Glucose

Spices were not the only thing fueling the global market however.  Sugar, also known as sucrose, was in great demand during this same time period, being primarily used as a sweetener.  Sugar was originally a product of southern Asia that spread to the Middle East and was later brought to places like the West Indies and Brazil.  The cultivation of sugarcane was labor intensive, so plantation owners growing this crop in the New World looked to native Americans as a worksource.  When the natives proved to be too weak for such labor, many having been afflicted by foreign diseases brought by the Europeans, the plantation owners began to buy slaves from Africa to do their dirty work.  Sugarcane production was the primary reason for African slaves being brought to the America's.  It is estimated that nearly two-thirds of these slaves had worked on sugar plantations.  Without sugar, the slave trade may have never had the opportunity to become as extensive as it did.

But what is it exactly that makes up this sweet compound?  Sucrose is the product of a glucose and a fructose molecule bound by an oxygen atom.  Both glucose and fructose are monosaccharides, which are also known as simple sugars.  The sucrose molecule is a disaccharide, being made up of two monosaccharides.  A molecule made of three or more monosaccharides is called a polysaccharide.  Glucose, like most other simple sugars such as fructose and galactose, is made of a six carbon chain that is partially looped by an oxygen atom.  Though it plays an equal role in the composition of sucrose as fructose does, it is typically seen as the most prominant, because it is also the most common of the monosaccharides.  It also makes the disaccharide lactose, a major component of milk products, when it binds to the galactose molecule.  Without the glucose molecule, humans would not likely be able to survive, but that fact aside, the slave trade would have never become as big as it had, and interest in New World markets might have even ended up being unsubstantial for Europeans powers to compete over.  This would have had a drastic impact on today's society, especially in the United States.

Ascorbic Acid

Though the Age of Discovery was fueled by the molecules of the spice trade, it was the lack of another molecule that hampered it.  Scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency, had an enormous impact on the sailors taking part in expeditions around the world, with symptoms ranging from exhaustion and weakness to foul breath and diarrhea to death.  With a weak and dying crew, a ship could not possibly function efficiently and could not stay at sea for too long a time.  In fact, most of the deaths on Magellan's expedition around the world had been caused by this terrible disease.  Despite the countless losses caused by scurvy, many saw it as an inevitablity, and though there were several alleged remedies for the disease, a lack of knowledge as to what it was caused by made most efforts to cure it futile.

Many believed that scurvy was the result of a diet consisting of too much salted meat or not enough fresh meat, as opposed to a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables.  Every once in a blue moon, however, a remedy to combat the disease actually worked.  The French learned one such cure from the native Americans in Quebec who suggested an infusion of needles from a spruce tree.  In the early 1600s, English Naval Captain James Lancaster took a bottle of lemon juice with him on his expeditions, dosing any crewmember who showed signs of scurvy with three teaspoons of the juice every morning.  The result were near scurvy free expeditions to the southern tip of Africa and beyond.  The first ship captain to ensure that his crew remained completely scurvy free, however, was Captain James Cook of the British Royal Navy, who insisted on maintaining high levels of diet and hygiene aboard his vessels, during his time at sea in the late 1700s.  His crew, with a diet of vitamin C-rich foods was able to accomplish numerous impressive feats, such as the discovery of Hawaii and the Great Barrier Reef, the first circumnavigation of New Zealand, the first charting of the Pacific Northwest coastline, and the first crossing of the Antarctic Circle.

Despite the successes seen on board several ships concerning the cure for scurvy, many ship captains ignored the preventatives and remedies that had been proven to be effective, and instead used others such as vinegar, salt water, cinnamon, and whey, which did not work.  Even an experiment performed in 1747 by Scottish naval surgeon James Lind was not enough to convince the thick-headed masses.  In the experiment he gave eight scurvy-afflicted sailors the false remedies named above, and gave two others oranges and lemons.  The two given the fruit were seaworthy again in less than a week, but the others were not so fortunate.  Even by the early 1900s, some expeditioners ignored the correct measures to prevent scurvy, and again it was seen how important a Vitamin C-rich diet was.  A 1911 Norwegian expedition to the south pole was made successful through a diet based on fresh seal and dog meat, which contained vitamin C.  A 1912 British expedition to the south pole, however, never made it back, as their commander, Robert Falcon Scott, still believed that scurvy was caused by tainted meat.

The importance of ascorbic acid in the diet is now clear today, though we are still not completely sure of all the roles it plays in the body.  Had this important molecule been discovered and accepted as a cure for scurvy earlier, the world as we know it might not be the same.  Empires such as Portugal and the Netherlands who got an early start in exploration and colonization would have been more successful and would have taken more land, leaving little for later-developing empires like Britain to discover.  It is in these ways that ascorbic acid has played an enormous role in how the course of human history has developed and how it has forever changed the way we live.

Peppers, Nutmeg, and Cloves

An assortment of spices, including pepper, nutmeg, cloves and ginger.

