Spice: The Commodities that Shaped the Modern World with Roger Crowley

Summary

Podcast Summary

The HC Commodities Podcast – "Spice: The Commodities that Shaped the Modern World with Roger Crowley"

Host: Paul Chapman
Guest: Roger Crowley (Author & Historian)
Date: March 25, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores how nutmeg and cloves—commodities once worth their weight in gold—shaped the 16th-century world order. Historian Roger Crowley discusses the incredible power, wealth, and violence surrounding the pursuit of these spices, as detailed in his 2024 book Spice: The 16th Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World. The conversation traces the origins of the spice trade, its impact on medieval economies, the rise and fall of Portuguese and Dutch maritime empires, and how innovations in navigation, finance, and warfare were driven by—and later reshaped—the global commodities trade.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Rarity and Allure of Spices (Nutmeg and Cloves)

• Origins:

  • Nutmeg and cloves only grew in specific, tiny islands in the 16th century:
    • Nutmeg: Banda Islands (now Indonesia)
    • Cloves: Ternate and Tidore, ~500 miles away ([01:55])
  • This isolation made them the most valuable commodities by weight in the medieval and early modern world.

• Trade Networks Pre-Discovery:

  • Spices moved via complex, multi-link trade routes spanning the Malay Archipelago, India, the Red Sea, Alexandria, and ultimately into Europe. Each leg added markups, often reaching 1000% by the time the spices reached England ([03:30], [05:18]).
  • Europeans largely had no idea where these spices originated, fueling their mystique and perceived medicinal, magical value ([03:30]).

“By the time these got, say, to England, the markup could be 1000%... So this was a global commodity chain in the hands of many players.” — Roger Crowley ([03:30])

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2. Portuguese Disruption: Technological Change and Maritime Hegemony

• Breakthrough:

  • The Portuguese developed advanced navigation, mastering Atlantic winds and innovating oceanic sailing ([07:10]).
  • Vasco da Gama’s pioneering route around Africa (Cape of Good Hope, 1497) allowed direct access to Indian Ocean spice sources, bypassing traditional middlemen ([07:10]).

• Alfonso de Albuquerque and Military Monopoly:

  • Albuquerque’s insight: controlling key trade choke points (Malacca, Goa, Ormuz, Mozambique, etc.) with forts and gunpowder weapons enabled a tiny Portuguese force to dominate the massive Indian Ocean trade ([09:17]).
  • This early form of “commodity imperialism,” enforced by violence and strategic fortresses, served as a blueprint for future European naval powers.

“With a good fort, Portuguese soldiers... can control the spice trade until the day of Judgment.” — Roger Crowley ([10:40])

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3. The Game of Empires: Spanish Rivals and the Magellan Voyage

• Spanish Entry:

  • Ferdinand Magellan, after falling out with the Portuguese, convinced the Spanish crown to attempt a westward route (through the Straits of Magellan), aiming to claim the lucrative Spice Islands for Spain ([14:11], [15:56]).
  • Despite Magellan’s circumnavigation, Spain could not create a sustainable return route across the Pacific due to persistent wind patterns; Portuguese control ultimately held ([15:56]).

• Geopolitical Tension & Treaty Fiction:

  • Rival Spanish and Portuguese kings traded polite letters, arguing over territory demarcated by the imaginary Treaty of Tordesillas line—which no one could locationally fix ([19:09]).
  • Eventually, the Treaty of Zaragoza effectively gave Portugal control over the Spice Islands in practice.

“He who has control of Malacca has his hands on the throat of Venice.” — Roger Crowley ([20:43])

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4. Economic Earthquakes: The Collapse of Old Powers

• Venice, Genoa, and the Mamluks:

  • Direct sailing routes devastated Mediterranean spice-trading powers. Venice suffered financial crashes; the Mamluk regime in Egypt, heavily dependent on spice transit, soon fell to Ottoman conquest ([20:43]).
  • The locus of wealth shifted to Lisbon and eventually to emerging Atlantic powers after centuries of Mediterranean dominance.

• Commodities as Catalysts:

  • Spices catalyzed technological, political, and financial transformation—blending innovation with ruthless exploitation ([12:39], [23:29]).

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5. The Move to Capitalism: Dutch & English Interventions

• From Royal Cronyism to Venture Capital:
  • The Portuguese and Spanish crown-led trading models proved inefficient and corrupt ([23:29]).
  • The Dutch (VOC – Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) and English (East India Company) revolutionized trade via joint-stock companies, risk pooling, and shareholder-led expeditions.

“Really, it's when you move to venture capitalism... where the decisions are taken not by a king... but guys on the ground who have shareholders and who can be much more fleet afoot.” — Roger Crowley ([23:29])

• Dutch Ruthlessness & The VOC:
  • The VOC systematized monocrop violence—massacring locals, uprooting rival spice trees, and creating exclusive plantations ([26:07]).
  • Dutch “Golden Age” (Rembrandt, Amsterdam’s rise) was bankrolled by monopoly on spice ([26:07], [27:18]).

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6. Why Spices Lost Their Luster: Substitution and Taste

• Tastes Change & Sugar Rises:

  • By the 18th century, culinary tastes shifted (led by French cuisine) toward less spice-laden food ([30:27]).
  • Sugar, itself a product of commodities and slave economies, became far more available and popular, outcompeting spices as the flavor enhancer of choice ([30:27], [32:48]).

