The cinnamon, or kannel, ‘Cinnamomum verum’, has played a very important role in the economic history of the Seychelles not only as a spice crop in the twentieth century but also as a fast-growing species which prevented erosion after the forests had been cleared for wood in the nineteenth century, and thus conserved the water supply of the main granitic islands.

Cinnamon Leaves and Seeds on Tree–Feye Kannel ek Lagrenn

What is cinnamon?

The cinnamon tree belongs to the Lauraceae family and is a bushy, tropical evergreen that ranges in height from 5 metres to 15 metres. The bark is rough, scaly, and highly aromatic. When stripped off and dried, this fragrant bark forms the familiar cylindrical quills that are powdered to produce what is possibly the world’s oldest and best-known spice. The bark when distilled is the source of cinnamon bark oil.

The leaves are bright green on the upper side and paler underneath, turning leathery when mature. When rubbed, the leaves emit a spicy odour and have a hot, pungent taste. The leaves when distilled are the source of cinnamon leaf essential oil

Introduction of Cinnamon to Seychelles

The cinnamon was introduced to Seychelles in 1772 together with other spice plants, including pepper, cloves and nutmeg. and was planted in the Jardin du Roi at Anse Royale on Mahé Island.

Pierre Poivre who was the Intendant of Ile de France and Bourbon (1719-1786), had one main ambition and that was to duplicate the exploits of the Dutch in the Indian Ocean where the trade of spices was a primary source of colonial wealth and to break the Dutch monopoly on cinnamon!

At the risk of the death sentence, he personally undertook a couple of expeditions to the Dutch East Indies and managed to smuggle out samples of spice plants, and most important of all cinnamon seedlings, which he brought back to Mauritius. Upon learning that on Mahé the salubrious climate and the soil composition were propitious for a spice garden, he dispatched his most trusted agent, Antoine Gillot, accompanied by forty workers and a small contingent of slaves. The spice garden Gillot created was situated at Anse Royale. It was called “Jardin Du Roi”…the king being of course Louis XV! There, cloves, nutmegs, pepper, and cinnamon grew and flourished for some time until May 1780 when it was destroyed by a monumental act of blunder.

The near disaster

In May 1780, however, disaster struck. A vessel flying the English flag was sighted entering Victoria harbor and the French Commandant Lieutenant Charles de Romainville fearing that the islands might fall in the hands of the enemies, deliberately ordered the burning down of the spice plantations. Overnight, the patient work of Pierre Poivre was reduced to ashes. Ironically, the vessel was not, after all, a British ship but was a French slaver whose captain, as a precautionary measure against the British, had hoisted the English flag.

Plan du Jardin de Roi de Gillot

The Dispersal

Although the spice garden was destroyed, the cinnamon survived. It was first dispersed by endemic birds such as the Seychelles blue pigeon (Alectroenas pulcherrima) and the Seychelles bulbul (Hypsipetes crassirostris). Today the main disperser is probably the introduced Indian mynah.  The birds feed on the ripe seeds which are swallowed whole. After the outer fleshy coating has been digested, the hard portion containing the undamaged embryo is usually excreted some kilometers away from the parent plants. The seedlings reach the coppicing stage about three years later. Coppicing is a traditional method of tree management which exploits the capacity of many species of trees to put out new shoots from their stump or roots if cut down.

During the nineteenth century, as the forests of all the granitic islands were cleared for wood, the cinnamon quickly established itself over the whole of Mahé. It was also used for reforestation on Mahé in 1920, and for that reason it was also introduced to Praslin in the 1930s.

The first Cinnamon oil distillery (lizin kannel) in Seychelles

It was not until the early 1900s that cinnamon was harvested for its oil.

A gentleman named Mr. De Lagrange, who after installing a small apparatus in his home, stripped off the bark from one of the cinnamon trees close by and started its distillation. When the people saw the clear golden oil yielding by the cinnamon bark, they at once realised the loss they have suffered, as well as the possibilities of the benefits they have omitted to derive, from this abandoned plant.  As a result of what they saw from Mr. Lagrange, who in fact was the first distiller on the islands, the whole of Seychelles awoke body and soul and started erecting stills everywhere.

