The Science of Spices - Empiricism and Economic Botany in The Early Spanish Empire

The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire
Author(s): Paula De Vos

Source: Journal of World History, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Dec., 2006), pp. 399-427
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20079398
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The Science of Spices:
Empiricism and Economic Botany
in the Early Spanish Empire*
PAULA DE VOS
San Diego State University
It sought
is a little-known fact
out and encouraged the among
cultivation historians
of spices for most of itsthat the Spanish crown
imperial history, both in the Americas and in the Philippines. We are
well aware that the search for direct access to the Eastern spice trade
was a major motivation for support for Columbus's voyages--but once
it became clear that Columbus had found no such route, our attention
veers away from spices. Yet for colonial Spanish administrators and
entrepreneurs, spices continued to be a product of considerable inter
est and investment throughout the three centuries of Spanish rule in
the Americas. The purpose of this essay is to trace the various mani
festations of that interest in the sixteenth and early seventeenth cen
turies and to discuss what it reveals about Spanish imperial aspirations
and the strategies used to accomplish them.
Why is it that Spanish efforts to cultivate spices have received so
* I would like to thank the participants of the University of Southern

California-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute's conference "Plants and Insects in
the Early Modern World," 28-30 April 2005, and the UC-World History Workshop,
"Between the Local and the Global," 7-8 May 2005, for their valuable comments. In addi
tion, Carla Rahn Phillips, Marcy Norton, and Antonio Barrera helped me to polish an ear
lier draft of this essay; Ravi Rajan and David Christian supplied valuable insights and bib
liographic suggestions; and Alix Cooper put much time and effort into providing me with
very useful and thought-provoking commentary. Finally, I would like to thank the Ameri
can Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, and the National
Endowment for the Humanities for providing funding support for the research and writing
of this essay.
Journal of World History, Vol. 17, No. 4

? 2006 by University of Hawai'i Press
399
400 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, DECEMBER 20o6
little attention from historians? It could be argued that the lack of

attention is due to the fact that a significant spice trade never resulted.
The Eastern spice trade continued to be dominated by Portuguese mer
chants in the sixteenth century and was overtaken by the Dutch East
India Company in the seventeenth. Most spices collected in Indonesia
and China still made their way to Europe westward along the routes of
the "monsoon fleets," from Macao to Goa, across the Indian Ocean
and round the Cape of Good Hope to their European destinations.
And although the Manila galleon trade route between Manila and
Acapulco did supply Mexico with some of its cinnamon, Spain's Amer
ican colonies continued to receive most of their Eastern spices from
Spain?via the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic rather than the more
direct route across the Pacific.
Yet what appear to be the doomed efforts of the crown to overtake
the spice trade actually reveal much about the crown's imperial aims
and help to clarify the rationale behind policies that have often been
deemed inefficient at best. Accounts of the rise of English and Dutch
global commerce in the early modern period often dismiss the Span
ish imperial system as one steeped in secrecy and xenophobia, based
on protectionist principles that choked entrepreneurial spirit and hin
dered economic development. What these assumptions fail to recog
nize, however, is that many of the protectionist policies of the Span
ish crown were not only perfectly rational given the goals and needs
of imperial policy, but actually fostered innovative practices usually
seen as distinctly "modern." To illustrate this point, this essay focuses
on one particular area of the imperial economy?the support for spice
cultivation and trade?in order to demonstrate how this support con
stituted a policy of state-sponsored economic botany initiated in the
sixteenth century and pursued for three centuries.
Economic botany is essentially the practice of studying the botan
ical properties of plants that may be of use to human society and cul
tivating them for profit. According to the modern, formalized defini
tion put forth by economic botanists, it is "the study of plants, fungi,
algae and bacteria that directly or indirectly, positively or adversely
affect man, his livestock, and the maintenance of the environment.
The effects may be domestic, commercial, environmental, or purely
aesthetic; their use may belong to the past, the present, or the future."1
1 Gerald E. Wickers, Economie Botany: Principles and Practices (Dordrecht: Kluwer

Academic Publishers, 2001), pp. 2-4. Ethnobotany, a subfield of economic botany, has
been a subject of considerable controversy as of late. It involves research into plants of
chiefly medicinal use, where indigenous knowledge of plants has been used by multina
De Vos: The Science of Spices 401
The term "economic botany" originated in the mid-nineteenth

century, with "economic" referring to the utilitarian aspects of the
plant. It is still practiced today as a subdivision of botany, though its
multidisciplinary roots and applications are readily acknowledged. In
the early modern period, botany was an especially useful endeavor for
the global empires of European nations. The type of imperial eco
nomic botany?or "colonial botany" as it has been recently termed?
that they practiced served economic and political ends in addition to
the scientific. According to historians Londa Schiebinger and Claudia
Swan, "early modern botany both facilitated and profited from colo
nialism and long-distance trade, and . . . the development of botany
and Europe's commercial and territorial expansion are closely associ
ated developments."2 The practice of economic botany produced
what historians have termed "green gold" for early modern European
empires?an alternative to mineral wealth where there was none to
be found.3
Thus, the goals of botany coincided well with the goals of empire:
tional pharmaceutical and biotech corporations to develop new medicines in the Western
medical tradition. The patents given these corporations then make the cost of the medi
cine prohibitive to its native populations. Recent debates have taken place over the ethics
of such practices, revolving around the issue of who "owns" the plant genome, or whether
it belongs to a global patrimony and ought to thus be available to all. In this way, the issues
developed here have continuing relevance and reverberations in the present day. See Jack
Kloppenburg Jr., ed., Seeds and Sovereignty: The Use and Control of Plant Genetic Resources
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1988) and Londa Schiebinger, Plants and Empire:
Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2004), pp. 15-17.
2 Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan, eds., Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and
Politics in the Early Modern World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), p.
3. Although this project in many ways coincides with and aims to further the work of
Schiebinger and Swan, I have continued to call the practices analyzed here "economic
botany" (in an imperial context) rather than "colonial botany," since the botanical investi
gations that took place have as a common theme utilitarian and commercial aims. Indeed,
Schiebinger, Plants and Empire, p. 6, argues that early modern botany enveloped several dif
ferent traditions that are today considered separate subfields of botany, including "applied
botany (economic and medicinal botany), horticulture and agriculture, and what today we
call theoretical botany, especially nomenclature and taxonomy."
3 This term is used by Londa Schiebinger in "Prospecting for Drugs: European Natu
ralists in the West Indies," in Schiebinger and Swan, Colonial Botany, p. 119, and in Plants
and Empire, p. 7, and by Jorge Ca?izares-Esguerra in "How Derivative Was Humboldt?" in
Schiebinger and Swan, Colonial Botany, p. 163, who says, "The new wealth of the Ameri
cas suddenly turned 'green.'" It should be pointed out that both authors used this term with
regard to a shift they see happening in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from a
search for mineral wealth to a realization that vegetable wealth could be even more prof
itable?and sustainable. However, this essay finds that such a realization was present from
the start of the Spanish empire and throughout the sixteenth century, as evidenced in the
transplantation efforts described here.
to find, identify, and categorize new and useful plants; to study their
constituent parts, climate, behavior, and nutritional needs; to deter
mine the feasibility of their transplantation; and to devise methods by
which to advertise and market their uses for commercial profit. The
information generated in the study of botany was then used by entre
preneurs?either through private or organized imperial initiative?to
organize large-scale agricultural projects to cultivate these useful plants
in the most efficient and economical method possible. The final step
was to establish widespread?and of course very lucrative?trade in
these products. The proliferation of botanical gardens throughout
Europe and European colonies during the early modern period greatly
facilitated the aims of economic botanists and provides testament to
the growing significance of botany as a policy of empire.4
This paper will trace the practices of economic botany in the inves
tigation and cultivation of spices in the Spanish empire in the six
teenth and early seventeenth centuries, beginning with the first reports
of spices found in the New World by Columbus and progressing on to
later attempts to transplant and cultivate Eastern spices both in the
Americas and in Spain. In doing so, I aim first to highlight the episte
mological significance of the transplantations that occurred and the
general significance of economic botany in the Spanish empire for
world history and the historiography of the Scientific Revolution. I
then turn to spices themselves and their uses and importance in the
early modern world, which serve to explain why first Columbus and
then Magellan set out into uncharted seas in search of them.
4 There were approximately i ,600 botanical gardens worldwide?in Europe and Euro
pean colonies?by the end of the eighteenth century. See Schiebinger and Swan, "Intro
duction," in Colonial Botany, p. 13, and Schiebinger, Plants and Empire, pp. 57-58. This is
not to say that botanical gardens were a European invention of the eighteenth century.
Botanical gardens have a long history, dating back at least to the time of the Zoroastrians,
and the concept was transmitted to Europe through the Islamic empires. See Andrew Wat
son, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1983), especially pp. 88-90 and 117-119. In Christian traditions the idea of recre
ating a Garden of Eden lent further stimulation to the establishment of botanical gardens.
However, as part of the European imperial enterprise, they seem to have proliferated most
spectacularly during the eighteenth century. See John Prest, The Garden of Eden: The
Botanic Garden and the Re-Creation of Paradise (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1981); Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and
the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995), pp. 175-179; and Richard Drayton, Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain,
and the "Improvement" of the World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000), who
point out the religious, aesthetic, and cultural, in addition to the utilitarian, roles of botan
ical gardens.
And they did find spices, especially in the East, including cinna
mon, cloves, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, and mace. Once it became clear,
however, that Portuguese (and later Dutch) domination of the Spice
Islands trade would not budge under Spanish pressure, Spanish entre
preneurs and the crown looked for other methods to procure them and
came up with two possibilities: they could look for new varieties of
spices in the lands they controlled?the Philippines and the temperate
regions of the Americas?or they could transplant known varieties to
new locations, taking care to record the botanical properties of the
spice flora, the best methods for collection and transport, and the
climate and soil conditions in which they grew best. Although both
methods were tried, it is the latter on which this essay focuses, as the
transplantation solution seems to have been the one most utilized in
the early years of colonization. Thus I go on to present several cases of
proposed and actual spice transplantation, first from the Spice Islands
and China to Mexico and the Caribbean, and then from the Caribbean
to Spain. These transplantations reveal an aspect of Spanish imperial
ism in the sixteenth century that is receiving increasing attention from
historians: that the Spanish imperialist project was one inherently tied
to the production, testing, and circulation of knowledge crucial for the
development of Western science.
Economic Botany in World History
The significance of natural history and particularly of botany as global