• End of the Spice Age:

  • The VOC folded; spices became globalized, cultivation spread, prices fell, and their social/mystical significance faded ([30:27], [34:28]).
  • The “gene is out of the bottle”—nutmeg and cloves are now produced worldwide ([34:28]).

“Once you export the seeds to other places, they still do grow nutmeg and cloves on those islands... but spices can be grown in Vietnam, in Africa, in China. The genie's out of the bottle.” — Roger Crowley ([34:28])

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7. Commodities’ Lasting Lessons & Modern Parallels

• Continuity of Concepts:
  • Strategies established in the 16th century—control of chokepoints, risk management, financial innovation—are still used in today’s commodities trading ([40:44]).
  • Modern trading houses mirror their forebears in their approach to ownership and control, “solving problems of commodities in time, form, and location” for profit ([40:44]).

“You don't want to control the country. You want to just control the choke points on that commodities route. If you own the pipeline or refined the one, you know, control the flows in and out of a particular refinery in one region, it's a tremendous source of wealth.” — Paul Chapman ([40:44])

• Reflection on Historical Influence:
  • The spice-driven “explosion of cartography, planetary imagination, and European knowledge of the world” is a true inflection point in world history ([37:56], [39:03]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Value of Spices:
  “It was worth its weight in gold... you presumably lock it up in your lockbox at night.” — Paul Chapman ([05:18])

• On a Single Galleon’s Worth:
  “It's hard... to describe the immense wealth that sits on one galleon.” — Paul Chapman ([14:11])

• On Monopoly and Violence:
  “This is a prototype model of what small countries do... British naval sea power worked on exactly the same principle. So did the Venetians. You just control critical points. There's a lot of violence involved...” — Roger Crowley ([09:17])

• On the Collapse of Venice/Eastern Powers:
  “A Portuguese said, he who has control of Malacca has his hands on the throat of Venice.” — Roger Crowley ([20:43])

• On the Dutch VOC:
  “They would massacre people, they would quell any competitor... if a neighboring island started having, you know, had also had some clove trees, those would get ripped up...” — Paul Chapman ([26:07])

• On the Transition to Sugar:
  “The popularity of sugar is actually a byproduct of the exploration of the world... slave plantations of the Americas bringing in this very cheap, much, much cheaper spice.” — Roger Crowley ([30:27])

• On Lasting Lessons for Commodities:
  “They're not, you don't want to control the country. You want to just control the choke points on that commodities route.” — Paul Chapman ([40:44])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:55] — Origins and rarity of nutmeg and cloves
• [03:30] — Medieval trade routes and value of spices
• [07:10] — Portuguese navigation breakthroughs
• [09:17] — Alfonso de Albuquerque’s military strategy
• [12:39] — Scale of wealth & secrecy in Portuguese trade
• [15:56] — Magellan’s westward route & Spanish-Portuguese rivalry
• [20:43] — The impact on Venice, Genoa, Alexandria, and Mamluk Egypt
• [23:29] — Shift from crown-based to joint-stock trading models
• [26:07] — Dutch VOC's rise and their brutal monopolization
• [30:27] — The decline of the spice trade: tastes and substitution
• [34:28] — Spread of spice cultivation & regional cultural legacies
• [37:56] — Breakpoints in knowledge, cartography, and imagination
• [40:44] — Enduring relevance of chokepoints and risk in commodities
• [43:21] — Roger Crowley’s next projects and reflections

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Conclusion

Roger Crowley’s discussion offers a vivid reminder that commodities have underpinned some of the greatest shifts in global history—from technological innovation and the rise of capitalism, to the birth of modern finance and the persistent logic of chokepoints and monopoly. The story of spices is at once a tale of adventure, violence, and ingenuity—and a parable for the commodity-driven world we still live in.

Resources:

• Spice: The 16th Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World by Roger Crowley (Yale University Press, 2024)

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(For more information about HC Group and related content, visit hcgroup.global)

Transcript

[Roger Crowley]

Foreign.

[Paul Chapman]

Welcome to the HC Commodities Podcast, a podcast dedicated to the commodities sector and the people within it. I'm your host, Paul Chapman. This podcast is produced by HC Group, a global search firm dedicated to the commodities sector. Today we are talking spice, namely nutmeg and cloves, and how their credible value drove technological change, political change, and the birth of the modern commodities sector. Our guest is Roger Crowley, author and historian, and we're discussing his book, Spice the 16th Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World, A Times History Book of the year, published in 2024 by Yale University Press and available in all good bookstores. As always, you can really support the show by leaving a positive review on the platform you're listening on. It really does support us and allow us to continue to get great guests just like Roger. And as always, I hope you enjoy this episode. Roger, welcome to the show.

[Roger Crowley]

Thank you very much, Paul. I'm delighted to be with you.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, I'm excited for this conversation. This is one of our sporadic forays into commodities of days past. And this one, I think, is. These two are particularly fascinating as both drive. Well, the story we're about to tell. The. The commodities themselves and. And what they meant for the. The world for thousands of years, but also the driver of technology and innovation and politics and geopolitics that they. They wrought. And. And we're zooming into the 16th century to tell that story. And the commodities we're talking about are nutmeg and cloves and mace associated with that nutmeg. Can you tell us exactly what they are and why they were kind of the, you know, the oil or the, you know, the gold of those centuries?

