Prices of Spices in Antwerp, London, and Oxford in 1438-39 How expensive would spices have been in the Dutch republic in - Reddit 168.23 Scarlet Broadcloth: highest range European exports to Asia were roughly 75% silver and only 25% goods in the early modern era. In the same skillet, add sliced onion and brown; then add coriander, turmeric, cumin results, until a lady-friend took pity on me -- or more likely on her own stomach -- by giving me as 0.500 London Guildhall Manuscripts Library: MS 5174, vol. IV: 1401 - 1582 (Oxford: 1882). The increasing access of European traders to the sources of the spices was a key factor that helped to bring down the price from that point onwards, increasing competition and eventually reducing protection costs. Genoese and Venetians had consolidated their control over the Mediterranean spice trade. rev2023.5.1.43405. 01 May 2023. The value of the textile trade, opium trade, or slave trade doesn't get determined by the comparison to the value of their weight in gold; and there are many valuable goods that are insignificant in trade because the demand (at that price) was only for very small quantities. Submitted by Mark Cartwright, published on 09 June 2021. grams Flavours were added to sauces thickened with bread crumbs and included spices from the East Indies like pepper, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg, as well as ginger, hot peppers, saffron, garlic, and mustard, perhaps the most popular flavour of all for meat dishes, at least. 0.25 So more often, the lower-cost goods are lower in quality, but not necessarily impure: When comparing "a giant jar of cinnamon for $2.99 verus bottle for $5 or $6, the difference you're seeing isn't adulteration but quality." There are different metrics of quality for each spice: For cinnamon, the quality is determined by its volatile oil content. 49.53 For the second question (why? Economic growth was very fast during until about 1620 when it slowed, but continued to grow steadily until the end of the Golden Age. It was subsequently delivered in the revised form that appears below as: 'Oriental Spices and Their 6. How significant was the Fall of Constantinople as an event leading to the Age of Exploration? hung). As examples of these, I next show on the screen shopping lists for two fifteenth-century London 0.47 1469-1524) were sent to find a maritime route from Europe to Asia. luxury, to break the routine of bland meals. Wages to ; and salt, for bodily 36.000 How Were Spices Used in Medieval English and French Cuisine? Buy 1 lb. d. ster. In 1488 Bartolomeu Dias sailed down the coast of West Africa and made the first voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, the southern tip of the African continent (now South Africa). We want people all over the world to learn about history. at 6d per day ii) In England, a 15th-century account book for two parish priests and a servant show that 35% of their Sign up for our free weekly email newsletter! grams c) When I ask this question of my students, however, a very common answer to explain that demand a large collection of late-medieval French and English recipe books and much other literary evidence 13.714 If the aim had been to disguise the taste of the flesh (as I might do with very cheap meat in my own 76.02 The word "salad" also originated from "salt," and began with the early Romans salting their leafy greens and vegetables. Silk: Plain Satin cheese, l/2 lb. to finance the veritable explosion in Europe's trade with Asia during the 16th, 17th, and 18th d) As an economic historian, my interests have focused in particular upon money, prices, and wages EDIT 6/4/2015: I have expanded this answer to elaborate on a number of things. As you can see, it was the cost of getting it from where it was grown to where it would be consumed that made spices so valuable. Within Asia, spices could be traded from one port to another and exchanged for precious goods like gold, silver, gems, pearls, and fine textiles. dominance of medieval commerce and finance rested principally upon their control of the Oriental worked at least twelve, and up to fourteen, hours a day during The Relative Decline in Spice Consumption after 1650. a) If these late-medieval English recipes and shopping lists for guild feasts seem so strangely out of 5.93 The most dramatic change But the establishment of a direct sea route to Europe from 1500 meant an even greater distance, of over 6,000 miles, since that route had to go round the Cape of South Africa. Of course people didn't like the taste of spoiled meat. Those spice prices might be 10 to a 100-fold higher than what Europeans had paid at the source in the East Indies. yard pound Thus the medieval artisans literally 'worked from sun to sun'. And every Indian grocery will stock cardamom, from eight-ounce packages to veritable pillowcase quantities. 2. d. gr. When saffron is called for in iv) Furthermore, many of the spices used were for the sauces that were served with the meats; and the Short story about swapping bodies as a job; the person who hires the main character misuses his body. special, seasonal feastdays, especially in their guildhalls. spices for a long time. Most Recent Contracts. 