Spice : the 16th-century contest that shaped the modern world /Roger Crowley.

"When the Portuguese finally reached the Spice Islands of the Moluccas in 1511, they set in motion a fierce competition for control. With great storytelling verve, Roger Crowley shows how this struggle shaped the modern world. From 1511 to 1571, European powers linked up the oceans, established vast maritime empires, and gave birth to global trade, all in the attempt to control the supply of spices. Taking us on voyages from the dockyards of Seville to the vastness of the Pacific, the volcanic Spice Islands of Indonesia, the Arctic Circle and the coasts of China, this is a narrative history rich in vivid eyewitness accounts of the adventures, shipwrecks, and sieges that formed the first colonial encounters - and remade the world economy for centuries to follow."