[Roger Crowley]

Well, nutmeg and cloves are two spice plants which grow or grew in only one place on the whole planet in the 16th century, which was in the Malay Archipelago, in some tiny islands which are now in the Philippines called the Moluccas. And there are only five small islands where cloves grew and only three small islands when a nutmeg grew. Malay Archipelago is kind of like a laboratory of evolution where two species meet, the species from Asia and the species from Oceania. And the spices which are created out of this extraordinary mix of natural history were very rare and very much sought after by people because of their unique, I think by their rarity value, but also by their uniqueness in terms of taste and flavor and the magical properties which people believe that they had prior

[Paul Chapman]

to the 16th century. In the story we're about to tell, these were very important in cuisine throughout the world, particularly Obviously, in European cuisine. And they were, as you say, they also had medicinal purposes. Can you just give us some sense of the value of nutmeg and cloves when they made it to your Roman dish or your sort of early medieval European banquet hall and how exactly they got there prior to the technological revolutions we're about to talk about, the further

[Roger Crowley]

away you live from the Malacca, the more expensive they became. The spice trade was in the hands of many, many merchants. A whole linking ch which stretched say from the Philippines to Malacca on the coast of the Malay Archipelago, up to India to Goa and Calicut, then across the Indian Ocean to Aden. And as far as Europeans are concerned, they would then be sailed up the Red Sea, they would pass through somebody else's hands, they would be put on a camel and taken over to the Nile. They would then be sailed up the Nile to Alexandria where Venetian and Genoese merchants would come, and then European merchants would come from all over Europe to Genoa and to Venice. And of course, with each link in the chain there's a markup. And the further away you were, the more expensive they became. So by the time these got, say, to England, the markup could be 1000%. So it's an extraordinary, it's a global product in the hands of many players. And the price and the rarity of these products, I think was part of what gave them their allure. People obviously in Europe did not know where these commodities came from. They seem to be something from a magical world beyond Europe. And they ascribe to the spices which they obtained a kind of almost a mystical value in terms of their properties, in terms of their medicinal properties, in terms of antiseptics, analgesics, aphrodisiacs, you name it, or just cheering up food. So this was a global commodity chain in the hands of many players.

[Paul Chapman]

This is sort of worth its weight in gold, right at the time, this was the most valuable by weight commodity in the world, or these two were. And it's kind of, it's worth emphasizing as well, because it really does. I guess I didn't know this before reading the book, but yeah, so, so nutmeg comes from one tiny island or chain of iron, the Bandas islands, which I think are now in modern indonesia. And then 500 miles away is where the clothes came from. So Ternate and Tildor, if I'm pronouncing that right, and, and you had, you know, there was, as you say, there's merchants at every stage and you had a thriving, you know, the, the merchants of these islands would trade with one another. They'd have micro wars and all the rest of it over these commodities. I think the band has had some sort of quite unique at the time sort of cons, government arrangements. But yeah, just there was this entire trading network in place that meant that if you were Roman, yes, you saw nutmeg and it was the most, you know, you presumably lock it up in your lockbox at night. It was so valuable. And this is a world pre sugar. This is a world pre sort of modern condiments that we would think about. And yeah, as you and I chatted offline a couple weeks ago, it would also mask some quite putrid foods at times. So you, you have this incredibly lucrative trade from commodities that are found in tiny islands the other side of the world from Europe. It's making, it's giving Venice all of its glory and the Genoese and there's, you know, it's very secretive where these, these spices come from. That's held in the hands of the merchants. And then I guess we. The story really starts kind of with Vasco da Gama in sort of 1498. And this, the technological revolutions around seafaring that basically meant that the Portuguese could realize that they could probably skip a lot of those middlemen and go and start getting toward the source. Can you, could you pick the story up there?

[Roger Crowley]

Yeah, exactly. I mean the Portuguese are on the Atlantic end of Europe. They're rather locked out of Europe. And the Portuguese are the people who develop Atlantic sailing and more sophisticated way than anybody else really. The idea of going for spices is one that develops over about a hundred year period as they work their way down the coast of Africa as they understand how the Atlantic winds work, really how to sail down there and how to sail back. And they develop the skill of sailing down the west coast of Africa and how to sail back again. And cracking the code of the Atlantic winds is critical really because you needed to swing out into the Atlantic and get a wind to come back to where you came from. And eventually by the 1490s they are ready for a major expedition to the Spice Islands to India, led by Vasco da Gama. And Da Gama's mission really was to develop a spice trade in the Indian Ocean. 1497.

[Paul Chapman]

Yes. And so and there's sort of the many threads that are fascinating for today's commodities world and some of which are pioneered by the Portuguese. So Vasco da Gama sort of unlocks this straight, A Good Hope Passage. And then there's this, I mean this kind of the standout character of the book really is Alfonso de Albuquerque, who, you know, needs to have a sort of HBO miniseries written about him, but he's kind of the one that like, is sort of the individual who truly goes for the prize, right, and figures out that there's some key spots on the way. In particular Malacca, which is now, I guess, modern day Goa, is a key point to control that sort of this way station that starts to bottleneck up the spice trade, because that's where everything, all the spices from the moluccas come through. Can you just tell us a little bit about Fonso de Albuquerque and kind of his plan and how he is the first one to really send ships that get. Get actually to those spice islands.

