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. Even Nathaniel himself - the man in the title - was only discussed after around 60% of the book, still with many going off on a tangent afterward. His one-time (!) role as a besieged commander while very heroic and all, was not very instrumental in deciding the fate of the islands. With such a long history during the years of the colonization, everything was decided in the negotiation rooms in London and The Hague and who knows where else. It's not his nutmeg - figuratively and literally - and the author/editor/whoever just did not write a very convincing thesis on why he chose that title.

merchants to enter the spice race — yet so unprepared for the risks and dangers — that they allowed enthusiasm to overrule practicalities and long before the ships had left port a catalogue of errors threatened the nutmeg but as he wearily admitted, `it is hard to get out of the flesh what is bred in the bone.'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. The more the experts researched the north-eastern route to the Spice Islands the more plausible it proved to be. In an age when men still looked for perfect symmetry on their maps, the northern cape of Norway Nonetheless, The Dutch and the English and the Portuguese would fight relentlessly over the access to nutmeg. Apart from successfully killing the smell and taste of rotten meat, nutmeg was also known for curing just about anything from the plague to impotence. In the beginning of the 17th century nutmeg was in. Maybe one day people will laugh at the lenghts we go now to get access and control over the oil resources.

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?". 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. 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). The historic 1553 voyage was the brainchild of a newly founded organisation known as the Mystery, Company and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Unknown Lands. So impatient were these He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.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.

Emperor of Russia and great Duke of Moscova doth reward thee with bread.' Even the wine goblets caught Chancellor's eye — weighing the golden beakers in his hand he declared they were `very massie' 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. The history of the East India Companies (Dutch and English) trying to find a Northeast Passage is also interesting, but these histories are also one of failure and horrible death.On 13 November 1609, Courthope was hired by the East India Company to go to the Spice Islands. He left England with great fanfare and by 1616 was a factor at Sukadana in Borneo. [2] 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.

Although I learned some interesting things from this book, and I’m ultimately happy I read it, I would’ve been much happier if this book was in the hands of a better popular history writer (Erik Larson?)—one who could fledge out the history with greater depth, build a stronger thesis (Milton's thesis that a mid-level merchant altered history isn't that strong), and make the characters more human. Not interesting or entertaining enough for a popular history book and strong enough of a thesis for a serious history book.T:]he crew returned to England with a strange horn, some six feet long and decorated with a spiral twirl. Ignorant of the existence of the narwhal - that strange member of the whale family that has a single tusk protruding from its head - the rough English mariners confidently declared that this odd piece of flotsam had once belonged to a unicorn, a highly significant find, for 'knowing that unicorns are bred in the lands of Cathay, China and other Oriental Regions, [the sailors:] fell into consideration that the same head was brought thither by the course of the sea, and that there must of necessity be a passage out of the said Oriental Ocean into our Septentrionall seas.'