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  • noun Plural form of clove.

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  • Historical/usage note re: how cloves were used to treat smallpox, on inoculation.

    A note about how cloves were packed for trade/long-distance transport can be found on fondaci.

    "For cloves in 1496-1498, it has been estimated that the Venetian price was about 100 times what traders paid for them in the Moluccas, which provides a rough picture of the tremendous transport and transfer costs, but also of the profits. The price in Venice, it should be kept in mind, was itself greatly increased when the goods were then brought to northern Europe and sold at retail shops. It is easier to understand the profits of transporting spices from the eastern Mediterranean to Christian Europe. In 1343, Barcelona merchants bought spices in Cyprus and sold them in Barcelona at a 25 percent profit for pepper, 41 percent for cinnamon, and 20 percent for cloves. In the early 15th century Venetians were able to sell cloves for 72 percent more than they had paid for them in the Levant and nutmegs for as much as 400 percent profit.

    "These revenues were garnered from a substantial trade, not just from a few small boxes of exotic miscellany. In an average year during the 15th century, Venetian merchants obtained at least 400 tons of pepper from Alexandria and another 104 tons from Beirut. There were occasional opportunities to acquire even greater quantities. In November 1496, on the eve of the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India, four galleys arrived in Venice from Alexandria carrying, according to one estimate, what might have been four million pounds of spices, mostly but not exclusively pepper. Another convoy arrived in the same year, reportedly with another two million pounds, of which about half was pepper."


    Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2008), 115.

    Some more info on value relative to other spices on sueldos carlines.

    December 3, 2016