Between East and West: The Moluccas and the Traffic in Spices Up to the Arrival of Europeans, Memoirs, American Philosophical Society (Vol. 248) (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780871692481)

Up to & including the Age of Discoveries, the wealth of the East was thought in Europe to consist primarily of spices & aromatics. Cloves, nutmeg, mace, & sandalwood all were thought to come from a few small islands in easternmost Indonesia, which no European reached before 1500. Yet supplies of these luxury products were reaching China, India, western Asia, & the Mediterranean lands more than a thousand years earlier. This study of Moluccan spices opens with their natural history & nomenclature, & the discovery of the Islands by Europeans near the opposing (& controversial) limits of Spanish & Portuguese jurisdiction. Donkin traces the expanding interest & long-distance trade in cloves, nutmeg, & sandalwood, first to India & then to the adjacent Arabo-Persian world. The medieval West & China lay on the margins of diffusion, the former in touch with the Levant, the latter with the trading world of South East Asia.

Author: R. a. Donkin
ISBN-10: 0871692481
ISBN-13: 9780871692481
Publisher: American Philosophical Society Press
Language: English
Published: 01/01/2003
Pages: 274
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.61lbs
Size: 10.00h x 7.00w x 0.69d