Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating tale of adventure, but is it accurate history?
Review: Because I am neither English nor Indonesian nor Dutch, Giles Milton's tale of the epic struggle for control over the Spice Islands came to me as a historic revelation: I've never heard of the story before and the plot could have as well been set on Mars or some other remote planet. As far as the book's genre was concerned, it could easily be classified as adventure or science fiction, and not necessarily popular history. The author got away with picking up a fairly obscure topic that makes him almost immune from any criticism. Giles Milton may be saying perfect truth or may be lying shamelessly, but whatever he says most readers won't be able to contradict because they don't know any better. That is an extraordinarily advantageous position for any author to be in. Many excellent books are published in Russian, so when I inconvenience myself and read in English (or other foreign language), I do so for the sake of cultural and linguistic adventure. Nathaniel's Nutmeg is both. It is an exotic and exiting story, that in many ways feels like one of the classic adventure novels by Alexandre Dumas or Robert Louis Stevenson. The author quotes from (supposedly) historic English texts liberally, keeps the original spelling, and this adds some linguistic spice to his work. Like his nineteenth literary predecessors, Giles Miles paints an uncomplicated black and white world with a broad brush. It is the world where the good guys (the English) struggle against the villains (the Dutch and everybody else). The Dutch are depicted as rapacious, treacherous, duplicitous, cruel race while the English are honest, human, chivalrous, and noble. The Dutch enslave natives and bring them misery while the English are the heralds of freedom who despise the idea of conquest and cherish liberty, and live off fair and honest free trade. Arabs and other Muslim "darkies" are expectedly portrayed as trash. They are wicked and treacherous. When the natives of Spice Islands are pressed against the wall by the wicked Dutch oppressors, poor wretches ally themselves with the British and even petition Nathaniel and other personages to become British subjects only to be slaughtered or sold to slavery to the last man by the evil Netherlanders. The goodness of the English is overwhelming while the evil of their enemies is equally awesome. Now and then this nationalist nonsense goes too far and may strike unbiased reader as outrageous, obscene stuff, but I think it shouldn't, - the book is about entertainment and should be read as such. Five stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Good yarn but little history
Review: Giles Milton tells a good story. His central interest in travel writing and the history of exploration are clear from the start. Most of the book recounts stories of various expeditions, not just to the Far East but also to the Arctic, the Hudson basin and Manhattan. These are mildly linked by the competition between the Dutch and British for the spice trade. However, the accounts of the central expeditions and the conflict over the island of Run, rely almost exclusively on British journals and diaries of the time. Thus the book reflects more the English reactions and prejudices of the time rather than giving an objective historical account. The natures of the two East India companies, the peoples of the Moluccas or the Dutch process of colonisation are sketched only very briefly. Instead life on board ship, the methods of Dutch torture and the banality of the factor's lives are given extensive treatment. While these are interesting, they do not particularly help explain the machinations which led to the Dutch control over the East Indies or the British revenge in taking Manhattan. The book's one-sided use of sources begins to get irritating by the end.
Rating:
Summary: Swashbuckling tales...
Review: I've recently been reading spice-themed books and this one takes the cake as far a swashbuckling tales of merchants-turned-pirates, pirates-turned-merchants and the deadly struggle between the Spainsh, Portugese, English and the Dutch to control the main source of spices. Nathaniel himself only makes an apperance towards the end of the book... but it takes a through and exciting explination of the earlier history to truly understand his heroisim. This book reads like a novel yet, it's all true! The pages are interspersed with captain's log entries, letters and vivid descriptions of the voyages and lands visited on the dangerous journey (1/3 died on the way there, and 1/3 died on the way back) to the spice islands.
Rating:
Summary: Five stars is not enough!
Review: Most of us know how important the spice trade was in initiating the age of exploration. But there exists surprisingly few books dealing with this aspect! Anyway, this is the book! My brother lent it to me. He said he could not put it down, and it turned out that neither could I! The book centres around a small island group called the Bandas. They were the world's only source of nutmeg - a spice worth more than its weight in gold. One ship in three was lost, usually about fifty percent of the crews perished during the journey. Still, if one ship every third year made it with a load of nutmeg its owners would make enourmous profits, and still have money to finance the next expedition. The trade, and its spin-offs, shaped world history - sometimes in unexpected ways.
