The Nutmeg's Curse

Parables for a Planet in Crisis

By: Amitav Ghosh

Narrated by: Sam Dastor

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.

©2021 Amitav Ghosh (P)2021 Hodder & Stoughten Ltd.

A tour de force

Blown away by this history and lens to look at the planet through. Will be ordering the print edition and listening to it again.

Colonialism vs indigenous people’s use of the land

It was shocking to me that throughout the world colonialism started with destruction of native populations. Then this was followed by the destruction of the land and creating mono crops for the most profit. Perhaps we in the western world need to look to the indigenous people on how to treat our environment and our planet.

A brilliant, challenging work

At a time when a determined minority of the US is trying to shut down even the most benign education of our children about the history of race and racism, here comes Ghosh’s book which pulls no punches while pulling back the curtain on the linked history of colonialism and the destruction of the environment - the subjugation of human beings and of nature working hand in hand.

Brace yourself - this is not easy stuff to listen to, as he delves into true stories of genocide as well as ecoside that have many of our ancestors’ fingerprints on them.

But the brilliance of his analysis make the ride worthwhile - I particularly admired how he repurposed the science fiction conceit into a concept to explain colonial history. Here in the US, we wiped out the buffalo and all those old growth forests and thereby both destroyed and remade the environment in which the Native American lived and thrived.

The narrator is good except when he tries to twist his British accent to imitate an American, at which times his voice sounds kind of awful.

Dreadful Narration is a Distraction

This is an excellent, extraordinary book, but the narrator was distracting and all wrong for the author's voice. He is much too old, sounding as if he were speaking from the 1950s. His attempts to quote Americans in the appropriate accent were painful. Remarkably egregious was his mis-pronunciation of the Navajo word Dineh, as DINE when it should be din-ay. Over and over he said that. It is printed accurately in the book--which I'm reading. I've purchased dozens of Audible books and this is only the second narrator whose voice has been such a thorn. Very frustrating.

Insightful

The book shares many unique insights that put in perspective long held views on common topics.

performance....

Excellent reading, but please, Readers! please learn how to pronounce names before pronouncing them repeatedly thereby essentially teaching the audience the wrong name,. Dine, for example, when speaking of the Dine people, should be pronounced dee ney. It should not be pronounced as the synonym for eating dinner.

Wow

This is an epic and amazing tgread of history on the landscape of VOC, Dutch and British colonialism and the spice trade lineages. bio political history and the future landscape

The impact of Western colonialism.

A thoughtful and detailed analysis of the impact of Western culture and colonialism on the world historically and in the present.
I would highly recommend the book to all who are interested in history, culture and the connections we can observe between present and past. I took a star off because I found it a bit long winded and at times I needed to bring myself back to it rather than being drawn back to it. However, overall everybody should read this book to gain a better understanding of the impact of western culture on our present state of affairs.

Must read

A book dense with history that is rarely shared or discussed, ideas around plant and more than human intelligence, conversation about power, capitalism, environment and our role on this planet and the future of existence