Delusions of Granules

Perhaps the ultimate quest among historians, much as it is among physicists, is the quest for the grand unifying theory. What one thing is common to all that has happened? What drives history?

Is is the migration of tribes? The simple accidents of germs and natural resources? Man's quest for freedom? A battle between religions? All of those theories have elements of truth, as do nearly all theories. But the truth is perhaps simpler. And sweeter.

Two of the turning points of modern history were caused by man's lust for......condiments. Spices. The expedition of Columbus and the Cuban Missile Crisis were both driven by the urge for more tasteful food.

Of course Columbus did not "discover" the Americas. But his journey to America represented the point of no return in the great human rediscovery of an elemental truth: there was one Earth of finite size and all mankind came from the same place upon it. This rediscovery is still a work in progress.

But Columbus' journey was not driven by this epic and primordial quest; it was driven by the urge for spices. Cinnamon. Pepper. Simple as that. We call Native Americans "Indians" because Columbus thought he was in the Indies, today Indonesia, which was also known as the spice islands.

Before Columbus discovered that the Natives had gold, he was horrified by their lack of nutmeg, terrified of returning to his royal sponsors with no crushed red pepper.

Just as Columbus was a turning point in the story of mankind, the Cuban Missile Crisis, played out upon one of the very islands Columbus "discovered" was the most dangerous moment in the history of man.

And this conflict, despite Kennedy's flighty rhetoric and murderous impulses, despite Castro's megalomania, and despite Khrushchev's bluster, was about sugar.

The reason mankind almost committed suicide over Cuba (or rather the reason John Fitzgerald Kennedy thought this to be a worthy gamble) was that Fidel Castro seized American sugar plantations in Cuba.

American businesses had bought up the best land in Cuba for pennies on the dollar and had profited mightily from the labor and land and natural resources of Cuba. Fidel Castro dictatorially (and rightly) claimed this to be unacceptable and "stole" this land from the American "owners".

This was the turning point in America's attitudes towards Cuba, and it nearly became the beginning of the end of the world. And for what? For sugar. How sweet it is.