in Italy in the 1540s, which had been chiefly medicinal in purpose. As England and France raced to emulate the Dutch and establish colonies and trading posts of their own, they also discovered an enthusiasm for economic botany. The history of the spice trade had shown that vast fortunes awaited anyone who could control the supply
and trade of valuable foodstuffs; who knew what other plants were waiting to be exploited?

  As if to emphasize the link between botanical and geopolitical mastery, some botanical gardens were even laid out to represent the world. Most were square, and were divided into four parts, one each for Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. These areas were then further subdivided, right down to individual beds for particular plants. The botanists who established them dreamed of being able to gather the whole world’s plants in one place. As the catalog of the Oxford Botanic Garden put it, “as all creatures were gathered into the Ark . . . so you have the plants of this world in microcosm in our garden.” But this ambitious goal proved to be hopelessly unrealistic as the number of known plants mushroomed. The “Enquiry into Plants” by Theophrastus, an ancient Greek author, included only five hundred plants; the “Pinax Theatri Botanici,” an epic work published by the Swiss botanist Caspar Bauhin in 1596, listed six thousand; and by the 1680s John Ray’s “Historia Generalis Plantarum” listed more than eighteen thousand. In botany, as in so many other fields, the knowledge of the ancient authorities was found to be incomplete or plain wrong.

  So the botanists served two masters: On the one hand they were members of an international research community, working together to add to mankind’s understanding of nature, participants in a scientific revolution in which direct observation finally triumphed over received wisdom. On the other hand, they were expected to do their best to ensure that their own country would benefit the most from the new plants. Robert Kyd, a British army officer stationed in India who founded Calcutta Botanic Gardens in 1787, summed this up when he wrote that the gardens were established “not for the purpose of collecting rare plants as things of curiosity or furnishing articles for the gratification of luxury, but for establishing a stock for disseminating such articles as may prove beneficial to the inhabitants, as well as the natives of Great Britain, and which ultimately may tend to the extension of the national commerce and riches.” Colonialism, commerce, and science went hand in hand; the number of plants a nation had at its disposal, and its botanists’ ability to grow them outside their usual habitats, demonstrated that nation’s technical prowess. Botany was regarded as the “big science” of its day, an indication of a country’s might and sophistication, just as mastery of nuclear science or space technology is thought to be today. All this meant that the pineapple presented to Charles II was more than a mere fruit; it was a vivid symbol of his power.