The scents of Eden : a narrative of the spice trade / Charles Corn.

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Clothed in mystery and lost in uncharted seas, the Spice Islands of the early 16th century tantalized European imagination to the point of obsession. The Scents of Eden explores the mystique of these islands and the empires they created. Maps. Notes.

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Library Journal Review

The spice trade of Southeast Asia was hotly contested among European powers between the 16th and 19th centuries and was at the heart of the early colonization competition among them. Centering first on the cloves, nutmeg, and mace of the Moluccas, it rapidly expanded to other spices grown throughout the region. Corn, an American travel writer, has assembled a remarkably seamless narrative of the trade, stringing together Portuguese, Dutch, British, and, finally, American efforts. Especially well done is the final section describing the pepper trade that flourished briefly between the island of Sumatra and Salem, Massachusetts. Much is published about our trade problems with Asia today; this book provides some needed historical perspective to show that it was never an easy matter. The result will appeal to both history buffs and armchair travelers, and Corn's "notes and sources" will please area specialists.‘Harold Otness, Southern Oregon Univ. Lib., Ashland (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

The Moluccas, or Spice Islands, located at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, held the European imagination in thrall since 1509, when Magellan's attempt to establish an outpost there ended in defeat. The Catholic explorer led the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe in search of these islands fabled for nutmeg, clove, mace, ginger and cinnamon. Corn (Distant Islands) serves up a mesmerizing blend of rambunctious history, exotic travelogue and seafaring adventure as he tracks the exploits of European and American colonizers vying for supremacy in the spice trade over four centuries. His cast of characters includes dispossessed Basque aristocrat Francis Xavier, who cofounded the Jesuits, and Jonathan Carnes, a Salem, Mass., sea captain. Corn explores how the confrontation between Europeans and islanders resonated in many areas; the encounter influenced metaphysical poetry, set Holland and England at loggerheads and spawned an interracial society that upset the planters' hierarchy. The author also unveils a vipers' nest of politics among the islands' Muslim rulers. In an epilog he records his 1994 trip to Sumatra and the Spice Islands, which are far more hospitable than they were in the age of discovery. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

For those for whom the Spice Islands conjure romantic visions of South Seas paradise, intrigue, and piracy, this book will not be a letdown. Covering the age of exploration, it is an informal history of the European invasion and the islanders' futile resistance, ending with the U.S. presence in the islands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Corn (Distant Islands: Travels across Indonesia, 1991) takes the reader from the founding of Malacca by Sumatran refugees right through the successive waves of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English invasions (the first English colony in the world, on the tiny island of Pulau Run, gave them a presence in the area, which they relinquished in 1667 at the Peace of Breda in exchange for Manhattan). Corn details the roles of such figures as Magellan, Francis Xavier, the infamous Jan Pieterszoon Coen, and Francis Drake. But this book is more than a chronicle of voyages and invasions as Corn endeavors to show how the spice trade was the catalyst of the expanding world economy, the bridge between feudalism and capitalism. --Frank Caso

Kirkus Book Review

A lucid and comprehensive account spanning the nearly four centuries of international intrigue and bloody straggle for control of the vast riches of the Spice Islands.At the dawn of the 16th century, the group of islands astride the equator to the east of Java known as the Moluccas became the stage for the first major colonial conflict played out by the seagoing European powers, and as Corn (Distant Islands: Crossing Indonesia's Ring of Fire, 1991) ably relates, the prizes were the most valuable commodities on earth: nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, and later pepper. The Spanish were the first beneficiaries of a cargo of spices brought by the remaining ship of Magellan's last voyage, but it was the Portuguese, urged on by figures such as the Jesuit Francis Xavier, who militarily first took control of the spice trade. Control over the region was finally wrested in the early 17th century by the tyrannical Dutch East India Company, responsible for the massacre of 14,000 of the 15,000 inhabitants of the Banda Islands, the richest spice-producing islands in the East Indies. The final section of Corn's study focuses on the merchants of Salem, who carried on a fantastically lucrative trade in pepper with the canny and often treacherous rajahs on Sumatra. As in most good history books, readers will be challenged by a wealth of revelatory arcana; for instance, unbelievably, until the mid-18th century botanists believed that plants native to one region could not be grown anywhere else; as part of the treaty eliminating England as a player in the Moluccas, Holland traded New Amsterdam--wlater Manhattan--to the English for a tiny island two miles long and a half mile wide. This is as pleasurable and eye-opening a history as one would hope for, generous in its descriptions of exotic islands and exciting in its depictions of the men who made fortunes in their waters. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.