APPUNTI DI STORIA DELLA LIQUIRIZIA

Liquorice root has been dug up and traded for centuries in a Euro-Asiatic belt stretching from the Iberic Peninsula to Eastern China. In this area it was possible to distinguish three different cultural traditions and markets: the Mediterranean and Middle East one, the Indian and the Chinese, probably the most important both in cultural and economic terms. The twentieth century unification of these markets in a global one has been fostered by some major events occurred in Europe or in America such as the “invention” of liquorice juice during the fifteenth century, its increasing use as a sweet and not only a drug, the opening of a huge american market following the discovery of its capability of flavouring the tobacco and the birth of a global liquorice firm in London at the middle of nineteenth century.