Cinnamon has probably been known in the Mediterranean since the second millennium BC.
Herodotus describes is as being used in mummification and Ezekiel mentions it as one the commodities handled by the Tyrian trading network.
It was written that Nero, Emperor of Rome burned a years’ supply of cinnamon at a ceremony for the death of his wife.
In the early times, nomad tribes in Arabia were frequent traders in the markets along the Mediterranean Sea, Persian Gulf and on the coats of India. When they traded with merchants in India they were introduced to cinnamon.
The Indians have always used cinnamon lavishly, but the Greeks and Romans did not really introduce it into their cooking until the final period of the Roman Empire, around the third and fourth centuries.
During the late Middle Ages, cinnamon became one of the frost commodities traded regularly between Europe and the Near East.
The demand for cinnamon was enough to launch a number of explorers’ enterprises, especially exploration by the Dutch and Portuguese. Cinnamon was one of the spices sought on European 15th and 16th century voyages.
During Dutch settlement in Ceylon, cinnamon made by them a lucrative article of trade and one which they strive by every means wholly to monopolize, this tree was not made by them an object of cultivation in Ceylon until 1766.
The Dutch controlled of cinnamon and their monopoly subsequently passed to Britain in 1796.
In 1771, the French introduce cinnamon to the Seychelles, and form 19th century cinnamon was more widely cultivated.
History of cinnamon