2.25 8.00 12,844.47 What then was the demand for spices in late-medieval Europe Other spices like cloves, cinnamon or nutmeg were probably worth significantly more than that. They are quite unlike modern English recipes, and surprisingly similar, in many I soon discovered 150.25 2.663 But the establishment of a direct sea route to Europe from 0.315 22.23 Thank you! The Minimalist . BOURBELIER DE SANGLIER: Loin of Wild Boar in Boar's Tail Sauce (late-medieval However, ii) Overlooks the fact that spices were widely used in cooking of wide variety of non-meat dishes: i) The first chart is one that Dr Ngai-Berthrong of the Royal Ontario Museum prepared, with some Europe: Luxuries or Necessities? 1; Brewers' Guild, Warden's Accounts (1424-1562); Corporation of London c) Next, on the screen, for direct comparison, I present a series of late-medieval English recipes, taken of Days' Wages Sugar cane, cotton, tea, opium, gold, diamonds, and slaves would take the place of spices in the world economy as the European powers raced to carve up the world and build an empire. 189-190). daily wage The Portuguese decided to use the one thing they had in their favour: superiority in weapons and ships. 24.07 0.667 Daily Wage b) Far and away the most important was pepper, which was always shipped as a large bulk French manual Le Mnagier de Paris (1393) advised cooks to 'put in the spices as late as possible.' Other Helpful Yield Info Beef Butchering Yields Fish Butchering Yields Fruit Yields Produce Yields offers an explanation provides that very same reason: Kristoff Glamann, 'European Trade, 1500-1750,' in, iii) Even in 16th century England, when living costs rose with growing population pressure, the Bury particular chili peppers of the, c) Next, on the screen, for direct comparison, I present a series of late-medieval English recipes, taken 64.200 The drive to control the spice trade, then, had opened up the world, but it was to become a much more violent and unstable one in the centuries to follow. Leaf of bergamot (kaffir lime) - Most expensive spices in the world. 2.286 Library. Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. screen I have indicated the names of the chief spices, with their Indian names. Red Wine 0.50 Pepper 0.49 0.38 5.62 Buy 7 yds of Minutes 0.17 A "proper" answer would be an estimate of the. yard medieval Mediterranean (Venetian) trade, for 15 November 2001, at this URL: http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/lecnot201.htm 22.86 water, and cover tightly, and simmer slowly, for one hour. in changes of such drastic magnitude. the cup water and meatballs, cooking slowly until the gravy is thick. 1.509 The Demand for Spices in Late-Medieval Europe. iii) Even in 16th century England, when living costs rose with growing population pressure, the Bury Roast the lamb; then make a sauce with the roast drippings, the above ingredients, and cup Catskill that had never heard of nouvelle cuisine: 'The food was quite disgusting -- but at least they Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. Pearson summarises, the costs required to get spices to Europe using the traditional Middle East routes were very high indeed: the price of a kilo of pepper as it changed hands was enormous - costing 1 or 2 grammes of silver at the production point, it was 10 to 14 in Alexandria, 14 to 18 in Venice, and 20 to 30 in the consumer countries of Europe. 122.50 29.63 0.44 For this reason, during the many waves of the Black Death plague that swept across Europe, people burnt ambergris to ward off the often fatal disease. Penny Ale (Beer) 0.01 49.41 Many Portuguese officials were themselves corrupt and traded without paying the Crown its slice of income. lb. Sugar In fifteenth-century b) Curiously enough, most economic history books do not really address this question of consumer with daily 2.182 carpenter's daily wage of 8d. number 0.47 for spices that not everyone does acquire. London Spices were used to add flavour not only to sauces but also wines; they were even crystallised and eaten on their own as sweets. Indian rulers and some Arab traders did have some cannons, but these were not of the same quality as the European ones, and more significantly, trade ships in the Indian Ocean were built for cargo and speed, not for naval warfare. All those animals and personnel had to be fed and accommodated, along the route. 27.000 weekly outlays went on meat and fish vs. 20% for bread grains: certainly they followed the bible in Eggs 620,000 solaris the decagram. demand. gallons Using an Ohm Meter to test for bonding of a subpanel, tar command with and without --absolute-names option, Weighted sum of two random variables ranked by first order stochastic dominance. the Unit Spices such as nutmeg and cloves, which came from the famed Spice Islands (now the provinces of Maluku and North Maluku in Indonesia), fetched fabulous prices in Europe. Indeed even before the I say between 10 or 20 florin, because when a sailor was working in a period of war he would earn more money. When and why did the price eventually drop? Roast Lamb with Cameline Sauce. The Port of Calicut in 1572Unknown Artist (Public Domain). soldier with 2 lb. 313.44 7.47 Adding spices to it disguised the taste of spoiled meat and made it actually taste good. The following lecture was originally delivered under the title: The Luxury Trades of the Silk Road: v) Note finally the very large quantities of beer and wine consumed -- and how very cheap the beer A Germanic price table of AD 1393 lists a pound of nutmeg as worth 7 fat oxen. 2.682 Cloves dangerous overland routes. Antwerp Is a downhill scooter lighter than a downhill MTB with same performance? Grocers' Feast of 1470: which I've taken from account books in the London Guildhall Manuscript 1.76 (in which, of course, spices still used). London 0.056 d) Economic power is more or less transitory and proved to be quite fleeting for the Spanish and To Buy 100 g. note, as I suggested earlier, that the direct sea route of the early-modern era made some but not a And what is the origin of such extraordinary demand? 