enterprises has come under recent investigation. Historians of science
have referred to the natural history collecting and botanical expedi
tions that were part and parcel of the early modern imperial programs
as "big science" and "big business," a product of global trade and the
earliest long-distance (some have even said "multinational") corpora
tions.5 Despite its global connections, however, until very recently
economic botany has been treated in the Anglophone literature as an
almost exclusively British endeavor. The typical Anglophone account
5 Steven Harris, "Long-Distance Corporations, Big Sciences, and the Geography of

Knowledge," Configurations 6, no. 2 (1998): 270. See also Harold Cook "The Cutting Edge
of a Revolution? Medicine and Natural History Near the Shores of the North Sea" in
Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen, and Natural Philosophers in Early
Modern Europe, ed. J. V. Field and Frank A. J. L. James (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993), pp. 45-61, and Schiebinger, Plants and Empire, p. 5.
of economic botany's history associates it mainly with the practices of

the British empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.6
These accounts focus on English naturalists who collected "exotic"
plants from far-off lands, and sent seeds and seedlings to Kew Gardens
where they were cultivated and studied, then shipped off to a part of
the empire where they could be best grown in large quantities. Thus
Kew acted as a kind of botanical and agricultural laboratory pro
moting, according to one geographer, a "benign kind of agricultural
imperialism."7
In many ways, this picture is not inaccurate: in the cultivation of
tea plants, quinine, and rubber trees, and in the introduction of new
strains of sugar cane in the Caribbean, British colonies took center
stage in the nineteenth century. Yet the impression in the Anglophone
literature that this is a modern, largely British phenomenon ignores
earlier practices in other empires.8 Swan and Schiebinger's recent vol
ume Colonial Botany (2005) sets out explicitly to correct this imbal
6 When historical background is discussed in the current debates over the control of
the germplasm, for example, economic botany's history is presented with regard to British
efforts only. See Lucille Brockway, "Plant Science and Colonial Expansion: The Botanical
Chess Game," in Kloppenburg, Seeds and Sovereignty, pp. 49-66, and Wickers, Economic
Botany, p. 13. Examples of histories of British imperial economic botany?which comprise
a distinguished collection of groundbreaking works of sophisticated analysis?include
Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Garden (New
York: Academic Press, 1979); Drayton, Nature's Government; Donald P. McKracken, Gar
dens of Empire: Botanical Institutions of the Victorian British Empire (London: Leicester Uni
versity Press, 1997); Ray Desmond, Kew: The History of the Royal Botanic Gardens (London:
Harvill Press with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 1995); Daniel Headrick, "Botany,
Chemistry, and Tropical Development," Journal of World History 7 (1996): 1-20; and Sat
pal Sangwan, "Natural History in Colonial Contest: Profit or Pursuit? British Botanical
Enterprise in India 17 78-1820," in Science and Empires: Historical Studies About Scientific
Development and European Expansion, ed. Patrick Petitjean et al. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Aca
demic Publishers, 1992), pp. 281-298. Historians of the Royal Botanical Gardens (Jardin
des Plantes) in France have begun to add to the historiography, particularly Emma Spary,
Utopia's Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2000).
7 J. H. Galloway, "Botany in the Service of Empire: The Barbados Cane-Breeding Pro
gram and the Revival of the Caribbean Sugar Industry, 1880S-1930S" Annals of the Associ
ation of American Geographers 86, no. 4 (December 1996): 683-706.
8 It must be noted that Spanish-language historians in Spain and Latin America are
aware of Spain's activities and contributions in natural history and botany, especially for the
eighteenth-century scientific expeditions. See for example Francisco Javier Puerto Sarmi
ento, La ilusi?n quebrada: Bot?nica, sanidad y pol?tica cient?fica en la Espa?a ilustrada (Barce
lona: Serbal; Madrid: CSIC, 1988). But I would argue that the literature they have produced
also fails to take into account the full extent and significance of Spain's imperial scientific
endeavors, particularly for the sixteenth century. For a more detailed discussion of and bib
liography for this argument, see Paula De Vos, "Research, Development, and Empire: State
Support of Science in the Later Spanish Empire," Colonial Latin American Review 15, no. 1
(June 2006): 55-79, particularly the section titled "Historiography of Science and Empire."
anee by recognizing the multiplicity of actors, methods, purposes, and

perspectives involved in the pursuit of colonial botanical study. Theirs
is an inherently comparative approach that "sets out the great variety
in colonial governance in different parts of the world, as well as the
diversity of commercial and scientific establishments planted around
the globe."9 In this way, the volume is consciously responding to Roy
MacLeod's call for a more inclusive treatment of imperial systems with
regard to history of science, one that problematizes the dichotomy
between metropolitan "center" and colonial "periphery" in the dis
semination of knowledge as well as in the production of and trade in
natural resources.10
For all their focus on comparative developments within global
imperial systems, however, these works still have the metropolitan
European powers as their focus and speak primarily to and about Euro
pean historical narratives of scientific development. Andrew Watson's
Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World (1983), however,
clearly demonstrates that botanical exchange through deliberate accli
matization was not a product of the modern Christian and Christian
izing world. Rather, in tracing the diffusion of a variety of staple crops,
fruits, and fibrous plants (cotton), Watson concludes that plant diffu
sion had occurred for millennia and intensified particularly during the
early centuries of Islamic expansion.11 The extensive infrastructure and
common systems of communication and exchange present within the
Islamic empires, which at their greatest extent stretched from north
ern India to central Spain, made them "unusually receptive to all that
was new" in terms of the efficient diffusion of known plants and the
development of new varieties.12 These cultivars diffused through a vari
ety of agents, including both peasant cultivators and rulers who col
lected exotic specimens in royal botanical gardens.13 Although Watson
does not make the argument explicitly, it is very plausible that the
methods of acclimatization employed under the Spanish caliphates
9 Schiebinger and Swan, Colonial Botany, pp. 4, 8.