[Roger Crowley]

Albuquerque was a successor of Vaxco da Gama. The Portuguese really, they enter the Indian Ocean with one commodity, if you can call it that, which is gunpowder, weapons on ships which nobody else had. And this really leads them to believe there's a kind of anti Islamic thing going on here because there are Muslim merchants in the Indian Ocean. There's also monopoly trading, which is really what Portuguese are trying to do. They're trying to grab control of the trade of the Indian Ocean. As this is 26 million square miles of ocean, it's kind of quite an ambitious undertaking. But Albuquerque worked out that effectively there were never more than about 2,000 Portuguese in the whole of the Indian Ocean, but that he worked out that if you control the choke points of trade and fortify them, you could really control the spice trade. So he develops a kind of fortress model of dotting around all the choke points of the Indian Ocean with forts, with a few Portuguese sailors. So we go from Zanzibar, Mozambique, Bahrain, Ormuz, Aden, Goa, which became the capital of Malacca. And he said to the king that with a good fort, Portuguese soldiers with helmets on their heads can control the spice trade until the day of Judgment. So actually, this is a prototype model of what small countries do thorn nations do in Europe. And British naval sea power worked on exactly the same principle. So did the Venetians. You just control critical points. There's a lot of violence involved in this, in subduing any rivals. And the Portuguese really are fairly brutal, quite honestly, but they managed to more or less get control of all these choke points. Not as if they could prevent leakage of spices to other people, but they severely upset, really what had been a kind of maritime commonwealth. The sea was open to a orlings, it used to be said, before the Portuguese came. So this naval Hegemony doctrine really becomes the blueprint for the Portuguese control of spices.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, and the book is fascinating because this sort of runs up until the end of the century. But waiting in the wings of this book are the Dutch and the English, who throughout the book are also doing some def. Spycraft and so forth to get their hands on rutters and pilot notes and maps. And, you know, the value of a map is extraordinary at this time. I guess firstly it is that confluence of naval technology, but also military power and the militarization of trade and this, the perspicacity of this chap Alfonso, to kind of figure out exactly strategically what you needed to do to achieve this. It immediately gets the backs up of the Spaniards, which we'll talk about in a moment. If you were like, you know, we're not talking a tremendous number of ships here, but essentially in 1511, they get it. They get some ships to the islands, they, you know, one ship loaded up with nutmeg and clothes. Can you just give us some sense of the scale of the value of what that would. I mean, that this would profoundly transform the Portuguese economy. Right, Just a ship turning up with this stuff.

[Roger Crowley]

Absolutely. I mean, you know, this is. I mean, they're the ideal global product really, because they're lightweight, they're valuable, and they're reasonably imperishable. So wealth is flowing into to Lisbon. And unfortunately, a lot of the wealth that went into Lisbon is no longer visible because of the earthquake in the 18th century, which destroyed a lot of it. But Lisbon turns into the go to place in Europe. Everybody wants to go there, cartographers, spies, fortune hunters. So this wealth is pouring into the country. If you think that the markup is 1000% and you're controlling it at the same time, the Portuguese are desperate to redact information. There's a great deal of secrecy around maps which they are unable to control in the long run. They prevent the publication of certain books. So they, for a good period, for about 50, 60, 70 years, they are the monopolists of Europe with this product. And everybody has to come to Portugal. It was an extraordinary achievement of a very small nation, if you can call it an achievement, because it obviously involved a great deal of unpleasant behavior. We get what you might call commodity imperialism, I think in your phrase, by violence and certainly by coercion of peoples. But. And it is an extraordinary story that for this short period, Portugal becomes the wealthiest place in Europe. You know, it's the gold mines of Europe.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, there's no real. I mean, it's hard it's sort of, yeah. Is it hard to describe the immense wealth that sits on one galleon? Right. You know, whether that's sort of a 50 ton galleon or two, you know, it's just unbelievable. There is obviously that, you know, there's this chapter, Francisco Cerro, if I'm saying that right, our Portuguese colleagues will probably say I butchered it. But he, he's the one who actually gets to the Spice Islands. And again there's even the Spice Islands banders and the, and Tildor and Tanati are kind of 500 miles away from each other. You know, the typical sort of horrors start and one, one polity is picked over another and, and thoughts kind of, you know, they kind of quickly, or it would seem over time they settle into kind of. It's certainly going to be worse under the Dutch. Right. I think it's the easiest way to say they settle into kind of like monopolizing those local trades. They're working with local merchants and local polities. The problem in some ways is that this chap, Soral's best mate is Ferdinand Magellan, who is a Portuguese at this, who he's writing notes to about, you know, what a wonderful thing we've done finding these Spice Islands. And Magellan Magliel goes unfortunately to the Spanish king and says, hey, I've got a plan for us. And that sort of supercharges what's going to happen with the Spaniards turning up, going the other way, going the westward route. And unfortunately all of that rivalry lands quite locally within Indonesia and the Philippines and these Spice Islands. So can you give us a few words on that, on that story? And again, it's kind of the fascinating, you know, that's a big part of the book is Magellan's voyage westward and you know, the consequences of that and the fact it was all driven by this geopolitical rivalry halfway around the world was driven by spice.

