Nutmeg & Mace

 

On the banks of Manimala river in Tiruvalla, Kerala, there is a place called Thottabhagom. Perhaps the area gets it name (~ 'garden areas') from its exceptionally fertile soil, enriched by the occasional flooding of the river. 

One of the common trees on these fertile river banks is the Jathi-ka Maram, better known as the Nutmeg tree (Myristica fragrans), the source of two important spices - Mace, and, of course, Nutmeg. During the summer months, hundreds of fruits can be found strewn under the tree, often hidden under tufts of grass and dried leaves. The ones that are found get carefully laid out on straw mats, its fleshy portions are cut away revealing a seed that looks like a piece of art, with its deep red pericarp delicately covering a large oval seed like a lace glove. 

As children we did not think much of this tree because there were others that offered instant gratification - mangos, guavas,  rose-apples, tamarind and mangosteens. It is only much later that we learnt just how much these spice seeds meant to people in far away places, of how thousands had been killed, and sold into slavery so that a few europeans could enjoy trade monopolies, and enrich their own cities.

The greed for nutmeg and mace brought the Dutch to the Banda Islands south the Malaccas in the 14th century. Here they first tried to get exclusive deals from the local traders, and when that failed, they decided to solve the problem with their won version of the "final solution" - by exterminating the entire population of these two islands. Then for about a century they ensured that all the nutmeg trees were uprooted and destroyed on the nearby islands. This ensured that they could enjoy profits of over 400 percent of the investments for each voyage.

This story, and its wider ecological and economic impact has been brought out in the latest book written by Amitav Ghosh - "The Nutmeg's Curse - Parables for a Planet in Crisis". As with Ghosh's earlier books this too weaves a narrative based on extensive research of the origins of global trade in these spices, the depredations of the colonial period, of how it shaped capitalism as we know it today which sees the earth as a resource to be exploited at will.

The fruit itself becomes a metaphor for the larger picture - 

...Taking the nutmeg out of its fruit is like unearthing a tiny planet...Like  a planet, the nutmeg is encased within a series of expanding spheres. There is, first of all, the fruit's matt-brown skin, a kind of exosphere. Then there is the pale, perfumed flesh, growing denser towards the core, like a planet's outer atmosphere. And when all the flesh is stripped away, you have in your hand a ball wrapped in what could be a stratosphere of fiery, crimson clouds..."

One question that this books leaves unanswered is on the Dutch monopoly. For a tree that grew widely in South India, with records in the Sanskrit texts going back at least to the 6th century, how could the Dutch establish a monopoly in the first place?  

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* https://penguin.co.in/book/the-nutmegs-curse/

* https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/the-wonders-of-nutmeg-fruit/article19369859.ece

* WebMD - https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-788/nutmeg-and-mace

Annals of Cruelty

This post is about one article and one book, both of which dwell on cruelty, and the mind boggling capacity of people to inflict pain and suffering on others.

Both are more than a decade old -- the article "Invaders - Destroying Baghdad", by Ian Frazier is from the Annals of History series in the New Yorker magazine (April, 2005), describes the Mongol invasion of Iraq in 1257 CE, while the book, "King Leopold's Ghost" by Adam Hochschild (1998) is a detailed account of how one Belgian king became the 'owner' of a country that was more than 60 times the size of his own tiny European nation. 

Even though both these apocalyptic events are separated by about 500 years they have a lot in common. Firstly they are both painstakingly recreated records of how men of fairly unremarkable origins transform into leaders with a single minded determination to rule and conquer, totally unmindful of the costs involved. 

Hulagu was the grandson of Genghis Khan whose domains had been divided amongst four brothers - 

"Mongke, who outmaneuvered rivals to become khan in 1251, and who died of dysentery; Kubilai, arguably the most powerful khan ever, who occupied Peking and founded a Chinese dynasty that lasted almost a hundred years; Hulagu, an il-khan, or subsidiary khan, whose domains were in Persia and the west; and Arigh-boke, who rebelled against Kubilai and held out for years until Kubilai defeated him."

When Hulagu's horde reached the gates of Baghdad, then one of the greatest cities of the world, its leader, Caliph Mustasim, refused to surrender. Thanks to help from the Shiites whom Mustasim had insulted (eg. by tossing a poem into the Tigri river!) the mongols managed to breach the city's defences and then set out to destroy the city and slaughter most of its residents (200,000 to a million!) 

"So many books from Baghdad’s libraries were flung into the Tigris that a horse could walk across on them. The river ran black with scholars’ ink and red with the blood of martyrs."

The Europeans did the same things differently.

