Lecture 17: 1492—Globalization and Fusion Cuisines
1492—Globalization and Fusion Cuisines......................................
Lecture 17
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his lecture is partly about exploration and the expansion of the
economy, but it is mostly about how the desire for spices and other
luxury items connects the entire globe. This lecture is also about
how plants, animals, and diseases were, for the fi rst time in human history,
transported across continents—not just from the Americas to Europe,
but also from Asia, Africa, and Europe to everywhere. In this lecture, you
will learn that the globalization of the food supply was probably the most
important event in human history since the discovery of agriculture.
The Venetian Spice Trade Monopoly
In the mid-15th century, the Venetians had pretty much monopolized
the spice trade. They picked up spices and luxury goods like silks,
gold, drugs, and dyestuff in the eastern Mediterranean and brought
it to the rest of Europe. The Venetians used galleys—which are big,
rowed, fl at-bottomed ships that can hold a lot of cargo—to hold
onto their monopoly. Spices and silks don’t take up much room, so
the Venetians armed these ships and fi lled them with guns to protect
their trade.
The Venetians captured a long stretch of land extending down the
Dalmatian coast all the way to Corfu in Greece, Crete, and Cyprus for
a while to serve as stopping off points and to provide friendly harbors
in case they’re chased by pirates or hostile Turks. The Venetian state
supported these enterprises. They built themselves a maritime empire
with colonies that were basically military garrisons.
The importance of this model is that it was imitated by the
Portuguese. Portugal faces the Atlantic, in which galleys are not of
much use, which meant that they were forced to develop a different
kind of sea-worthy vessel—and they did. They also had to develop
methods of navigation that were more sophisticated than those used
in the Mediterranean.