Plant
Nutmeg
Myristica fragrans
Also known as: Myristica fragrans
An evergreen tree in the family Myristicaceae, native to the Banda Islands of eastern Indonesia — the world's only natural source of the species until human transplantation in the late 18th century. The spice is the dried inner seed; mace, sold as a separate spice, is the lacy red aril (seed coat) that surrounds it. Like [[clove]], nutmeg's restricted native range made it the focus of brutal colonial monopoly enforcement — the 1621 VOC massacre on the Banda Islands killed or enslaved nearly the entire indigenous population to secure the nutmeg trade. In the same Treaty of Breda (1667) that ended a war between England and the Dutch, England traded the Dutch the nutmeg island of Run for the colony of New Amsterdam (now New York).
Scientific
Myristica fragrans (family Myristicaceae) is a tropical evergreen tree. The fruit is a fleshy yellow drupe; when ripe it splits open to reveal a single dark-brown seed wrapped in a lacy bright-red aril. Drying the seed produces nutmeg; drying the aril separately produces mace.
The seed contains myristicin — a psychoactive compound related (chemically and pharmacologically) to MDMA precursors. In quantities above ~15-30 grams, nutmeg ingestion can produce hallucinogenic and toxic effects; deaths have been recorded.
Cultural and historical
The Banda Islands — six tiny volcanic islands in eastern Indonesia, total land area smaller than [[manhattan|Manhattan]] — were the world’s only source of nutmeg until the late 18th century. This geographic improbability made the islands one of the most contested patches of land in early modern colonial history.
The Treaty of Breda (1667) included one of history’s strangest land swaps: in exchange for various territories, England ceded to the Dutch the tiny Banda island of Run (population ~1,000) — a transfer the English considered acceptable because England received in return the larger Dutch North American colony of New Amsterdam, the future [[beacon-ny|New York]]. The relative valuations look ridiculous in retrospect, but at the time the nutmeg trade made Run more economically valuable than [[manhattan|Manhattan]].
The 1621 Banda massacre — VOC commander Jan Pieterszoon Coen ordered the extermination of the Bandanese population (estimated 15,000) to secure the nutmeg monopoly — is among the most-documented atrocities of European colonial expansion in Asia.
Global production
Top producers: Indonesia (still by far the leading source), Guatemala, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka.
See also
Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.
- Shares approach with: [[clove]] · [[black-pepper]] · [[vanilla]] · [[turmeric]] · [[star-anise]] · [[salak]]
- Member of: [[plants]]
Sources
- Giles Milton, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg (1999)
- Wikipedia — Nutmeg
A plant entry in the 0mn1.one [[directory]].
What links here, and how
Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.
General
shares approach with
- Clove auto-linked via shared tag: colonial-violence
1 inbound link · 7 outbound