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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2010
The old debate amongst historians as to whether the testimony of the sixteenth century really bears out Adam Smith's claim that the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope constitutes ‘one of the two and most important events in the recorded history of mankind’ was, it seems, put to sleep with Niels Steensgaard's thesis of 1973. Steensgaard argued that ‘a structural revolution’ and which truly sounded the death-knell of the old overland caravan trades competing with the sea borne routes, was not effected by the Portuguese from 1498 but awaited the Dutch. The debate, however, was couched very much on the theory of the operation run by the Portuguese, and which was typologised as reactionary in that it relied upon the threat of force rather than commercial competitivity. Whilst price movements between Portuguese and Red Sea pepper on the European market have been analysed by historians such as Herman Van Der Wee and Rene Gascon, nobody has really stopped to consider the complex of factors intervening on the demand side. Pepper, like ginger, was not a unitary good as misleadingly assumed by Douglas Irwin in his attempt to analyse the Anglo-Dutch rivalry for the East India trade with the Brander-Spence analysis of duopolistic export competition. Price lists suggest that pepper came in manifold shapes, sizes and qualities, let alone competing species, all of which rendered the market remarkably heterogeneous with up to seven-fold price divergences between, for example, the different products that would pass as ‘pepper’. This article discusses some of the factors that made for market variegation, and focuses on the market consequences of a Portuguese policy of transportation in the open ship's hold. It suggests that quality was one of the demand factors that shaped the competition between the Adantic and Mediterranean spice trade.
1 Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations IV, Part 3 (1776)Google Scholar; Steensgaard, Niels, Carracks, Caravans and Companies (Copenhagen 1973). Useful contributions to the debate includeGoogle ScholarSilva, M. Pires da, Vicissitudines e ameaça comercial da rota portuguesa do Cabo (Lisbon 1947)Google Scholar; Godinho, V.M., ‘Le repli vénitien et égyptien et la route du Cap, 1496–1533’ in: Eventail de l'histoire vivante, hommage à Lucien Febvre offert II (Paris 1953)Google Scholar; Romano, R., Tenenti, A.Tucci, U., ‘Venise et la route du Cap, 1499–1517’, Mediterranee et Ocean Indien, Travaux du 6e Colloque International d'Histoire Maritime (Paris 1970) 109–139;Google ScholarWake, C.H.H., ‘The Changing Pattern of Europe's Pepper and Spice Imports, ca. 1400–1700’, Journal of European Economic History 8/2 (1979) 361–403;Google ScholarDavis, Ralph, ‘Influences de l'Angleterre sur le declin de Venise au XVIIème siècle’, Aspetti e cause delta decadenza economica veneuana nel secolo XVII: Atti del Convegno (Venice-Rome 1961) 183–234.Google Scholar The argument for the importance of the forging of a Portuguese route to the Indies was not only a nationalist one, nor one based purely on its heroic pioneirismo, but was seen as a response to the idea of a fifteenth-century blockage on the trade routes to the East. The notion of a blockage was, however, rejected as early as by Lybyer, A.H., ‘The Ottoman Turks and the Routes of Oriental Trade’, The English Historical Review 120 (October 1915) 577–588,CrossRefGoogle Scholar which was later confirmed by work undertaken by Inalcik, H. on Turkish customs registers at Kaffa, see Sources and Studies on the Ottoman Black Sea (Cambridge, Mass. 1996)Google Scholar and Malowist, Marian, Kaffa — kolonia genuenska na Krymie i problem wschodni w latach 1453–1475 (Warsaw 1947)Google Scholar.
2 Wee, Herman Van Der, The Growth of the Antwerp Market and the European Economy (14th to 16th Centuries) (The Hague 1963)Google Scholar; Gascon, Rene, ‘Un siècle du commerce des épices à Lyon (fin XVe - fin XVIe siécles’, Annales: Economies, Societes, Civilisations (1960). Jan Kieniewicz has tried to establish a line of prices on the Polish market dividing spices reexported from the Antwerp market from those percolating up from south-eastern Europe,Google Scholar‘Nouvelles et marchandises: La Perspective Polonaise des Decouvertes Portugaises au XVIe siècle’, Actes du Colloque ‘La Découverte, le Portugal et I'Europe’ Centre Culturel Portugais (Paris 1990) 333Google Scholar.
