Spain vs Portugal: The Spice Race

Summary

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Dan Snow’s History Hit

Episode: Spain vs Portugal: The Spice Race

Date: June 22, 2026
Host: Dan Snow
Guest: Roger Crowley, historian and author of Spice: The 16th Century Contest Which Shaped the Modern World

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the dramatic 16th-century struggle between Spain and Portugal to control the spice trade and, by extension, the birth of the modern global economy. Dan Snow and historian Roger Crowley vividly chart the motivations, technologies, and personalities that propelled these Iberian rivals into unknown oceans—and into violent confrontation—not just with each other, but with the sophisticated trade networks of the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. The "spice race" set the foundations for centuries of European imperialism, revolutionized world trade, and established routes, profits, and brutalities that shaped the beginning of globalization.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. European Context Before the Age of Discovery

• Europe’s Isolation & Frustration

  • [05:55] Europe in the mid-15th century was cut off from Oriental trade by the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, causing prices for valuable goods like spices to soar.
  • The main European powers—Holy Roman Empire, fading Venice—were blocked from trade routes, prompting the Atlantic seaboard nations (Portugal and Spain) to look outward.
  • Roger Crowley: “Europe has been isolated. It’s cut off now by the Ottoman Empire from a lot of the things which were valuable to it … so the opportunity for Europe now lies in what is beyond Europe.”

• Spice Routes & Markups

  • [08:04] Spices often saw a 1,000% markup from source to European consumer; trade was dominated by Muslim merchants.
  • Mamluks in Egypt and other Islamic powers became wealthy from controlling these bottlenecks.

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2. Why Portugal Led the Way

• Geographic & Cultural Conditions

  • [09:15] Portugal was poor and geographically isolated, its only advantage a long Atlantic coast, which left it little option but to look to the sea.
  • A culture of crusading adventure, fostered in part by the Anglo-Portuguese alliance, encouraged overseas exploits.
  • Roger Crowley: “It was almost down to individuals … part of this Anglo-Portuguese alliance conjured up a spiritual adventure of noble and heraldic deeds.”

• Technological & Scientific Advances

  • [12:09] Portuguese explorers led the way in navigational technology and scientific record-keeping (e.g., systematic logbooks, evolving cartography).
  • Annual expeditions pushed further down Africa, marking progress with stone pillars; it became a model for systematic exploration later cited by NASA.
  • The influx of expelled Jewish intellectuals (like cosmographer Abraham Zacuto) fortified Portugal’s expertise.

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3. Cracking the Route to the Indian Ocean

• Gold, Slaves, and the Search for Spices

  • [14:10] Early voyages focused on West African gold and initiating the Atlantic slave trade, but true fortune lay further afield.
  • Discovery that Africa could be rounded (likely by Bartolomeu Dias in late 1480s, but shrouded in secrecy) opened the way to the Indian Ocean.
  • Roger Crowley: “Suddenly they realized they could get into [the Indian Ocean]. And this is now the springboard for a major attempt to … try and get to the source of spices.”

• The Magnetic Appeal of Spices

  • [15:45] Spices like cloves, nutmeg, and pepper were rare, costly, and cloaked in mythic value — believed to be aphrodisiacs, medicines, and symbols of paradise.
  • Marco Polo’s and others’ tales reinforced the allure of these distant “Edens.”
  • Roger Crowley: “It’s difficult for us to comprehend the kind of magnetic hold … [spices] conjured up … for a very expensive price.”

• Trade & Crusade: Tangled Motives

  • [17:51] The Portuguese were motivated both by profit and messianic-geopolitical aims—hoping to outflank Islam, perhaps even to “capture the body of the prophet Muhammad” (King Manuel II’s fantasy) and reclaim Jerusalem.
  • Nevertheless, most adventurers were in it for the money, and the mission quickly became one of direct competition and violence.

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4. Portugal’s Empire in the Indian Ocean

• Monopoly and Violence

  • [22:54] Unlike the cooperative trading networks they encountered, the Portuguese introduced violence through cannon-armed ships and quickly pushed for monopoly.
  • The “Sea of Sinbad,” once a cosmopolitan commonwealth, soon bristled with Portuguese forts at strategic trade hubs: Goa, the Persian Gulf, Aden, Zanzibar.
  • Roger Crowley: “The guy who worked this out was … Alfonso d’Albuquerque … if we build fortified encampments at critical nodal points, we can control the trade.”

• Malacca: The Gateway to the Spices

  • [25:17] Capturing Malacca in 1511 was key, as it was the funnel to the fabled Spice Islands (Banda for nutmeg, the Moluccas for cloves).
  • These islands, and their astonishing evolutionary biodiversity, were the only source for these prized commodities.

• European Disruption to Asian Networks

  • [27:10] Europeans merely arrived and muscled in, piggybacking on extensive local trading systems using violence to seize control.
  • Local communities were linguistically and politically fragmented, making resistance more difficult.

