Cloves

Description

The Clove tree originates from the Moluccas archipelago. Charred kitchen remains containing cloves have been found in Syria and are dated to around 1,700 BCE. The attestation of their use by Ayurvedic medicine is almost as old. Pliny the Elder alludes to a pepper-like spice called garyophyllon, which is traded for its fragrance. However, there is no evidence that it is cloves. The first mention of its presence in Europe dates from the 4th century, when Emperor Constantine I made a gift of it to Saint Sylvester, then bishop of Rome (pope).

During the Middle Ages, the Arabs ensured the clove trade without knowing its exact origin (which the Persian geographer of the 9th century Ibn Khurdadhbih located in Java). Portuguese navigators discovered the Moluccas in 1511, then were driven out by the Dutch a century later. Anxious to maintain a commercial monopoly on the precious spice, the latter eradicated it from all the islands except Amboyna and Ternate, and systematically burned their surplus production.

It was the Frenchman Pierre Poivre who put an end to the monopoly of the Dutch East India Company in the 18th century by introducing clove trees to Mauritius, then to Guyana.

In 1812, the Omani Saleh ben Haramil al Bray introduced cloves to Zanzibar. The sultan of the archipelago will employ between 1830 and 1872 nearly 7000 slaves in the exploitation of the spice.