Spices

First, should make a correction to a previous spice post. da Gama wasn't the first Western European to reach the spice islands. He was probably the first to get there with large cannons suitable for empire carving.

In the medieval mind, spices were associated with Paradise. It was believed that spices grew in Eden, and were part of their allure to medieval Europeans. In fact, Columbus believed when he found spices, he would find Paradise. By his third voyage, when success was not abounding, Columbus still believed he was close to finding Paradise. In a telling detail that he expected to find a biblical Paradise, Columbus had brought with him a translator who spoke...Hebrew, Greek and Persian. He wasn't much use in talking to the Carib people.

The book also briefly refers to spiced wine, in the context of being served to royalty. In fantasy stories, people drink spiced wine like it was water any peasant could get from a tap. But, spice was expensive, given the distance it had to travel (say, from the East Indies to England) and all the middlemen involved. So, it was expensive, and not likely to be drunk by a peasant spending what little money he had on drinking spice.

I had already planned to have an exotic trade coming up the river to the royal city in The Circle. Now, I'll also include a spice trade, and spiced wine will be drunk only by rich people.

The book points out that even in ancient time, spice trade flourished, and made its way around the Roman world. A Roman camp, circa 10 BC, excavated in Germany, had remains of pepper corns. (Pepper is native to India's Malabar Coast.) There is tablet dated to around the second century AD, from a Roman fort south of Hadrian's wall in Britain that details soldiers' expenditures on pepper.

All this got me to thinking, the study of history is really just finding out the answers to the questions "What did people want?" and "What did they do to get it?"