Tradition · spice in world trade
Black pepper
Also known as Piper nigrum, Malabar pepper, Kālī mirc, Kali mirch, Peppercorn, Black gold
Black pepper is the dried fruit of Piper nigrum, a vine native to the rain forests of the Malabar Coast, which for the ancient world was the spice's only source. Its trade tied Kerala to the Mediterranean: Roman ships crossed the Arabian Sea on the monsoon to the Chera ports, Pliny complained of the drain of money, and the Portuguese sought a sea route round Africa partly to escape Venice's prices. Malabar pepper became a Geographical Indication in 2007–08, though Vietnam now grows almost four times as much as India.
- Function
- Trade & production
- Material
- dried drupes of Piper nigrum
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
Peppercorns were found stuffed in the nostrils of Ramesses II, who died in 1213 BCE, and no one knows how they reached the Nile from Malabar. Alaric the Visigoth included 3,000 pounds of pepper in the ransom he demanded from Rome in the fifth century.
Ancient sources often confuse black pepper with long pepper (Piper longum), which the Romans also called piper; Wikipedia's claim that pepper was used in Indian cooking by 2000 BCE is flagged as unsupported.
Connections (4)
- Trade routeMuziris / Pattanam
Muziris was the pepper port. The Periplus says pepper is exported there, 'produced in only one region near these markets', called Cottonara. A Sangam poem in the Ettuttokai describes Yavana ships on the Periyar arriving with gold and departing with pepper, and another Tamil poem pictures sacks of pepper heaped on the river bank. A second-century Greek papyrus records a loan contract on a Muziris cargo, chiefly pepper and spices, carried on the ship Hermapollon and valued at about nine million sesterces.
- Trade routeRome
Rome was the market. Strabo says about 120 ships sailed each year for India, and Apicius's cookbook uses pepper in most of its recipes. Pliny's Natural History gives Roman prices around 77 CE, long pepper at fifteen denarii a pound, white at seven and black at four, complains that India drains the empire of fifty million sesterces a year, and wonders who first thought pungency worth importing. When Alaric besieged Rome in the fifth century, his ransom included 3,000 pounds of pepper.
- Trade routeBerenike
Berenike, on Egypt's Red Sea coast, was where Malabar pepper entered the Roman world. Returning ships came up the Red Sea and their cargo went overland or by canal to the Nile and down to Alexandria. Excavators at Berenike recovered 7.55 kilograms of black peppercorns, imported from southern India, in a large Nile-silt jar in a temple courtyard: the largest single concentration ever found in the classical Mediterranean world, alongside Indian teak, pottery and a Tamil-Brahmi graffito.
- Historical linkKozhikode / Calicut
Pepper's medieval price and Venice's grip on its Mediterranean trade helped send the Portuguese round Africa. In 1498 Vasco da Gama reached Calicut; asked by Arabs in Calicut why they had come, his representative replied, 'we seek Christians and spices'. The Portuguese then monopolised the spice trade for about 150 years, until the Dutch and English took most of their Indian Ocean trade in the seventeenth century. As supplies into Europe rose, pepper slid from a luxury of the rich to an everyday seasoning.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Black pepper", "Muziris", "Berenice Troglodytica" and "Geographical indications in India". P. N. Ravindran, Black Pepper: Piper nigrum (2000). Jack Turner, Spice: The History of a Temptation (2004). Federico De Romanis, The Indo-Roman Pepper Trade and the Muziris Papyrus (2020).
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