The 2025 Innes Lecture – Following the Pepper: Black berries, Asian trade and European empires

This year’s Innes Lecture is being delivered by Prof Sujit Sivasundaram, Professor of World History at the University of Cambridge, who will look at the history of pepper and the role it plays in the world.

It will be held on Tuesday 29 April in the John Innes Conference Centre at Norwich Research Park. The event is free to attend and open to all. Please book your tickets here.

Doors open at 6pm with the lecture starting at 6.30pm.

Pepper is the most widely used spice in the world, but its widespread use was not always certain or predictable.

This lecture follows pepper’s journey from its origins in South India, across the Indian Ocean, and through many different hands, before the Portuguese sought to take control of it.

The way pepper was harvested and traded to meet growing demand helped shape the plantation economy. The combination of the plantation economy and European colonisation played a huge role in shaping the modern world. Looking at how pepper was cultivated and traded, reveals different ecologies, trade networks, labour systems and cultural influences.

Prof Sivasundaram’s last book, Waves Across the South: A New History of Revolution and Empire, won both the British Academy Book Prize and the Jerry Bentley Prize for World History. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.

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