The Age of Discovery was ushered in by a global search for spices such as peppers, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger, which, once valuable luxury items used for food preservation and flavoring, are now common household products.  Such spices were so valuable in Medieval Europe that a mere pound of dried pepper could buy the freedom of a serf bound to a nobleman's estate.  During the last four years of the Middle Ages, merchants from Venice had a complete monopoly over the spice trade, so in 1400, the Portuguese looked for an alternative route to India, which was the origin of the spice market.  By 1498, Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama had reached India by sailing around the southern tip of Africa, and five years later would return with an army that would conquer the Indian kingdom of Calicut. This was the start of a Portuguese empire that would eventually stretch from Indonesia, through India and Africa, to Brazil.

The Spanish monarchy was also eager to get involved in the spice trade, so in 1492, Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus was financed by King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella of Spain to sail an even more radical route in hopes of reaching India faster.  He sailed westward with three ships and landed on an island in the Caribbean Ocean, naming the islands the West Indies. The New World had been discovered.  On a second journey to the West Indies, Columbus found a new kind of pepper called the chili pepper.  Within fifty years the new spice had been incorporated into local cuisines around the world, but what is it exactly that gives the pepper its hot, fiery sensation when we eat it?  Some believe that the shape of the molecules piperine, found in both black and white pepper, and capsaicin, found in chili peppers, has some effect on our nerves which is currently unknown.  Both molecules have a single aromatic ring, a chain of carbon atoms, and a NC=O group.  Another molecule, zingerone (found in ginger), also has the aromatic ring and carbon chain, but has no NC=O group.

The English and Dutch also began to enter the spice trade, making the market fiercely competitive.  Yet again the Spanish sought out another route to the east by going west, so they commisioned Portuguese mariner Ferdinand Magellan to sail around the world starting west.  After sailing down the coast of South America and around its southern tip through the Strait of Magellan, the fleet finally reached the Pacific Ocean.  During a short landfall in the Philipine Islands however, Magellan was killed in a skirmish with the natives, but his crew pressed on.  Eventually, three years after they had left, the crew reached Spain once more with only one out of the five original ships and eighteen sailors out of the original 265.  The first journey around the world had been made and at a great cost, just for a little spice.

Pepper wasn't the only sought-after spice, however.  Cloves and nutmeg also contain molecules that, like zingerone, contain a single aromatic ring and a carbon chain.  Cloves had been used in the Chinese imperial court as sweeteners since ancient times and nutmeg soon became the center of a conflict between the English and the Dutch that would forever change history.  The Dutch had a nearly complete monopoly over the nutmeg trade; the only thing left to take was the English-held Banda islands.  After the English attacked the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, now New York, the Dutch attacked the Banda islands, and war ensued.  In 1667 a treaty that ended the war gave the Dutch the Banda islands, giving them complete control of the nutmeg market, and also gave the English the rights to the island of Manhattan.  Without the nutmeg trade, New York may have ended up remaining in the hands of the Dutch, which would have greatly affected American history.

As you can see, the demand for spices as preservatives and food-flavoring, fueled a global search that ushered in the Age of Discovery.  The pepper's piperine and capsaicin molecules, ginger's zingerone, the eugenol in cloves, and the isoeugenol in nutmeg all possess similar characteristics that may cause the fiery sensation we get from them that, in part, caused this demand in the first place.  Other spicy products also follow this pattern.  The safrole in sassafras and other molecules found in peppers, nutmeg, and cloves such as myristicin and elemicin fall into this category as well, further confirming the hypothesis that the shape of the molecule affects the taste.  Regardless, the demand for spices has forever changed the course of history and has given us cause to explore the earth we live on.

Napoleon's Buttons: 17 Molecules That Changed History

The book Napoleon's Buttons: 17 Molecules That Changed History follows 17 molecules or groups of molecules that had a significant impact on human history.  Each of its seventeen chapters discusses one of these molecules and how they changed history.  The first story, however, lies in its introduction, where it is shown that even monumentous events may depend on something as small as a molecule.

In December of 1812 on the long road road of retreat from Moscow, Napoleon Bonaparte's tattered Grande Armee, once 600,000 strong, now only numbered 10,000.  The Grande Armee was once a proud and prestigious military unit, but its defeat against the Russians that year marked not only a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars themselves, but also had a major impact on the politics of eastern Europe, which, had Napoleon conquered it, would have embraced the age of enlightenment that was so prevalent in the west.

But what was it exactly that caused Napoleon's most lethal fighting force, who had been victorious in so many battles before, to be defeated by their Russian adversaries?  Some believe that the buttons that the soldiers wore, which were made out of tin, were the cause of this major upset.  "Tin Disease" as it was called, was the problem in which tin will turn into a crumbly, nonmetallic, gray powder in low temperatures, such as those experienced by the French in Russia during the winter of 1812.

The tin buttons became obsolete in such conditions, causing the uniforms of Napoleon's men to merely drape loosely over them, exposing them to the cold and reducing their capability to fight.  Many attribute the defeat of the Grand Armee to this small, technical failure, but there are still many problems regarding the theory.  One is that Napoleon knew about "Tin Disease," so it would contradict his genius to send his men into the harsh Russian winter with these buttons.  It is also unlikely that the tin deteriorated that quickly, since such a process has been shown to take some time.

Never-the-less it is an amusing story that  demonstrates how the chemical propety of a molecule or element has the potential to completely change the course of human history.