In 1475, the Duke of Bavaria and Princess Hedwig of Jadwiga got married. It was the celebrity wedding of the century, with days of dancing, music, and jousting, all paid for by the extremely wealthy groom. But the real sign of the Duke’s prodigious wealth was on the celebration’s menu: his army of cooks had used 386 pounds of pepper, 286 pounds of ginger, 257 pounds of saffron, and 205 pounds of cinnamon making the wedding feast. The Duke hadn’t earned the nickname “George the Rich” for nothing.
Spices in medieval European life were luxuries, highly sought-after whiffs of exotic lands. Following the lead of high society, common tastes began to incorporate these flavors into dishes for special occasions. Spices also had an alternative, earlier use as medicine to balance the body’s volatile “humors”.
This combination of status symbol, gastronomical accent, and “medicine” brewed a perfect storm: demand and prices skyrocketed. With vast sums of money to be made, seafarers had plenty of incentive to enter the market and pioneer new sea-based routes to India, Sri Lanka, and southeast Asia. Thus were born some of the greatest, most influential voyages of exploration: while Portuguese traders sailed eastward around Africa in accord with the globe-splitting Treaty of Tordesillas, the Spanish commissioned expeditions to the West. In search of spices, Columbus island-hopped through the Caribbean Sea, and Magellan led the first circumnavigation of the globe.
As the dots were slowly connected, 15 th and 16 th centuries were a time of commodity-based exploration, a time when the transport of simple consumables went hand in hand with daring exploits and the romance of the high seas (or, if we’re being realistic about things, malnutrition, mutiny, and doldrums-induced boredom).
Today, those spices that men risked their lives and livelihoods to acquire sit alphabetized in racks on formica countertops, just another kitchen accessory. Similar tales could be told of coffee, cocoa, salt, bananas, or sugar: luxury items gone mainstream. Now we stand in line at Starbucks, faced with the maddening choice of the Ethiopian blend dark roast or the Assam tea, bandying about the names of these faraway lands as if they’re places on a game board. If caffeine isn’t your game, just go with the orange juice, fresh squeezed and imported even in the middle of winter.
The New Dawn Traders have a different vision of global trade that flies in the face of centuries of transportation technology. In February, a group of ten environmentalists, led by Englishman Jamie Pike, rented the wooden sailboat Irene and set off on a five-month journey plying old trade routes: beer from England to France; olive oil and wine from Spain to Rio de Janeiro; cocoa and coffee from Brazil to the Caribbean; and rum from the islands to England.
To the nostalgia-fueled New Dawn Traders, it’s the journey that makes the product, and by the very nature of geography, some things should be rare. It’s easy to take our globalized reality for granted, but the world is a big place, and it takes enormous resources to whisk items from Chile to Chattanooga, or Togo to Tokyo. Economies of scale and cheaper, faster modes of transport have made these former luxuries commonplace, but historically speaking, this is a very recent phenomenon.
The group is also hoping to raise awareness of the impact of global shipping on carbon emissions and other sources of pollution (they will be stopping by the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development to underscore the point). Cargo vessels travel roughly 42 billions miles per year and chew through 289 million metric tons of fuel. A more local pattern of consumption, the Traders note, would drastically reduce the need for CO2-releasing shipments. If you really must have a Ghanaian chocolate bar, maybe you should have to have to pay a bit more. Maybe the externalities associated with dirty transportation (or, alternatively, the labor costs associated with months-long shipping times) should be built into the price.
The New Dawn Traders’ journey is a creative, fully immersive window into 16 th century shipping realities. But hopefully they’ve packed enough fresh oranges to ward off scurvy in the doldrums.
Image: cseward/Flickr
