With 39 men and the natives, with scarce food and water (springs of which the island is devoid of) supply, he proceeded to hold off a siege of the Dutch - who outnumbered them considerably - for over 1,540 days. the Portuguese built a Fort in Oman named Muscat ['place of falling' in Arabic] a good place to refuel their sailors coming and going. Giles Milton doesn't make too much of a fuss about it, but we are talking about momentous history being decided here. It is the seed found in the fruit of that tropical evergreen: when split open the seed is found covered with a thread like membrane that is dried and ground into mace.

The Guardian Spice up your history | History books | The Guardian

It is astounding to learn how popular these two spices [nutmeg and mace] were in the 15th-17th centuries, especially when compared to how little they are appreciated today. 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. Milton's works of narrative history rely on personal testimonies, diaries, journals and letters to make sense of key moments in history, recounted through the eyes of those who were there. 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.In Medieval and Renaissance banquets, exotic spices, including mace and nutmeg, along with the popular cinnamon, were added in large amounts to various dishes. But then "How One Man's Dithering Changed the Course of History" is not such an uplifting message, is it? The East India Company used to be a turn-off at school but if they'd told us just how gloves-off this capitalism could be the kids' attention would have been guaranteed. At that time Nutmeg was thought to cure the plague; and was the most valuable commodity in the world.

Nathaniel’s Nutmeg – A Book Review and a Lesson | Joel D Nathaniel’s Nutmeg – A Book Review and a Lesson | Joel D

He was of the wealthy cloth-maker Courthope family of Goddard's Green in Cranbrook, Kent, the son of Alexander Courthope and brother of the Peter Courthope who bought Danny House in Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, and who was painted by Cornelius Johnson. In fact the Dutch come off appallingly: you can see how their settlers came up with such charming ideas as apartheid. Furthermore, ground nutmeg and pulverized mace rapidly lose their volatile oleoresins, and thus only freshly ground specimens are of major gustatory value.Both the Dutch East India Company and the English East India Company were para-state organizations; with charters from their Kings which encouraged the greed and bloodlust of corruptible men to engage in plunder, in piracy, in genocide, in colonization, in ethnic cleansing, in torture and in the construction of monopolies held by violence.

Nutmeg (The Diary of Samuel Pepys) Nutmeg (The Diary of Samuel Pepys)

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. Next time you contemplate the wealth and beauty of Amsterdam, or wonder how it is that the inhabitants of Manhattan speak English rather than Dutch - and then wonder if there might be any connection between the two facts - bear in mind that all the answers are here.Read about William Hawkins's dealings with the psychotic and unpredictable Moghul Emperor Jehangir (endless piss-ups, gladiatorial competitions between people and lions); Captain William Keeling making his crew put on Hamlet (in Africa, in 1607, possibly the first amateur production); and the Massacre of Amboyna, where the Dutch tortured and then murdered the English inhabitants on trumped-up charges. In the early 1600s, spices like nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, and pepper were far more valuable than any cinnamon-tasty Apple Jacks consumer would believe.

Nathaniel Courthope - Wikipedia

His nonfiction books include Nathaniel's Nutmeg, Big Chief Elizabeth, Samurai William, The Riddle and the Knight, White Gold, Paradise Lost, Wolfram, Russian Roulette, Fascinating Footnotes from History. On 25 December 1616, he landed his ships, Swan and Defence, on the island known as Run, the smallest (about 2 by 2. A 16th century monk praised nutmeg oil rubbed on a part of the male anatomy for the same purpose that Viagra is used today. The Nathaniel of the title is Nathaniel Courthope, whose story occupies about 8 per cent of this book, 30-odd pages before its end.Persistence often pays rich dividends and this book - an idiosyncratic collection of unknown historical chapters - is the result of my own metaphorical metal detecting. Days can pass without unearthing anything of interest: I liken it to those metal-detecting treasure-hunters of North Carolina who scour the Outer Banks in the hope of turning up a Jacobean shilling or signet ring. In 1614 he was accused of purloining company resources and other offences by one dying man named, Edward Langley.