10 Roy MacLeod, "Introduction," in "Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial
Enterprise," ed. Roy MacLeod, special issue, Osiris 15 (2000): 6. This volume and Colonial
Botany as well have attempted to redress this imbalance in the literature, including several
essays on Spanish imperial science.
11 Watson, Agricultural Innovation.
12 Ibid., pp. 2, 82-83, and 91-92. In fact, Watson specifically suggests reasons why
plant diffusion slowed considerably upon reaching medieval Europe, citing lower popula
tion densities, the inability of the land tenure system to support new experimental crops,
an unfavorable climate, and an unskilled European peasantry.
13 Ibid., pp. 87-98.
4o6 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, DECEMBER 20o6
left a legacy of botanical expertise geared toward the transplantation

and acclimatization of both useful and ornamental plants. The Span
ish efforts described here may well be the result of this legacy, a legacy
whereby Christian Europe, through Spain, learned of the advantages
and techniques of agricultural and botanical innovation from its
Islamic predecessors.14
Economic Botany, the Columbian Exchange,

and the Scientific Revolution
Thus economic botany was a global, imperial endeavor that may owe
its origins at least in part to the practices of the Islamic world. Yet
Spanish efforts in economic botany have epistemological ramifications
specific to the early modern period, for they involved a series of empir
ical practices that were arguably "scientific," and, when understood in
that way, can serve to enhance our understanding of two further his
toriographical themes in world history: the Columbian exchange and
the Scientific Revolution. Alfred Crosby's conceptions of the Colum
bian exchange and ecological imperialism, which allowed for the pro
liferation of "neo-Europes" throughout much of the temperate world,
have been of immense importance to world history in helping to
understand the global environmental factors that have shaped much
of the modern world.15 Yet his work largely focuses on the impersonal
forces of nature and the inadvertent, unintentional consequence of the
spread of biological materials from pathogens to weeds to rodents.16
The story presented here aims to augment this work for Latin Amer
ica by showing the conscious introductions of new plants, the organi
zational, institutional complex that initiated and supported them, and
the epistemological ramifications of the empirical and experimental?
that is, the scientific?methods that they entailed, all of which are
represented in the practice of economic botany. In this way, the study
14 This is an issue that deserves further research, not only with regard to the European
inheritance through Spain of Islamic botanical practice, but of medical and pharmacolog
ical knowledge as well.
15 See Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of
1492 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973), Ecological Imperialism: The Biological
Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), and Germs,
Seeds, and Animals: Studies in Ecological History (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994).
16 The same can be said of a more recent work on world environmental history by John
E Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modem World
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
of economic botany in the Spanish empire can serve to emphasize the

role of human agency in the specific manipulation of nature and the
role of botanical science in the ecological and environmental changes
that that manipulation brought about.17
The story of economic botany presented here also serves to refocus
our understanding of the origins of the Scientific Revolution, a subject
that has undergone much debate in the last few decades.18 Recent
works by Jorge Ca?izares-Esguerra and Antonio Barrera have con
tributed to those debates by bringing attention to Spain's role in the
development of the modern Western scientific tradition.19 The story
17 The same theme is true for the development of a global marketplace for goods in the
early modern period. Economic historians and, more recently, cultural and world historians
have paid much attention to the establishment of global commerce, particularly the devel
opment of and demand for cash crops?coffee, tea, chocolate, tobacco, cotton, spices, dye
stuffs?and the means of production and labor relations which resulted from them. See
Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik, The World that Trade Created: Society, Culture, and
the World Economy, 1400-the Present (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1999); Sidney Mintz,
Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modem History (New York: Viking, 1985); and
Philip Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1984) and The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History, 2nd
ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Again, the science involved in the
development has received less attention, even though the development of the plantation
complex and the "world that trade created" depended on botanical investigations of an
empirical and experimental nature that are described here. To the extent that historians
have addressed scientific or technological concerns in the establishment of world trade,
they tend to highlight navigation, cartography, and cosmology rather than natural history,
botany, or agronomy. The interrelationship between science and commerce, the impor
tance of natural history in early modern science, and the changing meaning of "economic"
in the early modern period have been the subject of recent elaboration and are promising
areas for further research. See for example Lisbet Koerner, Linneaus: Nature and Nation
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen,
Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modem Europe (New York: Rout
ledge, 2002); John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods (Lon
don: Routledge, 1993); and Margaret Schabas and Neil de Marchi, eds., Oeconomies in the
Age of Newton (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003).
18 The concept, the definition, and indeed the very existence of a European Scientific
Revolution have undergone serious questioning over the last several decades. For an
overview of these debates, see Steven ]. Harris, "Introduction: Thinking Locally, Acting
Globally," Configurations 6, no. 2 (1998): 131-139. In this essay, Harris calls for a new type
of history for the Scientfic Revolution, one that attempts to resolve (or at least address)
tensions between the "internalist" and "externalist" approaches to history of science and
between the local and the global.
19 Jorge Ca?izares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epis
temologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 2001) and "Iberian Colonial Science," Isis 96 (2005): 64-70, and Anto
nio Barrera, Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific
Revolution (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006). The subject of Spain's many contri
butions to the Scientific Revolution?indeed, its leading role in some instances?and the
4o8 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, DECEMBER 20o6
of economic botany presented here builds on their work in that the

knowledge-gathering efforts that accompanied economic botany con
stituted one aspect of what Barrera has termed the "information-gath
ering and knowledge-producing practices relating to the natural world
of the Indies" that the Spanish crown carried out.20 According to Bar
rera, these practices, which included sending out questionnaires, com
missioning the writing of natural history tomes, hosting scientific
expeditions, and testing the products found, provided a "protocol for
the articulation of empirical information" within the empire. Ca?i
zares-Esguerra has also pointed to the utilitarian nature of Spanish
contributions to botanical knowledge in the sixteenth century and
their importance in the development of European natural history.21
This type of empirical information gathering, codification, and util
itarianism was important to the development of European science in
two ways. First, as Harold Cook has pointed out, natural history was
the empirical science of the early modern period, a time of "the first
period of globalization, in which ... a worldwide natural science rooted
in descriptive natural history also developed for the first time."22 Sec
ond, the Spanish system of economic botany that was in place allowed
administrators to collect, process, and disseminate useful botanical
knowledge and specimens in a way that made it, according to Bruno
Latour's definition, a "center of calculation."23 In this way, the Span
ish empire, with its state-directed effort in the collection of empirical
knowledge and encouragement of experimental practice, anticipated
the methodological and epistemological groundwork of the Scientific
Revolution. It also provided a model for imperial information gather
ing that was based on a close relationship between state support, sci
entific knowledge and practice, economic policy, and commercial aims.
lack of recognition of this among Anglophone historians of science came up in several

panel discussions at a recent meeting of the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical
Studies in Charleston, South Carolina, 11-13 March 2005 and is the subject of Jorge
Ca?izares-Esguerra, "Iberian Science in the Renaissance: Ignored How Much Longer," Per
spectives on Science 12, no. 1 (2004): 86-124.
20 Antonio Barrera, "Empire and Empirical Practices: Commodities and Reports from
the New World," Colonial Latin American Review 15, no. 1 (June 2006): 39-54, and "Local
Herbs, Global Medicines: Commerce, Knowledge, and Commodities in Spanish America"
in Smith and Findlen, Merchants and Marvels, pp. 163-181.
21 Ca?izares-Esguerra, "Iberian Science in the Renaissance," pp. 98-103.
22 Harold Cook, "Global Economies and Local Knowledge in the East Indies," in
Schiebinger and Swan, Colonial Botany, p. 101.
23 Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Soci
ety (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), chap. 6, especially pp. 222,
232-233.
In wedding commercial pursuits with scientific research, the crown was

promoting a form of colonial policy that would be followed by other
European nations (whether consciously or not) for the next four cen
turies and that served to enhance its commercial potential?in theory
if not in practice?for the next three.
The Spanish crown's empirical and experimental approach to New
World nature also ties into broader discussions about the development
of science in world history. Historian David Christian has recently
argued that the establishment of transoceanic lines of communication
established in the Atlantic and Pacific brought together the "New" and
"Old" Worlds in a way that made Europe a clearinghouse of informa
tion?information that not only served to decenter traditional reli
ance on ancient and Biblical texts for knowledge of the world, but that
allowed for the collection and testing of knowledge in a way that had
not been possible before.24 The empirical approaches fostered by eco
nomic botany and the global transplantation of plants at this time, I
would argue, represent the type of information collection and testing
that Christian refers to and thus provide a concrete, localized example
of the global forces at work in the early modern period.
Spices in the Spanish Empire
Imperial efforts in the cultivation of spices, therefore, constituted an

early program of economic botany that has important historiographical
and epistemological ramifications. Let us now turn to the spices them
selves, which continued to be a significant aim of Spanish colonization
24 David Christian,"Science in the Mirror of 'Big History/" in The Changing Image of

the Sciences, ed. Ida H. Stamhuis, Teun Koetsier, Cornelis de Pater, and Albert Van Helden
(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), pp. 141-169. There is another dimension
of Christian's argument that I do not address here: that from a world history perspective,
the Scientific Revolution is not qualitatively different from earlier knowledge systems.
Rather, it is quantitatively different, in that the global nature of knowledge testing allowed
the system to become what it was, not because of any "canny choices" made by Europeans.
For histories of the impact of the New World on European thought, see Anthony Grafton,
New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992); John H. Elliott, The Old World and the New
1492-1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ed.,
America in European Consciousness, 1493-1750 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of
Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va., by the University of North Car
olina Press, 1995); and Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From
Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993) and The Fall
of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982).
4io JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, DECEMBER 20o6
throughout the sixteenth century and beyond. The lucrative nature o