[Roger Crowley]

Yes. Magellan sets off sailing west down the coast of South America. So there's a great deal of mystery around this. Nobody knew for sure that there was a barrier through the Americas or not. And there are gaps there that we will never know. Magellan seems to be mysteriously confident of this. As they go along, there are mutinies because people find going very tough. But they manage to thread their way through what are now the Straits of Magellan, make it into the Pacific Ocean, sail across the Pacific Ocean, which takes them something like six months, I think. And then they pitch up on one of the rival islands of the ones which the Portuguese are Really based in. And we see an extraordinary island micro scale colonial war going on between the two little kingdoms really, one called Ternate and the other called Tidor, with the Portuguese and the Spanish blasting each other with cannons and ship attacks across a distance of about 500 yards. But there can only be one winner of this really because although Magellan have pioneered a route across the Pacific Ocean, it isn't a coherent link in a global chain because they can't sail back again. They couldn't crack the problem of the Pacific winds. And so what happens is that there are about four expeditions. Magellan was killed on the first one in the Philippines when he kind of overreached himself. And the Spanish sent about four expeditions between about 1520 and, and 1540 sailing across the Pacific first round the Straits of Magellan. But then later they built ships on the coast of Mexico getting to the Spice Islands and it was a lobster pot. They couldn't sail back again because they hadn't cracked the problem of the Pacific winds. So effectively the Portuguese who could sail back to Malacca had a long supply chain from their end, effectively defeated the Spanish and successive micro wars captured them and sort of sent them, repatriated them on their own ships. So the local native people are kind of bystanders of this kind of weird little colonial war which obviously involved a great deal of exploitation of the local people as well. So although Magellan's voyage makes another link in the chain, it doesn't complete that chain unless Europeans learnt how to sail back across the Pacific Ocean.

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[Paul Chapman]

amazing sort of letters you recount exchanged between the two kings that are kind of brotherly and nice and making nice and all the rest of it. And everyone's sort of got this fiction of the Treaty of Torsia where Spain and Portugal split the world on a, on a latitude that they couldn't actually quite, quite calculate at that point. And you know, and as a result of that they're claiming where the bits of, where the Molochas, the Spice Islands are in, in whose territory? But as you say De facto Portugal owns those strategic choke points on the way back, and it was never Spain's fight. And eventually they kind of. The Treaty of Zaragoza, I think it is. They sort of divvy it up and Portugal essentially wins. What happens? I mean, again, sort of just for our world, the commodities world, you know, this is earth shaking, right. We're talking essentially within 20 years, the entire spice trade is disrupted. What happens? I mean, there's other stuff going on in the 16th century for Venice, it's, you know, it's sort of peak wars with. With the Ottoman Empire, that's resurgent and so forth. But what is the impact on the existing. You know, you've got incredible and obviously topical at the moment, incredible wealth sat in the Straits of Hormuz that have been controlling that particular flow. Alexandria's peak, Alexandria, you've got Venice and Genoa, powerful polities. And then within, within, basically the century is curtains for them. Right. Can you give us some sense of the impact outside of kind of this main narrative between Spain and Portugal?

[Roger Crowley]

Yes, I mean, you can always pinpoint it to a day, but a Portuguese said, he who has control of Malacca has his hands on the throat of Venice. And when the Venetians first heard, or, well, initially of Vasco da Gama's voyage, there were bank crashes in Venice. And really Venice had really, you know, it wasn't built only on spices, but spices are a very important part of their trading rationale. And merchants came from all over Europe. And so this is going to have a fundamental consequence for the Venetians. It's going to lead to sort of this gold rush to the Atlantic coast one way or another from, you know, Seville and Lisbon. And it's going to disrupt the Islamic world, particularly the Mamluks in Egypt, in Cairo, who were the ruling dynasty of the time, who depended very heavily on the spice trade, and which will actually collapse quite quickly because the Ottomans will come and take them over. So earth shaking, it did change the way that people looked at the world. Who are the winners, who are the losers? And we can see Venice, the sort of beginning, slow beginning decline of Venice, really, as a result of what the Atlantic pioneers were doing, or the Pacific pioneers as well. So it shook and started to reshape Europe, and there's no doubt about it.

[Paul Chapman]

And at the same time, you've got the English, there's a quite a good English spy in Seville sending info back and maps to London and Henry VIII and John Cabot and so forth, who are thinking about whether there's a northern route there's. At the same time that, you know, the Dutch are very much watching. The next company will be the Dutch East India Company or the voc. One of the other things that's happening at the same time as you have this, so you have this technology develops, the caravel and ocean faring. You also have obviously the rise, this is right at peak kind of gun power entering kind of the European wars and, and lots of competition between these small sort of micro states in Europe that is driving that technological change. You also get this sort of, this is, and you argue in the book as well, this is kind of early birth of capitalism as well. You, you start to, because you have these very risky long distance journeys. There is, you know, the start of kind of risk pooling and credit and kind of commodity spec. I mean, can you give us some sense of the financing and the setup of these trips?

