I like to define books. This one is history, that one is a novel, here is a tragedy, there is a whodunnit; it keeps things neat. Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, ostensibly an adult book but enjoyable by capable young readers, cuts across all my nice neat definitions by having a bit of this and a bit of that. And mostly, it works.

Its topic is the 17th century struggle between Britain and Holland to control the spice trade from what is now Indonesia, and so there is plenty of history. It looks at the larger than life characters who made the trade their battleground, bringing in biography. It reads like a rip roaring adventure novel with sailing ships, personal greed, massacres and lost explorers. And for the local inhabitants watching all this carry-on, it becomes largely a tragedy.

The title is not really accurate. The story of Nathaniel Courthope and his 5 year defence of the one island that held most of the world’s nutmeg (more valuable that gold, because it was considered a plague cure) is only one chapter in the whole story. Milton covers a century of exploration, from the Arctic wastes, round the American sea-board to the Australian coast. He tells of traders imprisoned in central Arabia, smoking tobacco with Massachusetts Indians, watching blood sports in the real India, and burning each others’ warehouses in Java. The overall story has major eventual consequences in the establishment of New York and the European settlement of Australia.

One aspect of this story, that almost seems unintended by the English author, is an impression of the cruel treatment of the local peoples by the trade-mad Europeans and its results in some of the tensions of modern Indonesia.

Milton tells it all in an fast paced, novel-like style intertwining graphic descriptions of struggles and confrontations with quotes from the diaries of the real people involved. Ships are lost at sea, secret plots are hatched and confounded, countries go to war and gradually we are led to the face-off over the tiny island of Run, south of Ambon.

But perhaps he tries to cover a bit too much, because at times it is difficult to follow who is doing what to whom. Characters flit in and out of the story, sometimes briefly, sometimes reappearing chapters later. As this is intended to be a portrayal of real events, a bit more use of formal history methods could have tightened things up quite a bit.

Unfortunately, while Milton uses plenty of quotes, he does not identify each one as he uses it. There is a bibliography at the back but it simply lists titles, not page references, for the quotes. Dates and chronologies are fairly vague, and plenty more maps would make following the many journeys much easier.

Despite these shortcomings, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg is a fascinating account of adventure and misadventure in a period and area close to our own history. It sheds an interesting light on the times and issues that led to Australia’s European settlement. 

Review by David Beagley

© 1999 David Beagley