The Spice Route

This history traces the trade in pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and related aromatics from antiquity through the early modern oceans. Keay follows Egyptian and Greco-Roman voyages toward India, the Arab and Asian middlemen who kept sources obscure, and the later Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English searches that redrew maps and seized islands. He uses geographies, pilots' books, and travelers' reports to show how a luxury traffic drove exploration and colonial war, then lost its mystery as volume rose. The book is a history of a trade, not a cookbook.

Bound in orange art silk cover blocked with a gilt design by Neil Packer. Dark brown slipcase wrapped on all sides with a colour picture. Map endpapers printed brown on orange.