3 Irwin, D., ‘Mercantilism as Strategic Trade Policy: The Anglo-Dutch Rivalry for the East India Irz&e’, Journal of Political Economy 99/6 (1991) 1296–1314CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 The price divergence is that between malagueta and short pepper on the Antwerp market at die beginning of the 1450s according to statistics presented by Elbl, Ivana, The Portuguese Trade with West Africa, 1440–1521, PhD University of Toronto (1986). Although Elbl insists that the Portuguese did not write of the malagueta as a pepper (see the second page of this article), one might like to recur to the Nuremberg Chronicle, which described malagueta in the following way: ‘although not as wrinkled as that of the Orient, it however reminds one of real pepper from its sharpness and form, in fact, in everything’ (‘nao sendo embora tao rugosa como a da Oriente, no entanto faz lembrar no picante, na forma, enfim, em tudo a verdadeira pimenta’),Google ScholarAlmeida, J. Mendes de, ‘Portugal nas Cronicas de Nuremberg de Hartmann Schedel’, Arquivo de Bibliografia Portuguesa 19–20 (Coimbra 1959) 214Google Scholar.
5 It is the same logic that explains why medieval European dyers preferred to receive oriental brazilwoodas billets rather than shavings as evidenced from the mercuriales of the Datini archives, see Balard, Michel, ‘L Impact des Produits du Levant’ in: Prodotti e tecniche d'oltre-mare nelle economie europee secc. XIII-XVIII: atti delta ventinovesima settimana di studi, [Prato] 14–19 aprik 1997, ed. Cavaciocchi, Simonetta (Firenze 1998)Google Scholar.
6 The Grands Livres are analysed and extracts presented in Denucé, Jean, Inventaire des Affaitati, banquiers italiensd Anvers de Vannee 1568 (Antwerp 1934)Google Scholar.
7 Letter to De Hertoghe, 22 December 1593. From the Fugger Archives at Dillingen 2, 1, 35 and cited by Kellenbenz, H., Autour de 1600: le commerce du poivre des Fugger et le marché intemationale du poivre (1956) 21Google Scholar.
8 PeterOchs, , Geschichte der Stadt undLand schafi Basel III (Leipzig/Berlin/Basel 1786-1832) 194Google Scholar.
9 The Oxford English Dictionary records the first reference to malagueta as pepper for 1705, the date of publication of the second translated edition to Bosnian's, WillemDescription of the Coast of Guinea, chapter xvi, 285, though I have found documents in the London Public Record Office that suggest slightly earlier usage, for example: P.R.O., T/70/50 fol. 133 dated 9 February 1692. Elbl, The Portuguese Trade with West Africa, 507Google Scholar.
10 ‘Lista das mercadorias permutadas com os estados de Flandres e Brabante no reinado Manuel', de D., Freire, A. Braamcamp, Noticías da Feitoria de Flandres, 119Google Scholar.
11 Dioscorides, , De materia medica II, 188. For a sixteenth-century edition complete with a fanciful illustrative rendering of the sheath, see the Frankfurt edition of 1549Google Scholar.
12 The long report submitted by the registrar of the factory of Cochin in 1607 to the king and the councils in Madrid concerning the pepper trade is full of interesting details, especially the second part, see Documentacdo ultramarina India III (Lisbon 1960-) 293–361;Google ScholarRego, A. da Silva ed., As Gavetas da Torre do TomboVltt (Lisbon 1960-1977) 183Google Scholar; Botelho, S., ‘Tombo do Estado da India’ in: Felner, ed., Subsidios para a Historia da India Portugueza (Lisbon 1868) 113Google Scholar; Sa, Artur Basilio de ed., Documentaçāo para a história das missōes do padroado português do oriente: Insulíndia 1506–1595 (Lisbon 1954-1958) Volume I, 575 and III, 494Google Scholar.
