Clove

Clove has shaped world history more than perhaps any other fragrance ingredient. Native to the tiny Maluku Islands, a volcanic archipelago in eastern Indonesia, cloves grew nowhere else on earth for most of human history. Arab traders guarded the secret of their origin with elaborate fictions, selling the dried buds at enormous markup to European markets where they were worth more than gold by weight. Medieval Europeans used cloves to preserve and flavor food, but also as a display of wealth: at state banquets, hosts might pass a silver bowl of cloves and cinnamon so guests could freshen their breath with these impossibly expensive spices.

The European scramble to control the clove trade reshaped global politics. The Portuguese reached the Spice Islands in 1512 and attempted a monopoly, but it was the Dutch East India Company that ultimately seized control through extraordinary brutality. In 1621, Dutch governor Jan Pieterszoon Coen orchestrated the near-total massacre of the Bandanese population, replacing them with Dutch planters and slaves. The 1667 Treaty of Breda saw the Dutch cede Manhattan to the English in exchange for Run, a three-kilometer Banda island, because its clove groves were considered more valuable than the entire settlement of New Amsterdam. French botanist Pierre Poivre eventually smuggled seedlings out in 1770, breaking the monopoly and spreading cultivation to Zanzibar, where cloves now dominate the economy. In perfumery, clove anchors iconic compositions from Yves Saint Laurent's Opium to Caron's Poivre, proof that this ancient spice continues to cast its spell.