Pepper: A History of the World's Most Influential Spice
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- R$ 67,90
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- R$ 67,90
Descrição da editora
Filled with anecdotes and fascinating information, "a spicy read indeed." (Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed the World)
The perfect companion to Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World History, Pepper illuminates the rich history of pepper for a popular audience. Vivid and entertaining, it describes the part pepper played in bringing the Europeans, and later the Americans, to Asia and details the fascinating encounters they had there. As Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds, said, "After reading Marjorie Shaffer's Pepper, you'll reconsider the significance of that grinder or shaker on your dining room table. The pursuit of this wizened berry with the bite changed history in ways you've never dreamed, involving extraordinary voyages, international trade, exotic locales, exploitation, brutality, disease, extinctions, and rebellions, and featuring a set of remarkable characters."
From the abundance of wildlife on the islands of the Indian Ocean, which the Europeans used as stepping stones to India and the East Indies, to colorful accounts of the sultan of Banda Aceh entertaining his European visitors with great banquets and elephant fights, this fascinating book reveals the often surprising story behind one of mankind's most common spices.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shaffer's book is less comprehensive food history than a chronicle of pepper's centuries as valued commodity from imperial Rome to present day. Its trade began in the classical era, continued through the Middle Ages, and exploded during the era of European imperialistic exploration and nationalist rivalry. Players included Asian, British, Iberian, and Continental crown and capital powers. The game ensnared proto-entrepreneurial and corporate-raider types such as explorer Vasco da Gama and colonial operator Sir Stamford Raffles. Erstwhile private agencies and startups like the Jesuits and the U.S. even got sucked into the business. Shaffer makes well-intentioned use of the records of the story's many colorful figures, including future saints, obscure seamen, and gender-bending stowaways, and at the center is the epic competition between two monolithic archrivals, the British and Dutch East India Companies. From humble beginnings, through expansion and market dominance, and into eventual decline, their fiercely capitalistic, sometimes violent competition provides the book's primary focus. A historian's more than a gastronome's book, its circling initially seems apropos, but becomes repetitious despite the decor of sidebars and maps. The result is a well-documented if scattered companion to Mark Kurlansky's Salt.
