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ecially in winter. However, pepper and other spices certainly played a role in improving the taste of long-preserved meats. A depiction of Calicut, India published in 1572 during Portugal's control of the pepper trade Its exorbitant price during the Middle Ages – and the monopoly on the trade held by Italy – was one of the inducements that led the Portuguese to seek a sea route to India. In 1498, Vasco da Gama became the first person to reach India by sailing around Africa (see Age of Discovery); asked by Arabs in Calicut (who spoke Spanish and Italian) why they had come, his representative replied, "we seek Christians and spices". Though this first trip to India by way of the southern tip of Africa was only a modest success, the Portuguese quickly returned in greater numbers and eventually gained much greater control of trade on the Arabian Sea. The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas with the Spanish granted Portugal exclu
sive rights to the half of the world where black pepper originated. However, the Portuguese proved unable to monopolize the spice trade. Older Arab and Venetian trade networks successfully imported enormous quantities of spices, and pepper once again flowed through Alexandria and Italy, as well as around Africa. In the 17th century, the Portuguese lost almost all of their valuable Indian Ocean trade to the Dutch and the English, who, taking advantage of the Spanish rule over Portugal during the Iberian Union (1580–1640), occupied by force almost all Portuguese interests in the area. The pepper ports of Malabar began to trade increasingly with the Dutch in the period 1661–1663. Pepper harvested for the European trade, from a manuscript Livre des merveilles de Marco Polo (The book of the marvels of Marco Polo) Pepper mill As pepper supplies into Europe increased, the price of pepper declined (though the total value of the import trade generally did not). Pepper, which in t
he early Middle Ages had been an item exclusively for the rich, started to become more of an everyday seasoning among those of more average means. Today, pepper accounts for one-fifth of the world's spice trade. China It is possible that black pepper was known in China in the second century BCE, if poetic reports regarding an explorer named Tang Meng (??) are correct. Sent by Emperor Wu to what is now south-west China, Tang Meng is said to have come across something called jujiang or "sauce-betel". He was told it came from the markets of Shu, an area in what is now the Sichuan province. The traditional view among historians is that "sauce-betel" is a sauce made from betel leaves, but arguments have been made that it actually refers to pepp
