The story of the sixteenth-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.In this vivid narrative of the epic race to control the spice trade, Roger Crowley shows how the competition between sixteenth-century European explorers shaped the modern world. Crowley’s account of adventure and voyage outlines how these first colonial encounters gave birth to a global trade that remade the world economies for centuries to follow.
 
Contributor Bio(s)
 
Roger Crowley is a narrative historian of the early modern period. He is the author of five celebrated books, including City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire and Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire.