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An aromatic trail
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Historian John Keay talks about his book that traces the Spice Route
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EXOTIC PURSUIT John Keay: `Spices have no preservative value but they help hide the taste of bad meat' Photo: K. Ananthan
John Keay enjoys bringing history alive and sharing with others the knowledge he has unearthed in libraries and archives. "I've been writing books for 30 years, many of them on India, mostly historical," he says, settling down in his chair at a coffee shop.
"I first came to India in 1966 because I wanted to fish. I went trout-fishing in Kashmir on a two-week holiday." To his left, on the table before him, lies one of his volumes on the spice trade, red bookmarks jutting out of the pages to help him in his many talks.
The spice route
"It is about the history of the Spice Route," he says, picking up the book and flipping through the pages. "Five of my books are about India, the most important being India — A History, which I wrote five years ago. The single-volume book was well received in the U.S. and the U.K," says Keay, who studied history at the Oxford University.
After completing a book on the history of the East India Company, Keay wrote Sowing The Wind, on West Asia. Of immense help during his research was his wife Julia Keay, a writer herself. One of his future projects is an account of Chinese history.
"The book on the Spice Route covers 2,500 years of history and is about how the spice trade is the first example of globalisation. Some people compare it with space exploration that is said to be the `last frontier'. Spice was perhaps the `first frontier'," he observes. " The book is set in the period between 1,000 B.C.E. and 1,800 C.E."
He continues, "In the 16th Century, it was easy to carry spices. They had a long shelf life and were used not only for cooking but also in perfumes and medicines. In the Roman world, they came in use for embalming. Spices have no preservative value but they help hide the taste of bad meat."
Mistaken notion
It was a mistaken notion — though one that was widely believed — that Europeans needed spices to "preserve meat" because they could not feed cattle during winter and so chose to slaughter all the animals.
He speaks of the Banda Islands, an archipelago north of Darwin in Australia, famed for nutmeg, a rare and precious spice used in substances ranging from soft drinks to remedies for common cold.
"It is partly to do with volcanoes. Some of them are active and the dust is important for the soil, for it has many important minerals for the spice to flourish. It is a unique ecology.
"In the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Centuries C.E., the Spice Route included the Indian peninsula. Spices from Indonesia arrived on the Coromandel Coast. Also, Chinese silks came to the Malabar Coast, especially Cochin and Quilon, and were then shipped to the Gulf or the Red Sea and carried over land to the Mediterranean," he explains.
Another point not often appreciated is that India was not only the largest producer of spices but also one of the largest consumers, with trade going on throughout Asia and Africa. Enormous quantities of black pepper left the shores of Kerala and there were accounts of 200 to 300 ships setting sail from the Malabar Coast to ports on the Red Sea and in Egypt. "There is a distribution of coins found right through the trade corridor. Gold coins were used to pay for spices. Coins in mint condition have been found, many of them scored right down the middle, cancelling them after payment. Such coins are not found anywhere else."
Gold coins
Leafing through the art paper pages of his book, Keay points to a photograph of a `cancelled' gold coin. Such coins had been found in hundreds, possibly thousands, but most were melted for their precious metal.
Keay has fond memories of the work he did while writing The Great Arc, a book on the Survey of India. While on the job, he was constantly "stumbling across references and turning up interesting facts" at various places.
Most of his notes were on bits of paper but when there was need for detailed research, he would obtain photocopies of documents from libraries and the archives. "In the U.K, there are libraries that send you information when you ask for it. I write mostly at home, from material collected through photocopying. While beginning a book, I might write longhand, but then I turn to the computer keyboard," the writer says.
"History has become an academic subject. Academic historians write for academic historians. Academic history often seems to go where funding is available. I am not an academic. I am not attached to any university. I am a writer writing about history," he concludes.
A. A. MICHAEL RAJ
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