Essential oil distillation had become such a lucrative and widespread business all over Mahe that the colonial government appointed an inspector of distilleries, who ensured that owners conformed to established standards of operation. In 1909, the inspector was Antoine Louis Despilly Jorre de Saint Jorre, who earned R1,200 a year. He was then 25 years old.

Mr. Paul Rivaltz Dupont, then curator of the Botanical Garden, whose advice had before been shunned by the proprietors who stubbornly considered this plant as a more decorative tree shinning white, red and green leaves only to charm the eye and country, saw his dream coming true a last. He, at once, carried a series of experimental distillations in the eyes of the population, amazed at the first steps of the ‘Bourbon’ gentleman.

The Excitement and Warning

Mr. Dupont backed the experiments with his profuse and learned information he gave to one and all in the most comprehensive language, in the course of lectures and conferences. He particularly warned these enthusiastic people that unless they adopt a reasonable method of cropping this plant, the latter would soon become extinct, the maturity of the leaves necessitating hardly two years. He also warned the planters that this should not suffer from severe over cropping in the long run, and that it would have been preferable for them never to have started distillation if they had a mind to derogate.

The cinnamon trees were believed to be of inferior quality and were consequently not exploited until 1907. By then, samples of bark had shown that it was of the same quality as the trees in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and small distilleries for producing bark oil began to be built.

The Destruction of the forests

Cinnamon bark quickly became a major export product and in 1915 distillation had to move over to processing leaf oil as all the larger trees had been cut down. With the beginning of the cinnamon industry, an intensive and extraordinarily rapid destruction of the forests began despite the warnings offered by Mr. Dupont. The cinnamon tree was felled for its leaves every 18 months and all other remaining woody plants were felled to provide firewood to operate the distilleries. An urgent need for reforestation was noted as early as 1911. As the mountain areas became deforested, the distilleries became concentrated along the coast, where there was abundant coconut trash for fuel.

Lanier the Conservationist!

Mr. Edouard Lanier who was also an agriculturalist, as well as a jack of all trade, also sounded the alarm that Mr. Dupont raised initially. He suggested, among others, the leaves only be picked up from their branches, in order to preserve the cinnamon from systematic destruction. Mr. Lanier also focused his attention on the kind of fuel which should most economically be used in the distillation process, as in their first enthusiasm most of the planters had already denuded all their forest timber. He subsequently started using coconut husks and branches as fuel. The yield was certainly a few degrees below, but was overall a success and consequently all other planters followed Mr. Lanier’s example, with the result that the last produce of the coconut palm, i.e. its leaves and branches, found a price.

The collection of coconut leaves was as now carried out by men and women who were paid only for every ton of leaves collected and transported to the distillery, with a police permit according to licensing ordinance framed and put in force by the authorities in 1919. The price for the leaves were set at 50 cents per 100 kilos in 1921  and reduced to 40 cents by 1931.

The Boom in Distilleries

Between 1930 and 1931 approximately 50 to 54,000 litres of leaf oil were exported. In 1932, 49,000 litres were exported and in 1933, 60,000 litres.

Cinnamon Distillery on Mahé

By 1921 with a population of just above 25,000, Seychelles had 67 cinammon leaf distilleries and all crown lands on Mahe and Praslin were leased for cinammon cultivation, totalling over 25,00 acres. By 1933, there were 82 distilleries working on Mahé, although the number had reduced to about 50 by 1938. With an average annual yield of 13.3 litres of cinnamon leaf oil per hectare there must have been over 55 km2 of forest under cultivation when annual leaf oil production peaked at 75 tons during the middle of the twentieth century. Given that the total area of Mahé is 142 km2 (and Silhouette 19.95 km2) with a forest cover of 90 percent, cropping must have included almost all of the islands’ accessible forests (c. 38 percent of total forest cover). By the end of 1940’s over 2,000 labourers were employed in the cinnamon industry.

The Seychelles cinnamon oil was greatly sought after at that time and it was exported to Europe and as far as the United States.

Below is a summary of cinnamon export from 1908 to 1947:

In 1908, Seychelles exported its first cargo of 740,123 kilos of cinnamon worth Rs. 50,166.

Between 1909 to 1913, the export for cinnamon brought over 4 millions rupees.

