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The Spice Route: A History
 
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The Spice Route: A History [Illustrated] (Hardcover)

by John Keay (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 286 pages
  • Publisher: John Murray Publishers Ltd; illustrated edition edition (4 Jul 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0719561981
  • ISBN-13: 978-0719561986
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.8 x 3.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 36,407 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review
'A typically droll and beautifully wrought book' -- Literary Review 'A springy, fresh feel!The Spice Route is what happens when you match a writer at the top of his form with a fashionable subject!The result is tremendous.' -- Literary Review-Nick Smith 'Its digressiveness is also a boon, allowing Keay to touch on everything' -- FT MAgazine 20050814 'Fascinating new history' -- Daily Telegraph 20050814 'Absorbing' -- Scotsman 20050814 'Keay more sharply than romantically points up the economic basis of historic trade wars over three millenia.' -- The Times 20050716 'Serves up a feast of detail on a fascinating and little-known subject' -- Sunday Telegraph 20050731 'Keay's retelling of the tale is restrained yet powerful, his choice of facts compelling' -- Guardian 20050910 'Keay has produced another scrupulously researched, persuasive book' -- TLS 20050910 'Consistently interesting' -- Observer/Review: Robert Colville 20060625 'A fascinating tale packed with eye-catching detail' -- Independent 20060624 'Keay's history! begins with romance and wonder, before it gives way to the adventure and violence of the age of maritime exploration' -- Independent: Laurence Phelan 20060623 'Keay crosses centuries as confidently as the great tea-clippers once coursed oceans. He writes elegant, exemplary prose, and this book is as full of bounty as any 18th-century privateer could pray for' -- The Times 20060617 'One of the clearest explanations of the oldest example of global trade and its cultural and political ramifications' -- South China Morning Post 20060604 'Impressively researched' -- Guardian 20050708 'An enthralling and erudite history of the spice trade' -- Traveller 20050708 'A delightful, scholarly and thoroughly readable account' -- Geographical 20050508 'Fascinating! covering 3000 years of history in well-written, easy-to-read prose!The book is full of wonderful facts! Quite a lot to discuss. Exploitation, greed, values. All grist to a reading group's mill' -- Margaret Burgess, NewBooksMag 20050508

Literary Review
'A typically droll and beautifully wrought book'

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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but difficult in places, 26 Aug 2007
This review is from: The Spice Route: A History (Paperback)
As can be determined from the title, this book represents a fairly brief history of the spice trade and also serves as an introduction to the age of discoveries, recounting the exploits of De Gamma, Columbus et al. I found this all very interesting but would have preferred to read more coverage of the recent history, e.g. Dutch 'colonisation' of the east Indies, than is included.

Unfortunately, as with the other titles by Keay that I've read, I found the writing style needless elaborate, e.g. "Herodotus, who was born at about the time of Darius' death, well knew the facts of its provenance, though still disinclined to forgo the chance of embellishing them..." This does become tiresome. The text also contains one or two niggling errors, for example the author seems unaware that coriander can be both spice and herb.

'Spice Route' is one of those books that teaches a 'little about a lot' and for that reason I'd recommend it to others, particularly as it is not overly long at ~250 pages of, albeit small, text.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Spice Trading and Raiding, 19 Jan 2009
By S Wood (Scotland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Spice Route: A History (Paperback)
John Keay has written a brilliant, amusing and readable account of the spice trade from pre-history to the 1800's.

Keay as always is irrerevent, his gentle and humourous mocking of the more fantastic elements of the accounts of for example Pliny, Herodotus, Marco Polo,etc are enlightening and amusing, always a pleasant combination. He charts the vagaries of the Spice Route, the changes to it over the centuries and the reasons for those changes succintly and with plenty of clarity.

He is particularly effective in portraying the European incursion into the Indian Ocean and points further east from the late 15th Century and doesnt shirk from describing the more brutal and frankly monstrous aspects of this. Raiding rather than trading would be the more appropriate term for say the Portugese visits to the west coast of India, or the Dutch in Sumatra and the Spice Islands proper.

There are also some beautiful colour plates of people and places related to the Spice Route and a number of maps from different periods in which the development of geographical knowledge is given eloquent expression.

Thoroughly reccomended. As is John Keays The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company which covers in particular the British involvement in Asia up to 1857.
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