A Vexed Pharmacopeia: Musings on Two Thousand Years of Scholarship Regarding the Ancient Spice Trade

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Roger Michel ◽  
Alexy Karenowska ◽  
George Altshuler ◽  
Matthew Cobb
Keyword(s):  
Spice Trade

The Amboyna Massacre in English Politics, 1624–1632

1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Chancey
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
James I ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Spice Trade ◽  
English Politics

On March 9, 1623, ten English merchants were beheaded on Amboyna in Indonesia by order of Harman van Speult, the Dutch governor of the island. They died accused of plotting to seize control of Fort Victoria, the island's stronghold, in order to take over the local spice trade. Considering the number of lives lost in the centuries of conflict between Dutch and British merchants in the East Indies, the incident on Amboyna seems in hindsight to have been a rather insignificant affair. Yet the occurrence played an important role in English politics under the early Stuarts, and influenced English/Dutch relations for a century.News of the incident, which the English came to know as the Amboyna Massacre, reached England on May 29, 1624, and caused a diplomatic dilemma. James I, who was negotiating an alliance with the Netherlands against Spain, chose to deal with the situation through diplomacy rather than military reprisals, a position his son supported. It was a decision for which neither the Stuarts' contemporaries nor their modern chroniclers would forgive them. John Chamberlain, the friend and correspondent of many important court figures, wrote in July 1624 that he hoped James would “say lesse so he would do more” to make the Dutch pay for insulting English honor. By February of the next year, he was lamenting that he had “knowne the time when they [the Dutch] durst not have offered the least of those indignities we have lately swallowed and indured.” Chamberlain's belief that James's policy consisted primarily of inaction, and that it played into the hands of the Dutch, has been a popular theme in modern accounts.

The Rise of the Dutch Spice Trade in the Middle Ages

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-12
Author(s):  
Wei Zheng ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Spice Trade ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Way

For medieval Europe, spices have always been of great significance, so the spice trade has become the object of competition for various countries in Western Europe. With the improvement of navigation technology, countries obsessed with spices have opened up the way to explore the origin of spices and monopolize the spices trade. Among them, the most typical country is the Netherlands. From the perspective of the spice trade, this paper discusses how the beneficiary of the spice trade, the Netherlands, has become a generation of marine hegemons by transferring spice to monopolizing the spice trade.

Scottish Alexanders and Stuart Empire

2019 ◽  
pp. 113-148
Author(s):  
Su Fang Ng
Keyword(s):  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Economic Basis ◽  
Spice Trade ◽  
James Iv ◽  
Alexander Romance

This chapter examines how the Scottish Alexander Romance, Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour, raises issues that are important to the ambitions of James IV of Scotland: religious crusade and dynastic expansion through marriage. Composed in 1460 and attributed to Gilbert Hay, Buik features a crusading Alexander the Great fighting Muslim enemies. The novel’s representation of Alexander’s enemies as Muslims references European fears of the growing power of the Ottomans. James IV wanted both to unite England and Scotland through his marriage and to unite Christendom against the Turks. The chapter discusses Alexander’s transformation from crusader into a merchant in the East, suggesting that it points to the underlying economic basis of the revival of crusading rhetoric—Ottoman control of the spice trade. These two themes—union and crusade—were continuing preoccupations of later Stuarts, including James VI of Scotland.

Ragusa and the Portuguese Spice Trade

1943 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Mirkovich
Keyword(s):  
Spice Trade
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