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5. Spanish Entry: Circumnavigation and Rivalry

• Spain's Late Entry and American Distraction

  • [27:56] Spain’s discovery of the Americas was a byproduct of its failed initial quest for direct spice access. Gold became their focus there.
  • Magellan, originally Portuguese and rebuffed by his homeland, persuaded Spain to back him to reach the spices by a western route.

• Tordesillas and the Circumnavigation

  • [28:29] Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) created an imaginary line dividing the world’s new lands between Spain and Portugal.
  • Magellan’s 1519 expedition found a strait at South America’s tip (now his namesake), then crossed the Pacific (over 9,500 miles, far longer than imagined); though Magellan died in the Philippines, Juan Sebastián Elcano completed the first circumnavigation.
  • Dan Snow [31:05]: “He dies on the beach in the Philippines, killed by a man now widely regarded as one of the first Filipino indigenous hero fighting colonization—Lapu Lapu.”

• Power Struggle in the Spice Islands

  • [32:00] Spanish and Portuguese proxy wars broke out in the islands—protracted, small-scale, but highly consequential.
  • Geographic realities favored Portugal, whose easier eastward route allowed for more effective control; Spain’s attempts were stymied by the difficulty of returning across the Pacific.

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6. Colonial Realities: From Trade to Exploitation

• The Shift Toward Empire and Exploitation

  • [34:47] Both nations initially paid for spices but soon moved to coercion, plunder, and fortification.
  • Portuguese governors on four-year contracts operated ruthlessly to amass personal fortunes, often horrifically exploiting local populations.
  • Roger Crowley: “Spices are the source of all evil. … It’s early colonialism on a grand scale.”

• Violence as a Byproduct and Blueprint

  • [36:06] The birth of globalization was rooted in violent beginnings: conquest, displacement, slavery, and monopoly.
  • Spain established Manila as its hub, expelling local rulers; Portugal attempted, with little success, to plant colonies even in China and Japan.

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7. The World Transformed: Globalization and Its Shadow

• Networks, Exchanges, and Modernity

  • [38:32] The spice race started the process by which plants, animals, and humans were moved around the world (the “Magellan Exchange”).
  • Silver from the Americas, especially the Potosí mine, flowed to China; Ming porcelain flowed to Europe; books, ideas, currency, and even cryptography became more globalized and sophisticated.
  • Roger Crowley: “The world is mine oyster, as Shakespeare said, which I with my sword will open.”

• Legacy: Economic Models and New Colonizers

  • [40:54] The episode closes with the transitional moment to Dutch and English dominance: the Dutch stole Portuguese charts, staged even more brutal takeovers, and their enormous profits fueled the art and growth of Amsterdam.
  • The birth of the joint stock company and modern stock exchanges stemmed from this era’s economic innovations (and speculative fever).

• Global Currency: The Silver Revolution

  • [41:04] Discovery of Potosí coincided with China’s shift to a silver tax regime, creating the world’s first true global currency.
  • Roger Crowley: “Silver becomes the dollar of its day. … We can start to see the emergence of all kinds of trends which are familiar to us now out of this wonderfully rich period.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“Of all countries to establish hegemony over the Indian Ocean, it’s Portugal. I mean, you couldn’t make it up.”
— Dan Snow [24:51]

“This small country … is going to be the front runner in an expansion into the wider world.”
— Roger Crowley [09:15]

“Spices could be worth more than gold. But no European knew precisely where they came from.”
— Narrator [02:34]

“It is a violent foundation. It certainly is … we’re seeing European colonialism starting to take hold.”
— Roger Crowley [36:22]

“The world is mine oyster, as Shakespeare said, which I with my sword will open.”
— Roger Crowley [39:43]

“The Portuguese tried to redact as much of the material that they had written as possible. Unfortunately, in this, they failed, because the Dutch managed to steal a map of all the trading routes to the Spice Islands and get there themselves.”
— Roger Crowley [39:07]

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Important Timestamps

• 05:55 – Roger Crowley on Europe’s trade situation in the 15th century
• 09:15 – Why Portugal, small and poor, launched the Age of Discovery
• 12:09 – Technological advancements and exploration process (“the scientific model of exploration”)
• 14:31 – Portuguese round Africa; motives shift to spices
• 17:51 – Crusading ideals mixed with profit motives
• 22:54 – Portuguese violence and fort strategy in the Indian Ocean
• 25:17 – Significance of Malacca for the spice trade
• 27:10 – Arrival in the Spice Islands; European disruption of Asian trade
• 28:29 – The Treaty of Tordesillas and Magellan’s westward journey
• 31:05 – Magellan’s death and indigenous resistance
• 34:47 – Shift from trade to exploitation; brutality of Portuguese and Spanish methods
• 38:32 – The “Magellan Exchange”: movement of crops, goods, and ideas
• 41:04 – Potosí, silver, China, and the rise of global currency

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Further Reading

Roger Crowley’s recommended book:

• Spice: The 16th Century Contest Which Shaped the Modern World

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Tone & Style

The conversation is engaging, vivid, and laced with historical detail and a touch of wry humor — perfectly suited to Dan Snow’s trademark accessible yet authoritative style. Crowley provides evocative, narrative-driven insight into both the epic ambitions and tragic consequences of the spice race, laying bare its legacies for listeners new and old.

