The Indian Spice Trade: In Search for Knowledge and Riches

For centuries India was the nexus of international trade by land and by sea. The valuable commodities exported from India included botanicals used as medicine, spices, dyes, unguents for rituals and worship and perfumes and cosmetics, as well as manufactured goods like dyed cottons and artificially colored stones. The commercial values of these commodities were based on complex understanding of the properties of natural products worked out since ancient times in India. Ways of learning through experience and observation accrued over centuries and transferring such deductions to broader applications were highly developed in ancient cultures, especially in India. The prime example of such knowledge development was the botanical-medical traditions of India, the underpinning of the primary commodities of trade from India, medicines and spices.

This exhibition is divided into six parts that spotlight the impact and influences of products of Indian botanical-medical knowledge systems, Indian medicines and spices had on shaping history, geography, natural sciences and culture in the early modern world and provides fascinating glimpses into a little-known chapter of East-West interactions.

1. India: The Nexus of International Trade in the First Millennium

2. In Search of Knowledge and Riches: Communities in Indian Spice Trade

3. Europeans Enter Indian Spice Trade

4. Portuguese and Dutch Records of Indian Medicine

5. British and the Botanical Wealth of India

Maritime Trade between India, Africa, and the Middle East, and between India and Southeast Asia and China, were well established by the 1st century AD. Overland inter-Asia trade routes (called the Silk Road in the 19th century) and the maritime routes came together in trading centers in India and the Middle East, bringing together traders, cultures and commodities from all parts of the ancient world. Different segments of trade routes were dominated by regional merchants, and all trade routes converged on Alexandria where Venetian and Genoese merchants took over Asian and Middle Eastern merchandize for European markets. The volumes of merchandize transported by sea far exceeded the capacity of overland trade. Documents from the period suggest remarkable knowledge of Asian geography and the profound impact of Asia trade on Europe.

Before Europeans directly entered trade with India, maritime trade was dominated by Asian and Middle Eastern merchants. Along with the enormous wealth amassed by regional traders, cultural, artistic and philosophical influences were exchanged between these regions that are evident even today. According to the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a maritime document from the 1st century AD, discovery of the monsoon winds changed the duration of the voyages to and from India, to the middle East and to East Asia. Aided by the winds, sailing ships could make the voyages to and from the East Coast of Africa to the West Coast of India in 3 weeks. The text also describes in detail routes to India, the hazards of the voyages and the wide range of highly valuable commodities available in India.

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Arrival of Vasco da Gama in India, in 1498, changed the pattern of India-European and inter-Asian trade. The search for shorter and direct sea routes to India by Europeans was to acquire Indian commodities “all very fruitful and yielding such Treasure and rich Merchandize, as none other place of the whole world can afford,” according to John van Linschoten in His Discourses of Voyages into ye East and West Indies (1598). The search for high value commodities from India was the driving force for the Voyages of Discovery that profoundly changed the map of the world and world history.

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Soon after their arrival in India it became obvious that European medicines were inadequate to deal with tropical diseases. According to contemporary records, Europeans experienced "many continuall fevers, which are burning agues, and consume men's bodies with extreame heate, whereby within foure or five days they are (eyther) whole or dead. This sickness is common and very dangerous, and hath no remedie for the Portingalles, but letting of blood: but the Indians and heathens do cure themselves with herbes…" Also obvious was that Indian medical systems had powerful therapies for tropical diseases, and that Indian physicians were “very well acquainted with medicine.” So, an important commodity Europeans collected from India was the rich legacy of regional botanical medical knowledge for their use in India and in tropical colonies in Asia and the Americas.

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In 1600 the British East India Company was established by royal charter of Queen Elizabeth I, for the specific purpose of establishing trade with India. In addition to engaging in the spice and commodities trade that had commercial value to Europe, the British viewed Portuguese and Dutch expansion into India with alarm. In a letter from Charles D'Avenan, a strong proponent for British expansion into overseas territories, to the Marquis of Normandy, the writer elaborates the importance of British presence in India thus: "But since Europe has tasted of this luxury, since the customs of a hundred years has made their spices necessary to the constitutions of all degrees of people, since their silks are pleasing everywhere to the better sort, and since their calicoes are a useful wear at home, and in our own plantations, and for the Spaniards in America, it can never be advisable for England to quit this trade, and leave it to any other nation" (The Avalon Project, Yale University).

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Encounter with the exotic flora and fauna of India, and peoples and their ways of life, expanded the study of natural sciences and the European vision of the world. And artists and poets found inspiration from descriptions of travelers and traders returning from India. Voyages to the ‘Indies’ also promoted Geography and map-making, and maritime technologies advanced during this period. Part six of the India Spice Trade series of exhibitions provides glimpses of such advances.

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Large scale and direct access to Indian commodities greatly enriched the European world and stimulated inquiry about the broader world and systematic study of natural history. New medicines and cures encountered in India promoted experimentation in medicine away from classical Greek medicine and stimulated drug discovery.

In addition to the historical and cultural significance of the unique contributions of Indian botanical-medical knowledge systems, information collected by Europeans on Indian botany and medicine highlighted in the exhibition are records of botanical medical knowledge developed in India over centuries. Medical healers and practitioners from all levels of Indian society contributed to this knowledge, which represents regional folk knowledge of India, in addition to what is available in classical Indian medical texts.

As such the European records of Indian medical therapies remain valuable records of many vanished regional medical traditions which were otherwise orally transmitted and unrecorded. Revisiting these records of therapies unique to India, with current understanding of disease pathways and modern scientific tools, could yield therapeutic solutions for hitherto intractable diseases.

While India scholars and practitioners who contributed to these volumes largely remain unidentified, the European botanical-medical documents featured in this exhibition bear witness to how vital Indian medical knowledge traditions were to early European colonial enterprise and provide glimpses into the little-known chapter of East-West interactions. According to the historian Prof. Donald F. Lach in Asia in the Making of Europe, “The remarkable story of knowledge Europeans encountered in Asia is often a footnote to the imaginative daring of the European voyages of discovery.”