King Leopold started off in the guise of a philanthropist. He had no hordes at his command, and much of the known world had already been colonised by entrenched powers of the day - Spain, Portugal, France and Britain. So he started off by courting explorers like HM Stanley who was roped in to survey central Africa after he had managed to find Dr. David Livingstone.

Surveys turned to road building and proselytising and then to the collection and export of ivory. Then came the discovery something everybody needed desperately - rubber.  While the rest of Europe was wondering how to grow the South American rubber tree commercially, Leopold found that the next best source of rubber was a vine of the Landolphia genus which was growing wild in the vast forests of Congo.

Africans were now set against each other to fill Leopold's treasury. Men armed with the latest firearms from Europe raided villages to force them to collect the resin. Entire villages were burnt down, women and children kept as hostages until the men returned with the resin weeks later. Punishment for not meeting 'targets' were swift - hands and legs of men, women and children were hacked off as standard punishment. Soldiers had to account for each bullet spent with a severed hand to serve as proof.  It is estimated that Congo lost 10 million people as a direct consequence of Belgian rule.

We can draw the lessons we want from history but you cannot help wondering about massacres which may have been far worse, of all the accounts that still await a storyteller.

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LINKS

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/04/25/invaders-3

Out of Africa - into Europe

This was an eye-opener, and a reminder about how little I know about Africa.

Having studied with a group of Africans I also find it surprising that even as a part of academic discussions at Tsukuba University on this very topic, there were no fiery discussions on the three key events mentioned by Dr. Arikana:

• Berlin conference of 1884-85 for amicable division of Africa into European colonies - a meeting of 14 colonial powers for drawing of arbitrary boundaries, creation of countries that exist today.
• The French government arm twisting its colonies to sign, during 1958-61,  a pact for the Continuation of Colonisation - "The Colonial Debt" 
• 1963 - Addis Ababa conference that lead to the creation of Organisation of African Unity (OAU) by just seven states - Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

Some of the numbers presented are truly cringe-worthy. As a repayment for "civilising" the Africans, for teaching them how to 'eat with fork and spoon', 14 French colonies were were required to deposit 80% (now down to 60%) of their bank reserves with the French Ministry of Finance. This self-serving arrangement enables France to extract no less than USD 500 billion from these 14 countries every year!

Since these 'Francophone' depended almost entirely on their former colonial master for marketing their minerals (first right of refusal), their military hardware, for their printed currencies, and for the education of their elite, the dependencies are almost hardwired. Countries that try to come out of the Colonial Debt are rewarded with coups (no less than 60 so far), assassinations and 'engineered chaos'.

On the 100th anniversary of the Jallianwalla Massacre, it does seem like a miracle that we Indians managed to get independence with just the partition of the subcontinent!

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* https://blogs.mediapart.fr/jecmaus/blog/300114/franceafrique-14-african-countries-forced-france-pay-colonial-tax-benefits-slavery-and-colonization
* The French African Connection - https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2013/08/201387113131914906.html
* The Berlin Conference of 1884 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Conference

Two Books on Africa

It is a coincidence that two of the books I have 'read' over the past weeks have both been on Africa.

The first was Chinua Achebe's 1958 classic, "Things Fall Apart", and the second one, Dorris Lessing's part fiction, part memoir, "Alfred and Emily". Both the books were connected in strange ways.

The Achebe's book is set in the pre-colonial Nigeria of 1890's. It is about a warrior named Okonkwo whose life and social standing is altered by the arrival of the White Man. The first one who turns up an amiable, gentle priest who wants to introduce Christianity to the remote villages of the Niger delta. He is something of a curiosity, worthy of being engaged and disdained at the same time. By the time it dawns on Okonkwo's community that this is just a soft, probing tentacle of a formidable British colonial administration, it is too late. Guns and machete's have been drawn, blood is spilt, tribes have been set against each other....and Things Fall Apart.

In Lessing's narrative, the view is from the other side of the fence, a few decades later. Countries like Kenya and Rhodesia have emerged out of the the same process that transformed West Africa. An apartheid system is well entrenched. The white farmer now lords over large tracts of land and employs locals as farm laborers, cooks, servants and menials. Tribal hierarchies have been decimated and the most coveted position a local can aspire to is that of the "Boss-Boy", an overseer to other laborers.

For the European settlers, this is a heaven they wouldn't trade for anything that Europe has to offer. Yet, once again, change is just around the corner. African freedom movements sweep aside the white settlers and the rich farmlands return to the bush. Things fall apart once again but for the ordinary Africans who want to pick up the pieces and start over again, there are no social structures to fall back on.

These two books tell stories that have perhaps been repeated a thousand times over in Asia, the Americas and Australia...