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Nathaniel's Nutmeg

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When it came to deciding the passage to the Spice Islands the merchant adventurers were most insistent. the nutmeg but as he wearily admitted, `it is hard to get out of the flesh what is bred in the bone.

Their ships, it was decided, would head due north; a route that would shave more than two thousand miles off the long voyage to the Spice Islands. Nathaniel's Nutmeg] deftly and arrestingly captures the sorry history of the European lust for nutmeg and its devastating impact on the Spice Islands. This book is more truly a history of colonialism in the Banda Islands, the destructive effects of Dutch and English attempts to take control of various islands (trade here was synonymous with substituting colonial governance for independent rule), the enslavement and murder of the indigenous population, and the many and repeated failures of the English to secure a toehold in the East Indies in the 17th century.Brutality was undeniable on both sides, but Nathaniel Courthope's valiant stand on the island of Run made the English claim seem justified. Lots of interesting, sometimes incredible, true tales of adventure and discovery, but put together in a dry fashion and which, to me, lacked continuity.

The British held Run Island for close to a decade and survived food shortages, blockades, and the constant threat of Dutch invasion.This is a book for people who want to know how people found places before the Google Maps and how weird it was when information would travel from one place to another for two years, rather than 0.

The means of written expression of even the meanest of sailors are artfully elegant and understated by our standards, interesting in themselves. In fact, the title is slightly misleading as Nathaniel Courthope after whom the book is named, is featured in only a short but important part of it, the tenacious defense of Run Island. Maybe one day people will laugh at the lenghts we go now to get access and control over the oil resources.

The tiny island of Run is an insignificant speck in the middle of the Indonesian archipelago--remote, tranquil, and now largely ignored. That connection is something that I would work into a history lesson, especially if I was trying to show how the colonies that become the US are connected to global history and world trade. This book is actually most interesting in its history of naval exploration, including Henry Hudson's exploration of North America in his attempts to find a Northwest Passage. If you are curious at all about the Spice Trade, or about the roots of the British and Dutch East India Companies, or how the competing interests to control the Spice Trade from the Spice Islands in Indonesia were fought, or even how it all affected the founding of Manhattan (and it did) and the ultimate control of it by Britain, this is the book for you. In essence the book is about the voyages of discovery and trade which set out to profit from the huge demand for spices in Western Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.

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