The Spice Route: A History (California Studies in Food and Culture)

If you think "Spice Route" somehow sounds unappetizing, I suggest that you set aside that prejudice and avail yourself of the fascinating and authoritative history well told here by John Keay. Rare is the writer who can rival Keay in undertaking researches of such daunting scope, resulting in books of such insightful cogency and eloquence. Keay's delightful idiolect, rooted in supreme mastery of H.M. English, makes this remarkably informative book, embracing a vast ambit of time and geography, savory indeed.

Keay has written a wonderful book here. I am a spice merchant, and have found the information in this book invaluable when folks ask me questions. If you are interested in spices, the spice routes (there were more than one!), this is the book for you. I have given copies to friends, and treasure the one I own.

Very academic, a slower read, but very informative. Well researched.

Really interesting and informative.

It was dull and boring...more like an old history book than something I'd read for pleasure.

This is a very good history of the spice trade despite the fact that the narrative is a bit confused and the prose can be purple and convoluted and he's obviously biased towards and against certain historical players causing him to gloss over the actions of some and hyper focus on those of others and the fact that there are one or two factual errors. But other than that this book was pretty okay. Took me forever to read though. A little disappointed because he starts off saying too many authors focus exclusively on the European narrative of this subject and not enough on the Asian story and he would do differently and then he basically does the same thing as everyone else. Or maybe I just imagined he said that; I started this book an ice age ago so it's a little hard to remember. Still, if you're interested in the subject I suggest giving this a read. It's very thorough.

Having an interest in Southeast Asia and its ancient (as well as its current) history, I was delighted to read a book that is not simply a rehash of European colonization. Think about Columbus, undertaking a dangerous and expensive sea journey -- for what? For the products of "the Indies" ... many of which were at that time called spices. The Europeans' conquests and massacres among the islands of South and Southeast Asia are recounted here in the context of the economics surrounding these valuable products of nature. Fortunes were made (and lost, when ships sank) and countless people from all around the world paid with their lives for the pursuit of this unique source of wealth.But John Keays takes us back further in time, before the Europeans had mastered sea travel to the degree necessary for them to reach India, the Strait of Malacca and the kingdoms of what is today Indonesia. Arab, Indian and Chinese merchants and traders sailed among the rich islands long before anyone from Europe laid eyes upon those shores. The Bandas ... the Moluccas ... the ancient Greeks and Romans knew the products of these places but never knew the islands whence they came. Pirates (or people we call pirates today) contested those waters centuries ago. Incense and cinnamon -- Keays shows these to us in a new light.Near the middle of the text, we begin the story of Europe's quest for spices with the journeys of Marco Polo. A subsequent chapter is devoted to China's forays to coasts and islands west of its own. The last chapters are the bloodiest, as the Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Dutch war with the local people of the islands and with one another to secure control of the valuable products. The barbarism of the European Christians staggers the mind.The reviewer here who said this book reads like a dissertation seriously misrepresents it. I found the writing easy and natural, highly enjoyable (sometimes horrifying) -- and the information conveyed fascinated me from start to finish. Imagine: "In the early tenth century ... Chinese vessels began to put in occasional appearances in the Arabian Sea" (p. 103).Illustrated, with 16 pages of good color plates and numerous very attractive outline maps.

John Keay has written a brilliant, amusing and readable account of the spice trade from pre-history to the 1800's.Keay as always is irrerevent, his gentle and humourous mocking of the more fantastic elements of the accounts of for example Pliny, Herodotus, Marco Polo,etc are enlightening and amusing, always a pleasant combination. He charts the vagaries of the Spice Route, the changes to it over the centuries and the reasons for those changes succintly and with plenty of clarity.He is particularly effective in portraying the European incursion into the Indian Ocean and points further east from the late 15th Century and doesnt shirk from describing the more brutal and frankly monstrous aspects of this. Raiding rather than trading would be the more appropriate term for say the Portugese visits to the west coast of India, or the Dutch in Sumatra and the Spice Islands proper.There are also some beautiful colour plates of people and places related to the Spice Route and a number of maps from different periods in which the development of geographical knowledge is given eloquent expression.Thoroughly reccomended. As is John Keays  The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company  which covers in particular the British involvement in Asia up to 1857.