1915-1918: 52,162 litres of cinnamon oil

1924-1928: 237,944 litres of cinnamon oil

1930-1934: 275,238 litres of cinnamon oil

1949-1952: 335,863 litres of cinnamon oil

1933-1937: 151 tons of cinammon bark

In 1947: 861 tons of cinammon bark was exported for a value of Rs. 71,002

Cinnamon Leaf Oil in Barrels Ready to be Shipped to New York

The Decline

As cinnamon bark prices rose in the early 1960s, workers shifted to cropping the bark. Many distilleries could no longer obtain sufficient leaves to keep operating and had to close.

In 1968, the exported tonnage of cinnamon bark reached an all-time high of 5,073 tons. In May 1970, for the first time, 200 tonnes of cinnamon bark were sold to the Soviet Union. A ship, M.V. Suzdal, of the Black Sea Steaming Company came to collect the Kremlin’s cargo. Since the opening of the International Airport on Mahé in 1971, Seychelles cinnamon industry has slowly declined (graph below).

SEYCHELLES CINNAMON EXPORTS

Data from: Purseglove (1981); Seychelles Annual Report on Agriculture (1910); Seychelles Annual Report on Agriculture and Crown Lands (1917); Seychelles Information and Statistical Bureau (2002).

I have inserted a table below with more detailed analysis of cinnamon exports from Seychelles from 1951 to 1982:

	Leaf Oil	Bark	Comments
Year	Tonnes	Tonnes
1951-1955	90.3	350	Annual Average
1956-1960	78.6	874	Annual Average
1961-1965	74.7	1260	Annual Average
1966	48.8	1543
1967	35.6	2484
1968	20.8	5073
1969	11.9	1444
1970	17.3	1335
1971	12.0	1302
1972	6.8	2031
1973	2.1	1676
1974	0.6	1500
1975	0.4	1116
1976	0.1	1204
1977		488
1982	0	419

Detailed Analysis of Cinnamon Exports from Seychelles from 1951 to 1982

It is interesting to note that in 1977 there were 84 households, 66 small holdings and 14 large farms producing cinnamon bark. They accounted for 68, 72, and 348 metric tonnes, respectively.

Cinnamon leaves and leaf oil

How were the cinnamon leaves collected?

The processing of cinnamon leaves into cinnamon oil started to gain momentum around 1910. On large estates of about 100 or more acres, collection of the leaves was done almost year-round, except during the “flushing period” which occurs during the rainy season, from October to December. In this period, fresh young leaves reddish in colour and quite thin are just coming out, and such leaves are unsuitable for the distillation of oil. On small estates and in easily accessible areas, collection took place once every 18 to 20 months. The average yield of leaves was around ¾ ton per acre.

Collection usually started around 6am to avoid working under the heat of the midday sun. Labour for cinnamon cropping was provided mainly by women, or fenm  kanel.  Using sharp large knives, or grancouto, or axes , the bushes were cut to within 20cm of the ground.  The branches were stripped, and the leaves were tightly packed in gunny bags which were then transported as headloads to the distilleries or collecting stations on roadsides. The stripped branches were left behind and later collected to be used as fuel for the distilleries.

Cinnamon Leaves in gunny bags being weighed

Leaves collected by workers on a daily quota were 50 kilos for men and 40 kilos for women. The price paid by a proprietor to collectors of leaves from lands owned by himself was around 30 cents per ton.

How was leaf oil produced?

The leaf oil was obtained by steam-distillation of the freshly picked leaves. Distillation was usually carried out, immediately on arrival, to the distilleries, as considerable loss of the volatile oil occurs if the leaves are left to dry.  There were two types of stills used in this process. The single stills which were the most popular by far, and the triple stills , of which there were only a few. The triple stills have the stills connected in series to only one source of steam. They were found not to be that efficient. There were two slightly different types of single stills. The main difference between them was that some stills had a separate steam generation boiler and some did not have the boiler and the leaves were placed into the distillation chamber on a grid above the boiling water.