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Transcript

[Dan Snow]

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they'd

[Narrator/Host]

been chasing rumors for years. Stories along caravan routes and imports from India to the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. Stories of spices that came from the very edge of the World Cloves, nutmeg. Tiny and unremarkable looking, but with the power to ignite the taste buds, heal the body, and make people astonishingly wealthy. Spices could be worth more than gold. But no European knew precisely where they came from. And on the Iberian Peninsula, it would become a deadly race to discover the source. In 1511, after a 90 year search enduring storms, hunger and violence, Portuguese ships slipped into a chain of volcanic islands scattered across a brilliant equatorial ocean. The Moluccas, modern day Indonesia, the only place where cloves and nutmeg grow. The air was thick with fragrance. Nutmeg hanging in trees, the yet to be harvested red split fruit. This was the source of the world's most valuable trade. Just three small rocky islands. But these islands weren't empty prizes waiting to be claimed. They were already alive with established communities and trade networks of local and foreign merchants negotiating the flow of spices and money reasonably peacefully. But as was so often the case in this period, Europeans announced they didn't really want to be part of this collaborative network. They wanted control of the whole thing. They saw this as a prize to be controlled, monopolized, and kept out of the hands of their European rivals. Because the Portuguese weren't the only ones hot on their heels were the Spanish themselves, also seeking the riches of the spice islands, led by a name that you may be familiar with, Ferdinand Magellan, whose fleet would eventually be the first to circumnavigate the globe. The spice race between the Spanish and Portuguese in the 16th century marked the beginning really of a truly globalized world. The rise and clash of world empires not on their home soil, but in distant lands. Fought directly, but also through proxy wars, diplomacy and trade, it ushered in a new age of maritime powers. It established a brutal model for how Europeans would colonize the world, taking what they wanted, whatever the cost. To tell this incredible story, I'm really happy to be joined by the esteemed historian Roger Crowley, whose excellent book Spice delves far deeper into the subject than we get through in one episode of Dan Snow's History.

[Dan Snow]

But we're going to try our best.

[Narrator/Host]

Enjoy.

[Dan Snow]

Roger, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Heyding Fine.

[Roger Crowley]

Thank you very much, Dan. I'm delighted to be talking to you.

[Dan Snow]

I've read many of your books. I loved Spice. It's an excellent one. I've loved all of your discussions of Portuguese penetration into the Indian Ocean. So I'm very excited about doing this. Let's start with the customer rather than the producer. Talk about Europe in the 15th century. Who are the big powers and who's in charge of the trade? Where's that wealth being generated in the

[Roger Crowley]

middle of the 15th century in Europe, we talk about being on the verge of the age of discovery, but we're really talking about Europe has been isolated. It's cut off now by the Ottoman Empire from a lot of the things which were valuable to it in terms of trade and in terms of spices and the goods of the Orient. The big players in Europe at this point, I suppose, is the Holy Roman Empire, of which Charles V is going to be the emperor or very large dynasty. Places like Venice are fading because they're locked into the Mediterranean and cannot now trade so easily with the world beyond. So the opportunity for Europe now lies in what is beyond Europe. And what is beyond Europe is the Atlantic, of which Europe knew very, very little. The Arabs called it the great green sea of darkness. And we're going to see the Atlantic pioneers taking Europe beyond Europe. And that really is going to be those countries which border the Atlantic and can learn how to sail the Atlantic and crack the code of the Atlantic and the world beyond. Nobody knew if there was a way around Africa. To a certain extent, the geography of ptolemy from the second century A.D. taught that what we call now called Africa wrapped around the world and the Indian Ocean was actually a lake. So the mystery of what lay beyond Europe is really the only way now that Europe can escape from a sort of slightly claustrophobic feeling, I think, of. Of being muzzled by the spread of Islam.

[Dan Snow]

And tell me about the Silk Roads, the spice routes. All the goodies are flowing into Europe eventually, but they're passing through the great powers of central Eurasia. Are they?

