{"id":4406,"date":"2020-04-15T14:28:24","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T14:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.talesofceylon.com\/?page_id=4406"},"modified":"2020-05-17T17:30:02","modified_gmt":"2020-05-17T17:30:02","slug":"the-battle-for-negombos-spice-lands","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.talesofceylon.com\/destinations\/negombo\/tales-of-negombo\/the-battle-for-negombos-spice-lands\/","title":{"rendered":"The Battle for Negombo\u2019s Spice Lands"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Long ago, the kingdoms of Sri Lanka flourished from the trade of various goods, of which spices were key. One of the most sought-after spices in the world at the time was cinnamon, and Sri Lanka was one of the few places that had an abundance of it. Even today, Ceylon cinnamon has a significant demand, with 80 percent of the world\u2019s supply coming from the paradise island.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When the Portuguese arrived in the country in 1505, they soon realized that the island had a lucrative cinnamon trade, which was largely handled by Moor merchants. At the time not many people knew where cinnamon really came from, as the merchants fabricated fantastical tales to keep their sources secret. The discovery that cinnamon was available in abundance in Sri Lanka would have excited the Portuguese greatly. They quickly manipulated the troubled politics of the native kingdom to their advantage and started wresting control of the spice trade from the existing merchants. Lisbon soon controlled much of the spice trade along the island\u2019s coastal belt, and began taking over the cinnamon growing lands as well. Other spices which grew on the island, such as turmeric, cardamom, and cloves were also traded by the Portuguese.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Long ago, the kingdoms of Sri Lanka flourished from the trade of various goods, of which spices were key. One of the most sought-after spices in the world at the time was cinnamon, and Sri Lanka was one of the few places that had an abundance of it. Even today, Ceylon cinnamon has a significant [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"parent":4405,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4406","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesofceylon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesofceylon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesofceylon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesofceylon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesofceylon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesofceylon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4406\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesofceylon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesofceylon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}