22.54 Rye Flour Portuguese Colonial Empire in the Age of Exploration, One quintal (100 kg/220 lbs) of pepper could be bought for six. 8 November 1988. 2.25 Cinnamon Fish, for example, was a cold and wet food and so by adding certain spices to fish dishes, these two characteristics became more balanced. represent myths about the role of spices in medieval society. Rabbits The best answers are voted up and rise to the top, Not the answer you're looking for? of Days' making the spice trade very risky indeed but obviously also potentially extremely profitable. per kg. Not even the most rigorous monopolist can impose a high price that is not Unit Daily Wage 24.15 minor assistance from me, for the ROM's 1983 Exhibition on Silk Roads, China Ships: on the relative You will Spices, despite their cost, were used in great quantities. Again, I have related the cost of spices and of other foodstuffs to the daily wage of a 130.84 There was, too, the real prospect of acquiring prestige and riches for the European elite and those mariners who dared sail into the unknown. The Ancient Spice Trade Route From Asia to Europe 1500s to 1700s 8d. bread, 2/3 gallon of beer). Explorers Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama . The only spice, and not an Oriental one, whose relative Mace Apples b) Note the following in these Indian recipes: i) the use of the leading spices, medieval and modern: pepper, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cardamom, Nutmeg's more expensive, at about $14/lb or $0.875/oz, Gold is $1185/oz. 3.000 0.044 wage Prices and Wages by Decade: Up through 1779 - University of Missouri 0.22 In a mixing bowl, mix the ground meat with the eggs, rice flour, spices, chopped lb. prices in terms of grams of gold, because the purchasing power of gold has so radically changed over or ale was. Numerous educational institutions recommend us, including Oxford University. In so far as any spices had any preservative traditional overland and sea routes by which they reached western Europe. g) Food and Spice Requirements for 15th Century Guildhall Feasts. The World History Encyclopedia logo is a registered trademark. iii) But more to the point, these recipe books show that in these feasts with a multitude of dishes (in wage Please support World History Encyclopedia. b) Coming back to Canada, I tried to imitate Indian cooking with absolutely abysmal, disastrous Clearly the lower classes were highly carnivorous. pound Cinnamon - The Oldest Known Spice - Documentarytube.com coming of refrigeration. World History Foundation is a non-profit organization registered in Canada. A route was opened up by Francisco Serro, who sailed to the Spice Islands in 1512, and Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521) when he made the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1519-22 in the service of Spain. Spices thus by definition 0.123 Spice How much did spices cost in the 1500s? time, as indeed has its value in terms of just silver (9:1 in 1350; 16:1 in 1750; 65:1 today). Toronto Gama, 1497, on arriving in Calicut, India: 'I come in search of Christians and spices;' quickly forgot Cartwright, M. (2021, June 09). Name of the vii) Spices were in short a luxury and treated as such even by the very rich in late-medieval society. possibly be tied to advances in agriculture. of Days' 2.500 10,920.06 Indeed for central Germany, then probably less affluent than NW Europe, some historians The authors either assume that the answer is self-evident -- and it is not -- or that it doesn't 3. mid-16th century the Arabs and Italians had broken the tenuous Portuguese spice monopoly to re-establish for Venice in particular an Indian Summer of golden commercial prosperity in the later 16th 1 capon (or broiling chicken), about 6 lb. for the rest of society. I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because before a unified world system and productive capitalism questions about "relative worth" in today's terms are meaningless. 217.20 Buy 1 lb. MOUTON Y-ROSTED WITH SAWSE CAMELYNE: Roast Lamb with Cameline Antwerp, London, and Oxford, a master carpenter (and mason, etc.) A lot of food we consider today as spoiled and throw away was eaten back then. 600.000 with highly spiced sauces added to the dish, sauces also containing combination of eggs, ground Muslim traders fared the worst and were often executed. 226.80 2. Many lords simply did not know what to do with their third or fourths sons and sending them to foreign lands to make their fortune was a happy solution for both parties. For example, a Dutch sailor in 'De Gouden Eeuw', or the golden age of the Dutch republic (1602-1702) earned a salary between 10 and 20 florin per month (probably 1500 euros nowadays). 1.000 ), Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. Published by Statista Research Department , Aug 1, 2016. 4.44 4. 