Cinnamon

The sweeping cultural history of a spice so coveted it launched empires across oceans, reshaped global trade, and bound generations of Sri Lankan peelers to colonial rule.

For millennia, cinnamon has been treasured for its healing powers and warm, unmistakable aroma. But behind its familiar scent lies a tumultuous past steeped in conquest and rebellion. In Cinnamon, acclaimed historian Nira Wickramasinghe traces the remarkable story of this ‘queen of spices’, from ancient Egyptian embalming tables and medieval Mughal kitchens to disastrous expeditions in search of mythical cinnamon lands in the Americas and the fierce imperial rivalries of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British. She reveals how global demand for ‘true’ cinnamon transformed Sri Lanka, where an entire caste of peelers, neither enslaved nor free, were compelled to harvest the bark under systems of semi-servitude, at times rising up in rebellion.

Drawing on meticulously researched global history and mythology, Wickramasinghe brings to life the smugglers, merchants, cooks, botanists, conquerors, and peelers who built the cinnamon trade. A vivid journey across centuries and continents, Cinnamon is the definitive portrait of a spice through which the turmoil and richness of our world come alive.

Nira Wickramasinghe is a historian of the Indian Ocean world and professor at Leiden University. Her recent books include the award-winning Slave in a Palanquin, Sri Lanka in the Modern Age, Metallic Modern, and Dressing the Colonised Body. She is the recipient of fellowships from, inter alia, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Davis Center at Princeton, the British Academy, and has spent time in New York as a Fulbright Hayes fellow. She grew up in Paris and studied at Oxford where she received her D.Phil in history. She now works and lives in Leiden with her younger son, travelling frequently to Sri Lanka, her land of birth.