[Roger Crowley]

Yeah, it's interesting really. I mean Spain and Portugal effectively had a crown based model which was that everything needed to come back to the king and then be dispersed. This is very inefficient in terms of the involvement of the people who are actually making the voyages, buying the stuff and so on. And there's a huge amount of corruption around this. But these are, are very inefficient commercial models. And really it's when you move to venture capitalism, if you like, and the East India Company and the VOC where the decisions are taken not by a king who's, you know, 10,000 miles away and has no idea what's going on, but guys on the ground who have shareholders and who can be much more fleet are afoot in terms of taking decisions. And really that's the story particularly of the voc, the Dutch trading company who were not constrained by. There was a Christian mission for the Spanish and the Portuguese. There's no mission to convert people to Christianity among the merchant venturers of Europe with these new commercial models in which people, many merchants can invest. And so you get a kind of all the stuff that went round exploration for Spain and Portugal, which was also sending out missionaries to convert people to Christianity and so on and recognize the King of Spain as their king. You don't get any of that anymore. You just get the VOC and indeed in due course the English equivalents that they just want the stuff and they act with a kind of cold blooded ruthlessness if you like, to control the trade, to cut out any competitors and to maximize their own profits. So we're moving to very much more of a capitalist entrepreneurial model from one from Crown back venture. And so this is really, you could call it the proto modern capitalism. A move away from kings being the controllers of this to teams of merchants. And, you know, this is a critical moment, I think, in the development of, you know, small state exploration of the world. The Dutch and the English particularly, and you know, certainly the Dutch behavior in the Moluccas was pretty awful, really. You know, they would massacre people, they would quell any, any competitor they managed

[Paul Chapman]

to push, they'd rip up, you know, if a neighboring island started having, you know, had also had some clove trees, those would get ripped up and all. I mean, it was quite, as you say, sort of the, the Portuguese. And let's use this to tell the story of what happened to Portuguese. But they, they're burdened in some ways by other territories, right. They've, you know, they were also trying to control Brazil and so forth. It's a very small country, but as you say, there's. There's also this sort of multiple missions of evangelizing the Catholic Church. All, you know, they've started this idea that the choke point is what matters, but they can't quite go full hog on it, whereas the Dutch do. And that ultimately leads to the 17th century. You know, the Netherlands and the incredible wealth that's in there is, you know, and Rembrandt and the, the golden age of Dutch maritime and Amsterdam and so forth is all driven by. They've captured the Spice Islands. And what they do there is, as you say, you allude to in the book, talk about in the book, kind of this transition pretty devastating stuff. What, what happens to Portugal? Why, why does Portugal, you know, it sort of. Well, firstly it gets combined with Spain. But can you just tell the story of Portugal and kind of how it won and then subsequently lost this vast fortune?

[Roger Crowley]

And yes, I think what happens is really that the monarchic model of exploration is very inefficient. Unfortunately for the Portuguese, they also, because of the. I mean, this is a Protestant economic revolution effectively in Northern Europe, the rise of Protestantism. And there's a lot that you can say about what the Protestant thing brought to merchant communities. Firstly, the translation of the Bible into English meant the people could read more. And literate merchants are different people to people who can't read. But the trouble with the Portuguese is that alongside the commercial mission was a religious mission. And they were nuts about crusading full stop. And the Portuguese effectively came to their nemesis the end of the 16th century. 1570. I think 1570 is when the king of Portugal and all the nobility get wiped out on a crusade in Morocco at a battle. So their model, if you like their commercial model, as I, you know, we've talked about a little bit earlier on, collapses under the weight of the pressure of the competition for the more ruthless, more pragmatic peoples of northern Europe. And ditto with Spain. I mean Spain, you know, again had the same kind of mentality and couldn't embrace the idea of a fully entrepreneurial commercial system. And they just get outflanked, outgunned by these nimbler, small Protestant merchant based countries.

[David Hunt]

Hello, I'm David Hunt, founder and managing director at Hyperion Search. Founded over a decade ago, Hyperion Search has helped organizations from major utilities to startups recruit their leadership teams and key individual contributors to accelerate both their growth and the energy transition. Our three main verticals are renewable power, energy storage and E mobility. The energy transition and the talent that delivers it has been our passion since day one. To find out more, visit hyperionsearch.com or listen to my leaders in question clean tech podcast available on all platforms.

[Paul Chapman]

Who invent. Essentially, you've got a couple of unlocking factors there. One is the joint stock company, right. And then also a different, well, the Dutch don't have a monarchy in the same way. So you just don't have that same sort of funneling and centralization. But I find it, I find that fascinating. The other thing. So then let's talk about the spice trade in general because obviously today I was marveling at my, my, my, our pantry this morning and we've got six nutmeg, clove, whatever they're called, fruits, dried. So you know, and that would have been worth a couple of bars of gold 500 years ago. Not that my son seen that interest when I told him that. But obviously today they aren't worth what they were. So you know, what happened to that spice trade and this is a story ultimately of it was too expensive and substitution. But also. Yeah, can you tell that story too?