[Roger Crowley]

Absolutely. I mean, I think what enraged the Europeans was that spices are very expensive. The markup could be 1000% from source to consumer was largely coming through the Indian Ocean, although there were spice routes that linked up with the Sil Road. And most of that trade, a lot of that trade was in the hand of Muslims. The Mamluks in Egypt were getting very wealthy. A lot of the trade, spice trade came up the Red Sea and then was portage over to the Nile and then to Alexandria. And the prices just went up and up and up. And so this feeling of being in hoc, if you like, to Islam was one that was of particular interest and aggravation, I think, to Europe at this time.

[Dan Snow]

This is where the story gets crazy, Roger, because of all the various, you know, you've talked about the Holy Roman Empire, Europe's divided, but there are powers Within Europe, nobody, nobody has ever paid any attention to what is going on on the western tip of the Iberian Peninsula before. Why does this little tiny region of Europe end up having such a massive global impact?

[Roger Crowley]

Well, it's very interesting, isn't it? I mean, the Portuguese, who are going to be, if you like, the pioneers of Atlantic expansion, was an incredibly poor little country, population of about a million, too poor to mint its own gold coins, facing the wrong way, you could say, because whatever economic action there was within the Mediterranean, and they're slightly barricaded by their neighbor Castile, on whom they're not on good terms, Portugal has nothing. It has no natural resources. But what it does have is because they've got this long Atlantic coast, they are the first candidates, if you like, to crack the code of the Atlantic Ocean and to start making voyages down the coast of Africa and to work out how the wind systems work, to explore the west coast of Africa and to jump off the edge of the known world. So it's this very small country of no importance at all that is going to be the front runner in an expansion into the wider world.

[Dan Snow]

And why, why Portugal? They've just got nowhere else to go and they're feeling adventurous. Are there changes in technology and or cartography? What precipitates this? One of the great questions in history,

[Roger Crowley]

what precipitated this, I think, was they were also very keen on crusading, as most people were, and they had some knowledge of North Africa. It was almost down to individuals. John I, the king of Portugal, at the end of the 14th century, there was an Anglo Portuguese alliance. He was married to Philip of Lancaster, who was the daughter of John of Gaunt, and that introduced into the mindset of the Portuguese royal family. I mean, the children of this alliance were cousins of Henry V, and therefore they were kind of inspired by this parallel idea of doing great deeds, of doing wonderful things. So part of this Anglo Portuguese alliance conjured up a spiritual adventure of noble and heraldic deeds that created a climate in which they were going to spring out beyond Portugal into a new world. It was cast somewhat as a crusade, because they knew that there were Muslims in North Africa and on the African coast. So it was a sort of like an Arthurian court, if you like. It wasn't quite the same as a merchant culture which was going there to get goods. These were a culture of doing great deeds, doing heroic things.

[Dan Snow]

Yes. And so they want to do heroic things. And whether you like it or not, that's the avenue you've got to go. You can't go east, you can't go north. So we're going south.

[Roger Crowley]

Yeah, absolutely. And they developed the sailing technology quite quickly, actually, and they slowly worked out how the winds worked effectively. You could sail down the coast of Africa, but you found it very difficult to come back. And over a period of time, they realized that you actually had to swing out into the Atlantic, pick up a wind to come back again. And over a period of 30, 40, 50 years, they worked out how the Atlantic winds worked. The son of John I was an extremely clever guy, and he made this more scientific. And so they'd send out ships every year as far down the coast as they could. And when they got to the furthest point, they would leave a marker across with the arms of the king of Portugal on it, so the next ship that went down the coast could see where they'd get to and go a bit further and a bit further and a bit further. And this is kind of almost like a scientific model of exploration. NASA, when it's peeling for funds for exploration without an unknown outcome, has cited the Portuguese as the people who invented this strategy. So over decades, they worked their way further down the coast, further down the coast of Africa, and they have a very good feedback system as well. So all the ships that came back, the captains had to produce their logbook, say, where they'd been, how far south they'd got, they had to record latitudes. And so they're also building cartography at the same time. This is kind of like a renaissance exploration going on here. And this small country, therefore, is punching very much above its weight in terms of scientific knowledge. They acquired quite a lot of intellectual capital after this. Castile expelled its Muslim population. A man called abroad Zakutu, who was a cosmographer and who worked out a great deal about the size of the world. So there was a kind of little intellectual hub going on in there as well.

[Dan Snow]

So they go down the coast of Africa. Initially, it sort of pays for itself in terms of the. The resources. They find that there's gold, isn't there? They enslave Africans and bring them back and start that brutal trade. At what stage do they think, hang on a minute, we might get into the Indian Ocean here, we might get the spices, because that's the real ball game, isn't it?

[Roger Crowley]

Absolutely. They were looking for gold, and they indeed was gold in Mali, and they brought back some kinds of spices, but nothing very impressive. So eventually they reach a point where they discover that there's an end to Africa in about late 1490s, and comes back with this knowledge. Very weirdly, it's not recorded in any Portuguese account because there's a climate of secrecy going on here. They do not want interlopers on their territory. And the only reason that we know this guy, Bartolomeo Dio, had actually found his way around the the Cape, the crew wouldn't go any further. They were frightened they were going to fall off the edge of the world. Well, the only thing we know about this is that Columbus was in Portugal at the time and made a marginal note in hysteria. But this is the point at which suddenly we've learned something about the world that we didn't know. That, yes, there is a way around Africa, Ptolemy's geography, which thought that land wrapped all the way around the Indian Ocean. You couldn't get into it. Suddenly they realized they could get into it. And this is now the springboard for a major attempt to work its way into what will be known as the Indian Ocean and to try and get to the source of spices.

[Dan Snow]

And let's just quickly talk about spices once again. We're talking pepper, cloves, nutmeg. How rare had those things been in Europe before this?

[Roger Crowley]

The rarest would have been cloves and nutmeg because they came from the furthest away. But they were expensive. These things are expensive. The markup could be 1000% from source to consumer. It's very difficult for us now to understand exactly why spices had this magical attraction for people. And it's a whole range of things. They thought they were analgesics, that they were antiseptics, they were aphrodisiacs, that they conjured up an idea of paradise out there, a better world. And behind this, of course, we have to factor in the influence of Marco Polo's travels of the world out there that was rich and stuff, and another Italian called Lodovico Du V at the end of the 15th century, who wrote an account of getting to the Spice Islands. There was in the minds of these people an idea of an Eden, of a paradise. So all these things are wrapped around it also. I think on some level, it just cheered up very dull food. But it's difficult for us to comprehend the kind of magnetic hold that this paradise of perfume, of gorgeous things the spice trade conjured up and that they just sniffed at a very expensive price.

[Dan Snow]

Well, having eaten a bit of medieval food, I'm aware of just how valuable those spices must have been to cheer

[Roger Crowley]

it up a bit.

[Dan Snow]

My goodness me. Yeah. But you've also got this heady heady intoxicating combination of if you head into the Indian Ocean, not only can you get spices, cut out the middleman and make a gigantic markup, just slightly less than the thousand percent markup that's already going on. So you make a lot of money. You also drain trade and wealth away from your great strategic and religious competent the Islamic world and in fact possibly outflank them and maybe even get to Jerusalem. I mean this is exciting stuff as the Portuguese are heading into the Indian Ocean.

[Roger Crowley]

You're right, there are two things going on here. One is just getting the stuff and this is going to make us all extraordinarily wealthy. But Manuel ii, King of Portugal, had a messianic mission. Behind this was by outflanking Islam, going back to the beginning here, the idea that Europe was being throttled by Islam, by the Ottomans, along North Africa and so on by outflanking Islam, Manwa had the idea that they could sail up the Red Sea, capture the body of the prophet Muhammad, hold it to ransom and recapture Jerusalem. So there's a mixture of trade and crusading going on here and the Portuguese were nuts about crusading. Their other hobby, apart from sailing was crusading in Morocco, which eventually will lead to the total wiping out of the whole of the Portuguese nobility and including the king at the end of the 15th century. So there are two things and they're definitely linked together. But generally on the whole, the average Joe Soap going out there wasn't terribly interested in crusading. They were much more interested in getting some stuff and I think they royal geostrategy was confined pretty much to the. Well, not entirely, but there are certainly some horrible acts of violence by the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean against Muslim ships and people. So the two go hand in hand.

[Dan Snow]

You listen to Dan Snow's history hit don't give up on us just yet. There's more coming.

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[Dan Snow]

So the spice race is now on the idea that European hulls can go round to the source of the spices, fill up, bring it all back and sell it cheaper, but still for a lot of money than those. All those spices coming over land across Eurasia, upending global trading networks. I mean, it's one of the great revolutions in history. That race is on initially and there's going to be two great competitors initially, Portugal and Spain. And Portugal makes all the early running, as we've been saying. Portugal pushes beyond Cape Town, beyond southern Africa, at Cape of Good Hope and into the Indian Ocean. And they make some. There's enough spice in those early expeditions to think, right, this is a goer. What do the and do the Portuguese do they dream of empire at this point, or they just, they see themselves as merchants? They just want to pay money, pick up spice and come home.

