the spice must flow

December 18, 2016 10:49 PM

The Strange Roots Of Globalization (And Its Discontents) - "Today's global economy has its roots in the frivolity of spice."
posted by kliuless (22 comments total)

Leslie T. Chang in 2012 on TED
posted by lazycomputerkids at 11:09 PM on December 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is an odd article. Ancient trade networks involved way more than just spice, e.g., precious metals. And long-distance textile trade existed well before the early modern period--I mean, it's called the Silk Road for a reason.

Also, spice really isn't frivolous if you don't have access to fresh foods for a season or more!

I guess "odd" is not the word so much as "typically over-simplifying in a glib way to make the narrative seem more striking." Lot of that going around these days.
posted by praemunire at 11:52 PM on December 18, 2016 [23 favorites]

it is vital to space travel
posted by poffin boffin at 12:26 AM on December 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

The challenge in thinking about this interconnected world is that you have to hold two seemingly contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time. On the one hand, there is something hideous in the idea that so much human suffering could be triggered by the pursuit of something as frivolous as cloves or calico, or that so many manufacturing jobs today could be lost so that our iPhones and 4K TVs could be produced more efficiently in China. But the story also contains a progressive thread woven alongside it, like a double-helix or a braid: that extraordinary capacity that humans have for wonder and delight, for the seeking out of new experiences. That drive — as frivolous as it can sometimes appear — brought us closer to other cultures, and laid the groundwork for new miraculous communities where citizens of every nation of the world live together with a level of peace and prosperity that would have been unimaginable five hundred years ago.

QFT. It's a good article, but it's hard to take someone seriously who thinks spice is "frivolous".
posted by chavenet at 1:17 AM on December 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think spices make food tasty, but they don't make spoiled foodstuffs edible, do they?
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:22 AM on December 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Having grown up with an Indian mom and her kitchen, it's virtually unimaginable to consider spice as frivolous.

Global trade flows is a particular passion. Thanks, kliuless
posted by infini at 1:26 AM on December 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

sebastienbailard: "I think spices make food tasty, but they don't make spoiled foodstuffs edible, do they?"

No, but they can keep lots of foods from spoiling so quickly. Salt is the ur-example of course, but there are many others.
posted by chavenet at 1:35 AM on December 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

This seems an appropriate time to revisit the horrifying history of nutmeg.
posted by retrograde at 1:52 AM on December 19, 2016

I was skeptical, but apparently some spices do show an
antimicrobial function.
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:00 AM on December 19, 2016

That was a great read, thanks.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:01 AM on December 19, 2016

This is an odd article. Ancient trade networks involved way more than just spice, e.g., precious metals. And long-distance textile trade existed well before the early modern period--I mean, it's called the Silk Road for a reason.

Also, spice really isn't frivolous if you don't have access to fresh foods for a season or more!

At the prices those things commanded in Early Modern Europe, yes they were all frivolous, or a luxury.

Metafilter: Let them eat spice
posted by iotic at 2:17 AM on December 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Concur with Metafilter that this was a breathless article that overstated the importance of cloves and the muslim trading system.
The Gupta Empire in India 0-600 ad was a trading and technological superpower, they invented zero , the decimal system and proved the earth moves round the sun a thousand years before Copernicas.
All round south east Asia, eg Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia you can see Hindu temples.
The Indian Ocean was similar to the Mediterean in it's trading activity. West East Tradewinds made sea transport relatively easy..
Have been to Ternate in the Spice Islands and recommend Indonesia as a place to travel to. Malay is quite an easy language to pick up.
posted by Narrative_Historian at 2:21 AM on December 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

ok look if i have to be earwormed then so do all of you
posted by poffin boffin at 2:24 AM on December 19, 2016

Needs moar stockfish and olive oil. Stockfish goes by that very name in Nice and in Italy, where it was traded by Vikings for olive oil. I've always gotten a kick out of the very real possibility that my boat-going Lofoten ancestors also travelled to Nice, where I lived for a decade. (We have written records of there being sailors and traders in the family all the way back to 1000AD, so the possibility is indeed very real.)

Also textiles, definitely. Lyon was a major center of textile trade and innovation for millennia.

Also, if you wear merino wool, you might be interested to know that they're quite the globe-trotting ungulate.

This article reads like an aspirational rewrite of history. I don't know why the media are so fascinated with luxury (well, okay, I do – money) but damn, there is so much creativity, innovation, and connection to discover in the humble.
posted by fraula at 3:36 AM on December 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

an antimicrobial function.

Oops linked the same straight dope link twice. Working link:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1998/03/food-bacteria-spice-survey-shows-why-some-cultures-it-hot
posted by sebastienbailard at 4:03 AM on December 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oh, humanity. Why must you continually confuse learning/new experience with better/status?
posted by yoga at 5:59 AM on December 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

At the prices those things commanded in Early Modern Europe, yes they were all frivolous, or a luxury.

Confounding "frivolous" and "luxury" is not intellectually defensible, and, frankly, if you determine whether something is frivolous by its price in the early modern period, you're going to deem a wool jacket or a steak to be frivolous.
posted by praemunire at 9:10 AM on December 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Indian Ocean was similar to the Mediterean in it's trading activity.

They were also connected, first by the Greeks under the Seleucid and the Ptolemaic dynasties and later the Romans:

The route so helped enhance trade between the ancient Roman Empire and the Indian subcontinent, that Roman politicians and historians are on record decrying the loss of silver and gold to buy silk to pamper Roman wives

The world has been interconnected for a lot longer than people generally think.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:11 AM on December 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

(Also I suspect those of you who think spice might be frivolous even without preservative qualities have never tried to eat porridge or months-old withered vegetables without any seasoning, not even salt...)
posted by praemunire at 9:12 AM on December 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

FFS stop saying "frivolous," author. What a distracting and ridiculous derail.
posted by desuetude at 9:24 AM on December 19, 2016

"I think spices make food tasty, but they don't make spoiled foodstuffs edible, do they?"

Cinnamon is excellent for stopping fungal/mold growth. I use it on my Haworthia seedlings to counter the white fuzz that can kill them when they are still young and feeble.
posted by srboisvert at 11:02 AM on December 19, 2016

The tone of the article is a bit like Charles C. Mann's 1493, albeit more reasonably non-positive. I really didn't like how Mann was all, "Yeah but it's okay because globalism made all this good stuff, though" with only a very flat and documentary, "All that slavery shit and death was evil".
posted by constantinescharity at 11:20 AM on December 19, 2016