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 to 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 from 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.


Praise for Metallic Modern-

'This is a fascinating book, rich in ideas about what we do with technology's reception and reconstitution in the colonial world.'
-South Asia- journal of South Asian studies

'This is a most engaging book from a well-known author ... a timely contribution concerning an important subject that is attracting renewed and sustained interest from historians of late.'
-Crispin Bates, University of Edinburgh


Praise for Slave in a Palanquin-

'Slave in a Palanquin is one of the most remarkable and original works I have read on the history of the Indian Ocean. With her enormous scholarly gifts, Wickramasinghe endeavors to recover what she calls "fugitive lives," a project that is as much as anything a meditation on the archive of slavery- its silences, fractures, and unexpected shards of illumination.
-Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly Waters, Itinerario, The International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter