History of the World in a Nutmeg

Travis, Tracy Anne

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/114295 Copy

Description

Title

History of the World in a Nutmeg

Author(s)

Travis, Tracy Anne

Contributor(s)

Coşkun, Noyan

Issue Date

2022

Keyword(s)

English

Abstract

When you grate a nutmeg, you will expose its internal canals that resemble the roads and channels leading into a city. This is a kind of synecdoche, since nutmeg was among the first global commodities and is brought to all ends of the earth. The Early Modern Dutch monopolized the spice production of the Maluku Islands and made exported seeds unviable by dipping them in lime. Now easily acquired at Champaign-Urbana’s groceries, they materialize not as seeds native to an ecosystem on the other side of the world, but as a familiar flavor and reminder that we live, in many ways, tethered to the assumptions of the Early Modern world. That world’s ideology surrounding trade and human labor are centered in my research in literature of the eighteenth century. As it is often said, “the past is not past.” The more I learn about the Early Modern world, the more things as mundane as the nutmeg in a pumpkin spice latte, or the highway that brings it to us, become nagging reminders of the work that must be done to wrestle our present from lingering beliefs about the relationships between necessity, economy, taste, locality, justice, and wellbeing.

Type of Resource

• Text
• Image

Language

eng

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/114295

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2022 Tracy Anne Travis

Owning Collections