How the still Works

The leaves were packed into a steel cylinder, and steam at atmospheric or higher pressure was passed through the load of leaves from the base of the cylinder. As the steam passes through the leaves, it carries the volatiles oils from the leaves to the top of the distillation chamber, then through a pipe that leads to a water-cooled condenser. The steam and the vaporized oils condense by indirect cooling with the water, and the distillate is then collected in a receiving tank fitted with a tap near the base and an overflow or return-flow pipe near the top. The aqueous portion of the distillate (hydrosol) is returned to the still, whilst the oil   which has a specific gravity of around 1.0206, i.e. it is heavier than water, collects at the bottom of the condensed water and is drawn off into iron drums. The process would take up to 8 hours.

This representation of a traditional still shows steam passing through the Cinnamon leaves carrying its volatile components out of the top of the chamber. The steam and oil vapor condenses to form the cinnamon oil and hydrosol

Cinnamon leaf essential oil is a yellow to pale brown colour and has a warm, sweet, and spicy aroma. The cinnamon oil from Seychelles was highly regarded because it has a high level of eugenol and most of it was exported.

Remnents of A Cinnamon Oil Distillery Showing the Boiler- courtesy Nicole Johnston ( Facebook)

Spent Cinnamon Leaves

The cinnamon leaves that have been exhausted of their oil by steam distillation were normally used in other plantation as a mulch. This mulch acted as a weed deterrent and held the moisture in the soil. In addition, it decomposed into a valuable source of humus. It was noted that the incidence of pests (insects, nematodes and snails) decreased in areas where the spent leaves were spread, but there was no documented evidence to support this theory.

How was the bark collected and oil produced?

The bark was collected at the same time as the leaves. Shoots that have been stripped of their leaves are sorted according to their diameter and thickness of the bark. The process of barking was carried out at the site of collection, and the unwanted wood was left behind.

Rough Unscrapped Cinnamon Bark being Sun-dried

Cinnamon bark oil was obtained by the steam distillation of thin and rough unscraped bark.  The same still and procedure as that for the leaf oil were used for the bark oil. Seychelles started producing bark oil as far back as 1905 but as the quality was inferior to the leaf oil, and the demand for leaf oil was high, the distillation of bark oil was more or less stopped. 

The demand for the bark picked up in the 1940s and although little bark oil was distilled, different other products were made from the bark and these were: compound quills; simple quills and quillings; thin unscrapped bark and rough unscraped bark

Compound and simple quills

Quills were prepared from the bark of 18-20 months old trees and measuring not more than 5 cm in diameter. The selected shoots were treated as follows:

With a sharp steel knife fixed to a thick wooden handle, the corky layer is scrapped off revealing a clean white bark. Circular incisions are then made along the length of the shoot at regular intervals of about 30cm.  The next step is the making of two vertical incisions on opposite sides of the shoot. The point of a curved steel knife is carefully inserted under the bark at the junction of the circular and vertical incisions, and working away from this junction, the bark is lifted from the wood.

The cinnamon Bark being lifted to Make Quills

Thus, a 30cm piece of shoot will give two simple quills. To make compound quill, several simple quills are placed one inside the other and firmly rolled into a more or less solid cylindrical stick. During drying, a certain amount of natural curling inwards occurs.

Drying methods for quills

Quills were dried in one of two ways:

1. By artificial heat
2. By the sun and shade system

Drying by artificial heat.  This happened in a dryer that consisted of a closed concrete shed with an oven built underneath the concrete. A ‘drying bed’ erected about 60cm  above floor level, made of a wooden frame covered with stout wire-netting, covered most of the floor space leaving about 30cm  on the sides for the workers to move around. The oven was fired by coconut husks. When the temperature inside reached between 60-70°C , the quills were spread over the wire netting. The exit door was closed, and the quills were allowed to dry without interruption. Drying was completed in about 20 hours. This method was widely used for the drying of simple quills.

Drying by Sun and Shade System.  The quills were spread on coconut or straw mats in the sun for 24 hours after preparation. They were then taken indoors and spread on concrete floors and allowed to dry slowly. The whole process took four to five days.

Sorting and packing of quills

 The dried quills were sorted according to colour and size. Compound quills were tied into small bundles of about ½ kg before being placed in wooden boxes. Simple quills on the other hand were merely packed into large wooden boxes, each quill packed end to end to avoid being crushed. Each box weighed approximately 100kg.

Simple quills Compound Quills

Broken compound and simple quills were packed together and exported as quillings.

