The Nutmeg’s Curse

THE NUTMEG’S CURSE
Amitav Ghosh
Hachette

REVIEWED BY  FEBY IDRUS

Amitav Ghosh is perhaps best known as the author of Sea of Poppies, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2008. He has however written six works of non-fiction, The Nutmeg’s Curse his latest.

The title points to the central conceit: the history of the nutmeg, from its discovery on the Banda Islands of Indonesia to its extraordinary part in Dutch colonial capitalism, economics, and culture. But the story of the nutmeg is one Ghosh uses only as a launch-pad for a much wider exploration of history, politics, post-colonialist theory, migration, and climate change.

Moreover, he does so with a very clear point of view. Objective history this is not; The Nutmeg’s Curse unmistakably skewers the entire colonial project and the philosophical constructs that supported it - and which continue to justify the exploitation of the earth now.

\His overall premise is that colonisers came to enable and support environmental exploitation (like relentlessly farming and selling nutmeg) thanks to a belief that the earth and nature is inert, only there to be used. By comparison, many indigenous people very much saw themselves as part of nature and, moreover, that the Earth itself had agency and could respond to the infractions being inflicted on it by Western colonisers.

Such a point of view obviously ran counter to the more mechanistic, exploitative view inherent in Western colonial capitalism. It is in part this nature-based point of view which Ghosh advocates returning to. This ‘‘vitalist politics’’, as he calls it, signals a return to not simply respecting the earth but acknowledging its ‘aliveness’, and recognising that it is not inert but a living entity. Such a belief ensures a genuine alliance between humans and non-humans - between us and nature.

Of course, that is only a summary of a thread of thought that Ghosh expertly fleshes out over 19 discursive chapters. It will be interesting to see the work’s reception in academic circles; though its long list of endnotes and its bibliography indicate rigorous research, the clear criticism levelled at, for example the US military and its enforcement of the international oil trade make it impossible to view The Nutmeg’s Curse as any kind of objective academic history.

In style, it is, by turns, a historical essay, a cultural opinion piece, a postcolonial critique, and even a memoir, as Ghosh recounts the deaths of his parents-in-law and his mother. In addition, his idea of vitalist politics incorporates the belief in unseen spirits that move in nature. This animist belief is more common in indigenous communities and amongst people of colour - and probably strongly rejected by modern Western readers.

As such, Ghosh’s work challenges as well as analyses, provokes as well as points us to his final conclusion. For a Western reader, it may be confronting to read about Western colonisers terraforming the land, not only to make it resemble the homeland (think of Edinburgh’s streets being transplanted to Dunedin’s hills, or Christchurch wetlands becoming English gardens) but also to alienate the indigenous people who lived there first. It may also be confronting to read of climate change being equivalent to colonisation for many people of colour - regardless of the type of war, whether colonial or climatic, people of colour still suffer the most casualties.

In erudite, pointed fashion Ghosh makes his claims and challenges you to re-evaluate your own assumptions about history, politics and the Earth. The Nutmeg’s Curse is a uniquely wide-ranging work that will certainly provide considerable food for thought.