Nathaniel's Nutmeg

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So future expeditions, hugely expensive and incredibly risky, were launched on the basis of global symmetry and the knowledge that unicorns are bred in China, along with some ancient texts by Pliny the Elder, claiming that there were open waters at the North Pole. Which is a pretty astounding testament to the power of magical thinking, and makes you wonder which modern assumptions will seem similarly absurd to future generations. the added benefit of avoiding conflict with the Portuguese who had been sailing the eastern route for almost a century and had established fortified bastions in every port. There was also the question of illness and climate no knowledge of navigation. Such a man would have been a risk for the short hop across the English Channel; to despatch him to the uttermost ends of the earth was to court disaster.

years. His adoptive father, Henry Sidney, so eulogised his young charge when presented to the Company that the merchant adventurers thought they had a new Magellan in their midst. Sidney explained that it was Chancellor's It was the look-out who saw them first. Two crippled vessels, rotting and abandoned, lay at anchor close to the shoreline. Their hulls were splintered and twisted, their sails in tatters and their crew apparently long since dead. But it was not a tropical Long story short, thanks to nutmeg New York is called New York and not New Amsterdam and we are not all speaking Dutch. If you want to know what that has to do with the price of the fish, read the book. You will also learn that the English are good and the Dutch are bad (it is not quite clear why, but apparently the English were more gentlemanly when doing the pirate stuff). Another thing, Nathaniel doesn't appear until towards the end of the book and doesn't do all that much before dying but he makes for a nice title. The English and Dutch wasted tons of lives and money searching for a fabled North-East passage above Russia in hopes of shortening the distance to the Spice Islands.In all honesty, I hadn’t even heard of the Amboyna Massacre of Englishmen by the Dutch in 1623, until I read this. “The East India Company merchants were tortured with fire and water before having their limbs blown off with gunpowder.” There was a huge outcry over this atrocity at the time, with many pamphlets printed and, according to Milton, it may have even brought King James I to tears. The spilling of English blood at the hands of the Dutch made for good propaganda against the Dutch for English writer John Dryden, whom Milton states, “used the massacre to whip up anti-Dutch feeling, publishing his tragedy Amboyna, or The Cruelties of the Dutch to the English Merchants.”

A beautifully told adventure story and a fascinating depiction of exploration in the seventeenth century, NATHANIEL’S NUTMEG sheds a remarkable light on history. It gets worse. The book's subtitle is "How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History". There is no doubting Courthope's courage. You don't hole up on an island against a superior fleet, with no natural water sources (he and his men had to drink their supplies with clenched teeth to keep the fauna out) and nothing to eat but sago without a good deal of the right stuff. But his courage did not change the course of history - it simply delayed it a bit. scarcely have failed to work on his lordship, for he knew to his cost that a spoonful of nutmeg before bedtime could cause no end of sweet but troublesome dreams:Wasn't what I thought it would be, but I enjoyed it very much. The book is not as much about Nathaniel Courthope as it is about the Anglo-Dutch spice wars in modern-day Indonesia. It's a sprawling set of situations, characters, and stories, and makes for gripping reading. What it does not do is come together as a memorable whole, though I don't think the author was quite aiming for that either. Learnt a lot, but kept thinking this could have been better structured. Bantam (modern day Banten) was once a hot smelly, disease-filled port, “infamous in the East for its loose women and lax morals and an air of profligacy hung over the town like the plague of typhoid that frequently descended on its inhabitants” (98). Living in East Java now, this is something I can’t imagine at all, which makes details like this fascinating.

Wolfram: The Boy Who Went to War" tells the story of Wolfram Aichele, a young artist who grew up during the Third Reich. The book follows his life, including his time in the Reich Labour Service, his experiences in the war, and his time as a prisoner of war. The subject matter of this book is great; it's why I read it. There is a dearth of English language history on Indonesia (at least what is available outside the academic presses). Reading about a lesser known chapter of history—especially a story as seemingly buried as this one was interesting. Kudos to Milton for digging it up. I also learned some really interesting things that I want to hold on to (which I've written below). The emperor's conduct was as majestic as it was awe-inspiring: at a courtly banquet he `sent to every man a great sliver of bread, and the bearer called the party so sent to by his name aloud, and said, Ivan Vasilivich, Interestingly enough, nutmegs grew only on a few small remote islands that form part of today's Indonesia. For about two hundred years no one had the brilliant idea of taking some seeds and planting them somewhere else, it seems. Instead, the English and the Dutch fought like maniacs over Banda islands that had very little except for nutmeg. Of course, Giles Milton sympathises with the poor natives who got paid very little for their nutmeg which fetched astronomical prices in Europe. But I'd like to believe that the natives were thinking they were conning the Europeans selling them all that useless nutmeg and getting things like knives and clothes in return. They probably thought: "What in the hell are you doing with all that nutmeg, you crazy white man?".Dyetary of Helth, a guide to good living which earned the author even more fame than his seminal Treatyse upon I first came across Giles Milton’s work about two years ago when I was researching for my books about the Stuart period, and I have to commend him for finding subjects that are not well-known at all and bringing them to life. Nathaniel’s Nutmeg is a very well-researched, beautifully-written book, but it was mainly about the adventures and misadventures of the men who voyaged to the Banda Islands in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and focused a great deal upon the enmity between the Dutch and the English and their attempts to take control of the lucrative trade in spices. Milton describes how deadly voyages could be, especially with onboard diseases such as scurvy, and in a time before refrigeration, malnutrition was a serious problem. The things they ate could make your stomach turn. This is an interesting recount of the history of English trade in the East and their battles with the Netherlands for supremacy over a small group of islands, the Bandas Islands, much coveted for their rich harvest of cloves, mace and nutmeg. Much credit must go to Milton who has managed to piece together this history despite the limited extant historical sources. This battle known as the 'spice race' which began in the late 16th century and lasted throughout the 17th century, as well as being interesting in itself, also sheds light on the story of how Britain came to be involved in India and how New York cam to be so named. Oddly enough, despite the piracy and bloodshed and heartache, it took until the 1810's before anyone thought to uproot a plant and transfer it elsewhere. Strange! There was obviously a lot of honour in dying for your nutmeg.