the trade, and the recognition that sea routes often posed less danger
than the traditional overland transport of the Silk Roads, would have
been motivation enough, and we are all aware of the benefits of spice
in improving the culinary arts. Yet the significance of spice cultivatio
goes beyond these more obvious benefits. In fact, spices served anoth
important purpose as well: they were key ingredients in a number o
medicines in the early modern European pharmacopoeia.25 Cinna
mon, cloves, cardamom, and nutmeg, for example, were medicinal sta
ples and of central importance in the preparation of early moder
cures. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Spanish pharmacy books
include entire sections on what were termed the "aromatics," medica
preparations made from ginger, cinnamon, aloe, sandalwood, nutmeg,
clove, and cardamom that cured a wide variety of common ailments.
For example, cinnamon water fortified the heart, stomach, and head
and cured epilepsy and palsy.26 Nutmeg oil calmed the stomach
relieved colds, and helped eliminate "acrid humors," which caus
diarrhea and vomiting.27 And cardamom oil soothed intestinal pa
and reduced flatulence.28
Thus, control over the spice trade brought great commercial advan
tages in the areas of both food and medicine. These spices came from
many different regions in the East?mainly from India, China, and, of
course, the Spice Islands of Indonesia. Spices, then, were associate
with the East, the ultimate goal of Columbus's voyages. Yet spices wer
also found in the Americas. If the accounts of colonial explorers a
entrepreneurs are to be believed, there were naturally occurring vari
eties of cinnamon, nutmeg, and pepper found in the Caribbean, Yuca
t?n, and parts of present-day Colombia and Ecuador. Columbus himse
attested to the presence of spices in Hispaniola. In a letter to crow
officials upon his return to Spain after the first voyage, he claimed
have come across abundant and "marvelous" trees, fruits, and othe
plants, especially spices, claiming that "there are many spices and grea
25 This topic is treated more fully in my dissertation, "The Art of Pharmacy in Se

enteenth- and Eighteenth-Century Mexico" (PhD diss., University of California, Berkele
2001).
26 Felix Palacios, Palestra Pharmace?tica Chy mico-Gal?nica en la quai se trata de la elec
ci?n de los Simples, sus Preparaciones Chymicas y Gal?nicas. Facsimile of 1706 ed. (Madrid:
Juan Garcia Insan?on, 1706), Parte IV, Cap?tulo IV, pp. 344-345.
27 Ibid., pp. 250-251.
28 Ibid., pp. 266-267.
mines of gold" on the island.29 If Ferdinand and Isabela would lend him
further assistance, Columbus promised that they would have "spice . . .
as much as their highnesses shall command," including rhubarb, cin
namon, and aloe, which he believed he had identified.30 Clearly, spices
were still very much on Columbus's mind, and understandably so,
because he believed that he was near to the Spice Islands of the East
Indies.
It was soon obvious to the crown, navigators, and explorers alike
(though never to Columbus) that these islands were in fact on the
outskirts of two continents hitherto unknown to the Old World. They
presented a formidable barrier to the sought-after Spice Islands and
the silks, porcelain, and perfumes of India and China, but that does
not mean that the crown abandoned its intentions of tapping into the
trade. Encouraged by Columbus's accounts and by the temperate cli
mate of the Caribbean regions, the crown supported efforts to estab
lish spice cultivation there and in New Spain. Explorers also went on
to explore Pacific islands in search of spices and eventually claimed
the Philippine Islands, where, again, spices were objects of consider
able interest.
Eastern Spices and American Varieties
Indeed, the story of economic botany in the Spanish empire begins

where Columbus left off: with Magellan's voyage around the world
(1519-1522), which had the express purpose of casting out across the
Pacific in search of the famed Spice Islands, which had come under
Portuguese maritime control in 1513. Royal instructions to Magellan
stipulated that he "make a treaty of peace or trade" with native lead
ers in the Spice Islands and that he negotiate the best terms possible
for Spanish goods in exchange for spices. A well-known published
account of the circumnavigation by Antonio Pigafetta, a member of
the expedition, includes detailed information on the cost and amount
of spices that were garnered from native leaders in the Moluccas. Yet
the interest in spices was not only commercial, as Pigafetta duly noted
29 Christopher Columbus, "Letter to Santangel," in New Iberian World: A Documen

tary History of the Discovery and Settlement of Latin America to the Early ijth Century, vol. 2,
The Caribbean, ed. J. H. Parry and Robert G. Keith (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.,
1984), p. 60.
30 Ibid., p. 62.
their botanical characteristics as well. The trees and shrubs that pro
duced cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and especially cloves were subjects
of scrutiny. For each, Pigafetta described the contour and dimensions
of leaves, trunk, and branches, the climate in which they grew, and
the time of year and manner in which their all-important fruits were
harvested (or in the case of cinnamon, its bark).
For example, according to Pigafetta "the best cinnamon that can
be found" on the islands grew in a tall tree with leaves similar to the
laurel and branches "as thick as fingers" whose bark was collected
twice a year.31 The nutmeg tree resembled that of the walnut, whose
fruit yielded a bright red rind of mace that surrounded the nutmeg
inside of it.32 Ginger consisted of a small shrub whose roots could be
eaten "green" or dried.33 Cloves were probably the most sought after
and expensive spice, as they were known to grow only on the five Spice
Islands of Ternate, Tidore, Mutir, Machian, and Bacchian. A testa
ment to their importance was the fact that Pigafetta went ashore on
the islands specifically to study how they grew, noting the trees' height
and thickness?"tall and as big around as a man"?as well as the shape
of their leaves, color of the bark, and fructification?the cloves them
selves.34 Pigafetta also recorded the climactic conditions of the cloves,
which were gathered twice a year, in June and December, during the
most temperate weather. The cloves grew in very specific locales in
the mountains of the Spice Islands, where each day a cloud apparently
descended and surrounded them, and due to the moisture and cooler
temperatures that this would have effected, "the cloves become per
fect." These specific conditions were not met elsewhere, as "if any of
these trees are planted in another place, they will not live.. .. And no
cloves are grown in the world except on the five mountains of these
five islands."35 Such attention to detail would serve the Spaniards when
later on they wished to cultivate the cloves on their own.
Although Magellan's much reduced crew returned to Spain on a
ship loaded down with large quantities of valuable cloves?and another
had foundered because it was so overloaded with spices?Spanish
efforts to infiltrate the Spice Islands trade were never ultimately sue
31 See Antonio Pigafetta, The Voyage of Magellan, trans. Paula Spurlin Paige (Engle
wood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969), p. 104. See also Emma Helen Blair and James
Alexander Robertson, eds., The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, vol. 1, De Moluccis Insulis
(Cleveland: A. H. Clark company, 1903-1909), pp. 330-335.
32 Pigafetta, Voyage of Magellan, p. 122.
33 Ibid., p. 129
34 Ibid., p. 112.
35 Ibid., p. 121.
cessful.36 The Portuguese remained in control of the spice-bearing

monsoon fleets that crisscrossed the Indian Ocean.37 Portuguese dom
inance, in fact, continued well into the seventeenth century (when it
was taken over by the Dutch) despite the fact that Spain not only took
over part of the island of Ternate and established a garrison there in
1606, but also became the nominal ruler of Portugal due to the dynas
tic succession of Philip II to the Portuguese throne in 1580. The rea
son for continued Portuguese hold over the trade stemmed from a
treaty signed at the time of the union of the crowns that Spanish mer
chants and seamen were forced to respect. The Treaty of Zaragoza
(1529), furthermore, established once and for all that the dividing line
between Spanish and Portuguese interests in the Pacific put the Spice
Islands squarely in Portuguese territory.
Foiled in their desire to take over the Spice Islands, then, the
Spaniards were left with two choices, both of which involved the prac
tice of economic botany: they could search for varieties of spice flora
in other locations, or they could acquire seeds and seedlings and trans
plant them elsewhere. In fact, they did both. Subsequent Spanish
expeditions to the East Indies led to the successful establishment of a
colony in the Philippines (which after some debate was deemed within
Spain's area of demarcation), where settlers eagerly looked for and
often found local varieties of pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg.38 Cinna
mon was said to be so common, for example, that it was burned for
36 Ian Cameron, Magellan and the First Circumnavigation of the World (New York: Sat
urday Review Press, 1973), p. 201. The ship that foundered was later captured by the Por
tuguese in the Moluccas.
37 For an overview of the spice trade and European rivalry over the Indian Ocean trade
routes, see Carla Rahn Phillips, "The Growth and Composition of Trade in the Iberian
Empires, 1450-1750," in The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early
Modern World, 1350-1750, ed. James D. Tracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990), pp. 34-101.
38 For information specific to spice cultivation in the Spanish colonial Philippines, see
Paula De Vos, "The Spice Trade and the Colonization of the Philippines," Mains'l Haul: A
Journal of Pacific Maritime History 41, no. 4/42, no. 1 (Fall 2005/Winter 2006): 33-42, and
Maria Lourdes D?az-Trechuelo, "Eighteenth-Century Philippine Economy: Agriculture,"
Philippine Studies 14 (1966): 65-126. See Nicholas Cushner, Spain in the Philippines (Que
zon City: Ateneo de Manila University, 1971) for a good general English-language over
view of colonial history of the Philippines. For further reading on Spanish exploration of
the Pacific and Spanish imperial aims, see O. H. K. Spate, The Spanish Lake (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1979), and John M. Headley, "Spain's Asian Presence,
1565-1590: Structures and Aspirations," Hispanic America Historical Review 75, no. 4
(1995): 623-646. For the development of the Manila galleon trade, see William Lytle
Schurz, The Manila Galleon: The Romantic History of the Spanish Galleons Trading between
Manila and Acapuko (New York: Dutton, 1939), and, more recently, Katharine Bjork, "The
Link that Kept the Philippines Spanish," Journal of World History 9 (1998): 25-50.
4M JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, DECEMBER 20
fuel, and Legaspi noted in his 1559 expedition to the isla

