I can’t help wondering just how much of the spice trade is actually a more polite way of saying it was opium dealing, after all wars were fought over the trade into China.
I’ve heard this is the reason we have this differentiation between “herbs” and “spices”, even though both basically mean “things used for flavoring food”. Herbs were common and cheap and were what peasants flavored their food with. Spices were exotic and expensive and were status symbols.
The technical distinction is supposedly that herbs are dried or fresh leaves or flowers, whereas spices come from other plant parts such as seeds/nuts/fruits, roots, and bark. On that basis some flavorings traditionally used in Europe would technically be spices, including caraway, anise, poppy seeds, and horseradish.
The spice trade was from India and the Far East to Europe, and began centuries before opium was regularly used in Europe. The Opium Wars weren’t fought until the mid-1800s, for the purpose of forcing China to accept imports of opium from British India. They had nothing to do with the spice trade per se.
Daniel J. Boorsteen’s book “The Explorers” has a bit about the spice trade. When Genghis Khan conquered Asia, he created an open empire to replace the patchwork of fiefdoms that controlled the spice trade, and especially the xenophobic restrictions that prevented Europeans from travelling to the east. For a century or so until it all fell apart, Europeans were able to see the sources of spices, silks, and other treasures. This is the time that Marco Polo and his uncles made it to China. Then the empire fell apart and the previously easy-to-obtain merchandise was walled off by newly liberated middlemen who charged exorbitant tariffs to pass the goods through to the Mediterranean.
So Europeans knew that the goods they wanted could be obtained far more cheaply if they could do an end run around the middleman, there were lands that would sell you bags and bags for almost nothing. Why spices? As others point out, like gold or diamonds or silks, it could be sold for an extremely high price for compact and light quantities. A shipload was a fortune, and there was no acceptable local substitute, people would pay.
(Side note, Columbus took Marco Polo’s journals, calculated how far he must have travelled east, and took the smallest calculation of the diameter of the earth from the ancient Greeks - about 4600 miles diameter, not 8,000 - and came to the conclusion that Spain or whoever sponsored him could bypass the long African route controlled by the Portugeuse by simply sailing about 3,000 miles west.)
Dill NEVER goes away.
I’d say they kindasorta have something to do with it, namely : Britain conquered India for its spices. When spices became more common and prices dropped worldwide (because a little spice goes a long way, and as has been alluded to earlier fashions and tastes had changed) they sought to turn it into Tea&Cotton Central instead. Then Merica started growing its own, cheaper tea and cotton and freed itself of the British monopolistic trade scheme so the administrators of India had to find yet another outlet for its mostly agricultural industry. Cue opium.
That’s quite a stretch, and there’s a bunch of inaccuracies in there as well. For example, tea has never been grown very much in the Americas, and Bangladesh and India (then part of British India) remain among the top producers of tea today. Britain didn’t conquer India mainly for its spices; although they played a part, much of the early trade was for cotton, silk, and indigo. The richest source of spices were the Spice Islands (Moluccas), which had spices that initially could be found nowhere else, including nutmeg, mace, and cloves. They were first taken by the Portuguese, and later ended up in the hands of the Dutch.
Ha! The first year I planted a garden in my backyard I planted an oregano plant, among other things. I assumed it would die when winter came, like all the other plants. It did not. At least in California’s mild climate it survived the winter, and now I have a giant oregano bush in my yard.
What USDA zone are you in? It sure doesn’t overwinter in my 5B region, although it may re-seed. Cilantro/coriander definitely does.
Rosemary is also a perennial in zone 7 or warmer.
I just looked it up and I am in a 9B zone.
Around here rosemary is often planted as an ornamental plant, the same way one might plant juniper bushes. It’s in the flower beds at several of the local shopping centers. I sometimes wonder why I don’t just snip off a few sprigs to take home and cook with rather than buying it. I suppose I could just plant some next to the oregano.
Yes, a pound of saffron is incredibly expensive but keep in mind no home cook or chef would come close to buying it in that quantity. A little bit goes a long way and it breaks down or spoils fairly quickly when exposed to air.
We use it at times in the restaurants I run but we typically buy it in 1oz containers that cost ~$40, similar to one of these. Those metal canisters are slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes so clearly saffron isn’t dense in the way black pepper or even salt tends to be. Very little is needed to get the desired color, flavor or aroma. Literally a pinch in something like Risotto Milanese.
