Spice - The 16th-Century Contest That Shaped the Modern World

The story of the sixteenth-century's epic contest for the spice trade, which propelled European maritime exploration and conquest across Asia and the PacificSpices drove the early modern world economy, and for Europeans they represented riches on an unprecedented scale. Cloves and nutmeg could reach Europe only via a complex web of trade routes, and for decades Spanish and Portuguese explorers competed to find their elusive source. But when the Portuguese finally reached the spice islands of the Moluccas in 1511, they set in motion a fierce competition for control.Roger Crowley shows how this struggle shaped the modern world. From 1511 to 1571, European powers linked up the oceans, established vast maritime empires, and gave birth to global trade, all in the attempt to control the supply of spices.Taking us on voyages from the dockyards of Seville to the vastness of the Pacific, the volcanic Spice Islands of Indonesia, the Arctic Circle, and the coasts of China, this is a narrative history rich in vivid eyewitness accounts of the adventures, shipwrecks, and sieges that formed the first colonial encounters-and remade the world economy for centuries to follow.

Product details

• Authors: Roger Crowley, Crowley Roger
• Publisher: Yale University Press Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 08.07.2025
• EAN: 9780300281125
• ISBN: 978-0-300-28112-5
• No. of pages: 320
• Subjects: Education and learning > Teaching preparation > Vocational needs; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; European History, HISTORY / World, HISTORY / Modern / 16th Century, HISTORY / Asia / Southeast Asia, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Imperialism, maritime history, South East Asia, General & world history, Colonialism and imperialism, Asian History, Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500, Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700, General and world history, 16th century, c 1500 to c 1599, c 1500 to c 1600, HISTORY / Europe / Spain