13 Marques, A.H. de Oliviera, ‘Um Preçário de Mercadorias e de Câmbios de Hamburgo, do Século XVI’, Portugal Quinhentista: Ensaios (1987) 216Google Scholar.
14 Barbosa, , Livro deDuarte Barbosa, Colleccdo de Noticias (Lisbon 1812) 229Google Scholar; Orta, Garcia da, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas medçfinais da India, Ficalho, Conde de ed. (Lisbon 1895) 212Google Scholar.
15 From the list of products bought on Alessandro Magno's trading venture from Venice to Alexandria in 1561, Lane, ‘The Mediterranean Spice Trade: Further Evidence of its Revival in the Sixteenth Century’, American Historical Review 45 (1939-1940) 583Google Scholar.
16 Anthony Reid shows in the form of a graph how, nonetheless, South-East Asian pepper constituted an ever increasing proportion of total European pepper imports between 1500 and 1680, ‘The System of Trade and Shipping in Maritime and South-East Asia, and the Effects of the Development of the Cape Route to Europe’ in: Pohl, H. ed., The European Discovery of the World and its Economic Effects on Pre-Industrial Societies, 1500–1800. Papers of the 10th International Economic History Congress (Stuttgart 1990) Figure 1Google Scholar.
17 Orta, Da, Coloquiosll, 141Google Scholar; Pires, Tome, Suma Oriental, Cortesao, A. ed. (Coimbra 1978) 265 (‘nem he da bomdade da de Cochim he moor mais vaa dura menos nom tern a perfeicam do gosto E nom e tanto a Romatico’)Google Scholar.
18 India Office Records, London, Despatch Book, 16 February 1670, Volume 87, 315.
19 For the Carreira da India, the best introduction is still Boxer, C.R., The Tragic History of the Sea, 1589–1622 (Cambridge 1959) 1–30, though further sources have subsequendy emerged, seeGoogle ScholarVidago, Joāo, ‘Anotaçōes a uma Bibliografia da “Carreira da India”’, Studia 18 (1966) 209–241 andGoogle ScholarMatos, A.T. de, ‘Novas Fontes para a Historia da Carreira da India: os Livros das Naus S. Roque e Nossa Senhora da Conceiçaō’, Studia 48 (1989) 337–352; for the overland routes, seeGoogle ScholarPearson, Michael, ‘The Portuguese Overland Communications between Europe and India, 1510–1640’, Papers of the International Conference on Indian Ocean Studies (Perth 1979) section IIIGoogle Scholar; Furber, Holden, ‘The Overland Routes to India’, fournal of Indian History 29 (1951). For a comparison, seeGoogle ScholarDavis, Ralph, ‘Comparative Advantages of the Levant and Cape Routes to India in the 16th and 17th Centuries’, Sviluppo e sottosviluppo in Europa e Fuori d'Europa dal secolo XIII alia rivoluzione industriale. Atti delle ‘Settimane delle Studio’ e altri convegni 10 (1983). On the trade routes of Antiquity, see J. Innes Miller, The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire (Oxford 1969)Google Scholar.
20 Sernigi's second letter together with that of Guido Detti are published by Radulet, C., Vasco da Gama, la prima circumnavigazione dell'Africa, 1497–99 (Reggio Emilia 1994) 182–Google Scholar. Martin Behaim's globe has been transcribed by Ravenstein, E.G., Martin Behaim, his Life and his Globe (London 1908)Google Scholar. Radulet thinks Sernigi confuses the city of Mecca for that of at-Tūr in the Yemen, see page 186.