although wild pepper trees abounded, the islanders did not
them, but native chiefs kept them in their houses as objects
ity.39 In 1639, a local Franciscan friar assured the crown tha
parts of the islands would produce harvests of nutmeg an
abundant as those of the Moluccas. The crown in turn ord
governor to "introduce and establish the cultivation of nu
clove ... in each area [of the islands] where the disposition of
permits it."40
Spices were sought after not only in the Philippines, bu
Americas as well. As discussed earlier, Columbus claimed
found naturally occurring varieties of cinnamon and rhub
Caribbean. Nicol?s Monardes, a Spanish physician who coll
experimented with various spices and other medicines com
Seville from the Indies fleets, provided evidence of several
eties in the Americas in his Medicinal History of Things Brou
Our West Indies.*1 One was the "Long Pepper" (Pimienta lueng
along the coast of Tierra Firme (present-day Panama) an
Cartagena de Indias (on the Caribbean coast of Colombia),
according to Monardes, was more flavorful, healthful, and sp
the Eastern black pepper due to its greater "aromaticity" (
dad).*2 Another American variety was that of cinnamon, f
province near Quito. Monardes deemed some of the varie
which he was presented to have the same flavor, odor, "arom
astringency, and fragrance as the cinnamon brought to Eu
39 Blair and Robertson, Philippine Islands, vol. 2, The Expedition of Ruy L?pe
bos, 1541-46, p. 227, copy of a letter sent from Sevilla to Miguel Salvador of V
p. 241, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi to Philip II, 26 June 1568.
40 Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla (hereafter AGI/S) Filipinas, 330, L. 4
41 Monardes has been the subject of extensive writing among Spanish-languag
and is receiving increasing recognition in Anglophone literature. For biograp
liographical information on Monardes, see Francisco Guerra, Nicol?s Bautista
vida y su obra (1493-1588) (M?xico, D.F., 1961); Francisco Rodr?guez Marin, L
biograf?a de Nicolas Monardes (Seville: Padilla Libros, 1988); Javier Lasso de la
tezo, Biograf?a y estudio cr?tico de las obras del m?dico Nicol?s Monardes (Seville: Pad
1988); and Juan Jim?nez-Castellanos y Calvo-Rubio, "Pr?logo," in Historia med
cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias occidentales que sirven de medicina, by Nico
(Seville: Padilla Libros, 1988). For recent Anglophone histories, see Marcia Su
"New World of Goods: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Spanis
1492-1700" (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2000) and Daniela
"Books, Bodies, and Fields: Sixteenth-Century Transatlantic Encounters with
Materia Medica," in Schiebinger and Swan, Colonial Botany, pp. 83-99, which d
ways in which Monardes gathered and interpreted information about Americ
that came into Seville.
42 Monardes, Historia Medicinal, 86r-v.
India by the Portuguese.43 Others, however, had a thicker bark that

had neither taste nor aroma?"the opposite of the cinnamon brought
from East India"?leading some to argue that it was not cinnamon at
all, a point with which Monardes disagreed.44
Disputes aside, clearly, not all spice varieties were created equally,
and Spanish bureaucrats, naturalists, and entrepreneurs set about try
ing to cultivate new varieties that would rival if not surpass the spices
imported by the Portuguese. However, experimentation with new vari
eties and arguments as to their qualities vis-?-vis established strains,
and debates over their naming and classification are subjects more
appropriate for the eighteenth century and thus beyond the scope of
this paper.45 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spanish solu
tions to the problem of how to procure spices tended to focus on meth
ods of transplantation, and it is to these transplantations that we will
now turn.
Transplantation of Spices:
From the Spice Islands to Mexico
The transplantation of spices appears to be the method of spice pro

curement most favored in the early years of the Spanish empire. The
cases described below include both proposals for and actual transplan
tations of spices from the East Indies to the West Indies, and from there
on to Spain. The archival record for the transplantations is in some
parts fragmentary, but enough of the story is apparent to deduce what
took place, and there are enough cases to show a pattern and a plan.
Overall, the transplantations took place through a combination of
efforts on the part of the state in coordination with colonial leaders and
local entrepreneurs. The state consisted of the Spanish crown and the
Council of the Indies, the highest governing body with respect to the
Indies, created in 1524. They worked in concert with the Casa de la
Contrataci?n, or customs house, established in Seville in 1503 to deal
43 Ibid., 98r-v.
44 Ibid., 98v.
45 For an example of the kind of rivalry that took place over the identification of spice
varieties and the search for the "true" spice in the French colonial system, see E. C. Spary,
"Of Nutmegs and Botanists: The Colonial Cultivation of Botanical Identity," in
Schiebinger and Swan, Colonial Botany, pp. 187-203. For examples in the Spanish empire,
see Daniela Bleichmar, "Visual Culture in Eighteenth-Century Natural History: Botanical
Illustrations and Expeditions in the Spanish Atlantic" (PhD diss., Princeton University,
2005).
4i6 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, DECEMBER 20o6
with the regulation of trade and navigation between Spain and the
Americas?though we see here that it was also involved in natural his
tory and botanical investigation. Casa officials in turn relied on colo
nial administrators?the viceroy of New Spain, the governor of the
Philippines, and the audiencia (high court) of Santo Domingo in the
cases below?for the provision of expert opinion and information.
The crown and council typically issued orders for transplantations and
dictated the economic terms under which cultivation and export
would take place; the Casa de la Contrataci?n then oversaw the col
lection of information concerning the methods and success of the
transplantation. In the colonies, local entrepreneurs cultivated the
spices and would have recorded and conveyed the pertinent data to
the local administrative body (viceroy, governor, or audiencia).
This network of administrative, economic, and knowledge-gather
ing responsibilities illustrates an important point of larger historical
and historiographical significance in that it serves to challenge certain
assumptions about the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Tradi
tional historical treatment of the development of Western science in
imperial contexts has assumed that Western science "diffused" out from
a metropolitan, European center and that any science that took place
in colonial settings as derivative by definition.46 Yet in the cases of
transplantation described below, the "expert" that the council and the
casa turned to for advice and direction was the viceroy of Mexico, who
was asked on one occasion to send an instruction booklet along with
seedlings he sent to Spain. Furthermore, it is clear that no one involved
in this network was a trained naturalist, and though they consulted
with doctors and apothecaries for botanical knowledge, their work was
to provide empirical data and careful, meticulous observation as well.47
Thus, rather than disseminating from an obvious European metropo
lis to an obvious colonial periphery, the knowledge created in these
cases was a product of circulation?of a "moving metropolis" rather
than a strictly defined center, through which knowledge moved multi
directionally and thus served creative purposes on both sides of the
46 The classic work that originated the so-called "diffusionist" approach is George
Basalla, "The Spread of Western Science," Science 156 (1967): 616-622.
47 There is growing awareness among historians of science that much European scien
tific development of the early modern period came not from learned experts, but rather from
artists, artisans, merchants, and other entrepreneurs. See, for example, Smith and Findlen,
Merchants and Marvels, of which Antonio Barrera's "Local Herbs, Global Medicines," pp.
163-181, is particularly relevant, and Pamela H. Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and
Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
Atlantic and of the Pacific.48 In this way, the unit under observation is
less a strictly political entity than one also defined by transoceanic
travel, and as such serves to highlight another way in which it is part
of a larger, global narrative.49
Francisco de Mendoza's Asiento
The earliest evidence of long-distance transplantation of spices in the