Some export figures for cinnamon quills

The 9 inches cinnamon quills were first exported in 1959 to the United Kingdom to establish it on the spice market. In 1960, 8,920 kilos of quills valued at Rs. 25,760 were exported. In 1968, 9 tons of quills were sold for Rs. 98,144. In 1970 , 8 tons of quills were sold at Rs. 106,000.

Thin unscraped bark.

Thin unscraped bark was obtained from shoots which were either too small for making quills or from shoots of  5cm  in diameter whenever the amount of bark available was so small that the preparation of quills became uneconomical. The method employed for removal of the bark from the wood was quick and easy and required no skill. This job was in fact often given to children. With a sharp steel knife, the bark was scraped off the shoots. Drying was done by spreading the bark on dry concrete floors in the shade. Thin unscraped bark often appeared as long slender strips and were sometimes curled.

Rough Unscraped Bark

Rough unscraped bark consisted of dried pieces of bark of different sizes, shapes and thickness obtained from old stems and stocks. Often the corky layer was cracked, giving the bark a horny appearance. The method of preparation was simple. With a blunt edge of an axe or heavy piece of timber about 45cm long, the thick bark was simply beaten off the wood and was collected onto a mat or a gunny sack spread on the ground.  This method of preparation accounted for the large amount of small bark fragments found in any consignment of rough unscraped bark.   After drying the bark was tightly packed in gunny sacks for export.

Cinnamon Bark Being Bagged for Export

The cinnamon industry in early 1980

In the early part of 1980 a parastatal export company (SEYCOM) was established. The mandate was that SEYCOM (Seychelles National Commodity Co. Ltd.) would be the sole exporter and international marketer for the major agricultural products, namely copra and cinnamon. Soon after establishment, SEYCOM agreed to purchase all of the dry cinnamon bark at a fixed price of Rs 3,200.00 per metric tonne. The price was raised in 1981 to Rs 3,850.00 per metric tonne . Unfortunately, knowledge of the international cinnamon market was severely lacking at SEYCOM. Consequently, SEYCOM was unfortunately unable to recapture some of the traditional Seychelles cinnamon markets giving the death blow to the industry!

The Seychelles cinnamon industry today

Cinnamon no longer plays an important part in the Seychelles economy.

Remnants of a cinnamon oil distillery at Anse Takamaka, Praslin Island

There is no cinnamon plantation as such. All cinnamon now grows wild. Small producers still collect bark directly from the forests in teams of three to six workers. Collection is done in a destructive manner, harming surrounding endemic species and opening large gaps which are often quickly filled by invasive species.

 There is currently a small resurgence in production and according to the National Bureau of Statistics, 3.4 tons of cinnamon bark was exported in 2018 which, according to Gafoor Yakub of Chaka Brothers “ is a far cry from the 1500 tons that were once being exported annually in the 1960s and 70s.” The Chaka brothers were the longest exporters of cinnamon bark from Seychelles. The brothers were up to early 2000, along with local company Seychelles Marketing Board, the only two local exporters.

Now that there is this small resurgence in production it is necessary that the relevant ministries develop a policy for the sustainable harvesting and production of cinnamon for the export market while protecting the ecosystems during the felling of the trees. History cannot be repeated.

Cinnamon in our Creole Cuisine

Although there is little revenue to be generated from cinnamon, it is not entirely unused or rejected. It is delightfully obvious how we, the Seychellois people, just love our cinnamon leaves. Our Creole cuisine dictates that cinnamon leaves should be used in all curries that are made with coconut milk, thus the delectable and appetising taste of our octopus curry! The evolution of the culinary history of Seychelles has been influenced and inspired largely by African and Asian cooking. If nowadays cinnamon features prominently in Creole recipes it is because of the Indian and Chinese immigrants who brought along their own recipes which required cinnamon as flavouring. Consequently, the Seychellois penchant for the hot and spicy made it easy for our ancestors to assimilate cinnamon into our own Creole cuisine.

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Sources:

Philip A. Fock-Heng – Cinnamon of Seychelles,

The Seychelles News Agency,

Wikipedia, various other sources.

Tony Mathiot

FEASIBILITY STUDY FOR CINNAMON PROCESSING in the SEYCHELLES
A Report to the U.S. Agency for International Development Nairobi, Kenya
by Dr. Brian Lawrence

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