21 The East European perimeter trade is much neglected by historians who seem to have accepted António Galvāo's dismissal of these routes being ‘muito mais comprido e custoso’, Tractado dos diversos e desvariados caminhos […] (Lisbon 1563) re-ed.Google Scholar Hakluyt Soc. (1862) 52, but a general overview can be had in Malowist, M., ‘Le commerce du Levant avec l'Europe de l'Est au XVIe siècle’ in: Mélanges en l'honneur de Fernand Braudel (Toulouse 1973).Google Scholar For Transylvania, see Pach, Z., ‘The Transylvanian Route of Levantine Trade around 1500’, Studia Histmica (Budapest 1975)Google Scholar; for Lemberg, see Nadel-Golobič, Eleonora, ‘Armenians and Jews in Medieval Lvov: Their Role in Oriental Trade, 1400–1600’, Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 20 (1979),CrossRefGoogle Scholar but also Charewiczowa, L., Handelśrednioxaieanego Lwowa (Lwów 1925)Google Scholar; for the registers of the Kassa Merchant Company in 1502–1503, see Kerekes, G., ‘A kassai kereskedelmi társaság foljegyzései 1502 és 1503’, Magyar Gazdasagtortenelmi Szemle (1902) 106–117Google Scholar.
22 Chaudhuri, R.N., The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660–1760 (Cambridge 1978) p326CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 The King of Portugal, for example, paid for a series of expensive tapestries commissioned from a renowned firm of Flemish tapestry-makers in the 1530s, and members of his retinue on occasion asked for pepper by way of dispensation (mêrce), see ‘Alvára para se lhe darem dous quintaes de pimenta de mêrce’, 30 Abril 1518, Arquivo Nacional de Torre do Tombo (A.N.T.T.), Lisbon, Corpo Crónologico, p. 1, m. 23, d. 43.
24 See Musgrave, Peter, ‘The Economics of Uncertainty: The Structural Revolution in the Spice Trade, 1480–1640’ in: Cottrell, P.L. & Aldcrofts, D.H. eds, Shipping, Trade and Commerce: Essays in Memory of Ralph Davis (Leicester 1981) 14.Google Scholar It is interesting to note that shipping times had, if anything, got slower by the beginning of the nineteenth century. While it took seventeen and a half months for a return journey to India via Suez, the Cape route demanded twenty months, Blancard, P., Manuel du Commerce des Indes et de la Chine (Paris 1806) 525–526Google Scholar.
25 See Ferreira, Godefredo, Relaçāo da Viagem de um Correio do Vice-Rex das Indias Orientals a Sua Majestade, Expedido de Goa, no Primeiro de Janeiro de 1608 (Lisbon 1953)Google Scholar.
26 Eden, Richard, ‘Of the Northeast Frosty Sea and Kingdomes Lying That Way’ (1555) in: Major, R.H. ed., Notes Upon Russia (London 1851-1852) 230Google Scholar.
27 ‘Il peuere che va in Portogallo, non è cosi buono, come quello che va nello stretto della Mecca, percioche I ministri del Re di Portogallo già molti anni fecero l'appalto col Re di Cochin per nome del Re di Portogallo, e posero il prezzo al peuere […]’, Cesare de'Fedrici, ‘Viaggio […]’ in: Ramusio, G.B., Dalle nauigationi e viaggi III (Venice 1606) 389vGoogle Scholar.
28 ‘Le spezierie sono in tutte perfezione e molto miglior che coteste vengono d'Alessandria per esser più fresche, come cosa colta di pochi dg’, letter of 10 August 1499, published in Radulet, Vasco da Gama.
29 The controversy over the re-export trade will be the subject of a forthcoming article, ‘Who Wants to Take on the Portuguese Spice Trade? The Politics of European Re-export, 1500–1550’.
