Monday, January 26, 2015

Blog #3- Economic Transformations

It was surprising to read how the import of spices had affect a lot of the dominate countries to want to take to control.  To me it is sort of funny to think that countries are fighting over spices. The fight for spices have token over control of the Indian Ocean. It was sad to read how India was the main producer for spices and they got no profit from it. I could not believe how the Dutch killed 15,000 people, an entire population just so they can have control of spices, which is too extreme. Why couldn't they have token those people and make them work for them instead of killing off a whole population. It seemed like they were desperate to have nutmeg as if nutmeg was a drug to them. I can see why spices were such a big deal and why every country wanted control over them, they were a delicatessen. Spices can make a tremendous difference in the taste of food, it makes food more appetizing. When reading this section about spices it reminded me of the movie A Hundred Foot Journey. It specifically reminded me of a part in the movie where this Indian guy brought over his spices and add them to a French lady about twenty year old recipe, she was mad that he was changing it by adding spices. When he added his spices it made a big difference in her food, then she started to include adding his spices to the food.  It was a really good movie I highly recommend it. Anyways knowing how big spices are used and depended on in today society and I cannot imagine how much of an impact it was back them.  They made many big discoveries that we depend so much on in cooking, such as sugar and the variety of spices. Imagining cooking and not able to have an access to a certain spice or sugar or not having it at all because it was not discovered yet. I wonder if food was really bland before the discoveries of sugar and spices. I figure spices was a big deal to these countries once I read how they were granted to make war in order to be in control of the spices they wanted. I think the Dutch got carried away with having control of the spices; they acted as if the spices were their life. In the end I thought the British was smart to take control of India due to India having a majority of the spices, thus the British would get more profit over the Dutch. The Dutch seemed to limit themselves to just nutmeg and cloves, although they were selling it for four times the price I don’t think they will be much profitable as the British.  It was really interesting how a lot of countries became involved in trade with Asia. It was like Asia had everything, which everyone wanted; I’m surprised that Asia did not capitalize on the trade to make their empire grow. 

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