To understand the world, we must understand the mountains that built it. The Spice Spine traces the story of the Western Ghats—one of the world’s great ecological engines—and reimagines global history through the mountains that shaped it.
Long before ships braved the oceans or empires carved their names in stone, the rainforests of the Ghats nurtured the world’s most coveted treasures—spices whose fragrance traveled across continents. This book reveals how those forests shaped faiths, built kingdoms, and drew the world to India’s shores.
From Chola fleets crossing Sumatra to Arab sailors mapping the monsoon, from India’s coastal pepper routes to the rise of European empires, this is the story of how a landscape became global currency—and how its sacred geography still breathes beneath modern trade.
Integrating themes of ecology, empire, and cultural memory, The Spice Spine offers a sweeping exploration of the mountains and spices that have shaped global history. It invites readers to see both history—and the world—anew.
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Prabhakar Perumalsamy Shanmugavel
Beneath the forests of the Western Ghats lie the traces of ancient routes that once connected peninsular India to Africa, Arabia, Southeast Asia, and Rome. Long before European powers arrived by sea, these mountains and their rivers supported ports, cities, temples, and trading guilds that formed the foundation of the world’s earliest spice networks. From the sweet waters of the Siruvani to the spice rich forests of Valparai and the Nilgiris, ecology, faith, and commerce once thrived together.
This book uncovers a largely untold history of how spices native to the Western Ghats placed India at the center of global trade, drawing the ambitions of empires from the Cholas to the Portuguese, the British, and even Napoleonic France. Using inscriptions, ancient texts, port records, and temple stones, it traces the journey of spice from forest to port and across oceans, revealing why control over these routes shaped the rise and fall of global powers for over two thousand years.
More than a record of dates and events, this is a story of geography, ambition, and mountains that quietly moved the world.
