Spice
The 16th-Century Contest That Shaped the Modern World
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Spice
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Narrated by:
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Samuel Roukin
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Written by:
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Roger Crowley
About this listen
The story of the 16th-century’s epic contest for the spice trade, which propelled European maritime exploration and conquest across Asia and the Pacific.
Spices 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.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2024 Roger Crowley (P)2024 Audible, Inc.What listeners say about Spice
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Rainbow J.
- 2025-01-28
I will never look at spices the same again
I’m a chef and very much into researching food history and colonialism and ancestral heritage, that’s how I found myself audio reading this book. It’s amazing. I wish it had more sociological context and i also wish the author had sourced more non-European information… but it’s so good. Very well written. And it’s NOT excruciating history of dates and wars - which imo is the more common way of presenting history. The book does an amazing job painting a picture of what was involved in the spice trade of the time and how a global market was created. The first hand accounts of the characters on the ocean journeys particularly caught my imagination. The interactions with indigenous tribes is also captivating. Thankfully there were some European humans who treated the indigenous people of the world with respect.
The whole adventure is so juicy.
I have been living in Mexico for the last 10 years and I enjoyed all the parts that put Mexico into the global context of the time. My curiosity has definitely been peaked about Veracruz and Acapulco and even Mexico City.
Highly recommended, overall.
Also the narrator is great as his job! I will listen to this book again. The last chapter finishes off the book very thoughtfully. Thank you Roger Crowley.
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