Nathaniel’s Nutmeg: How One Man’s Courage Changed the Course of History by Giles Milton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The book chronicles the history of the Banda Islands in what is now Indonesia. The author has done an admirable amount of research of the voyages of various ship captains of both the Dutch and English, two countries that were fighting over the East Indies spice trade in the 16th and 17th centuries. It’s shocking how much violence there was between the two countries and between the Dutch and the natives. Slaughter is an understatement and torture and slavery were rampant. Control of the islands, and Run in particular, shifted back and forth several times. The last Englishman to have control of it before its ultimate disposition by treaty was a man named Nathaniel Courthope, the eponym of the book. The bravery of the sailors and tradesmen of the day is incredible today since most of them ended up dying of scurvy, disease, or violence. Life (and death) was quite literally cheap. I found the accounts fascinating, although I must say they became rather repetitive in nature. I liked the liberal quoting of the captains and others using what seems archaic English now. There are many hints throughout the book that the island of Run was later to play a very big and unexpected part in history, but that part is not revealed until the very end. I don’t fully accept the idea that Run was as instrumental as the author makes it out to be, nor do I find Courthope to be the transformational figure he is made out to be.