30 In 1516, Venetian ginger sold for eighteen dinheiros, whereas the Portuguese would not sell at more than thirteen. Letter of Ruy Fernandes dated 6 May 1516, published in Freire, Braamcamp, Notiíkas daFeitoria deFlandres (1920) doc. LXXXVI, 250Google Scholar. In October 1505, ginger from Alexandria sold at 24 gros per pound, Portuguese at 17, Quirini, Vincenzo in LeRelazioni degli ambasciatori veneti, ed. Alberi, E. (Firenze 1863)Google Scholar. Herman Van Der Wee thus considerably underestimates the mark-up on Veneetse gimber, which he claims was as little as five to six per cent, The Growth of the Antwerp Market I, Appendix 26.
31 Then there is the problem not of translatability, but variance within a given measure. The bales of pepper captured by the San Stefano galleys of Tuscany on 4 July 1579 fluctuated between 260 and 522 pounds, Archivio di Stato, Firenze. Mediceo del Principato, Pezzo 2077, fo. 590.
32 ‘comme il n'eut aucun qui sceut rien du nouveau voyage des Portugais aux Indes, en furent si estonnés qu'ils estoyent en doute de la bonté desdites espices, et soupçonnoyent que fussent faulces et sophistiquées […]’, Ludovico Guicciardini, Description de toutUPais Bas autrement diet la Germanie inferieure, ou Basse-Allemaigne, Plantin ed. (1582) 130.
33 For malagueta, see Almeida, J. Mendes de ed., ‘Portugal nás Cronicas de Nuremberg de Hartmann Schedel’, Arquivo de Bibliografia Portuguesa 19–20 (Coimbra 1959) 214.Google Scholar For pimento de rabo, see Barros, J., Asia I (Venice 1561) 80Google Scholar. Another account, by contrast, seems to suggest that the African cubeb was received with great enthusiasm on the Antwerp market, but it could perhaps play on its novelty value where pepper and malagueta had long been delivered by other suppliers (‘cijas mostras foram logo emviadas a Frandes e a outras panes, e foy logo avida em gramde preço, e estima’), Pina, Ruy de, ‘Chronica del Rey D. Joāo II’, Livros ineditos da história portuguesa III (Lisbon 1790-y1824) 74Google Scholar.
34 The decree is reported by Vincenzo Quirini in Le relazioni degli ambasdatori veneti (Firenze 1863) 13Google Scholar and Ca'Masser, , ‘Ordenazion del Re di Portogallo’, in his Retazione […] (1845) 29–30Google Scholar.
35 Ehrenberg, Richard, ‘Ein Hamburgischer Waaren-und Wechsel-Preiscourant aus dem XVI.Jahrhundert’, Hansische Geschichtsblatter IV/3 (1883) 165–170Google Scholar
36 For a synopsis of the history of Portuguese public accounting, see the short contribution of Godinho, V.M. to the Diciónario da História de Portugal,] Serrāo, J. ed. (Lisbon 1960)Google Scholar and paragraph ‘Le Nombre’ in his Les Découvertes Xve-XVIe, une revolution des mentalités (Paris 1990)Google Scholar.
37 ‘The pepper is somewhat green and small’, letter published in Greenlee, W.B. ed., (The) Voyage of Pedro Alvares Cabral to Brazil and India (London 1937) 138.Google Scholar Priuli, informed by merchants’ letters received from Bruges and Antwerp, reported how pepper was ‘fairly good, although a little green and small, while the cinnamon a little large’, I Diarii II (Città di Castello 1912) 175–176Google Scholar.
38 See, for example, Serdyukov, A. E. & Emelin, V.G., ‘Conservation of Tomato, Sweet Pepper and Aubergine Quality under Mechanized Harvesting, Storage and Sale’, ISHS Ada Horticullurae (Lund12 1979) no. 93Google Scholar.
39 See, for example, the regulations governing the Crown's compensation on pepper quotas brought back in the Carreira, Gaspar Corrêa, Lendas da Índia (Lisbon 1859-1866) 147Google Scholar; also letter of Gaspar Vaz to D. Joāo III: ‘a pimenta ha-de receber gramde quebra’, C.C., I m. 47, doc. 75.
