The Spice Trade For thousands of years, spices were a major trade item in the Indian Ocean commercial network, as this fifteenth-century French depiction of the gathering of pepper in southern India illustrates. In the early modern era, Europeans gained direct access to this ancient network for the first time. (From the Livres des Merveilles du Monde, ca. 1410–1412, by Master Boucicaut [fl. 1390–1430] and workshop/Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France /Archives Charmet/Bridgeman Images)