[Roger Crowley]

There is an element certainly of empire. I tend to think of the Indian Ocean as a much nicer place for the Portuguese game along. It was kind of a trading commonwealth and it was said the sea is held in common this is the Sea of Sindbad with a tremendously rich cultural life going on. People being swept back and forth across from Africa to India and back again by the monsoon. The Portuguese, their aim is to really control, rather ambitiously, the Indian Ocean, 28 million square miles of ocean or something like that. They are the only people in the Indian Ocean who have cannons. And therefore they introduce a high level of violence. They very quickly try to create monopoly trading to drive out the Islamic merchants, which leads to quite high levels of violence along the coast of India. Their ambitions are huge. They develop almost like a proto model of the kind of small seafaring state maritime empire, which is. They ring the Indian Ocean in forts, key strategic places on the coasts of India at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, Aden, Zanzibar, along the Swahili coast. There's never very many of them, never more than about 2,000 Portuguese in the Indian Ocean in these early period of the 16th century. But they worked out that you could more or less control trade if you controlled the hubs. And the guy who worked this out was a very bright nobleman called Alfonso d', Albuquerque, who works out that actually, you know, we don't need to have boots on the ground because there aren't very many of us, but if we build fortified encampments at critical nodal points, we can control the trade. And that was what they were hell bent on doing and driving Islam out of the sea and making it effectively a Portuguese monopoly.

[Dan Snow]

One of the greatest upsets and surprises in world history. Of all countries to establish hegemony over the Indian Ocean, it's Portugal. I mean, you couldn't make it up. Okay, so we got Vasco da Gan. People have heard of 1498, he gets to India. Albuquerque just mentioned 1511, he goes even further. He gets to Malacca on the Malay Peninsula. Why is the Malacca Strait. We're all talking about straits in the world at the moment through which trade flows. Well, why does the Malacca strait matter?

[Roger Crowley]

In 1511, Malacca is one of those critical trading hubs in the whole network of Indian Ocean trade and spice trade. It's the gateway to the Malay archipelago, Sumatra, Java, the Philippines, where the most valuable spices came from cloves and nutmeg. And Malacca is one of those key trading points to which Islamic merchants came and merchants from further east came to buy and sell spices. And particularly these two very rare and highly prized spices, nutmeg and clove.

[Dan Snow]

Just give us a sense, I mean, the amount of global wealth being generated by these tiny volcanic islands, places like Banda. I mean, this is, we're used to now, everything growing everywhere. But this is the only place on Earth that you can get things like nutmeg.

[Roger Crowley]

Yes. The islands of the Malay Archipelago were kind of a laboratory of evolution. And the 19th century biologist Alfred Wallace more or less worked out the theory of evolution simultaneously of Darwin there. There's a kind of notional line through the middle of this archipelago called the Wallace Line, where species from Oceania, from the Pacific Ocean, meet species from the Malay Peninsula. And the extraordinary kind of weird, freaky evolutionary products of this were that in the Banda Sea, which is a sea in the middle of this huge array of islands, there were just three tiny islands in the world where nutmeg grew. And a bit further north, a group called the Molakas in what I know, the Philippines, where cloves grew. And these were the only places in the world. It is quite extraordinary. It's evolutionary freak.

[Dan Snow]

And it's an important, important point, isn't it, that no one's discovering anything. These are just ships arriving from Europe asking locals where to go and what to buy and then shipping it all home. There's sophisticated trade networks happening already that Europeans have turned up with slightly bigger ships and critically, ships that have installed cannon on them. I mean, that is it.

[Roger Crowley]

You're exactly right. I mean, they introduce a level of violence into procedures almost immediately, and there are no unified states. Effectively, the random evolutionary scattering relates to peoples as well. Islands five miles apart from each other could not speak to each other in the Moluccas because they spoke different languages. So, you know, it's a completely extraordinary situation.

[Dan Snow]

Let's talk about Spain now, to speak of Europeans, because Spain is entering the spice race. I suppose it considered it entered the spice race a bit earlier because 1492, Columbus sails across the ocean looking for Asia to access silk and spice and all the rest of it. The Spanish have quote, unquote, discovered Central America and North America and South America. They are colonizing it. They're looking for gold, they're looking for. But they haven't found any spice, have they? They haven't found the trade that they were looking for quite yet. And so what do they do?

[Roger Crowley]

No, they weren't. I mean, Kalomuth comes back with something, declares that he's very close to spice islands. But if not, the Portuguese get to these Spice islands first. They send a man called Fernal Serrao Serao, we don't know how we know this. Writes back to his chum, Fernal Magalaes, otherwise known as Magellan Portuguese, and says, you Ought to come out here. You can live like a rajah out here. But Magellan is out of favor with the Portuguese court. So he hops across the frontier to Castile and persuades the young, very young king of Spain, Charles I, to invest in a venture. Now he has to sail in the other direction because of a deal which was done in the end of the 15th century, dividing up spheres of influence along an imaginary line through the Atlantic Ocean, called them the Tordesillas Line. So Magellan has to sail west and find a route round the Americas. Nobody knows if there is a way around the Americas. And this is one of the great mystery to compete for the spice trade. So while the Portuguese are sailing east around India, the Spanish are sailing west round the Americas. Magellan does find a way around the Americas. We still don't know how this happens around the bottom of American what is now called the Magellan Straits and then has to tackle the Pacific Ocean. Nobody knows how big the Pacific Ocean is. They thought that it would be a short hop till they got to the spice Islands. It's 9,500 miles. And although it's an easy sail because the wind carries you across, it's also extremely dangerous because if you're out of land for three months and you haven't got any vitamin C, your crew are going to start dying with scurvy. So it was kind of pretty tough. But Magellan turns up in the Spice Islands, or in fact he doesn't himself turn up because he's killed in the Philippines doing a kind of crazy fight with the locals. But Johan Sebastian Elcano makes it to the Spice Islands and at this point we're starting to see a conflict between the Portuguese and the Spanish in these tiny little islands fighting each other probably across about 500 yards strait on the other side of the world. And this is going to be a running fight that's going to go on for several decades. It's a very, very weird little battle between two micro armies to try and control the spice trade of these most valuable commodities.