Spanish empire took place sometime in the 1550s and involved the
transport of spice seeds from the East Indies to New Spain (present-day
Mexico and the U.S. southwest). It is not clear how the seeds came to
arrive in Mexico, but we can assume that it involved some illegal activ
ity. It seems that they were smuggled out of Portuguese India and came
to Mexico by way of Spain, since at this time the navigational course
eastward across the Pacific was not yet known to Spanish navigators.
In Mexico, they appeared in the possession of Antonio de Mendoza,
the first viceroy of New Spain.50 Mendoza had indicated an interest in
cultivating products from the East as early as 1542, when he ordered
that an expedition to the Philippines under the direction of Villalobos
collect and send him "specimens of all the products of the land that
you can secure."51
The Villalobos expedition ended in disaster, and it was therefore an
unlikely source of the stolen seeds. At any rate, by 1558 the viceroy had
successfully obtained them and was able to keep such precious com
modities in his family's possession, as he was most likely very instru
mental in securing for his son Francisco monopoly rights to cultivate
the seeds in 1558. Like his father, Francisco Mendoza also exhibited
48 The literature on issues of center and periphery is wide ranging. For issues specific
to imperial and colonial science, see Roy MacLeod, "On Visiting the 'Moving Metropolis':
Reflections on the Architecture of Imperial Science," in Scientific Colonialism: A Cross
Cultural Comparison, ed. Nathan Reingold and Marc Rothenberg (Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987). I would also like to point out that the multidirec
tional movement of knowledge and expertise throughout the Spanish empire that I describe
below demonstrates that for the empire, there was not simply one "center of calculation"?
the obvious one centered on the customs house in Seville?but rather multiple centers,
including Mexico City, where the viceroy was looked upon to gather expert advice on
transplantations.
49 This idea fits in with Jerry Bentley's call for using sea and ocean basins as units for
the study of world history as an alternative to national parameters that modern historians
tend to adhere to. See Jerry H. Bentley, "Sea and Ocean Basins as Frameworks of Histori
cal Analysis," Geographical Review 89, no. 2 (1999): 215-224.
50 I thank Antonio Ba?era for providing me with this information.
51 Blair and Robertson, Philippine Islands, 2:58.
4i8 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, DECEMBER 20o6
evidence of a long-standing interest in indigenous products, as it was

he who commissioned the Badianus manuscript, a codex containing
information on Aztec medicines, as a gift for Charles V.52 In the agree
ment between Francisco Mendoza and the crown about the spice trans
plantation, the economic side of economic botany is clearly evident
and indicates an empire-wide policy of monopolistic practices that
would ensure the regular collection of royal taxes through two main
practices. The first was the practice of assigning asientos, the exclusive
right to the production of and trade in a particular commodity, to
select individuals. For the crown, asientos provided a method of regu
lating trade with the Indies that in turn allowed customs officials to
keep track of colonial revenues and ensure that the crown received its
share, or "rights" (derechos), of taxes. The other method involved the
establishment of estancos, or royal monopolies on the sale of certain
goods.
Thus the transplantation and cultivation of spices brought from
the Spice Islands to New Spain was put under the charge of Francisco
de Mendoza, who in 1558 was granted an asiento to plant seeds of black
peppers, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, saffron, sandal wood, and "China
root," a purgative medicine used to treat fevers.53 The conditions of
the asiento were rather specific: they granted Mendoza exclusive rights
to plant the various seeds in New Spain "and other parts of the Indies."
According to the terms, no one else could cultivate these spices, nor
could they contract with the spice estanco?such privileges were
reserved only for Mendoza.54 In addition, Mendoza would be given "all
the land necessary" for his enterprise and would receive half the prof
its (the crown receiving the other half).55 The Council of the Indies
was initially quite opposed to the asiento, not because they opposed
the practice of the asiento itself, but because council members felt that
the spices would not do well in New Spain's climate and because if they
did indeed flourish, the practice of giving unlimited-lands for their cul
tivation would interfere with indigenous land rights and the grazing of
livestock. They also felt that limiting the rights to contract with the
estanco to Mendoza only?in perpetuity no less?was an "intolerable"
practice.56
52 See Bleichmar, "Books, Bodies, and Fields," in Schiebinger and Swan, Colonial
Botany, p. 87.
53 AGI/S 606 L. 2, f. i2ir.
54 AGI/S Indiferente, 738, N. 47, f. ir.
55 Ibid., f. IV.
56 Ibid., fs. ir-v.
Although the record at this point is fragmentary, despite the Coun

cil's strong reservations, it is clear that the asiento was ultimately
granted. Mendoza enjoyed at least limited success with some of the
products until his untimely death. What evidence I do have as to the
enterprise's development comes mainly from the work of Nicol?s
Monardes. Monardes writes that "Don Francisco de Mendoza, son of
the Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, grew in New Spain clove, pepper,
ginger, and other spices brought from East India, [but] the enterprise
was lost due to his death."57 Only two spices seem to have flourished:
ginger, because it "grew well in those parts," and China root.58 Indeed,
China root was the source of a conversation between Mendoza and
Monardes in Seville at some point when Mendoza had returned from
the Americas. Mendoza showed Monardes several roots, asking
Monardes to identify them. Monardes responded that they were
clearly examples of China root, but he was confused because they
looked so fresh?not their usual condition after the long trip from
China. When Mendoza responded that in fact they had recently come
from New Spain, where they had been cultivated along with "a large
quantity of [other] spices," Monardes was shocked ("yo me espante1),
because he believed that China root "was to be found only in
China."59 Mendoza then explained to him about the "contract" (con
tractaci?n) he had with the crown that had allowed him "to bring to
Spain large quantities of spices," which he had already started plant
ing and cultivating.60 It is not clear exactly when this conversation
took place, as Monardes carried out experiments with American med
icines for decades prior to publishing his work, and publication took
place over several years. However, given that this account occurs in
the first part of three that were ultimately published, the conversation
probably took place sometime between 1558 and 1565, when he first
began publishing his material.
Although Monardes had been in contact at some point with Men
doza, the Council of the Indies apparently remained in the dark about
what was taking place. Indeed, a full forty years after his 1558 agree
57 Monardes, Historia medicinal, 99V.

58 "China root" may be ginseng. According to Monardes, it was a root "with some
knots on it, which is white on the inside, sometimes a little reddish too, and brown on the
outside." It was especially effective in curing fevers because it was "marvelous" at provok
ing sweats. See ibid., i6v-i7r.
59 Ibid., p. i6v.
60 The phrase "large quantity of spices" (mucha cantidad de Especer?a) occurs twice
within the passage, and I have quoted it twice in order to emphasize that Mendoza's efforts
did at one point yield substantial fruit.
ment with the crown, the council sent a request to the viceroy of New
Spain for information as to the progress of spice cultivation in those
lands. It is in this request that the empirical, information-seeking prac
tices of the Spanish crown become clear, showing the possibility of sci
entific activity and knowledge production within the very strict com
mercial and economic boundaries set up by the terms of the asiento. In
1597, the Council of the Indies admitted that "it is unknown whether
[Mendoza] ever executed the cultivation of pepper, cloves, cinnamon,
Chinese ginger, or sandalwood." In the interest of their great potential
and "utility for the state," the council requested information, presum
ably from the viceroy of Mexico, as to Mendoza's efforts in this regard
and sent along a treatise titled "Seedlings and Plantings" ("Sementeras
y Plantios") to help with any current projects.61 Most importantly, the
council desired to know if the spice cultivation had been successful,
and if so, why, and if not, why not. They requested "very particularly"
information on "the disposition and condition of the earth, ... in
which lands, what climate, and where and how these seeds were cul
tivated, and the uses which result from them."62 This type of informa
tion, which delved into the specific habitat and ecology of spice flora,
represents an early example of the methods of economic botany.
The Transplantation of Cloves

In the early seventeenth century, cloves became another target for
colonial transplantation. Cloves were one of the most valuable of the
Eastern spices. Not only were they a highly prized spice, but, as men
tioned above, they grew in only a tiny area, the northern islands of the
Moluccas. There was a healthy trade in cloves throughout Southeast
and East Asia, with as much as five thousand to seven thousand bahar
produced annually around the turn of the sixteenth century.63 Portu
guese infiltration into the area around this time made them the dom
inant merchants for carrying the spice to Europe. Cloves, then, entered
Europe mainly through the port of Lisbon. Castilian acceptance of Por
61 AGI/S Indiferente, 606, L. 2, fs. 121-122.

