Tales of our Times
By JOHN BARTLIT
New Mexico Citizens
for Clean Air & Water
Cinnamon, from the bark of a tree species in the tropics, adds greatly to the toasty baked goods and winter beverages we enjoy. How could that happen?
To the extent that history is known that far back, cinnamon production began on the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as early as 2,800 B.C. From there, the cinnamon story is much like stories of other early foods that were widely prized in the world. The sum of the food stories sums up humans more than food history.
By 2,000 B.C., Arab marketeers learned to haul cinnamon by boat from Ceylon to Egypt, where the spice (which flavored, preserved, and healed) was as precious as silver. Grecians wrote of cinnamon in the 7th century B.C. Next, Indonesian boats carrying cinnamon found their way to East Africa, from where traders moved it on to Rome and to merchants in Venice.
Over millennia, the cinnamon trade spread widely and prospered. Yet, the markets still knew little about the origin of cinnamon that was traded. That would change … at first slowly. Then the pace speeded up. Circa 1505, as the story goes, a wayward storm at sea drove a Portuguese ship under the command of Lourenço de Almeida to the coast of Ceylon.
Long story short: in exchange for protecting Ceylon from foes, the Portuguese had a monopoly on the best cinnamon supply for the next 150 years. In the mid-1600s, the Dutch, by an alliance with an inland kingdom in Ceylon, expelled the Portuguese and held the monopoly on Ceylon’s cinnamon for the next 150 years.
By the time the British captured the monopoly in the early 1800s, the inevitable step forward had occurred. That is, many growers learned to grow good cinnamon trees in many other places. The trees did well as far off as in parts of Africa and South America. Know-how may come slowly, but it breaks up monopolies. Today, a bottle of cinnamon for your spice shelf costs $4 at Smith’s Grocery.
Today’s top producers of cinnamon are Indonesia, China, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka. Ceylon, as that island was known to the ancients, still stands fourth in the world.
The distant past provides a context whose ongoing value is in tracking the good as well as the bad. Ages ago, news came on foot and cities arose from countryside. People sought news about the overlapping interests of producers, traders, and consumers. Now, the news business brings a heavy diet of hints that one party or both parties are unfit for high office. Look back. Spreading religions and marketable goods were what led explorers to sail across stormy oceans in little ships. The world still wrestles with civics to build more good and do less harm. This world harbors 500 times more people than in 2,800 B.C. The scale of problems naturally grows with the population, which speaks well for the know-how learned to keep pace.
Nowadays, people like to buy things that are “natural” and shun things that are known as “chemical.” The brutal truth is that everything in nature is made of chemicals. Nature herself—solid, liquid, or gas—is made of the 94 chemical elements occurring in nature, coupled with nature’s family recipes for combining these elements into products. Cinnamon’s taste and smell are from cinnamon’s chemicals.
Their names have that eerie sound said to reek of chemistry. You know the groan caused by names such as cinnamaldehyde, caryophyllene oxide, eugenol, and cinnamyl acetate. Not to worry. These natural features have treated people well for millennia.
We can all use a pause now and then from absorbing the constant drumbeat of notably bad human deeds throughout history. Human nature is indeed a mixed bag. Yet, that very mixed bag has also produced for us some lasting universal marvels. Think of cinnamon, trade, and chemistry in the world. These benefits count, too, in the total package sent us from the past.