"In Spices Fred Czarra explores a wide range of spice fact, fable and legend: from giant birds building cinnamon nests, to the trade routes of the ancient world, to the later competitive struggles abroad between the English, Portuguese and Dutch. In this history of spices he shows that the spice trade opened up the first era of globalization, where people and spices mixed in cross-cultural exchanges: and that this involved the enslavement of many to work on spice plantations, and even led to the first global war."--BOOK JACKET. Source: OpenLibrary