The Nutmeg’s Curse Amitav Ghosh Penguin Rs.599 Pages 352 To describe this seminal work of exhaustive research and deductive logic as the most insightful and illuminating explanation of the environmental crises threatening Planet Earth suffering floods, famine, pandemics, typhoons, forest wildfires, shrinking polar icecaps — all at the same time — written in the past century, would be an understatement. The downside of the fascinating subject that is history is that 95 percent are narratives of five American-European countries. These histories are chronicled by White scholars and academics who perhaps unwittingly, permitted deeply entrenched white supremacist academic traditions and racial biases to prejudice their writing. The great value of The Nutmeg’s Curse is that it is written from a new perspective of a third world non-white scholar, who incisively questions several fundamental assumptions of European civilisation and culture that spread across north and south America to New Zealand and Australia in the east during the past 400-500 years, and currently dominates the world. According to Amitav Ghosh, a globally respected conservationist and eco warrior, acts of omission and commission of the world’s first predator multinational corporations, notably the Dutch and British East India companies promoted by greedy European elites, are the root cause of the multiple afflictions that have sparked a planetary crisis which could be the beginning of the end of the species homo sapiens. In this perceptive critique and indictment, the author traces the climate change disaster staring us in the face to the unique nutmeg spice forests discovered in the early 17th century by VOC (Vereengide Oostindische Compagnie), aka Dutch East India Company, in the isolated Banda Islands off latter day Indonesia. In the 16th century English medical practitioners decreed that the exotic nutmeg peculiar to the Banda Islands, cured victims of plague epidemics sweeping Europe at the time. Consequently nutmegs became so valuable that “a handful could buy a house or a ship”. And with the passage of years, this tiny aromatic fruit became “envy-inducing symbols of luxury and wealth” coveted not only for “materialistic satisfactions that it brings, but because it is desired by others”. Enter VOC. A monopoly had to be created. Neighbouring islands that hosted nutmeg forests were cleared. The gentle natives who worshipped dormant volcanoes that endowed the air with unique properties and enabled nutmeg forests to thrive, were first brutally tortured as heathen savages and exterminated by armed VOC mercenaries. The fantastic profits earned by VOC and its stolid burgher shareholders back in Holland inspired the rise of the British East India Company in the 17th century. It replicated the VOC model by establishing spice trading outposts in the Indian subcontinent. Soon these outposts transformed into “factories” which had to be protected by armed mercenaries. This was followed by negotiating monopoly trading rights and acquisition of territory from local rajas, nawabs and satraps to secure steady supply. Other European maritime powers with ship-building capabilities — Portugal, Spain, France — were quick to adopt this predator model and forcibly site trading centres…