[Roger Crowley]

Yes. I mean I think two things happen really. I think by the 18th century we can see culinary taste change and the French are the leaders in this. They move away from heavy spice laden cuisine to more natural flavors, fresh vegetables. I mean one of the things that spice did was the sort of cosh your taste buds and also to disguise meat that wasn't actually quite up to it. So there's a cultural shift away from heavy taste. And the French are the leaders in this. But what really makes the difference is sugar. And actually we don't think of Sugar as a spice. But actually sugar first home is somewhere in that laboratory of, of evolution in the Malay archipelago. Sugar. And you could say that the popularity of sugar is actually a byproduct of the exploration of the world. Because one of the things of course that happens is that the Portuguese, among many things they did with, are actually the, you could call them the fathers of the spice trade. So fathers of the slave trade. So we start to see the human labor is available to harvest sugar much more cheaply. Shorter distances and I think in England in the 18th century, sugar consumption quadruples. So it's both a cultural thing, it's a popularity and cheapness of this new flavor. And in a sense I think of people being absolutely fed up with having to buy spices from the Dutch at enormous prices. So the VOC is finally wound up somewhere in the early 18th century I think. So we're seeing the revolution, if you like, of taste, of imperial power. And the imperial power now being tied up with the slave plantations of the Americas bringing in this very cheap, much, much cheaper spice, if you can call sugar a spice, knocking out the popularity. But it's also a taste difference I think, from, from those kind of heavy, full on tastes of spices to something, well, which is also full on, I suppose, sugar.

[Paul Chapman]

It's not, not quite as full on as nutmeg, mace and cloves.

[Roger Crowley]

No, no, no, no. So you know, people start to rot their teeth, you know, by piercing sugar.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah. The Dutch didn't enter that trade. Right. Because they got, you know, beat with the English did them over.

[Roger Crowley]

No, they didn't because they didn't really have quite, quite the colonial reach I suppose, of other countries really. I don't know why they, you know, I mean there's, you know, small population.

[Paul Chapman]

I mean we had quite a few. I mean basically it was who, who won the wars of the 17th century between the British or the English and the Dutch kind of then determined sort of future, you know, opportunity. And a lot of that was ultimately down to maritime, you know, skill. And we, you know, the British obviously have a very long coastline and some pretty pre contrary winds that they developed that skill over. But yeah, I mean that's, that's definitely interesting. Needs to be your next book.

[Roger Crowley]

Well, yes, that is interesting. British get it together in the 18th century in terms of commitment to the sea and managing their economy and national buy in around a maritime identity and

[Paul Chapman]

a national debt and a. Well, you, you could argue that the Dutch win in the sense that William of Orange became king of England in 1688.

[Roger Crowley]

Yeah.

[Paul Chapman]

So perhaps they, you know, actually, that's. I'm using the wrong. Wrong lens there, but the different stories you say, what are the Spice Islands today? I know now they grow nutmeg in Grenada. And, you know, but these are. They're very unique environments, like. And I think to this day, the region celebrates the death of Magellan.

[Roger Crowley]

Yes, they do. Yes. I mean, there are all sorts of impacts, really. Of course, all these spices. And I had a quick look at it. You know, they grow. Spices can be grown in Vietnam, in Africa, in China, the genies out of the bottle. Once you export the seeds to other places, they still do grow nutmeg and clothes on those islands. It had been my plan to go, but unfortunately Covid intervened. But they remain, as far as I can understand from people who have been there, absolutely fascinating laboratory of evolution. You know, they are completely remarkable places. And they're part of the Philippines in terms of cultural impact. Yes. The death of Magellan or Magellan. I don't quite know if he's Magellan or Magellan. I think it might depend with the Spanish or Portuguese, is celebrated every year on what they call Lapu, Lapu Day, which is when Magellan was killed in a battle. And they reenact this very cheerfully when somebody has to dress up and be Magellan. But there's two sides to it, actually, because at the same time, Magellan introduced to them into Christianity, and he brought with him a tiny little Christ figure called the Santa Nino de Cebu, I think he's called, which is the most revered of the Filipino Catholic figurines or saint figures in their religion. So Filipinos are Christians as a result of what the Europeans brought them. So, you know, it's kind of interesting, the side products, if you like, of the whole spice thing, you know, they kept multiplying in all sorts of different directions. So, yeah, for the Filipinos, you know, it's Magellan. Apparently, it's a not uncommon name in the Philippines, so I'm not quite sure where that one's going.

[Paul Chapman]

Mixed a mixing. Yeah. And the book also recounts. We don't have time for it here, but obviously the. The Portuguese, Sorry. Also make forays into the Pearl river and China, which I guess is subsequent. You know, that's how we get Macau. And eventually they'll see the British take that over or take, you know, that they ain't take on that trade with a different suite of commodities and tea and opium and that whole world that one day we'll hopefully do a podcast on. I guess when you when you. What's sort of fascinating about this, and it's still very much true today, is how technology change as well as kind of technologies in terms of hard things like ships, but also soft things like contracts and risk and pooling and so forth and taste, you know, drove this dramatic change in the world that was sort of wrought over this 70100 year period that completely upended 2000 years worth of trade networks and in itself then drove change to sugar as well. Right. I mean, I just find it kind of fascinating how the commodity shaped the society previously. A change, technological change, then utterly reshaped society, society and then the commodity itself became substituted and somewhat abandoned in the wake of new tastes and new technologies in the form of sugar and subsequently all of the condiments we have today. I mean it's, it's quite a, it's a fascinating. I guess I find the book is. Is really powerful in that it takes what is quite a short lens of this, you know, the, the early 16th century. But really, I guess there's a lot there for the commodity world to, to see and recognize in today's trade and especially what's going on at the moment with the Straits of Hormuz.