40 ‘e cōtado digno que hū das drogas qū se corrompe nesta terra mais he acanela, e mais se for levada muyto têmpo por mar’ in: Da Orta, Coloquios, 59.
41 Freire, Braamcamp, Noticías da Feitoria de Flandres, doc. XXIGoogle Scholar.
42 The Merchants Avizo. Verie Necessarie for their Sons and Seruants, when they first send them beyond the Seas, as to Spaine and Portingale, or other countries (London 1607) 23, 51Google Scholar.
43 A.N.T.T., Lisbon, Corpo Cronólogico, pte. I, m. 12, doc. 16.
44 These examples have been taken from documents #3642 and #3813, published in Doehaerd, R., Etudes Anversoises. Documents sur le commerce international d'Anvers, 1488–1514 III (Paris 1963)Google Scholar.
45 ‘Wreck of the Santo Alberto’ in: Boxer, C.R. ed. and trans., The Tragic History of the Sea (Minneapolis 2001) 111Google Scholar; also ‘The Wreck of the Sāo Thomé’, where ‘the pumps became blocked with the pepper which went into the hold’, 57. For a general appreciation of the theme, see also Lanciani, Giulia, Tempeste e Naufragi sulla via delle Indie (Roma 1991)Google Scholar.
46 ‘Ritratto et Riuerso del Regno di Portogallo’, in the Niedersāchsische Staatsarchiv St. A P 2399, Hannover, and reproduced by Oliviera Marques, Portugal Quinhentista, Chapter 8. ‘le naui uengono carricate co i/pepi senza sacchi, a quella guisa, che si carrica in Sicilia il formento’, 180–181.
47 ‘Per l'acqua che le tocca da basso, è puzolente’, Leonardo da Ca’ Masser, ‘Relazione di Leonardo da CM. alla Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia sopra il commercio dei Portoghesi nell'India dopo la scoperta del Capo di Buona Speranza (1497–1506)’, published in Archivio Storico Italiano 10 (Firenze 1845)Google Scholar Appendix t. II, 28/29. In all truth, it does not appear that the Indiamen of the North European joint stock companies provided any better for their cargoes. Pepys, Samuel describes the hold of an ‘India shipp’ with ‘pepper scattered through every chink, you trod upon it; and in cloves and nutmegs, I walked above the knees’, The Diary ofSamuel Pepys V (London 1970-1983) entry for 16 11 1665, 300Google Scholar.
48 For a discussion of these measurements, see C.H.H. Wake, ‘The Changing Pattern of Europe's Pepper and Spice Imports, ca. 1400–1700’, repr. in: M. Pearson ed., The Perfumed Road: Spices in the Indian Ocean World (Brookfield, VT 1996) 145–146.
49 Commandant L. Denoix exaggerates when he claims that ‘la jauge des galères était inexistante, car une grande partie des marchandises était chargée en pontée’, ‘Caractéristiques des Navires de l'Époque des Grandes Découvertes’, Les aspects dé la découverte océànique. Ve Colloque d'histoire maritime, Lisbon 1960 (Paris 1966) 138Google Scholar. For Venetian ship types, see Lane, F.C., Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders of the Renaissance (Baltimore 1992)Google Scholar chapters 1 and 2. The chests were such an obstacle that regulations were frequently drawn up to limit their number, see for example Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Senato Misti, reg. 52, f. 72.
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57 See, for example, the Regimento das caixas de liberdade (1515) in the Ataide papers, A.N.T.T., Lisbon, and where the standard measures of the chests were set out.
58 The sudden drop in the price of spices as from 1503 on both Lisbon and Antwerp markets was covered at first hand by the Venetian ambassador secret Vincenzo Quirini in Le relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti (Firenze 1863)Google Scholar, though Rawdon Brown believes that the price Quirini stipulates for the Antwerp autumn fair, 18'/4 groats/pound, relates to 1508 rather than 1505, see The Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English affairs existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice etc. I (London 1864- ) no. 857 etal. missives.Google Scholar
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66 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama (Cambridge 1997)Google Scholar paragraph ‘The Making of Hostile Trade'.
