The Age of Exploration

A sack of black pepper in fifteenth-century Lisbon could sell for a price that would buy a horse. Nutmeg, clove, cinnamon — these were not condiments in the modern sense. They were medicines, preservatives, status markers, and stores of value. A merchant who could bring a shipload of spices from the Malabar Coast to a European port stood to make a return of several thousand percent.

The problem was getting them there. The The centuries-old commercial network that moved pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and other aromatics from Southeast Asia and India to European markets. By the fifteenth century, this trade passed through multiple intermediaries — Indian, Arab, Venetian — each adding markup. The desire to bypass these middlemen and access spice sources directly was a primary driver of Portuguese and Spanish maritime expansion. had operated for centuries along overland and coastal routes through the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the eastern Mediterranean. By the time spices reached Lisbon or London, they had passed through the hands of Indian growers, Arab merchants, Egyptian middlemen, and Venetian traders. Each intermediary took a cut. Venice, sitting at the western end of this chain, had grown enormously rich.

Portugal and Castile sat at the wrong end of Europe for this trade. Atlantic-facing, far from the Mediterranean chokepoints Venice controlled, they had every reason to find an alternative route. So did their kings. Revenue from the spice trade could fund armies, build fleets, pay debts. The monarchs who backed exploration were not dreamers. They were investors calculating returns.