Spice Trade

Spice trade is a commercial activity of ancient origin which involves the merchandising of spices and herbs.

1. Civilizations of Asia were involved in spice trade from the ancient times, and the Greco-Roman world soon followed by trading along the Incense route.
2. and the Roman-India routes.
3. The Roman-Indian routes were dependent upon techniques developed by the maritime trading power, Kingdom of Axum (ca 400s BC–AD 1000s) which had pioneered the Red Sea route before the 1st century.

When they encountered Rome (circa 30 BCE– 10 CE) they shared knowledge of riding the Monsoons of the route on to Rome, keeping a cordial relationship with one another until the mid-seventh century, when the rise of Islam closed off the overland caravan routes through Egypt and the Suez, and sundered the European trade community from Axum and India. Arab traders eventually took over conveying goods via the Levant and Venetian merchants to Europe until the rise of the Ottoman Turks cut the route again by 1453.

Overland routes helped the spice trade initially, but maritime trade routes led to tremendous growth in commercial activities. During the high and late medieval periods Muslim traders dominated maritime spice trading routes throughout the Indian Ocean, tapping source regions in the Far East and shipping spices from trading emporiums in India westward to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, from which overland routes led to Europe.

The trade was transformed by the European Age of Discovery, during which spice trade became an influential activity for European traders. The route from Europe to the Indian Ocean via the Cape of Good Hope was pioneered by European navigators, such as Vasco Da Gama, resulting in new maritime routes for trade.

This trade — driving the world economy from the end of the middle ages well into the modern times - ushered an age of European domination in the East. Channels, such as the Bay of Bengal, served as bridges for cultural and commercial exchanges between diverse cultures as nations struggled to gain control of the trade along the many spice routes.

European dominance was slow to develop. The Portuguese trade routes were mainly restricted and limited by the use of ancient and difficult to dominate routes, ports, and nations. The Dutch were later able to bypass much of these problems by pioneering a direct ocean route from the Cape of Good Hope to the Sunda Strait in Indonesia.