Competition was fierce between the English and Dutch. Vicious wars were fought, where the vanquished were treated without mercy. The whole story is told in this little book. There are plenty of characters, heroes like the sailor and soldier Courthope, villains like the Dutch governor Speult, and fools like the failed navigator Willoughby. There is more action than in a Verhooven movie, there is drama and great tragedy. in short, not too be missed.
Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating book despite the hype
Review: The author has done painstaking research into many old journals, diaries, and letters to produce a vivid history of the rivalry for the spice trade in the Molucca Islands (now called Maluku in eastern Indonesia) around 1610. Along the way, he notes some interesting "probable firsts" that could be claimed by the captains and sailors in this tale: the use of lime juice to prevent scurvy, the observation of sunspots, and even the amateur performance of Shakespeare.
Hype about this book appears on the back cover, where the publisher explains that the tiny island of Run (pronounced Roon) was ultimately swapped for Manhattan, confirmed in the Treaty of Breda. As a native New Yorker resident in Indonesia, I find that information fascinating but I think the book would have been just as interesting if this marketing angle hadn't been exploited by the author.
Chapter 1 provides a thorough backdrop by summarizing 16th century explorations but the "update" of the quest for the Northeast and Northwest Passages in Chapter 6 is way too detailed, turning the whole chapter into a digression. I get the feeling Giles Milton's purpose in writing it was to weave Henry Hudson into the story.
As several reviewers pointed out, non-linear chronology disrupts what would otherwise be a fast-paced account of history. The author's desire to explain the confluence of events in opposite parts of the globe produces awkward branching in the storytelling: several pages flow for months or years in one direction, and then Milton jumps backwards to an earlier point in time to show how a related event unfolded. Some branching is inevitable because communications with the "home office" required year-long voyages, leading to the strategy of launching new fleets before previous ones returned.
The main character doesn't appear until page 202. Aside from giving the title catchy alliteration, Nathaniel Courthope's inclusion in the book as leader of the heroic but futile defense of Run serves mainly to romanticize the story and create a climax: the swap that turned New Amsterdam into New York. I'm sure this boosted sales in New York, but the previous 200 pages were already a highly readable account of the "spice race." Curiously, the British swap of Bencoolen (their source of pepper in southwest Sumatra since the 1680s) for Malacca isn't even mentioned in the epilogue; I guess readers in Malaysia weren't part of the marketing plan.
Despite the hype, and beyond the swashbuckling, this book leads the reader to consider many aspects of the Age of Discovery besides money and politics. Although Milton quite naturally is biased toward his native England, he is honest enough to report some of the British atrocities while enumerating the many Dutch ones. He is also quite open about the lack of unity among his compatriots, which led to indecisiveness: fleets were small compared to those from Holland; and captains within a fleet sometimes hesitated to risk their own ships in battle because financial gain overruled nationalism.
Numerous issues related to intercultural communication hover beneath the surface of the story. For example, the future Indonesians in Banda used Malay and Portuguese as lingua francas but how did Japanese pirates and mercenaries communicate with Europeans in the degree of detail that Milton describes?
Although flair was a plus in bridging cultural gulfs between European merchants and Asian rulers, it seems the biggest risk in many trading ventures was taking sides in local feuds (as Magellan did), not making behavioral faux pas. The only cross-cultural blunders recounted in this book were two cases of butchering a cow in a Hindu community to feed hungry sailors; the rest of the problems were due to greed, cruelty, panic, prejudice, and other failures of character that are present in all cultures and universally recognizable.
Thus, reflecting on this book leads me to question the value of "taboo avoidance" as the key feature in preparing modern business travelers for overseas ventures. Inaccurate translations and intercultural misunderstandings were the rule not the exception in the 1600s, yet trade flourished. Tolerance for mistakes is far greater today, when people in nearly every culture have seen "foreigners" on TV in movies and the news.
Rating:
Summary: A well-written history of Run
Review: The only failure of this book is that it is putting too much of an emphasis on the remotest island of the Banda group (where the English were most involved), even though the rest of the archipelago was actually more important.
So those inspired to get the full picture should also read the more thoroughly-written "Indonesian Banda" by W.A.Hanna which gives a more complete and balaced account of the history of these islands.
