Striking Passage from The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis

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“The horror of the story of the Bandanese lies, in no small part, in the fact that the narrative of their elimination from their land revolves around a tree, a species of incomparable value, gifted to the islanders by the region’s volcanic ecology” (Ghosh, 31). The above excerpt from Ghosh’s third chapter was particularly striking. The sentence packs up so much in it and lays a strong background upon which Ghosh puts forth his argument. The horror story of Banda Island represents the historical injustices upon which colonialism was built. The Dutch attacked the Banda islands, killed some of its people, and captured others, all for the purpose of controlling the nutmeg tree.
There are two key reasons why the excerpt above is particularly important. First, it illustrates the western philosophy of exploiting the environment for capitalistic gains. The Dutch were ready to kill and carry out other acts of injustice for the purpo...