As Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor, lay in the captivity of the Spaniards, little would he have known that his fate – and that of his kingdom – were related to the European search for a trade route to India. The Inca emperor, for that matter, had never even heard of India or the Indian spices that the Europeans craved for. Fate of the Incas tied to spice trade with India? Sounds like a trumped up story? Let me explain.
At the beginning
We start our journey way back in time when the Romans were the masters of Europe and dominated the sea trade route to India. Spices of all types, were traded between India and Rome, but the pride of place belonged to pepper, the King of Spices. Native to the Malabar coast, pepper was highly sought after in Europe. After all, till the early 16th century, the only way you could spice up your food was by adding a dash of pepper.
Oh wait, couldn’t they have used chili, you may ask? They could have, if only they knew about the existence of chili! Chili, or ‘chili pepper’ as it is known, is native to South America and the entire South American continent was unknown to Europe till the 15th century CE. Pepper thus occupied a unique place in every household. And the only place where it was grown – the Malabar coast of India!
Given a chance, I am sure many of us would be eager to go back in time to the early middle ages and become a pepper grower. You would have a virtual monopoly on one of the most sought after commodities in the world. Kings in the Malabar coast raked-in the moolah and so did the merchants who transported the precious commodity around the world.
By the 14th – 5th century, the Romans had long disappeared from the scene, and were replaced by the Arabs and Ottomans. In all cases, Christian Europe lost direct trade access to the spices of India and were dependent on Arab merchants to procure spices from the East.
Spice War
There may not have been patents or trademarks those days, but the Arabs protected the secret of their trade route to India very carefully. Pepper procured from all along the Malabar coast would travel via Arab ships across the Arabian Sea (now you know why the sea is thus named) taking the produce via one of two routes to Europe:
- Via the Persian Gulf and further overland to Baghdad and beyond into Europe
- Via the Red Sea and the Mediterranean and further overland through Constantinople into Europe
Arab rulers protected this trade route to India with all their might. The Europeans, as you would expect, were not really thrilled about having to pay a premium to the Arabs for their essential spice. An uneasy truce lasted all through the 11th-15th century and while Venetian and Arab merchants got richer in the trade, the Christian rulers of Europe and the Muslim rulers of Arabia and Turkey were itching for a fight.
| Did you know… |
|---|
| Pepper trade in the Mediterranean was monopolized by Venetian merchants. The humble pepper was in large parts responsible for the rise of Venice as an economic powerhouse. |
Fall of Constantinople
Things finally came to a head in the mid 15th century. To be exact, on 29 May 1453. That was the day when Constantinople, the capital of the Christian Byzantine empire, fell to the Ottoman Turks. Constantinople was one of the greatest market places of mediaeval Europe. With it now under the Ottoman control, Europe was at a great disadvantage. The Silk route and the Spice route both terminated within Ottoman territory and Europe was entirely at the mercy of Arab merchants for trade with Asia.
The alternate route
Defeating the Ottomans in a frontal war was out of the question. The land route around Turkey/Central Asia to China and further to India was perilous and not practical. It seemed that all hope was lost for the Europeans.
But wait, an alternate route to India did exist. If somebody could sail down the West coast of Africa, turn around the Cape of Good Hope and sail east to the Malabar coast, they could completely bypass the Ottoman blockade. In today’s world, with Google maps and GPS satellites, this looks like a trivial task – any school child can suggest this alternative. But in the 15th century, no European had ventured down the west coast of Africa. Fantastical stories existed that the African landmass extended till eternity. God knows how far the tip of the continent was?!
It was a gamble, and lured by the possibility of humongous wealth, a few brave men set sail from Portugal and Spain. (Brave or crazy, depending on how you would want to look at it, there being a very fine line separating the two!) But why Portugal and Spain? These two countries were closest to the west African coast and their sailors were most familiar with the weather, the currents, and the winds of the area.
East or West?
The rest of the story should be fairly familiar for my readers. The Portuguese sailed down the west coast of Africa and reached the Cape of Good Hope. Here they bribed someone who knew the monsoon wind system, and following the South-West monsoon (read my earlier article on the monsoon wind system) reached Calicut on 20 May 1498. Nearly 45 years after the fall of Constantinople, Europe had finally bypassed the Ottomans.
The Spaniards did something different. Strong believers in the theory that if you travel sufficiently far to the west you will end up reaching the east, they travelled in the opposite direction. It was supposed to be an open ocean and a few islands here and there before they would reach the fabled riches of India. But, where did they end up? South America! On October 12, 1492 Columbus landed in the Bahamas island, and, like all European colonialists, claimed the Bahamas and its people for Spain.
Peppercorn for the Incas
The Spanish still didn’t understand that they had landed not in India but a totally new land, and continued referring to everything they saw with an Indian name. The people were ‘Red Indians’ and on finding chili instead of pepper, they named it ‘Chili Pepper’ or ‘Bell Pepper’. Within 20-30 years, the Spaniards raced through the South American continent and came across the Incas.
Which brings us back to Atahualpa. His warriors were no match for the Spaniards and the diseases they brought from Europe (Influenza in particular). Atahualpa was quickly subdued, imprisoned and eventually executed. Alas, the quest for the humble pepper had destroyed the Inca empire.
| Did you know… |
|---|
| Pepper remains the most traded spice in the world. It is now grown in many countries, so hopefully we wouldn’t have any more colonial explorations pursuing the King of Spices. |
Superb read!! loved it 🙂