Nathaniel's Nutmeg

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One final remark is that when the English look at who have actually done more real harm to them in history, perhaps they should look first at the Dutch. Particular focus is given to the increasingly bitter and deadly rivalries of the 17th Century English and Dutch spice merchants as they vie for control of the remote archipelagos of Indonesia along with their precious crops of cloves and nutmegs. Milton has organized innumerable first-person accounts, by tradesmen and ship captains and others not given to long descriptives, into this tapestry. It seems to have been chosen for rhyming effect instead of any substantial role played by Nathaniel Courthope.

Don't be misled by the title, although Nathaniel Courthope has a very significant role to play in this history, he is only in the story for a very short period. The crew's final grim months remain a mystery, for Willoughby, racked by hunger, stopped recording daily entries in his ship's log. That said, this is an interesting introduction to Western Europe's involvement in the global race to corner the spice market.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 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. He sounded the sea floor, pored over charts and scratched his head before concluding that `the land lay not as the globe made mention.

His forthcoming book (UK: May 2024, US: Sept 2024) is THE STALIN AFFAIR: The Allies' Secret Mission to Wartime Russia. The means of written expression of even the meanest of sailors are artfully elegant and understated by our standards, interesting in themselves.Other authorities, turning Borde's misfortune to good effect, began to claim that far from dampening sexual desire, nutmeg was actually a powerful aphrodisiac. At the centre of the story lies Nathaniel Courthope, a trusty lieutenant of the East India Company, who took and held the tiny nutmeg-producing island of Run in the face of overwhelming Dutch opposition for more than five years, before being treacherously murdered in 1620. I do not normally read non-fiction, but my dad shoved this book into my hands after a recent visit and said "Read it" in hushed tones, as if this book contains all the hidden truths I could possibly need. The author even offers a brief anecdote on the origin of the word “Manhattan” which is derived from the drunkenness that took place there when the native Indians took the alcohol that Hudson offered them, from the native Indian word manahactanienk which means “the island of general intoxication”. To my credit, I have been a librarian for a long time and rarely do I start something that I don't think I'll like.

Secondly, is the signing of the Treaty of Breda in 1667, which brought swift end to the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Nathaniel's is a very minor character in the book and Milton's hypothesis that his actions changed the course of history is not properly explored or supported by the book. Yet probably not 1 in 100 people (or more) could state the most fantastic outcome of this story involving an eventual trade of islands in 1667 (Treaty of Breda) between the Dutch and English. The Banda Islands were some of the only islands in the world where these spices grew and so these tiny, tough to access islands became a battleground for two of the world’s naval powers. It was extremely fascinating to read about the spice race in which a large number of ships and men were lost to war and illness all over a few small isolated and backwater islands in the South Pacific.Two of Milton's previous works, Nathaniel's Nutmeg and Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare , are currently being developed into major screen projects. It's informative, but know what you're getting: a history of the spice race over the course of two centuries, and very few accounts from non-Europeans included in the primary sources.