[Dan Snow]

So we should say that Magellan expedition, he dies on the beach in the Philippines, killed by a man now widely regarded as one of the first Filipino indigenous hero fighting colonization. Lapu. Lapu. But his ship Victoria, one of his ships, gets back to Spain, doesn't it, with Elcano on board the first circumnavigation of the world. So that prompted by that desire to find spice.

[Roger Crowley]

Absolutely. And suddenly the world has been proved to be circular in all kinds of ways and it's redefined People's ideas of the planet. Immediately, absolutely immediately. We've encircled the globe. Elcano gets a very fine coat of arms with the globe on it and above it, the globe is saying, you have circumnavigated me. We now own you. I think the globe is very small on the coat of arms. This is a sign of a European conquests of the world.

[Dan Snow]

So they're both in the Spice Islands, the Spanish and the Portuguese. How does Spain and Portugal try and resolve this? I mean, they believe they're going to divide the world up between them. It's like nothing anyone's ever seen before.

[Roger Crowley]

Warfare goes on for quite a long period. The Portuguese can sail quite easily to the Spice Islands. For the Spanish, it's much, much more tricky because they have to sail across the Pacific Ocean. The route around South America is very tough. And after a while they start shipbuilding on the west coast of Mexico under Cortes and sending expeditions over to the Spice Islands. The problem for the Spanish is that they can sail over there very easily, but they find it impossible to sail back. They haven't worked out the pattern of the winds. So repeatedly they. The Spanish expeditions sail over there. There's a bit of fighting goes on. They can't sail back. The Portuguese capture them and repatriate them on their own ships. So the Pacific Ocean is like a lobster pot, if you like. For the Spanish, it's a trap that they can't get out of. This is a conundrum which they can't solve. And for quite a long time, it leaves the Portuguese in complete control of the spice tray.

[Dan Snow]

You listen to Dan Snow's history.

[Narrator/Host]

There's more coming up.

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[Dan Snow]

Also, I should ask, what are the Spanish? What are the Portuguese doing when they arrive at these places? Are they just paying for goods and services and taking the spice with them? Or why are they being drawn into first of all brutality and then conquering coercion, building fortresses? Trade rapidly gets overtaken by empire building.

[Roger Crowley]

Trade does rapidly get overtaken by empire building. And there are two things going on here, really. One is that the Portuguese send out governors on four year contracts. And the aim of these guys is to get as rich as possible as they can in their four years. They are extremely exploitative of the local population. One governor who sends out was a man called Antonio Galvao who observes the terrible things that the Portuguese are doing. And really, he says spices are the source of all evil. Because it was just a quick get as rich as you can and go home. We're not interested in the local people. We exploit them as much as we can. It's early colonialism on a grand scale. The Spanish are doing more or less the same thing. So it's really a kind of early example of European plunder of the world, I think. And those who were sensitive to it, such as Galvao, were horrified by what the Portuguese were doing and the consequences of it.

[Dan Snow]

And the Spanish in place like the Philippines, I guess as well. It's such an interesting story because it's the birth of globalization, isn't it? It really is the first time that all continents have been dragged into the same sort of trading and political networks. But it's such a violent foundation of that, isn't it?

[Roger Crowley]

It is a violent foundation. It certainly is. I mean, I think we're seeing a European colonialism starting to take hold and it will spread effectively. In a way, the spice trade in the Moluccas becomes a springboard for further and further encroachments into the world of the East. The Spanish eventually create their own hub in Manila in the Philippines, where they drive out the local ruling class. And we're starting to see Europeans spreading their wings, if you like, across further and further into the Far East. There are some places which are actually impenetrable to them. The Portuguese get a very bloody nose when they try and do trade with China. They think we can just turn up and speak to the emperor. China, it doesn't work like that. They try to build forts and colonize little bits of China. They are brutally expelled and killed. So it doesn't go all the way. But what we see happening in the Far east is a nodal set of networks which allow trade to spread in all directions. So by middle of the 16th century, the Portuguese had got a place, a little hold in Japan and Nagasaki in Macau, in Manila, Goa across the Pacific Ocean, because eventually the Spanish learned to sail back across the Pacific Ocean. And then we're starting to see a very finely webbed trading network stretching across the whole world off the springboard of. Of the spice trade exploration.

