If spices are central to the history of colonialism, what does that mean for projects on decolonizing botany? How do we understand the history of botany through the colonial, postcolonial, settler colonial, and decolonial that centers spices as pivotal points of encounter? In this first lecture of our South Asia Lecture Series, Dr. Banu Subramaniam explores the enduring and shifting means of transnational regimes of power, of colonial administration and postcolonial governance through a melange of spices and spicy embranglements.