62 Ibid., f. 122.
63 Roderich Ptak, "Asian Trade in Cloves, circa 1500: Quantities and Trade Routes?
A Synopsis of Portuguese and Other Sources," in The Portuguese and the Pacific, ed. Francis
A. Dutra and Joao Camilo dos Santos (Santa Barbara: Center for Portuguese Studies, Uni
versity of California at Santa Barbara, 1995), p. 151. A bahar is a weight used in the East
Indies that can vary considerably, usually between 223 and 625 pounds. According to Ptak,
5,000-7,000 bahar was the equivalent of approximately 1.2 million kg, or 2.64 million
pounds.
tug?ese commerce even after the Union of Crowns in 1580, however,

did not mean that Spanish merchants were not disgruntled, and indeed
complained of the high duties placed on it.64 Such dissatisfaction was
probably the motivation for a 1607 proposal to grow cloves in New
Spain. The proposal originated from the suggestion of the governor of
the Philippines, who recommended to the king and the Council of the
Indies that growing cloves in New Spain could be a very profitable
enterprise, provided that cultivation were successful. Building on this
suggestion, the proposal stipulated that cloves be collected in Ternate
(which was by this time under Spanish control) and transported to
New Spain via the Manila galleons, where they would in turn be
planted in regions with the appropriate climactic and soil conditions.65
But first, it was necessary to determine the feasibility of such an
experiment, and the responsibility for that fell on the shoulders of the
viceroy of New Spain, Luis de Velasco. The proposal, addressed to
Velasco, stated that he was to first "communicate with people who are
the both learned and disinterested" and who could tell him "what
methods would best serve to cultivate and care for the cloves, and the
best way to collect them from the Kingdom of Terrenate [sic], and by
what means they could be brought [to New Spain] with the least risk
and cost, and how to best and most usefully serve the Royal Treasury
and my subjects and vassals."66 Thus, the crown wished to implement
a program of transplanting the cloves from their original habitat to
another area halfway around the globe, and their intentions are fairly
clear that if the transplantation were successful, cloves would be cul
tivated on a large scale for export from New Spain. Yet in order to do
so, the crown recognized the need for gathering specific information
from experts as to the conditions both for transporting and for grow
ing the cloves. Here again, then, is another example of an empire that
functioned by gathering empirical information, in this case in the
botanical realm.
It is not clear whether this early initiative to transplant and culti
vate cloves was ever deemed feasible. Apart from a response by the
viceroy that "to me, it seems right to follow the opinion of the experts
in such matters," the documentary trail ends here.67 One can assume,
however, that it did not meet with much success, because cloves never
became part of New Spain's exports and because efforts to grow cloves
64 AGI/S Filipinas, 19, R. 5, N. 82, fs. 1-2.

65 AGI /S Filipinas, 329, L. 1, f. 13 ir.
66 Ibid., fs. 131-132.
67 AGI/S Mexico, 27, N. 52, 4V.
in other locations met with frustration. What is important here, how

ever, is not the outcome of the transplantation as much as the way in
which this proposal represents the transoceanic networks of knowl
edge in place, and the fact that, once again, the viceroy of Mexico was
looked to as the conduit for scientific exchange and expertise.
Ginger's World Odyssey
Mendoza's transplantation of spices was hindered by his untimely

death?as well as, perhaps, the inhospitable climate of New Spain.
However, there was one success story in it, and that lies in the culti
vation of ginger. Mendoza's original asiento included the aim of culti
vating "Chinese ginger," which, like cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, and
cloves, was a highly prized spice in the early modern world. Nicol?s
Monardes described it as a plant whose leaves resembled that of the lily
but whose main value lay in its root which, "when sliced and tossed in
a salad adds flavor and aroma" and when dried or preserved had a
number of medicinal qualities.68 Ginger root, in fact, had "great aro
matic virtue" that was good for soothing stomachaches, aiding diges
tion, and restoring the appetite.
While the outcome of the ginger transplantation to the mainland
of New Spain remains unclear, it was clearly successful on the island
of Hispaniola, and by the end of the sixteenth century, according to
the archival documentation, ginger constituted the island's main
export. Ginger did very well. Cultivators of the spice declared that
"the land [here] is good for cultivating ginger, and it grows in great
abundance,"69 and Council members recognized that the abundance
of ginger "[had] been of much substance and utility" to the people
there.70 Indeed, by 1599, the audiencia of Santo Domingo declared that
ginger was the "principal crop" of the island, crucial for the "develop
ment, stability, and continuation" of its economy.71
The fact that ginger production constituted Hispaniola's number
one crop in the late sixteenth century is significant in that the histo
riography of the Caribbean region usually highlights the production of
sugar and the impact of its relations of production?on the slave trade
68 Monardes, Historia medicinal, pp. 99-100.

69 AGI/S Santo Domingo, 868, L. 3, f. 5t.
70 AGI/S Indiferente, 606, L 2, f. 55r.
71 AGI/S Santo Domingo, 868, L. 4, f. 29r.
and slave labor?on Caribbean society. Yet the production of ginger

in sixteenth-century Hispaniola was prodigious, and in the early 1580s
it was being produced in large quantities and received higher prices in
Europe than sugar did.72 By 1587, two million pounds of ginger reached
Seville annually, worth 250,000 ducats.13 Such a profitable enterprise
drew labor and capital away from sugar plantations. In 1606, for exam
ple, of 9,648 slaves in Hispaniola, 6,742 worked producing ginger,
while only eight hundred served in the sugar mills.74 By 1624, ginger
production had spread to the island of Puerto Rico, which became
another major producer of the spice, and to other Caribbean islands as
well.75
Yet, in the end it seems that ginger was almost too successful Alto
gether, the islands began to produce too much ginger for Spanish con
sumption. Oversupply of the spice meant that "there was no one to
buy it and it rotted, so that those who had paid most to grow and
transport it profited the least."76 In response to the problem, the crown
sought to monitor and control ginger's production. Colonial Spaniards
in Hispaniola had always had to apply to the audiencia of Santo
Domingo for royal licenses in order to produce and sell many different
goods, including ginger, hides, and sugar.77 In 1599 the Council of the
Indies stepped up its regulatory responsibilities and ordered that the
production of ginger be limited to the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto
Rico only. These two islands, the Council declared, produced more
than enough ginger to supply the needs of Spain. The council finished
by requesting that the audiencia of Santo Domingo keep council mem
bers abreast of developments in the production of ginger by sending
them a report detailing "most particularly" "the benefits and inconve
niences associated with the limitation on ginger cultivation, and of
the quantity that ought to be brought to Spain . . . and the quantities
that are now planted and harvested there as well as the quantities
grown on other islands and if it would be better to enforce the pro
72 Frank Moya Pons, Historia colonial de Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: UCMM,
1974), p. 89.
73 These statistics come from Schiebinger, Plants and Empire, p. 4, who cites Mauricio
Nieto Olarte, "Remedies for the Empire: The Eighteenth-Century Spanish Botanical
Expeditions to the New World" (PhD diss., History of Science and Technology, Imperial
College, London, 1993). Moya Pons, Historia colonial, p. 89, states that by 1607, Hispan
iola was producing more than 170,000 pounds of ginger worth approximately 103 million
maravedis.
74 Moya Pons, Historia colonial, p. 89.
75 AGI/S Santo Domingo, 869, L. 7, fs. 25^r-v.
76 AGI/S Santo Dominto, 868, L. 4, f. 34r.
77 AGI/S Santo Domingo, 870, L. 8, f. i46r.
duct ion of sugar [on these islands]."78 In this way, although the crown
sought to inhibit the production of ginger, the council was still very
interested in collecting knowledge, via the detailed reports, about how
to best manage its production.
Yet the problems did not end there. Ginger continued to be so
profitable that sugar mill owners had abandoned their mills in favor of
growing the spice. Given the problems of oversupply of ginger, crown
officials in 1607 banned the sugar planters from growing ginger.
According to the Council of the Indies, eight sugar mills on the island
of Hispaniola were no longer in service, and the island had produced
only three thousand arrobas ( 1 arroba is the equivalent of twenty-five
pounds?so seventy-five thousand pounds) of sugar that year, when it
was capable of producing at least twelve thousand. The council's solu
tion was to order the mill owners "to devote themselves solely to the
production of sugar" and forbid them from planting any ginger.79
Ginger Transplantation in Spain
The cultivation of ginger also stimulated research and experimentation

in the areas of botany and agriculture. In the early 1570s, a series of
orders issued from the Council of the Indies requesting detailed infor
mation about the cultivation of ginger in Hispaniola and ordering its
transport to Spain for experimental cultivation. These orders coin
cided with the Relaciones Geogr?ficas of 15 70-15 71 recently codified
by the royal cosmographer of the Casa de la Contrataci?n of Seville.
The Relaciones consisted of a series of questionnaires sent to colonial
officials in the Americas requesting information about the geography,
ethnography, natural history, and economic prospects of each region.80
They constituted one of the most important and representative exam
ples of what Antonio Barrera has referred to as the information-gath
ering mechanisms of the Spanish empire in the production of knowl
edge about nature in the sixteenth century.81 I would argue that the
requests for information about ginger's cultivation from the Council of
the Indies were also part of the culture of this information-gathering
78 AGI/S Santo Domingo, 868, L. 4, fs.34r-v.