[Roger Crowley]

Yes, no, absolutely. I mean, I think it was a moment, you know, an explosion of cartography, an explosion of what people understanding of the world in Europe, you know, that the. You could own a globe, you know, and you could spin the world around, you could see the world, you could have a planetary imagination developing, developing as a result of this. And the world is mine oyster and I with mine sword will take it, as Shakespeare said. But the explosion of knowledge that comes out of this really both in terms of printed accounts of literacy, of cartography, of the imagination of the world developed very fast in the 16th century. You know, it's absolutely fascinating period of growth really in terms of the European knowledge of the world, the way that it experienced it. So, you know, it's one of those breakpoint moments I think in world history. And the spice trade certainly has, you know, quite a significant part of, you know.

[Paul Chapman]

Well, because these decades, particularly 1511. 15, 20, 15, 30. I mean, the, the world history I read or the history I read, you know, we were always seeing these decades through the lens of what Spain and Portugal doing on the, the other half of the world. Right. What they're doing in the Americas and the conquest of the Aztecs and the Incans and the rivalry between the two. And it's, it's fascinating to realize at the same time and probably as consequential was this other trade, you know, that was going on, certainly as consequential when it came to people's, you know, to, to the middle, you know, to Eurasia from a winners and losers standpoint. So I just found it a really refreshing lens. And then once again it rams home that at the center of technological innovation, center geopolitics and geo rivalry and at the center of economics ultimately sits commodities. And you can tell the same story through the lens as we have, you know, with Salt. We had Mr. Kalansky on talking about his book there, you know, through spice, through oil, through gold. And I just find it fascinating that actually the way that the world intersects with one of good or ill and a lot of ill in this book, you know, is through commodities. So it's been a, it was a great read and I very much appreciate you coming on.

[Roger Crowley]

Yeah, well, it's fascinating to talk about it, but also to hear from what you were saying, you know, about the way that spice is just one commodity and you can, and you could pars the history of the world through a whole range of commodities at different periods, you know, and it's fascinating to think about to just take a commodity centered view of world history, which I'm sure you know, is your stock in trade. So. Yeah, I mean, thought.

[Paul Chapman]

Well, it's not. I mean, the lessons are still employed today, right. You have these privately owned trading houses and many of our listeners are work there today, you know, who are fabulously successful at solving problems of commodities in time, form and, and location and as a result, fabulously wealthy companies at the same, you know, doing that. But you know, they are, it's the same lessons, right? They're not, you don't want to control the, the country. You want to just control the, the choke points on that commodities route. If you own the pipeline or the refined, the one, you know, control the flows in and out of a particular refinery in one region. It's a tremendous source of wealth. You don't. And all the risk pooling and the risk taken and all the rest of it. As we all know right now, trading oil is as risky as it was trading spices back in the day. But. Well, we'll put links to the book in the show notes. What's next on the horizon? Have you started to dream up the next book?

[Roger Crowley]

The next book is going to be I'm fascinated by the sea. My dad with a naval officer. I'm collecting a range of articles that I've written or intend to write about various, mainly about the maritime things about Mediterranean, about the rise of European sea power in the 18th century. It's going to be sort of not quite great as hits. It's going to be a sort of some of the material that I've collected in the writing of books that I have written really in series of kind of short, short pieces. It's kind of like my, my self

[Paul Chapman]

indulgent holiday Patrick o' Brien vignettes and

[Roger Crowley]

well, no, I'm not quite down there but I mean each of these books takes about four years quite by the time I, you know, so, so this is kind of like, you know this is, this is my vac. A short vacation from heavy lifting. After that we'll see. But they, they're fascinating to write. I mean I knew a little bit about this but once I started exploring this topic it just unfolded in so many different ways in so many different directions. You know there are just so many aspects to it that you know, my, my brain was kind of hurting under the, the impact of trying to manage all the potential material that was available. Not least of all because some fool invented printing in the 16th century and with tons more to read but which actually was good because you know, too few sources is not good. So anyway, that's, that's my, that's my next task. The holiday.

[Paul Chapman]

Lovely.

[Roger Crowley]

The holiday writing.

[Paul Chapman]

Well, I love the book. I'll give Dominic Sambrook the the Final Word where he calls it a story of true tremendous verve and scope and indeed it is and we haven't covered but a tenth of the stories within the book and yeah, as I say, I'll put links to the show notes and Roger, I think all of us really appreciate your time.

[Roger Crowley]

Thanks very much Paul. It was a joy to talk to you.

[Paul Chapman]

Thank you for listening. To find out more about HC Group, our global offices and our expertise in search within the commodities sector, please visit www.hcgroup global.