Spices Once Ruled the World. Now They’re $3.99 at the Supermarket.

How Nutmeg Sparked Massacres, Cloves Traded for Manhattan, and Vanilla Made Empires – All for a Bit of Flavor

By now, you probably know that Per My Last Thought is where I expand on thoughts that stick with me, about topics of interest that aren’t necessarily about business. The kind that linger after I finish a book, leave a conversation, or drift back from one of my usual mental wanderings.

Recently, I read An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage. It explores global history through a deceptively simple lens: food. What we grow, trade, and consume has shaped the modern world more than most of us realize.

The chapter on the global spice trade stood out to me the most. Not because the history was new, but because of how absurd it feels in hindsight. Nutmeg once justified massacres. Cloves were exchanged for land. Cinnamon funded conquest. All to make spoiled food slightly more bearable.

Here are five spices that now sit in the back of your drawer, but once could’ve been worth more than your house:

1- Cinnamon: What You Use on French Toast

Cinnamon is the inner bark of trees native to Sri Lanka. It was used as early as 2000 BCE, prized by Egyptians for embalming and later by Romans and medieval Europeans for religious and elite purposes.

Arab traders controlled its route into Europe for over a millennium, fabricating elaborate myths about its origin – giant birds nesting on sheer cliffs, guarding the spice. It was disinformation as trade strategy.

That veil lifted in the early 1500s, when the Portuguese reached Ceylon and seized control of the cinnamon-producing coast. The Dutch ousted them in the 1600s, followed by the British, who industrialized the trade and expanded cultivation to India and the Seychelles.

At its peak, cinnamon cost more than a laborer’s monthly wage. The human cost was far greater: entire villages were displaced, forests stripped, and labor forcibly conscripted. It wasn’t until the 1800s, with commercial farming in Indonesia, that cinnamon became accessible to ordinary households.

The quest for cinnamon led men around the world, and often to their graves.
– Jack Turner

2- Cloves: What You Use in Biryani

Cloves grow on trees native to the Maluku Islands in Indonesia. Locals used them in cooking, medicine, and rituals – from easing childbirth to freshening breath. By the 3rd century BCE, Chinese courtiers were already chewing cloves before addressing the emperor.

Early trade was handled by Arab and Indian merchants. But by the 1600s, the Dutch East India Company imposed a more brutal model: control every tree or destroy it. Clove trees outside Dutch territory were burned. Villages were razed. Locals caught trading with outsiders were executed.

In 1667, the Dutch famously traded Manhattan to the British in exchange for Run Island – a tiny volcanic island that grew cloves. At the time, it seemed a rational trade.

Cloves remained rare until the 18th century, when the French smuggled seedlings to Zanzibar and broke the monopoly.

We gave away a continent for a condiment.
– Dutch historian, on the Manhattan–Run Island deal

3- Nutmeg: What You Grate on Eggnog

If cinnamon was built on myth and cloves on monopoly, nutmeg was driven by mania. Europeans believed nutmeg could cure everything from indigestion to the plague. That made the Banda Islands, the world’s only source at the time, a high-value target.

In 1621, the Dutch invaded Banda, slaughtered most of the male population, and seized control. Survivors were enslaved or exiled, and new laborers were brought in to operate plantations. Nutmeg became one of the most profitable monopolies in colonial history. By weight, it was more valuable than gold.

The Dutch conquest of the Bandas was not a war, but a massacre for spice.
– Giles Milton, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg

Eventually, the monopoly cracked. The French smuggled nutmeg trees to Mauritius. The British followed suit, planting them in Grenada. Prices collapsed. Banda faded from view.

Today, nutmeg is grated into sauces, desserts, and eggnog. Thankfully, nobody dies for it anymore, unless they really love its flavor (apologies for the pun).

4- Chili Peppers: What You Use in Hot Sauce

In a history dominated by violence, extraction, and control, chili peppers are one of the few exception. They weren't traded in blood. They were simply adopted globally for their fiety taste and ability to thrive in diverse climates.

Chilies are native to Central and South America, first cultivated over 6,000 years ago by civilizations like the Aztecs and Mayans. After Columbus’s first voyage, they spread across the world... not through conquest or monopoly, but through flavor. When Columbus encountered chilies in the Caribbean, he mistook them for black pepper, the highly prized Asian spice he was seeking. He called them peppers, and the name stuck.

Portuguese and Spanish traders introduced chilies to West Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and China. Adoption was swift. No empire tried to monopolize them. Within decades of their arrival from the New World, chilies became central to cuisines that had never known them. In India, Thailand, and parts of China, they’re now considered native.

When Columbus found chili, he mistook it for black pepper. The world didn’t correct him. It just ran with it.
– Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking

5- Vanilla: What You Use in Ice Cream

Vanilla originated in Mexico. It was first cultivated by the Totonac people, an Indigenous civilization that flourished along the Gulf coast of present-day Veracruz as early as 1000 BCE. They considered vanilla sacred and were the first to domesticate the orchid. The Aztecs later adopted it, using vanilla to flavor cacao in ceremonial drinks reserved for nobility.

After the Spanish conquest, vanilla was introduced to Europe, where demand surged. But production remained elusive. Vanilla orchids require a specific bee for pollination, one found only in Mesoamerica – and attempts to grow it elsewhere failed for centuries.

That changed in 1841, when Edmond Albius, a 12-year-old enslaved boy on the French island of Réunion, discovered how to hand-pollinate the orchid. His discovery unlocked global cultivation and enormous profit. But not for him – of course not.

“Vanilla, like diamonds or oil, has always come at a price. And too often, someone else pays it.” – Tim Ecott

The French expanded vanilla production to Madagascar and the Comoros. The British followed in India and Sri Lanka. As demand rose, so did the violence behind it. In Madagascar, enslaved and later colonized Malagasy laborers were forced to work on vanilla plantations under brutal conditions. Workers who failed to meet quotas were beaten, jailed, or killed. Theft of even a single pod was punishable by death. Vanilla fields were patrolled like gold mines – and treated with the same paranoia.

Edmond Albius died in poverty. Vanilla became an industry.

At its peak, real vanilla was among the world’s most expensive commodities. Even now, it ranks just behind saffron in price per kilo. Yet over 99% of the vanilla flavoring used today is synthetic, typically derived from lignin (a wood byproduct) or guaiacol (a petrochemical). Bon appetit... I guess!

Per my last thought...

Spice once ruled the world. It sparked wars, somehow justified massacres, and redrew maps, before ending up in the back of a kitchen drawer, often past its expiry date.

The question now is: what’s the hypothetical spice that will shape the world of tomorrow? It might be data, water, electricity. Dopamine? Or even 72-hour silent retreats in a Balinese villa.

Whatever it is, may future historians find it just as ridiculous. And may it come with a lot less blood shed...