Rating:
Summary: Better to read about it than live through it
Review: The real power of this book is that it takes you to the early days (1500s to 1600s)of the spice trade in the East Indies and lets you know what is was really like. With a skillful mix of narrative and quotes from documents (how did those people write all those letters?), Milton lets you know what it really took to get a ship half way around the world and bring it back with a load of nutmeg and other spices. The diseases, the storms, the treachery; its all there and told like and adventure story. Milton's theory in the book in very interesting too, which is that the Dutch eventually traded New Amsterdam to the British for a small spice-loaded island in the Pacific. Whether he's right or not (his theory is clearly well researched) is not critical because Milton is just a terrific writer and you enjoy every page of this historical page-turner. I'll be reading his other books very soon.
Rating:
Summary: The sweet scent of riches
Review: This book gives an excellent, albeit summary, account of the incredible spice trade that existed in the 16th and 17th century. At the heart of the conflict were two major combatants, England and Holland. At stake was the richest trade in the world, the exotic spices that came from the tiny, primal islands below China and India - the "spiceries" as they were called.
This tiny collection of exotic islands, inhabited by stone-age cultures and lush forests, became the grand prize of the day, offering nearly unbelievable riches and a horrifying catalogue of dangers. Nearly all the grand exploration of the time had as its primary goal the discovery of faster routes to these islands, and countries seemed in a nearly constant state of war over them.
The author does a good job of describing this long-ago world. He also is good at describing the kind of near hysteria that gripped kings and queens of the day. Literally, the control of these islands, and the trade routes, could bring a country to global dominance. Countries and men leapt at the chance to go there, despite the fact that life expectancy for European's established in these outposts was short (most died very quickly of dysentery or malaria), and the chances of surviving the ocean voyage in the first place was not good.
Eventually, Holland won the contest. Brutal ruthlessness was the key to success. While no country proved deficient in these qualities, Holland, through the Dutch East Indian Spice Company, relentlessly and without a trace of mercy showed the severest hand. They were no slouches in the slave trade, either.
A very engaging account - brief but very well researched. I recommend it. -Mykal Banta
Rating:
Summary: informative but not well writte
Review: This book was recommended to me as a text that I should read for my world istroy class. I checked the reviews on amazon and saw that the book was about pirates, politics, adventure etc and so I decided to read it. I was vastly disapointed. While the story of nathaniel Courthope was interesting Giles Milton didn't even bring him into the story until halfway through the book and then killed him off after about 90 pages, I didn't even get to know him.
Milton crames a ton of imformation into this book which is good up untill it is to o much. In one paragraph he brought up about 20 different topics only two of which had to do with the spice trade the others were anecdotes about various non important characters and descriptions of portaits of important characters. Milton also skipped around and left me completely lost as to the date. One moment it was 1583 the next 1492 then 1600, 1100 and back again.Not to say that Milton didn't do his research he simply seemed to get carried away by it.
When reading this book I also felt like there was no character development or climax. the back of the book gies away the ending, and half the timeI ahd no idea what was going on.
On apostive side I did learn about the spice trade and various members of the British government and trading company as well as imformation about sailing at see which was interesting
Rating: 
Summary: An inconsequential book?
Review: Through extensive and in-depth research, Giles Milton details the various endeavours made by the European powers in the 17th century to acquire spice, a resource in high demand back in Europe, in the Malay Archipelago region (now South-East Asia). Among the plenitude of European adventurers, the heroic Nathaniel's experience stands out, for he catalyzed the development of Manhattan, a small trading centre back then in 1667, to enter a period of rapidly increasing prosperity.
And I have just summarized in a few sentences the essence of the book. Granted, the book provides an interesting read as Giles Milton managed to pack into the book various exciting accounts of the spice trade, marked by heroism, tragedy, scheming of minds, ruthlessness and even bloodshed. But most the book is inconsequential other than probably the prologue and chapter twelve, which will tell you more than what you need to know to fully appreciate the book And though the book is entitled "Nathaniel's Nutmeg", more than 50% of the book relates to people other than the supposed hero Nathaniel himself.
I will recommend this book to die-hard fans of popular history books, for it indeed stimulates and captivates, thanks to the lively writing style of Milton. But if you are a more serious student of history, give this book a miss.
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