Nathaniel's Nutmeg

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on a little-known corner of history
Review: Fascinating & well-written volume on a little corner of history, one that helps explain the fervor with which Europeans went after the spice trade, how they competed with one another in the mercantile/imperial/colonial sphere in these early days of "modern" trade, their various attitudes toward the "natives," and the interdependencies between Far East colonialism & New World colonialism. This book is a rousing read with just enough analysis to keep those of an intellectual bent interested, without turning off readers who are just interested in the story itself.

Rating:
Summary: Engrossing tale of the spice wars and colonialism
Review: This book is fascinating, especially for one who observed the effects from the other end (the colonized). The personal experiences of the explorers, the desperate greed of the merchants, and the visions of glory for the monarchs - all help illuminate an era of exploration and colonialism that has shaped what our world has become today.

Rating:
Summary: Literate and racy. History at its best.
Review: This is an unlikely, but completely engaging, page turner. Milton has written a thoroughly enjoyable history of great-power rivalry for contol of the spice trade in the 1600s. Its packed with generous quotations from dairies of the protagonists, and has an authentic feel, blending learning with dry humour. The book itself is handsomly produced, with curious well chosen illustrations. Highly recommended.

Bassim Blazey ([e-mail])

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: 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: Can an island be worth THAT much?
Review: We take things for granted now that people 400 years ago did not. A sack of peppercorn, cloves or nutmeg could have made a man's fortune then, whereas it is commonplace today. Why? The laws of supply and demand, with these commodities coming from the Spice Islands of the East Indies (sometimes known as the Spiceries), far removed from Western Europe where the demand was. Nutmeg was more difficult still, most coming from the remote Banda Islands within the same large group.

Nathaniel Courthope is the man from the title. Strangely enough, the book is not just about him, but about the extra-ordinary struggles of those of the time (roughly 1560 - 1630) to obtain spice. Voyages were very dangerous: pirates, legal pirates (i.e. governments), diseases a-plenty, storms and rocks were some of the many obstacles in the way of the redoubtable men who journeyed from Europe. There was almost a state of war between Britain and other nations (principally the Dutch) in the East Indies for a number of years. Some treachery and dubious torture methods were employed - not all I may add perpetrated against the British; the United Kingdom was responsible for some of the questionable acts.

The absorbing account is told using a great deal of source material, much of this in hardly readable 16th and 17th century language. The reader may learn something of the discovery of Hudson Bay, or the person of Peter Stuyvesant (after whom a brand of cigarettes is named). Above all, he will appreciate the courage in the face of danger of the aforementioned Nathaniel Courthope. For more than four years Courthope and his crew (their ship rendered un-sea worthy, and with little food and water) defended the tiny nutmeg-rich island of Run in the Banda Islands against the Dutch, who controlled the rest of the small group. Courthope himself was finally either shot, or took his own life on the point of capture at sea, by treachery, as one inhabitant of the besieged island betrayed his plans to seek assistance from the natives of Great Banda.

The lasting legacy of Courthope was not the spice trade in the area; that has all but ceased, and the islands in the Banda group are once again an international backwater. It is more the development of the spice trade elsewhere (using nutmeg trees stolen from Run) - and of course the trading of the island that Courthope so steadfastly defended for another island half a world away that was to gain greater prominence in the world. The name of that other island? None other than Manhatten!

Peter Morgan, Bath, UK ([e-mail])


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.


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