326.62 There might even be Christian allies in Asia who were as yet unknown to Europe. .we can estimate that a full harvest load might contain as many as 10 grams of refined spice. offers an explanation provides that very same reason: Kristoff Glamann, 'European Trade, 1500-1750,' in Fontana Economic History of Europe, II: 16th and 17th Centuries (1974), p. 447; and others commodities could preserve foods, meats, especially, far more effectively. thus for adults; an annual per capita consumption that declined to just 20 kg. e) Furthermore the concept of necessity, that spices were a necessary food preservative, is inconsistent consider the labour involved, you will understand why). These include information costs, market search and The solution was simple, then: take over the trade network by force and establish a monopoly on the spice trade not only in terms of Asia with Europe but also within Asia, too. 0.67 In other words: a caravan loaded with spices was economically worth the travel from (say) India or even China all the way to Europe. e) Instead it was the Dutch, whose new East India Company, established in 1600, rapidly succeeded Antwerp Daily Wage How Much Did Silks and Spices Really Cost? heat and simmer; add sprinkled parsley when serving. Spice Conversion Calculator | Whole to Ground Spice Oz Per Tsp Silk: Velvet: average The global silver between the Americas, Europe and China from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries was a spillover of the Columbian Exchange which had a profound effect on the world economy. 102.06 Wages to is that spices, before the age of refrigeration, were required to preserve foods, meats especially. I must first begin with a disclaimer. of beef or mutton (with l lb. All of those things would have helped to make spices and other Asian imports much cheaper in relative terms. 36.00 The Luxury Trades of the Silk Road: How Much Did Silks and Spices Really Cost? Production was at first intentionally limited. 0.46 Quantity That's a whole lot of money, but also a whole lot of pulls from the gacha. The Middle East land and sea routes to transport spices, never entirely replaced by the Cape of Good Hope route, began to prosper again in the second half of the 16th century thanks to the ever-increasing demand for spices in Europe. 9.69 8,967.80 patterns, in both food and clothing, including of courses spices. 1.03 number Pepper It cost about $1800 a pound What Cakes Looked And Tasted Like Throughout History - So Yummy 65.158 in $CAD* Question: Which Country Is The Largest Exporter Of Spices? PIKE IN GALENTYNE: Galantine of Pike (Late medieval French). The Silk Routes from China through Eurasia was another way spices entered into European markets. India Company imposed a monopoly on the European sale of spices. many days' wages would it take to buy a pound of each of these commodities (silk, pepper, cinnamon, paste mixture and mix well; form into small marble-sized meatballs. No. We Dutch sold those spices! In 2022, the federal government spent a total of $1,025 on Spice & Extract Manufacturing. Several strong-scented spices were thought capable of combatting foul smells, which themselves were thought to cause diseases. 5. preceding and succeeding centuries (before 19th). (18.5 years, with 270 workdays per year); but in 1875, only 1.4 days' pay. in modern Indian cooking. Mark is a full-time author, researcher, historian, and editor. 0.13 English Broadcloth, Dyed: highest Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1777/the-spice-trade--the-age-of-exploration/. e) How Expensive Were These Spices? per lb. 24.151 [2001] The statistic shows the average unit price of spices and seasonings in the United States in 2016, by segment. 144.000 I have omitted two lesser spices used in medieval What is our basis of comparison? ** In Toronto a master carpenter currently (2001) earns $27.15 per hour and thus $217.20 for an eight-hour day. No. On the screen I have tried to supply some estimates of the CAPOUN Y-ROSTYDE WITH BLACKE SAWSE: Roast Capon with Black Sauce Later, on this screen, I They had to be somewhat competitive. 30.48 0.26 more graphs, tables, and maps may be accessed from my on-line lectures for Economics 201Y, for 133,251.53 particular chili peppers of the capsicum family (red peppers, cayenne, paprika, chili), which bushels Purchased iv) Note the wide variety of meats, fowl, and fish: some were not too expensive, perhaps, but many 4.000 or ale. House of Correction (1588) provided a daily allowance of lb. No. 0.661 Spices, by that view, are a necessity (without substitutes). 10.700 [2001] on the spice trade from the East Indies to western Europe, you can appreciate how these costs would No. 0.50 The Spice Trade & the Age of Exploration - World History Encyclopedia More practically, discovering new agricultural land to grow cereal crops would help reduce trade deficits. Ginger Unit bought Cloves And that hegemony It was no longer a case of exploration and discovery to establish a handful of coastal trade centres. 52.91 It is important to note that Europe accounted for only around one-quarter of the global trade in spices. wage 176.00 of intermediaries involved in the long-distance spice trade, and all the assorted taxes and tolls levied Roast the park, with cloves studded in the pork loin; then make a sauce with the roast negotiation costs, and above all protection (and insurance) costs. screen, various spices were reputed to serve as digestive, stimulants, cures for halitosis, fevers, Many Indian curries call for this strong, aromatic spice. Spices in the Middle Ages - Lords and Ladies