# Which commodity changed world history the most?

> Empires rose on some of these and colonies were built to grow others; a few still move markets today.

*By YPB Team · Published September 28, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/which-commodity-changed-world-history-the-most*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Spices** — score 1000/1000
   Pepper, cloves and nutmeg sent Columbus and Vasco da Gama across the oceans.
2. **Coffee** — score 682/1000
   The bean behind Europe's coffeehouses, colonial plantations and the modern morning routine.
3. **Salt** — score 622/1000
   Taxed, traded and fought over for millennia, it even sparked Gandhi's 1930 Salt March.
4. **Crude oil** — score 551/1000
   The fuel of the 20th century, behind cars, plastics, wars and entire national fortunes.
5. **Tobacco** — score 466/1000
   The cash crop that kept the Jamestown colony alive and shaped colonial America.
6. **Rice** — score 466/1000
   The staple grain that feeds half the world and shaped Asian civilisations.
7. **Silver** — score 466/1000
   Spanish silver from Potosí became the first truly global currency.
8. **Coal** — score 466/1000
   The fuel that fired steam engines and started the Industrial Revolution.
9. **Wheat** — score 466/1000
   One of the first domesticated crops, the grain that let cities exist.
10. **Cotton** — score 363/1000
   The fibre that powered the Industrial Revolution's mills and the American South's economy.
11. **Silk** — score 363/1000
   The luxury fabric that gave the Silk Road its name and linked China with Rome.
12. **Tea** — score 0/1000
   The leaf behind the Boston Tea Party and the British East India Company's trade empire.
13. **Gold** — score 0/1000
   Money, gold rushes and conquests: the metal every empire chased.
14. **Rubber** — score 0/1000
   Tyres, the Amazon rubber boom and the horrors of the Congo Free State.
15. **Cocoa** — score 0/1000
   Aztec currency turned into Europe's chocolate craze and West Africa's biggest cash crop.
16. **Iron** — score 0/1000
   From the Iron Age to railways and skyscrapers, the metal that built the modern world.
17. **Sugar** — score 0/1000
   Caribbean sugar plantations drove the Atlantic slave trade and changed the world's diet.

Tags: coffee, commodities, trade