[Dan Snow]

Well, and just another little example, those Portuguese ships trying to get to the Indian Ocean, they end up hitting Brazil by mistake. So they quote, unquote, discover Brazil, and then you see vast numbers of enslaved Africans taken to Brazil to work plantations in the West Indies. So, yeah, the world being radically reordered and these commodities flowing from one continent to the next, a recognisably modern world, which is why historians have described this as one of the most important sort of events, revolutions in our history.

[Roger Crowley]

I see 16th century as the age of acceleration, as you've said. We get these very deep webs of connection. We start seeing plant species being moved around across the Pacific Ocean, what they call the Magellan Exchange, where you start seeing crops being introduced into the Philippines. You've seen new types of rice being introduced into China, which is going to increase the health of the Chinese nation. We see goods traveling in all sorts of directions. We see the Chinese now exporting Ming China. Across the world, we see all kinds of goods, ideas, images. And a lot of this in Europe is expressed in the development of printing. In 16th century, we start to see, I think, something like 150 million books were printed 16th century in Europe, probably more writing than ever been done in the whole of the world before. And a lot of this was about exploration, about places, and people could visualize the world in a different way. You could have a globe, you could see the world yourself. You could have a pocket atlas of the world. The world is mine oyster, as Shakespeare said, which I with my sword will open. So we're seeing the development, I think, of the springboard of Europe's unfortunate, in many ways, launch across the world happening in this century. It is absolutely fascinating. And along with it go a whole range of other developments. We see the development of cryptography because people are trying to keep their information secret. The Portuguese tried to redact as much of the material that they had written as possible. Unfortunately, in this, they failed, because the Dutch managed to steal a map of all the trading routes to the Spice Islands and get there themselves. Where they behaved far more brutally than the Portuguese and Spanish had. The British Dutch had no interest in converting people to Christianity. They just wanted the stuff. And for a long period, the Dutch had monopoly of the spice trade. And when you look at Amsterdam or you look at Rembrandt or Vermeers or something, these are all paid for by spices that the Dutch managed to monopolize. As we move into the 17th century, it's a very really interesting period.

[Dan Snow]

Such. You mentioned a part of many other developments, and one of the other ones is the modern joint stock company. The idea of buying and selling shares on stock markets of gigantic multinational corporations. That all starts.

[Roger Crowley]

Absolutely. You could go in for arbitrage because the Chinese change their tax system to silver. And you could do very well by turning your silver into gold if you knew what you were doing. So there are all kinds of games and opportunities going on here. And one of the things that I discovered and that totally blew me away, was the discovery of the largest silver mine in the world in the Bolivian Andes, at a place called Potosi, just at the moment that the Chinese were changing their tax system to silver. And Potosi became the biggest mining boom in history. It ended up with a population of about 180,000 people. It was as large as London because everybody flocked there to make their fortunes. And silver becomes the global currency because the Chinese, sort of then as now, they wanted the money and they exported the goods. Ming pottery, particularly, was incredibly coveted. If you were a Portuguese nobleman, you could order a Ming dinner set with your coat of arms from China and have it delivered rather slowly over a period of time. And silver becomes the currency. It becomes the dollar of its day. So we can start to see the emergence of all kinds of trends which are familiar to us now out of this wonderfully rich period. I wouldn't say it was wonderful in terms of the fates of many of the peoples of the world, but it was the springboard for the modern world in many ways.

[Dan Snow]

Well, Roger, you put it perfectly. Thank you for. Let's end it right there. Well, you've probably got a couple of books that sort of touch on this period, but tell us which ones people can read to follow up on.

[Roger Crowley]

Well, the book that relates to this one is just called spies the 16th century contest which Shaped the Modern World.

[Dan Snow]

Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Roger. That was great.

[Roger Crowley]

Thank you very much, Dan.

[Narrator/Host]

Well, that's it, folks. Thank you very much to Roger Crowley, expert storyteller as ever. And if you missed it, we released an episode earlier this year with Roger, where he told the story of the rise and fall of the Venetian Republic, one of the great maritime powers leading up to this period. A maritime power whose fortunes would be radically changed by what was going on in the distant Pacific and Indian oceans. We put a link in the notes in the show notes to that episode if you missed it. But of course, look, the best way to never miss an episode is to hit following your podcast player. Trust me, you're going to want to, because this summer we've got banger after banger on the show. We've got the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the Maya. We'll be explaining everything you need to know about the Odyssey and about Christopher Columbus as well. It's all happening. So hit follow now.

[Dan Snow]

Thank you very much for listening.

[Narrator/Host]

See you next time.

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[Dan Snow]

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