Cinnamon is the dried bark from several varieties of small evergreen trees or bushes of the laurel family that provide similar flavors. Early cinnamons—such as Cinnamomum burmanni, which originated in Burma (Myanmar) and grows in southern China, South Asia, and Southeast Asia—were actually harvested from other varieties of evergreen laurel trees, known as cassia. Cassia bark is peeled into strips that curl into a “quill” shape when dried. Because the exterior bark is left on, the strip is thick, coarse, and dark brown.
True cinnamon, or Cinnamomum zeylanicum, is native only to Sri Lanka. It possesses a more delicate flavor and aroma than cassia. It is handled in the same manner, with an important exception—the coarse, first bark is removed by scraping, leaving a thinner, paler, light red-brown quill. The variation in handling cassia and true cinnamon sounds slight, but consumers perceived a difference and were prepared to pay for it.
Cinnamon was found in the wild and was not exploited on plantations in Sri Lanka until the later half of the eighteenth century. Multiple efforts were made in the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries by different colonial powers (the Portuguese in Brazil; the Spanish on Mindanao in the Philippines; the Dutch on Sumatra; and the French on Mauritius and Reunion and in Guyana) to transplant true cinnamon. They were less successful than with other spices, in part because of the extra semiartisanal handling required in its peeling. Some colonial powers and others, such as the Chinese, chose to increase deliveries of false cinnamon, which found market acceptance on the basis of price. Their efforts to break the Dutch and subsequent British monopoly of true cinnamon met with success in the nineteenth century.
The Portuguese, from 1506 until 1658, actively commercialized the commodity in Europe and Asia, but they did not establish an effective monopoly. The Dutch East India Company from 1658 to 1796, and later the English East India Company, did establish a monopoly over cinnamon.
The Dutch controlled deliveries and prices. From 1658 to 1760, the total volume of cinnamon delivered to them on Sri Lanka approximated 27,670 metric tons (about 30,500 short tons). Three-quarters of this volume was exported to Europe. The other quarter was ostensibly meant for sale in Asia, but most of it was sold to intermediaries or directly to the Spanish in the Philippines for transshipment to markets in the New World; only a small fraction was sold and consumed in Asia. Approximately one-half of the cinnamon sold in Europe was destined for Spain and its empire. Other major markets were France, the Netherlands, and the early political configurations of modern Italy and Germany.
From 1650 to 1700 the Dutch doubled the price of cinnamon in Europe from 1.50 to 3 guilders per pound. By 1750 they had doubled it again, to 6 guilders. In the 1780s it neared 9 guilders. It returned to an average of 6 or 7 guilders in the 1790s. The profits were considerable. A precise calculation is not possible because colonial administrative expenditures were kept separate from cinnamon income.
