You will probably hear that because the protagonists of the conflict (at least one chapter of it) were the Dutch East India Company against the English East India Company, it is an example of how unregulated business is capable of great evil. In some places it was hard to read; not because the prose is cumbersome (the book flows well) but simply because it is difficult to imagine that people would do such unspeakable things to each other simply for a few pounds of nutmeg or mace. Thought to have the power to cure everything from the plague to flatulence to the common cold, nutmeg was "the most coveted luxury in seventeenth-century Europe, a spice held to have such medicinal properties that men would risk their lives to acquire it.

GILES MILTON About — GILES MILTON

Furthermore, ground nutmeg and pulverized mace rapidly lose their volatile oleoresins, and thus only freshly ground specimens are of major gustatory value. It's also toxic, so I don't recomend trying it without consulting a professional herbalist, but I could see how nutmeg in honey might be helpful to a person without access to a 21st century bathroom medicine cabinet. The English may have been thugs and pirates but at least the natives, when they had a choice, preferred us to the Dutch.

GILES MILTON is the internationally best-selling author of twelve works of narrative history, including Nathaniel’s Nutmeg and Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Nutmeg is not a nut, but the seed kernel inside the fruit of the nutmeg tree (Myristica fragrans), which is native to Indonesia.

Nathaniel Courthope - Wikipedia

A Cornish slave boy held captive in Morocco; a Jacobean adventurer in Japan; a young German artist conscripted into Hitler's war machine - Giles Milton's books focus on the stories of ordinary people who found themselves attempting to survive in extreme situations.the Portuguese built a Fort in Oman named Muscat ['place of falling' in Arabic] a good place to refuel their sailors coming and going. After losing his two ships to mutiny and sinking by the Dutch, he fortified the island by erecting forts to overlook approaches from the east. In fact the Dutch come off appallingly: you can see how their settlers came up with such charming ideas as apartheid. He is also the author of three novels, The Perfect Corpse, According to Arnoldand Edward Trencom's Nose. Despite numerous letters from the Company's directors allowing Courthope to leave his post, and even awarding him repeatedly for his efforts, he never gave in.