I have read that black pepper was traded for an equal weight of gold. By that rule, a pound of black pepper that we pay 10 or 20 bucks for would be worth maybe $20,000.
In 1666, in the settlement of an Anglo-Dutch war, the winning Dutch traded a small island at the mouth of the Hudson river for one called Nutmeg Island.
I once had a green rose bush, which has a mutation where the flower petals are replaced by sepals. Someone should come up with a saffron flower that is all stigma.
The main cause of the Opium Wars, as I read, was silver. Tea was in huge demand, and much of it came from China. the engineering marvels of the time, clipper ships, could carry a huge cargo China to Europe at a pretty good clip. (sorry) China insisted on being paid in silver, so the silver of Europe was drained into China. Britain needed something to sell China to get their silver back, and unfortunately other than drug dealing, there wasn’t much that appealed to the Chinese that came in volume from Europe or its colonies. Fortunately, like humans everywhere, some Chinese also had a weakness for opium. When the Empire discovered the negative effects they tried to stop the opium trade, but like free enterprise lovers everywhere, Britain found it was better to force the Chinese Empire to accept their trade good.
Food “traditions” can change fast. Think about the fact that before the Colombian exchange, Indian cuisine didn’t include chilies, potatoes, tomatoes, or corn.
And tea, coffee, and chocolate are all relatively recent arrivals to European tastes, from a historical perspective.
The big tickets from China wasn’t tea so much as porcelain and silk ; but other than that you’ve got the right idea. China had a ton of high quality goods to sell (by Europe’s standards - by Chinese standards they flogged us shit) and didn’t want to buy anything Europeans sold. They had tea, they had spices, didn’t need cotton when they had silk, produced much better metal and pottery, etc… So more or less the only thing that could be used to trade with China was silver and gold. Most of the gold and silver mined in the Americas actually made its way west rather than towards Spain (via the famous Galleon of Manila) ; and of the silver that made it East Spain spent it across Europe, and Europeans shipped it in bulk to China.
That was the statu quo from 1500 to ~1800. But at that point the silver mines in America were growing dry, the Spanish empire was moribund and nobody could really make it rain in China any more. Then, as you say, the Brits started to bulkship opium until about 40 to 60% of the Chinese were hopelessly addicted (hard numbers are difficult to come by, the Chinese didn’t exactly keep sterling police reports) and the Emperor said “um, ok, how about stop ?” and forbid all sale of opium, at which point the Brits said “um, ok, how about FUCK YOU !”. Twice.
But prior to that, England (and France, until they were forced out) got their silver-for-China the old fashioned way, either by bringing things back to Europe to sell to the Spaniards ; or by bringing stuff from Europe to sell all around the Indian Ocean (and moving goods from one point of it to another) in exchange for silver. And even then, they typically had to accept Spain & Portugal as middlemen in the Philipines because China had declared all foreigners persona non grata on Chinese soil and pretty much all heavy duty shipping had to go through Macao & Manila (Chinese merchants would sail off from the Chinese coast and into Macao, thereby not technically breaking any laws. Also there was a huge amount of smuggling going on).
More about all of this in the excellent ***Vermeer’s Hat:***The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World, by Timothy Brook. He chose an interesting approach to present his research, writes well and it’s a much, much more user-friendly read than what I’ve grown used to from academics 
I remember learning in grade school that the reason spices were so valuable in the past compared to today is that they were the main way to preserve foods before refrigeration. They were more of a food supply necessity back then.
This is true of salt but not of the spices sought in the Orient. Salt was captured from salt water and was not traded between Europe and Asia.
Beneficial effects of spices in food preservation and safety
While spices were mainly imported because of their taste, many do have antibacterial and antioxidant properties that can contribute to food quality and safety. (Most compounds in spices are produced by plants as a deterrent against insects and other herbivores or as antifungals or antibacterials.)
I’ve been snipping and using parking-lot rosemary for over 20 years. It is amusing to, then, go into the grocery store and see a few fresh sprigs going for 2 dollars or more. Bay Laurels grow plentifully in my area. Though they are not quite the same as true “culinary” Bay, the leaves work perfectly well in cooking and pickling.