The Gold of the Bandas: The History of the Nutmeg

2021 History

Author : Horst H. Geerken
Release : 2021
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 520/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Gold of the Bandas: The History of the Nutmeg by : Horst H. Geerken

Download or read book The Gold of the Bandas: The History of the Nutmeg written by Horst H. Geerken. This book was released on 2021. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For a long time, the Banda Islands were the only place on earth where the nutmeg would grow. The spice was transported along the arduous Silk Road to Europe, growing ever dearer as it travelled, and when the nutmeg was also touted as a panacea against the plague it became for a while more valuable than gold. Some of the European powers began a race to find the Spice Islands. They wanted a share in the lucrative trade. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach the Spice Islands, followed by the Spanish and the English. The last to arrive were the Dutch, and their arrival triggered conquest, wars and ruthless murder. While the Portuguese, Spanish and English simply wanted to trade with the Bandanese, the Dutch aimed to take possession of the islands. Out of sheer avarice they committed the first genocide in modern history there. Today the Bandas are inhabited almost entirely by the descendants of the slaves brought to the islands by the Dutch. The book contains many exciting and largely unknown stories about this tiny archipelago, for example, that one of the islands was once exchanged for Manhattan, or that properties on the island of Banda Neira were once the most expensive real estate in the world. This fascinating book documents the history of the Banda Islands and the colonisation of Indonesia. It describes world-shattering events and shows how a little nut altered the course of world history.

The Nutmeg's Curse

2022-09-07 Literary Criticism

Author : Amitav Ghosh
Release : 2022-09-07
Genre : Literary Criticism
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 954/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Nutmeg's Curse by : Amitav Ghosh

Download or read book The Nutmeg's Curse written by Amitav Ghosh. This book was released on 2022-09-07. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this ambitious successor to The Great Derangement, acclaimed writer Amitav Ghosh finds the origins of our contemporary climate crisis in Western colonialism’s violent exploitation of human life and the natural environment. A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, Amitav Ghosh’s new book traces our contemporary planetary crisis back to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean. The Nutmeg’s Curse argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis, revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials such as spices, tea, sugarcane, opium, and fossil fuels. Our crisis, he shows, is ultimately the result of a mechanistic view of the earth, where nature exists only as a resource for humans to use for our own ends, rather than a force of its own, full of agency and meaning. Writing against the backdrop of the global pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, Ghosh frames these historical stories in a way that connects our shared colonial histories with the deep inequality we see around us today. By interweaving discussions on everything from the global history of the oil trade to the migrant crisis and the animist spirituality of Indigenous communities around the world, The Nutmeg’s Curse offers a sharp critique of Western society and speaks to the profoundly remarkable ways in which human history is shaped by non-human forces.

Bioethics of Displacement and Its Implications

2023-06-19 Science

Author : Rodríguez, Manuel Lozano
Release : 2023-06-19
Genre : Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 092/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Bioethics of Displacement and Its Implications by : Rodríguez, Manuel Lozano

Download or read book Bioethics of Displacement and Its Implications written by Rodríguez, Manuel Lozano. This book was released on 2023-06-19. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bioethics aims to provide a framework for making informed and ethical decisions in the face of complex and often controversial issues. It is concerned with issues such as informed consent, autonomy, justice, beneficence, non-maleficence, and respect for persons and seeks to balance the interests of individuals, communities, and society. Defining the bioethics of displacement presents a challenge; despite bioethicists’ efforts to raise multidisciplinarity, the truth is that narrow medical bioethics focused on health is currently mainstream. Bioethics of Displacement and Its Implications defines the bioethics of displacement, explains why it is necessary, and sets the basic curricula on the bioethics of displacement. This book puts displacement in context through historical reflections and stresses how psychological inflexibility and the politics of pain work are reflected in the context of bioethics both in the nature of the research and in bioethics as a force of displacement and the challenges in the bioethical discourse. Finally, the book frames the bioethics of displacement (Bodi) in the modern bioethics discourse and how it can become a game changer. This work focuses on bioethics, confinement, displacement, global public health, and politics. This premier reference source is an essential resource for medical professionals, pharmacists, hospital administrators, government officials, students and faculty of higher education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

Nathaniel's Nutmeg

2014-06-10 History

Author : Giles Milton
Release : 2014-06-10
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 477/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Nathaniel's Nutmeg by : Giles Milton

Download or read book Nathaniel's Nutmeg written by Giles Milton. This book was released on 2014-06-10. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true tale of high adventure in the South Seas. The tiny island of Run is an insignificant speck in the Indonesian archipelago. Just two miles long and half a mile wide, it is remote, tranquil, and, these days, largely ignored. Yet 370 years ago, Run's harvest of nutmeg (a pound of which yielded a 3,200 percent profit by the time it arrived in England) turned it into the most lucrative of the Spice Islands, precipitating a battle between the all-powerful Dutch East India Company and the British Crown. The outcome of the fighting was one of the most spectacular deals in history: Britain ceded Run to Holland but in return was given Manhattan. This led not only to the birth of New York but also to the beginning of the British Empire. Such a deal was due to the persistence of one man. Nathaniel Courthope and his small band of adventurers were sent to Run in October 1616, and for four years held off the massive Dutch navy. Nathaniel's Nutmeg centers on the remarkable showdown between Courthope and the Dutch Governor General Jan Coen, and the brutal fate of the mariners racing to Run--and the other corners of the globe--to reap the huge profits of the spice trade. Written with the flair of a historical sea novel but based on rigorous research, Giles Milton's Nathaniel's Nutmeg is a brilliant adventure story by Giles Milton, a writer who has been hailed as the "new Bruce Chatwin" (Mail on Sunday).

Spice

2008-12-10 History

Author : Jack Turner
Release : 2008-12-10
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 226/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Spice by : Jack Turner

Download or read book Spice written by Jack Turner. This book was released on 2008-12-10. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this brilliant, engrossing work, Jack Turner explores an era—from ancient times through the Renaissance—when what we now consider common condiments were valued in gold and blood. Spices made sour medieval wines palatable, camouflaged the smell of corpses, and served as wedding night aphrodisiacs. Indispensible for cooking, medicine, worship, and the arts of love, they were thought to have magical properties and were so valuable that they were often kept under lock and key. For some, spices represented Paradise, for others, the road to perdition, but they were potent symbols of wealth and power, and the wish to possess them drove explorers to circumnavigate the globe—and even to savagery. Following spices across continents and through literature and mythology, Spice is a beguiling narrative about the surprisingly vast influence spices have had on human desire. Includes eight pages of color photographs. One of the Best Books of the Year: Discover Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle

Popular eBooks

The Gold of the Bandas: The History of the Nutmeg

The Nutmeg's Curse

Bioethics of Displacement and Its Implications

Nathaniel's Nutmeg

Spice

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