History The Road to Malabar: Tracing the Trade Routes That Built and Broke Empires
There is a version of history where the spice is the hero. Pepper corns and cinnamon bark cross oceans, empires rise to meet them, and the story ends with a shipload of black gold docking in Lisbon harbor. It's a good story. It's also the wrong one.The spice was never the point. The spice was cargo — inert, interchangeable, waiting to be carried. What actually built and broke empires was the road itself: the physical corridor a merchant, a caravan, …
