Nathaniel's Nutmeg

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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. Nathaniel’s Nutmeg by Giles Milton is a historical account which neatly chronicles the race of all the major powers in Western Europe to corner the spice market. One of the most sought-after spice at that time was nutmeg, a native plant of Banda Islands, East Indies (now known as Indonesia). for the expedition's other large ship, the Bona Esperanza. For reasons that remain obscure they plumped for Sir Hugh Willoughby, a `goodly personage' according to the records, but one who had absolutely 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 tropical 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,

rise with mirth' every morning were assured of good health. His suggestion that nutmeg dampens sexual desire had signally failed to work on him, for this celibate former monk died in disgrace. `Under the colour of It's quite a story, but not for any one who is feint of heart, squeamish or missish. But then, most of history is not for such as those. It was not just life-threatening illnesses that nutmeg was said to cure. A growing interest in the medicinal value of plants had led to an explosion in the number of dietary books and herbals, all of which He lives in London, where he is a member of the Hakluyt Society, which is dedicated to reprinting the works of explorers and adventurers in scholarly editions, some of which he uses in his research. He wrote most of Samurai William in the London Library, where he loves the "huge reading room, large Victorian desks and creaking armchairs". At home and while traveling, he is ever on the lookout for new untold stories. Apparently he began researching the life of Sir John Mandeville for his book The Riddle and the Knight after Mandeville’s book Travels "literally fell off the shelf of a Paris bookstore" in which he was browsing. Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America, 2000 ISBN 978-0340748824 was said to kill in just two hours the pomander had to be made with all possible haste. After all, the old patter ran: `mery at dinner, dead at supper.'

A beautifully told adventure story and a fascinating depiction of exploration in the seventeenth century, NATHANIEL’S NUTMEG sheds a remarkable light on history. 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] while those embarrassed by trapped wind were recommended to take an extraordinary pot-pourri of fifteen spices including cardamom, cinnamon and nutmeg — a recipe that would have been out of reach of all but the flatulentRussian Roulette: A Deadly Game: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot, 2013, Sceptre, ISBN 978-1-444-73702-8 Perhaps European nutmeg, which comes from the Moluccan Islands, is of better quality than U.S. nutmegs that are grown in Grenada. Furthermore, ground nutmeg and pulverized mace rapidly lose their volatile oleoresins, and thus only freshly ground specimens are of major gustatory value." In 1614 he was accused of purloining company resources and other offences by one dying man named, Edward Langley. [3] 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

In all honesty, I hadn’t even heard of the Amboyna Massacre of Englishmen by the Dutch in 1623, until I read this. “The East India Company merchants were tortured with fire and water before having their limbs blown off with gunpowder.” There was a huge outcry over this atrocity at the time, with many pamphlets printed and, according to Milton, it may have even brought King James I to tears. The spilling of English blood at the hands of the Dutch made for good propaganda against the Dutch for English writer John Dryden, whom Milton states, “used the massacre to whip up anti-Dutch feeling, publishing his tragedy Amboyna, or The Cruelties of the Dutch to the English Merchants.” Knowledgeable, insatiably curious and entertaining, Milton locates history's most fascinating—and most overlooked—stories and brings them to life in his books. The English departed without a struggle shortly after Courthope's death and their local allies - who considered themselves to be under His Majesty's reign - were being oppressed. [6]

not much bigger than a garden pea it scarcely had the same appeal as a golden ducat or finely hewn sapphire.