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Between East and West: The Moluccas and the Traffic in Spices Up to the Arrival of Europeans

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Up to and including the Age of Discoveries wealth of the East was thought in Europe to consul primarily and inexhaustibly of spices and Clove, nutmeg, mace, and sandalwood all came from a few small islands in easternmost Indonesia, which no European reached before tart 1500, and indeed no Arab or Indian merchant, either, as far as we are aware. Yet supplies of these luxury products were reaching China, India, western Asia, and the Mediterranean lands more than a thousand years earlier.

Influences cultural and commercial-began to permeate South East Asia from about the beginning of the Christian era. This "bridge" across the Bay of Bengal was extended west-ward by the presence of Indians in the marts and medical centers of the Near East and, from late seventh century, by Arabs in the course of the expansion of Islam.
The present study of Moluccan spices opens with their natural history and nomenclature, and the discovery of the islands by Europeans near the opposing (and controversial) limits of Spanish and Portuguese jurisdiction. The monograph traces the expanding interest and long-distance trade in cloves, nutmeg, and sandalwood, first to India and thence to the adjacent Arabo-Persian world. The medieval West and China lay on the margins of diffusion, the former in touch with the Levant, the latter with the trading world of South East Asia.