Roger Crowley's "Spice"

Roger Crowley is a narrative historian of the early modern period. His celebrated books include City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire and Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire.

Crowley applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Spice: The 16th-Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World, and reported the following:

Page 99 contains a vivid eyewitness account of the torture and execution of Portuguese sailors in China, at the port of Canton in 1517, told from their letters smuggled out of the country. I have to say it makes for rather ghastly reading!

Page 99 says nothing directly about the European quest for spices in the world – the book’s central theme – but it is integral to the larger issue laid out in the sub-title – that the quest for spices shaped the modern world through countless interactions with peoples beyond Europe. It is also an example of the book’s emphasis on eyewitness history. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach China by sea. And here they received a profound culture shock. They completely misread the protocols tied up with China. As misunderstandings grew, the Chinese, who had closed their borders to foreigners, became increasingly suspicious of these incomers. For readers, the page 99 test of the account of the fates of these captured Portuguese is a reliable sample of the book’s narrative approach.

Spice is a history of six crucial decades in the sixteenth century – from 1511, when the Portuguese first reached the Spice Islands, the Moluccas, in the Malay Archipelago through to 1571 when the Spanish created a trading hub in Manila in the Philippines.

The Moluccas were destined to become the focus of intense rivalry for the spice trade – first between Portugal and Spain, later with other European maritime powers, that led to contests with the Ottoman empires and contact with China and Japan.

The competitive attempts on the Spice Islands, driven by sophisticated sailing ships, increased skills of navigation and information gathering, and fast-firing cannons, gave a definitive shape to the planet’s seas and continents. In the process Europeans proved that the world was spherical, spanned the Pacific Ocean, created Manila, the world’s first global city, and linked up the oceans – ‘the world encompassed’ in Drake’s phrase. While the great land empires of China and India remained aloof, the spice voyages created maritime empires across distances unmatched in human history and gave birth to global trade. It shifted Europe from the margins to the centre: its maritime empires would dominate the planet for half a millennium.

Visit Roger Crowley's website.

Writers Read: Roger Crowley (December 2015).

The Page 99 Test: Conquerors.

The Page 99 Test: The Accursed Tower.

--Marshal Zeringue