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68 The traditions of Bruges, as laid out in the ‘Ordonnance sur le commerce des épices á Bruges, 4 March 1470’, translated by Gheldolf and published by Bussche, Van Den, Flandre et Portugal (Bruges 1874)Google Scholar as Document H, 193, carried over into the procedure at Antwerp, see Stadsarchief Antwerp Pkt. 913, fo. 43. Further information can be gleaned from the Antwerp Ambachtsboeken, and specifically Geudens, E., Het hoofdambacht der Meerseniers (Antwerpen 1891).Google Scholar Precisely why Portuguese pepper should have paid twice as much as the Venetian for the garbeleuren procedure, as Van Der Wee brings to light from a town ordinance of 1508, remains very much a mystery, particularly in light of the explicit hostility towards Venice in Maximilian I's dominions culminating in the latter's invasion of the Republic in March of that year, Van Der Wee, The Growth of the Antwerp Market I, Appendix 26. Perhaps the garbeleuren fees were fixed according to the quantity of import of which, it is true, there was scarcely a trickle from Venice at this time, see Horst, W.A., ‘Antwerpen als specerijenmarkt’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 51 (1936) 333Google Scholar.
69 Antwerp, Stadsarchief, RequestboeckVl (1563) foGoogle Scholar. 25 - the maitre des garbeleursvias requested to produce an attestation to support the consortium's complaint.
70 ‘Aucun attirail, pour l'année prochaine, pour tamiser et raffiner le poivre […] notre cause sera servie comme auparavant, et en tenant compte j'interdis que rien ne soit change’, a letter sent from King to an unknown official in the East, dated Evora, 17 February 1524, translated and cited by Burbure, A. dede Wesembeek, , La Casa de Portugal d'Anvers. Histoire de trois siecles d'activite (Bruxelles 1953) 13Google Scholar.
71 Ordonnance of 12 June 1515 in the Stadsarchief Gebodtboeck 1515, fo. 66; the complaint is in the Requestboek II, fo. 332.
72 Fluckiger, Friedrich A., Beitrage zur alteren Geschichte der Pharmatie in Bern (Schaffhausen 1862) 21Google Scholar as cited by Heyd, Wilhelm, Histoire du commerce du Levant au Moyen Age (Leipzig 1885-1886)Google Scholar trans, into French by F. Reynaud (Amsterdam 1967) 534.
73 ‘Quelques fritons y font entrer de la crotte de chien pulvériśee qui, par sa couleur noire, se confond avec le poivre. Au lieu de la graine des Moloques, le Parisien trompe mange de la merde de chien desséchée’,Mercier, Sébastien, Tableau de Paris (c. 1786) t. XII, 127Google Scholar.
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75 Bright, Timothy, A Treatise, wherein is declared the sufficiency of English medicines for cure of all diseases, cured with medicine (1580) 14Google Scholar. For borax, see Sanudo, M., I Diarii entry for 1522, Fulin, R. et al. ed. (Venice 1879-1903) t. XXXII, 438–439Google Scholar. For Theriaca Veneta in Transylvania, see Crijan, Eva, Materia medica de Transylvanie (Cluj-Napoca 1996)Google Scholar. Lisbon, by contrast, never made the step up to the refining and manufacturing of the raw materials it brought back from its colonies; they were either sent on to Antwerp as was the case with pearls and precious stones, or, when attempts were made, for example, to refine sugar, the results a Spanish memorandum tells us, ‘were deceiving and bad’, see Brumont, Francis, ‘El comercio exterior castellano a mediados del siglo XVI: Un memorial de las mercaderias que entran en el Reyno’ in: Hilario Alonso Casado, Castill y Europa, Comercio y Mercaderes en los sighs XIV, XVy XVI (Burgos 1995)Google Scholar.
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