79 AGI/S Santo Domingo, 869, L. 6, fs. 55T-V.
80 See Howard F. Cline, "The Relaciones Geogr?ficas of the Spanish Indies, 1577-1648"
in Guide to the Ethno-historical Sources, ed. Howard R Cline, 183-242, vol. 12, Handbook of
Middle American Indians, general ed. Robert Wauchope (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1964-1976), for an excellent overview of the Relaciones.
81 Barrera, "Experiencing Nature" and "Empire and Empirical Practices."
mission and part of the processing network of a "center of calcu

lation."
In its quest for knowledge of ginger's properties, the Council of the
Indies wrote to the Audiencia of Santo Domingo in 1573 requesting
them to "pay much attention and care to this important enterprise so
that it will continue to develop and grow" and to send to the Casa de
la Contrataci?n a quantity of "fine examples" of ginger. Along with
the ginger, they desired a detailed set of instructions as to the uses of
ginger, and "in what season and type of earth to plant it and how it is
cultivated so that in these lands [reinos] we may be able to cultivate
it."82 This request for the transplantation of ginger from Hispaniola to
Spain also highlights the scientific culture of Spain under Philip II.
Recent historians have begun to recognize that important scientific
developments were taking place in the court of Philip II. Although
Philip II is often characterized as a devout and pious Catholic who
closed Spain's borders to outside ideas and travel, new findings demon
strate that the king himself was dedicated to the promotion and dis
semination of knowledge in his kingdoms and in fact sponsored the
establishment of an academy of mathematics, a royal chemistry labo
ratory, and the cultivation of new plants in royal botanical gardens.83
Thus spice transplantations that occurred with economic botany
were a component of Philip IPs sponsorship of the natural sciences, as
evident in another crown request to the viceroy of New Spain in 1572
that he organize a shipment of a quantity of ginger to be planted in
Seville, "to see if it would bear fruit [grow], as up to this time, its
method of cultivation is not wholly understood."84 This "experiment"
(espirencia) was orchestrated by the crown in order to see if ginger could
be grown and sold in Spain on a large scale, or if it should be culti
vated only in the Indies. To initiate the experiment, the viceroy was
to send instructions as to how to best cultivate the ginger, and customs
house officials were to send notice "with the very next fleet to New
Spain" of the plants' progress, the methods of cultivation used, and the
82 AGI/S Santo Dominto, 868, L. 3, f. i6v. Subsequent orders also requested similar
information concerning the cultivation of cotton and rice and the management of live
stock on the island.
83 See David C. Goodman, Power and Penury: Government, Technology, and Science in
Philip IPs Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Enrique Martinez Ruiz,
dir. Felipe II, la Ciencia y la T?cnica (Madrid: Actas Editorial, 1999), especially Jos? Mar?a
L?pez Pinero, "Actividad cient?fica y sociedad en la Espa?a de Felipe II," 17-36 and F J.
Campos y Fern?ndez De Sevilla, dir. La Ciencia en el Escorial (Madrid: Ediciones Escuria
lenses, 1992).
84 AGI/S Indiferente, 1956, L. 1, f. 67r.
quality of the ginger?if it bore richer fruit in Spain than in Mexico,

and in what season it grew best.85 The officials dutifully wrote back
that, indeed, the ginger had done quite well in and around Seville.
Plantings were done in several local gardens, including that of the
Alcazar (royal palace), and in various locations within three leagues of
the city. With the report they sent several specimens of the plant,
including seeds, and "canes of a little more than four fingers' in height,
and some roots."86
The experiment did not end there, however. Hoping to capitalize
on this apparent success, the crown took it one step further. In Novem
ber 1573, customs house officials were once again directed to oversee
the cultivation of twelve boxes of "green ginger" that had recently
arrived from New Spain along with instructions as to how to best care
for them. This time, however, officials were to distribute the ginger
throughout Spain to those areas whose soil the officials deemed capa
ble of growing it. Along with the ginger, the Casa officials would also
send a copy of the instruction book that had come from New Spain
and had to make sure that local growers "take much care and pay close
attention to this matter and send reports of their progress," which
would then be sent on to the crown.87 Officials were also admonished
to make sure that the planting began as soon as possible, while the
seedlings were still viable, and to inform the council once it had taken
place. The records that I have been able to uncover unfortunately stop
here. No doubt the requested reports lie somewhere among the uncat
alogued documents of the indiferente (miscellaneous) section of the
Archive of the Indies, awaiting the intrepid historian. Nevertheless, it
is probably safe to assume that these experiments did not lead to big
business, because ginger never became a major export product in
Spain. Yet I argue that the efforts and aims in and of themselves are of
significance to the history of economic botany and to the history of
science in the Spanish empire.
Conclusion
Thus from Columbus to Magellan to Mendoza to the Dominican

planters, spices continued to be an important commodity?a source of
"green gold"?throughout the sixteenth century and into the seven
85 Ibid., fs. 67PV.

86 Ibid., f. 21 or.
87 Ibid., f. 33or.
teenth. In conjunction with these explorers and entrepreneurs, the

Spanish crown, the Council of the Indies, the Casa de la Contrata
ci?n, and various levels of the colonial administration in the Ameri
cas directed the transplantation of several different spices, but partic
ularly ginger, from the East Indies to the Americas, and then from the
Americas to Spain. Despite the successes of ginger in the Caribbean,
however, the most significant aspect of the transplantations was not
in the actual commercial outcome, but rather in the collection of
detailed reports and information that accompanied them, for the data
consisted of empirical information about the geography, climate, soil
conditions, and botanical properties of potentially useful plants, and
as such were part of a project of economic botany that has wide
ranging?indeed global?epistemological significance. Not only does
it bring a very particular kind of human agency and intent to the
Columbian exchange, but it also serves to direct our thinking about
the origins of the Scientific Revolution to the encounter between the
New and Old Worlds. In this way, economic botany in the Spanish
empire highlights the interconnection between science and commerce,
and between local knowledge and global imperial aspirations in the
early modern world.

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The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire

Author(s): Paula De Vos

* I would like to thank the participants of the University of Southern

Journal of World History, Vol. 17, No. 4

little attention from historians? It could be argued that the lack of

1 Gerald E. Wickers, Economie Botany: Principles and Practices (Dordrecht: Kluwer

The term "economic botany" originated in the mid-nineteenth

Economic Botany in World History

The significance of natural history and particularly of botany as global

5 Steven Harris, "Long-Distance Corporations, Big Sciences, and the Geography of

of economic botany's history associates it mainly with the practices of

anee by recognizing the multiplicity of actors, methods, purposes, and

9 Schiebinger and Swan, Colonial Botany, pp. 4, 8.

left a legacy of botanical expertise geared toward the transplantation

Economic Botany, the Columbian Exchange,

of economic botany in the Spanish empire can serve to emphasize the

of economic botany presented here builds on their work in that the

lack of recognition of this among Anglophone historians of science came up in several

In wedding commercial pursuits with scientific research, the crown was

Spices in the Spanish Empire

Imperial efforts in the cultivation of spices, therefore, constituted an

24 David Christian,"Science in the Mirror of 'Big History/" in The Changing Image of

throughout the sixteenth century and beyond. The lucrative nature o

25 This topic is treated more fully in my dissertation, "The Art of Pharmacy in Se

Eastern Spices and American Varieties

Indeed, the story of economic botany in the Spanish empire begins

29 Christopher Columbus, "Letter to Santangel," in New Iberian World: A Documen

cessful.36 The Portuguese remained in control of the spice-bearing

fuel, and Legaspi noted in his 1559 expedition to the isla

India by the Portuguese.43 Others, however, had a thicker bark that

The transplantation of spices appears to be the method of spice pro

Francisco de Mendoza's Asiento

The earliest evidence of long-distance transplantation of spices in the

evidence of a long-standing interest in indigenous products, as it was

Although the record at this point is fragmentary, despite the Coun

57 Monardes, Historia medicinal, 99V.

The Transplantation of Cloves

61 AGI/S Indiferente, 606, L. 2, fs. 121-122.

tug?ese commerce even after the Union of Crowns in 1580, however,

64 AGI/S Filipinas, 19, R. 5, N. 82, fs. 1-2.

in other locations met with frustration. What is important here, how

Ginger's World Odyssey

Mendoza's transplantation of spices was hindered by his untimely

68 Monardes, Historia medicinal, pp. 99-100.

and slave labor?on Caribbean society. Yet the production of ginger

Ginger Transplantation in Spain

The cultivation of ginger also stimulated research and experimentation

78 AGI/S Santo Domingo, 868, L. 4, fs.34r-v.

mission and part of the processing network of a "center of calcu

quality of the ginger?if it bore richer fruit in Spain than in Mexico,

Thus from Columbus to Magellan to Mendoza to the Dominican

85 Ibid., fs. 67PV.

teenth. In conjunction with these explorers and entrepreneurs, the

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