The (history of) spice must flow | Hacker News Reader

The (history of) spice must flow

resobscura.substack.com

71 pointsbenbreen22 comments

I can easily imagine people wanting spices and for the purposes benbreen (the OP) says, including as components of drugs (in the medieval sense of drugs as described).

But a key to spice trade puzzle, for me, is the transport cost. Some shipped almost all the way around Eurasia, the long way. I know sea transport was and is relatively very inexpensive, but how much did it cost in the technology of the time? And they also had the overhead of military costs. What was the total cost of procuring spices, if that can be calculated?

(Also, I'm not quite clear about the time period this history describes. Freedman's book's title says it's about the medieval period, but most examples in the article seem to be early modern. It's starting to sound like a wide swath of history.)

The key to spice trade is TINA - There is no alternative - in financial terms. The largest form of investment in Middle Ages had been farmland with average ROI of c.a. 7-8 percent but no guarantee (wars, diseases, crop failure). The ROI of spice trade was 200-300 percent over similar period.

So if you wanted double you capital it was either spice trade or investing in land for 20 years.

And the cost? It is like asking Citadel about their servers costs....

Sea transport was hugely expensive and risky: building giant ships, supplying and paying crews for voyages lasting years, and huge rates of loss (20% was common). But unlike land transport, it scaled very well, so this was a direct trigger for creating companies as we know them: merchants would band together to finance the expeditions, and then collect outsize returns (400%+ was not uncommon) for successful ones, much like VCs today.

I'm sure this is well-known, but the dutch East India Company invented investing, having investors invest in a future voyage, paying the upfront cost of the journey, reducing the risk of the company, and if the journey was successful they would get a profit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company

Risk sharing with investors predates the VOC by a few centuries if not millennia. iirc Hansa merchants invested in the modern sense and the Code of Hammurabi, written around 1700 BCE, provides a legal framework to things that could be construed as invested. The Italian republics, China, etc. probably have more of the same.

> They are more like nutmeg, sugar, or tea: slightly mood-altering, perhaps.

This line struck me and particularly the mention of tea.

While tea is only slightly mood-altering, the fact that tea was made with boiled water must have had some larger impact given that it reduced the odds of getting a water borne disease. Yes, you could argue that beer/mead etc also had to be boiled but alcohol is a depressant.

The combination of boiled water and a small amount of caffeine being used by a population not used to it must have been a big deal.

Fair point but most beer had a low alcohol content .5%~3%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_beer

From that same page:

> It was common for workers who engaged in laborious tasks to drink more than ten imperial pints (5.7 litres) of small beer a day to quench their thirst

And not one mention of Frank Herbert.

Yes, quite contrary to my expectations. The phrase isn't even used outside of the title. I always knew it only as a Dune reference; was the actual spice trade ever described in such terms?

Pretty sure the answer is no.

all I know is they better keep that black pepper flowing across the ocean to my plate or war could break out

Ah yes, hundreds of years of global spice trade and colonisation for the sake of spices, yet the flavors that stuck were salt and pepper. I am so disappointed.

Author here - I love Dune and mostly just used the phrase for the title. But I did write this about Herbert and the drug/spice trade which might be of interest: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/pharmacology/

The phrase in the title is also not from Frank Herbert. It is from Lynch's movie adaptation of the books.

...Paul turned back to look at the Emperor, said: ‘When they permitted you to mount your father’s throne, it was only on the assurance that you’d keep the spice flowing. You’ve failed them, Majesty. Do you know the consequences?’ ‘Nobody permitted me to—’ ...

And

... The spice flow, that’s their river, and I have built a dam. But my dam is such that you cannot destroy it without destroying the river. ...’

Sure, but "The spice must flow" specifically as a slogan is an iconic phrase original to the movie.

It would be nice if it could be surreptitiously slipped into the new one somehow, as a tip of the hat to Lynch.

Reminds me of the phrase "Luke, I am your father", which is not actually used in the movie.

I've read all of the Herbert's Dune before watching Lynch movie, cited phrase above stood out to me at the time even when embedded within the broader context of a dialogue. Its possible though that I've picked it up from someone who picked it also up from the movie, sure.

Great article. One note: it’s the Metropolitan Museum of Art, not Modern Art (you’re thinking of MoMA).

An article that talks of the history of spice, but doesn't mention Indian spice origins alongside Ayurvedic texts. Perhaps should be renamed to "more recent spice trade from a western lense view"

if you like spices history, there's this account on twitter that talks about spices in middle ages with main focus of spices in SEA countries. siwaratrikalpa or something i can't really remember.

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