The Scents of Eden: A Narrative of the Spice Trade

Rating:
Summary: The writing is dull
Review: This book needed a good editor who knew the different between an active and passive voice. The writing is much too flowery for my taste. I spend too much time thinking "huh?" and rereading passages. I didn't finish it. Let me, instead, recommend Wolfgang Schivelbusch's A Taste of Paradise.

Rating:
Summary: He who is Lord of Malacca has Venice by the Throat
Review: Thus goes the old saying which aptly summarised the politics and economics of the renaissance spice trade. Charles Corn's splendid narrative of the spice trade seeks to explain the forces which inspired Western Europeans to commit acts of bravery and madness in pursuit of nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and pepper. Provided you didn't get yourself either killed by the weird island Sultans of the various East Indies, or robbed by a rival merchant fleet, the spice trade offered profits well in excess of 1000%. The spice trade started with Portugal's efforts to win control of Malacca (in modern Malaysia); it continued with the establishment of the two rival East India Companies (Dutch and English respectively), who fought control of the Banda island group. (At that time, Banda had the world's monopoly on nutmeg, the King of Spices.) Corn has visited the Banda group (modern Indonesia) and as a result, his descriptions of these once-prized possessions has a sure sense of place. Also enjoyable are the later chapters dealing with the American intrusion into the spice trade, which, as Corn notes, was closely linked to the American slave trade. "Scents of Eden" complements another recent tale of pirate-capitalism, "The Power of Gold."