The Scents of Eden: A History of the Spice Trade (Paperback)

In the wake of their victory over the last Muslim vestiges on the Iberian Peninsula, Portuguese navigators set out to find their own way to the riches of the orient. By obtaining them at their source they would ensure that the dazzling profits to be made in this business would solely be theirs. In this first part of his historical account, Corn introduces a number of colorful characters: swaggering adventurers of a type later immortalized by Joseph Conrad in "Lord Jim", as well as zealots like the warrior-priest Francis Xavier, whose proselytizing efforts took him all over Asia. Thus we are presented with an animated image of early European colonialism, an era in which the protagonists served both treasury and the cross.

Much gloomier is the picture painted of the next phase of European exploits. In an attempt to obtain a unchallenged monopoly over the trade in both pepper and the `holy trinity of spices': clove, nutmeg and mace, the merchants of the Dutch Republic have no qualms about exterminating the native population of the isles or subjecting their competitors to unspeakable cruelty. The figure of Jan Pietersz. Coen, a dour accountant turned Governor General, looms large over this episode, serving as the archetype of the unscrupulous East India Company official. Unfeeling and clinical, he sees terror as a tool to reach his objective: total Dutch control over all trade in the Far East. With surgical precision he executes his plans. His letters to the company directors back home in the Netherlands read like present-day management reports, in which the firing of thousands of workers and the muscling-out of competitors of a market are rendered in the same benign prose. While he retains a certain sympathy for Portuguese and English, the Dutch - to Corn - are insensitive, greedy, amoral, in short: plain evil.

But it must be said: Corn spins a magnificent yarn. It is unfortunate that, towards the end of the third part of the book - dedicated to the American participation in the global spice trade, he derails into a moralistic tale, in which the New England merchants and skippers from Salem, Massachusetts, are cast in the unlikely role of `Hollywood' white knights. Here Corn puts his credibility as a competent historian in jeopardy. While one of the contemporary actors in the episode displays a willingness to accept that not all of his fellow countrymen were of unblemished repute, Corn wants nothing of that. So when, after his ship has been hijacked by the Malays, Captain Charles Endicott surmises that this may be the result of the practices of certain dishonest American traders, Corn rejects this out of hand as he writes: `this speculation on Endicott's part is unconvincing. A more likely explanation is that three centuries of infidel European colonization in the Indies - the successive waves of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English - had bred a profound distrust of Christian Europeans on the part of Muslim Malays in a part of the world where word spread across the waters with the wind [...] The straight-talking, square-dealing sons of Salem had not earned the natives' contempt 250 years later, they merely inherited it from their predecessors."

At first it seems that Corn has fallen victim to the kind of naivité or innocence he wants to celebrate in his heroes. But as he elaborates further on the episode and the ensuing punitive campaign organized by the US navy, one can not dispel the thoght that the author is actually employing the incident as the paradigm for future American interventions elsewhere in the world: protecting American interests overseas is (always) done for morally sound reasons. In underlying message seems to be that in its current, self-appointed role as the world's policeman, the US is confronted with the consequences of wrongs committed by others. And so a well-told `tale of sea' suddenly appears to get political undertones. What a pity.

I think about 60% of this book presents interesting and relevant material, but the remaining 40% felt like filler to me. The portions of the book where Corn discusses the key spice-producing islands, their discovery and the imperialistic practices that controlled them, were generally very interesting, and read quickly and with satisfaction. Moreover, I found Corn's writing style generally pleasant to read, and appropriate (or at least acceptable) for "popular" history. The early chapters were among the better ones.

However, Corn doesn't seem to have enough material to make all 319 pages interesting, or perhaps the topic just isn't robust enough for that much book. Either way, I found many chapters off topic, and felt like I was suffering through a droning lecture. For example, Corn provides long descriptions of Amsterdam, London and Salem, none of which seemed more than peripherally relevant to me. More irritating was a rather gratuitous description of Dutch atrocities to both native inhabitants and other pesky Europeans (most notably, the English). While these seemed well documented (among the best documented material Corn presents), I thought he'd made his point adequately in earlier discussions of the topic, and this elaboration didn't seem to add anything to the book.

For my money, "The Scents of Eden" isn't polished enough to make for a serious academic work, and isn't interesting or consistent enough to be top shelf "popular" history. While it had its moments, I found myself struggling through mediocre material in the later parts. And the abundance of chapters that I found off-topic made me question the significance of the entire subject. If you're considering reading this, you may enjoy the book somewhat, but I'd recommend something by Tuchman or Gleeson well ahead of this book.