Nathaniel's Nutmeg

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Although, I’ve heard plenty about the Dutch legacy in Indonesia—they oppressed Indonesia for over three centuries—I never knew how contested their initial presence was. Dutch dominance over other European powers was never guaranteed. The British East India Company was originally established to promote trade and compete with Dutch in the East Indies (rather than the Indian subcontinent. With that goal, the English established a trading in “Bantam” (current day Banten, on the Western tip of Java) long before the Dutch established Batavia, and poured plenty of ships and money towards the dream of controlling the spice trade.

not much bigger than a garden pea it scarcely had the same appeal as a golden ducat or finely hewn sapphire. Milton’s use of irony was adroitly placed, often he shows sympathy with the poor natives who are paid small amount of fee for their nutmeg which could be resold very expensively in Europe. However, the irony also works on both sides: the natives of Banda Islands are shown to be “profiting” from the trade by getting European knives and clothes (which worth almost nothing in Europe but worth a lot in East Indies) by trading their nutmegs (which worth almost nothing in East Indies but worth a lot in Europe). to consider. English mariners had seen the Portuguese ships return home with their crews decimated by dysentery and typhoid, often contracted in the tropical climes of the Indian Ocean. At least one man in five could expect

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The final, macabre twist in the tale was recorded by Giovanni Michiel, the Venetian ambassador to Moscow. The search party, he wrote, `has returned safe, bringing with them the two vessels of the first voyage, having found them on the Muscovite coast with the men on board all frozen. And they [the rescuers] narrate strange things about the mode in which they were frozen, pen still in hand, and the paper before them, others at In an age when men still looked for perfect symmetry on their maps, the northern cape of Norway showed an exact topographical correspondence to the southern cape of Africa. Geographers agreed that this was indeed good news; the chilly northern land mass must surely be a second Cape of Good Hope. 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:

More than five years was to pass before a search ship from England finally discovered what had happened to the Russian Roulette" is an historical account of British spies who were sent to Soviet Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, aiming to thwart Lenin's plans. The book is based on previously unknown secret documents found in archives. wrote Sir Hugh, `but [they] could find none.' Next he sent a party westwards, `which also returned without finding any people'. A final team confirmed what Willoughby had feared — that they were imprisoned 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 tropicaland upon the main we saw beares, great deere, foxes with divers strange beasts'. They planned at first to spend a week here but `seeing the yeare far spent, and also very evill weather, as frost, snow, and haile',

The Treaty of Westminster which was signed in 1674 and ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War, provided the return of the colony of New Netherland to England (which would be called New York in time) and was commissioned to solve trade conflicts concerning the East Indies. In short, the British gave up their claim to the spice trading on the island of Run in exchange for the right to keep their colony in Manhattan. The rest is history. The way the two lines are drawn together to connect facts by the author is interesting for scholarly reading but I surely wouldn’t recommend this to someone who has just arrived in Indonesia and is looking for information about the country. The book is laden with colloquial terms which might resonate instantly with most Indonesians or scholars specialising in the colonial history of this particular period (again, proof that Giles Milton has done good research with his archives) but it doesn’t make it an easy read. Compelling, fascinating and filled with excerpts from primary sources, meaning letters and journals of the merchants and sailors and ships captains who experienced it all, I will never again use nutmeg, cloves, and peppercorns without thinking of the battles fought and blood shed in the 17th Century over these commodities. And there was a lot of blood. There are points that the brutality described, especially that of the Dutch during the final battles against the British for total control of the Spice Islands, make the bloodshed George RR Martin's 'Song of Ice and Fire' cycle look like an afternoon at a picnic in a park. 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.Bona Esperanza and Confidentia. Sailing into the bay where Willoughby had chosen to winter, the would-be rescuers stumbled across the ghostly and rotting hulks of the two ships — ships which had ended Thanks to Courthope's defence of the island however, Britain was able to barter its legal title to the island of Run with the Dutch, for another island by the name of Manhattan. [7] Further reading [ edit ] Within the stories of the Spice Islands and the founding of the Dutch East India Company, and the East India Company are some really interesting stories and they are dutifully recorded here in the driest way possible. Juicy stories are told with all the exuberance of a terrible middle school text book. There isn't really a story here, just the relating of some events in a report sort of way. Blerg.