Europe spice trade

Figure 2.5. When the Dutch gained a near monopoly on the spice trade into northern Europe, the resulting wealth made Amsterdam one of the richest cities in the world, with a consequential blossoming of the arts, education, medicine and science.

Ginger is the rhizosome of the plant Zingiber officinale Roscoe, grown in southern Asia. It was one of the first oriental spices to reach south-eastern Europe in the ancient spice trade. 

Europe, a pound of ginger was worth the price of a sheep a pound of mace would buy three sheep or half a cow cloves cost the equivalent of about 20 a pound. Pepper, always the greatest prize, was counted out peppercorn by peppercorn. The guards on London docks even down to Elizabethan times, had to have their pockets sewn up to make sure they didn t steal any spices. In the 11 Century, many towns kept their accounts in pepper taxes and rents were assessed and paid in this spice and a sack of pepper was worth a man s life . This reflects the immense value of spices and the spice trade about 800 years ago. 

Venice was an important centre for trade and commerce between Europe, the Middle East and the Orient, and became the funnel through which many spices and aromatic raw materials reached Europe, and its domination in trade for these products lasted for a few hundred years. 

Combatting such practices was a long time in coming. The first recorded pure food laws were enacted in thirteenth century Europe [2], but enforcement always lagged behind the actual law, and things really got out of hand with the great trade expansion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when all kinds of exotic and expensive brews and spices were imported into Europe. 

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