Cloves from a few tiny Indonesian islands reached Syria by 1720 BC
Until colonial times, clove trees grew only on a handful of islands in Indonesia's Moluccas. Yet cloves turned up in a burned house in Terqa, Syria, dated to 1720 BC, and Han dynasty ministers sucked them to sweeten their breath before addressing the emperor. Austronesian sailors had built a spice network spanning oceans.
A clove is an unopened flower bud of Syzygium aromaticum, an evergreen in the myrtle family that can reach 12 metres. The buds start pale, turn green and are picked once they flush bright red, at 1.5 to 2 centimetres long. The name comes via French from the Latin clavus, meaning nail, after their shape. Most of the flavour comes from eugenol, so a little goes a long way in hams, curries, mulled drinks and spice blends from Malay rempah to Dutch speculaas.
Islands such as Ternate and Tidore were the only source. Austronesian traders moved cloves along sea routes that began around 1500 BC and later became part of the Maritime Silk Road. Archaeologists have found clove starch on grinding tools in Vietnam's Mekong Delta and whole cloves in Sri Lanka from around 900 to 1100 AD. Early records of cloves in China, India and Persia before that trade existed seem to be misidentified cassia buds, cinnamon or nutmeg. Chinese merchants began sailing straight to the Moluccas under the Yuan dynasty.
Europe prized them as luxuries. A Danish-Norwegian royal flagship that sank off Sweden in 1495 carried cloves meant to impress nobles at a summit, and cloves appear in late medieval and early modern European embalming and burials. The Dutch East India Company tried to monopolise them as it had nutmeg but failed, because the trees grew all over the Moluccas. In 1770 agents working for Pierre Poivre smuggled seedlings from a Ternate tree called Afo, possibly 350 to 400 years old, to Mauritius and on to the Caribbean.
Indonesia is now the largest producer yet exports only 10 to 15 percent, and at home the spice flavours kretek cigarettes. Madagascar, Tanzania, Sri Lanka and the Comoros follow. Clove oil has evidence behind it for toothache, but the US Food and Drug Administration has not approved clove for any medical use.
Source: Clove
