The author of the British author John O’Connell’s Book of Spices writes that without the wealth of the spice trade, the Renaissance may never happen. When Dumas wrote in Venice, he described it best: “Under the influence of spices, intelligence seems to have an immortal leap. The reason why we can have the masterpiece of Titian, is it all thanks to spices? I really want to believe at this point.”
In 1658, in order to compete for the cinnamon trade in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the Dutch defeated the Portuguese in the war and added a port for transporting peppers on the Malabar coast and Java island in the southwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. Since the Middle Ages, pepper has attracted Europeans to come to India. After winning the short-lived cinnamon and pepper trade, the Dutch cut off all the clove trees outside Abaya and monopolized the clove trade market for 60 years. Later, the Frenchman stole the seeds of the lilac tree and transplanted it successfully. This monopoly was broken. After more than 100 years of turning around, this has stirred up the spice trade war in Western Europe and ended with the victory of the British.
