[Sca-cooks] fashion and spices (was Grains of Paradise)

[Terry Decker]

> Regina suggested:
> "Wars in Africa which cut the trade routes so thoroughly and so long
> that people got out of the habit of  using them."
>    Please date and define African geographical areas concerning trade
> route reductions of grains of paradise. I study 15th century Spanish
> history up to 1474 in particular. All other personal knowledge is from
> dabbling. I, therefore, am not cognizant of African affairs affecting
> African spice trade after that period.

The primary areas involved (IIRC) are Ghana, Togo, Liberia, Cote d' Ivorie, 
and Nigeria.  The chief trade route would have been through the medieval 
Kingdom of Mali via Timbuktu, north to Algeria or Tunisia.

>    I am well aware of the fact that Protestants prohibited spices in
> England with Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th Century as that was an
> anti-Roman Catholic measure.

Sources, please.  To my knowledge, Elizabethean England actively traded in 
and used spices and sugar.

'The Age of Discovery', on the other hand,
> to my knowledge was aimed at developing spice routes to counter prices
> of the Muslims who controlled the Silk Route.

>From at least the 2nd Century BCE, spice were shipped primarily by sea to 
ports on the north end of the Red Sea, then by canal and Nile barge 
(depending on whether the canal was useable) to Alexandria or overland to 
Alexandria and the Levant.  Lower cost, faster delivery, better product than 
anything that could be delivered over the Silk Road.

Spices may have come over the Silk Road, but I am beginning to think that 
they were more likely meant for the markets of Central Asia, than the 
markets of Europe.

 Perhaps Queen Bessy
> preferred ruining her teeth with honey (as sugar was so scarce it used
> primarily as medicine in cold England.) and sending all good English
> colonists to spread the word of her God (to fatten her honey comb)
> without pepper pots to spice route development in accordance with the
> puritan movement.

>From what I've seen of the household accounts, Good Queen Bess liked her 
sugar.  As for "in accordance with the puritan movement," unfortunately, 
Elizabeth was the secular head of the Church of England and definitely not a 
Puritan.  Puritans were Dissenters from the Church of England and in many 
ways opposed to the Crown.

<clipped>
>    The Spaniards dominated slave trade with their center in Las Palmas
> and competed with the Portuguese in African spice trade thanks to their
> territories in Africa but within 200 years after the discovery of
> Central and South America they learned how to use American agricultural
> produces and busily exported pepper products, sugar and chocolate among
> others to Europe.
<clipped>
>
> Susan

Sugar is an Old World crop introduced to the New World on Columbus' second 
voyage.  Production in the Old World was largely controlled by the Arabs and 
the 16th Century was a period of rising demand with limited growth 
possibilities at home.  Therefore, the Caribbean sugar plantation became an 
ideal solution to grabbing market share.  It is also very likely that the 
extreme conditions of the sugar plantations and the continuous needd for 
more laborers greatly expanded the slave trade from what it was at the end 
of the 15th Century.

Bear