Spice: The 16th-Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World

Spice: the sixteenth century contest that shaped the modern world by Roger CrowleyA really good read (May 2024.) The story of Magellan, empowered by Charles V, fighting his way down the coast of Brazil, facing mutiny, appalling weather and near starvation, finally locating the straits named after him, and then scooting across the Pacific powered by the trade winds. Taking sides in local spice islanders warfare and in a fit of hubris, starting an unnecessary local war and being killed with one of the remaining ships circumnavigating the globe back to Seville. Then the story of Potesi, slave mountain, and the transportation of silver across to a Ming China which had just made silver its national currency and where its value was twice that in Europe. The argument of which line of longitude was established by the Treaty of Tortillas was abrogated when Charles V mortgaged the spice islands to Portugal. Then came the Dutch who just killed for profit. What a story!

Speedy delivery. Superb quality book.

Clearly and beautifully written. When you see the maps at the front, you know you're going to be in good hands even before you start reading.

It’s a fascinating story. I enjoyed it mostly but it was a huge amount of material to cover in a small book. So sometimes it seemed a bit hurried and major events covered in one sentence.

Very informative.

Grazie!

na

Crowley never met an adjective he didn't like, and tells the story through a murky anti-imperial lens that consistently puts discovery in scare quotes but calls Magellan's slave Enrique a servant. The book is short and readable, but a little too full of solecisms like calling the Tordesillas Line "imaginary" for my tastes. ("Arbitrary," or "contrived" or "imposed" maybe, but the book spends too much time talking about the line and its lethal consequences for it to be "imaginary.") The stories he tells are all interesting enough, but the selection can feel a bit arbitrary: How is it that that the Iberians encountered Muslims in the Moluccas and Philippines? How can the impoverishment of the Ming Dynasty (because the tax stream, which was set in fixed amounts of silver, bought less when silver from Petosi flooded in) be reduced to a single sentence towards the end of the book?At one point, Crowley even crosses over into what seems like flat out nonsense. We're told on p 28 that "In the contract for the voyage, Magellan asked for the inclusion of a curious clause: that if more than six islands were discovered he would be able to retain two for himself. It hints that he might have been aiming to create a fiefdom of his own, as Serrão had done in the Moluccas." OK, but then on p 60 "The ships maintained a northwest course that would take them to a destination the Spanish called the Islands of the West - which would become Las Filipinas, the Philippines. Had this been his intention all along, when he had written into his contract that he could keep two islands for himself if he discovered more than six?" You may wonder how Magellan could have known a northwest course might take him to a vast and hitherto unknown (to Europeans) archipelago - but it doesn't appear that Crowley did.

Kind of ridiculous how many dates are incorrect. For instance, constantly crossing out something like 1527 and fixing it to read 1528.