Evening Post. SATURDAY, MAY 27, 1933. SPIGE AND EMPIRE

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 123, 27 May 1933, Page 12

Evening Post. SATURDAY, MAY 27, 1933. SPIGE AND EMPIRE

The, important part that spices once played in the economy of the Eastern world is indicated by the frequent and honourable mention which they Receive in the Old Testament. Balm and spices were a part of the present with which.Jacob equipped his.,sons for their mission to the Court of Egypt When the Queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon her "very -great train" included "camels that bare spices and very much gold and precious stones," and in the account of Hezekiah's treasuries and in Ezekiel's great, picture of , the traffic,of'Tyre there is the same close association of spices with gold and precious stones. But pepper, which afterwards claimed a leading place in the spicery of the East, had not then come as far west as Jerusalem or Tyre, and to associate it with the Queen of'Sheba or even with "the spicy breezes", that "blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle" would Be to raise a laugh. Pepper is one of the; prosy things of the world which we are apt to regard as equally devoid of romantic, sentiment and of historical importance, but on the second point at any fate we are wrong. • Pepper is said to have been known to Hippocrates, who flourished in the 4th andSth centuries 8.C., but it was of course as a drug that it attracted the attention of the Father, of. Medicine. The capital importance that pepper had attained at the beginning of the sth century A.D. as an article of diet both for the Roman and for the Barbarian worlds is proved by a strange feature,of a great historical episode. When Alaric hacf Rome at his mercy in the year 408 his first demands were such as to leave the citizens little but their lives, but he afterwards granted an armistice and condescended to negotiation. Tho; stewi, features of. Alaric, says Gfiblbon, were '; iusonmbl y relaxed; ho abated much of the rigour of his terms; and at length consented to raise the siege, on tho payment of 5000 pounds of gold, of 30,000 pounds of silver, of 4000 robes of silk, of 3000 pieces of fine- scarlet cloth, and of 3000 pounds weight of pepper. Pepper was thus given exactly the same association willi. the precious metals by the King of the Goths that had been given to spices by the Queen of Sheba and Hezekiah more than a thousand years previously. And Alaric at any rate. . must be credited with having put the matter on a strict business footing with no nonsense of sentiment .about it at all. In his note upon the passage Gibbon says: Pepper, was a favourite ingredient of the most oxpensivo' Roman cookery and the best sort commonly sold for 15 denarii, or 10 • shillings, the pound. . . . It waa brought from India; and tho same country; itho coast of Malabar, still affords the greatest plenty: but tho improvement of trade and navigation has multiplied the' quantity and reduced tho price. According to Pliny, who is one of Gibbon's authorities, cinnamon and pepper were the two most important of the spices for which Rome was indebted to India, and the exports which she sent in return included glass, textiles, coral, and amber. But her supplies N of these articles were inadequate, and the result was, as Pliny himself points out, an adverse balance of trade equivalent in the currency of today to about £1,000,000 a year. "So dearly," says. Pliny, "do we pay for our luxuries and our women." General Sir Percy Sykcs, to whom we owe this estimate, adds another strikingly modern touch. This, ho says, constituted a serious state of affairs, as tho money was hoarded in India, where' enormous quantities of Roman coins have been found, while Rome had no minos from which this currency could bo adequately replenished. Strangely indeed is history repeating itself. After the lapse of eighteen hundred years the city which is the modern equivalent of ancient Rome is still-supplied with cinnamon and pepper from India, still suffers from an adverse balance of trade, and India. still continues, or was till a few weeks ago, still continuing to hoard her gold! Our quotation from Sir Percy Sykes and some of our references are taken from an article which he has contributed to last month's "Nineteenth Century." He has chosen the fascinating title, "The Influence of the Spice Trade on History," and has written an article to match. If he has! not proved that a nation of shopkeepers has founded its world-wide Empire on spice, he has certainly put it beyond a doubt that in her slow and largely undesigned march towards sea power and world power Britain has been led for a considerable part of the way by the call, of a trade which has long since declined into relatively insignificant proportions. The limits of this article will not allow us to follow General Sykes in his sketch of this development, but we may quote the two rapid sentences in which' he bridges the gap between the Roman world c-f Pliny's day and the beginning of the modern e,ra. For two 'centuries, lie writes, the Eastern trade flourished, but it canio to ah end owing to tho. decline of Boman power and prestige, the result

of which was that the- Arabs and Abyssinians practically closed tho Red Sea to Roman ships. Indeed, from that period, until the appearance of Vasco da Gama in Eastern waters, there was no direct commercial intercourse be- j tweon Europe and India or tho Spico Islands—a period of inoro than 1000 years. The direct intercourse which was blocked by the death of the old sea power was not resumed unjtil a new sea power had opened up another route. Abandoning any further lead from Sir Percy Sykes for the Npresent' we may supplement the modern turn which he has given to the adverse balance of ancient Rome's trade with India by citing for a similar purpose two other examples which the inquiries suggested by Jiis article have revealed. In the days when the citizens of. the tiny City-States of Italy were dividing their time, between creating immortal masterpieces of art and cutting one another's throats, a commercial treaty between Florence and Sienna actually affirmed, and apparently acted upon, the principle that -. r free trade ia a good which ought tobo constantly promoted, ,and even during war preserved intact. Similar doctrine was proclaimed by Sir Josiah Child, the banker who towards the close of the 17th century acquired autocratic control of the East India Company, and had even a king on his pay-roll. It was never found 'politic, lie said, to put trade into strait-laced _ bodices which, instoad of making- jt grow upright and thrive, must either kill it or. forco it away. On the eve of the World Economic Conference, at which most of the States to be represented have been acting on the theory that the best way of promoting international trade is to put it into "strait-laced bodices," or even to strangle it altogether, these wise heresies from an earlier day have a timely application.