Amitav Ghosh's 'The Nutmeg's Curse' Examines Colonial Roots of Climate Crisis

Amitav Ghosh's new book 'The Nutmeg's Curse' argues that today's climate emergency stems from colonial-era metaphysics that separated humans from nature. He traces this worldview to 17th-century European colonial expansion, using the Dutch East India Company's 1620s massacre of thousands in Indonesia's Banda Islands as a key example. The company sought monopoly control over nutmeg, which grew exclusively in those forests. Ghosh contends that colonial powers pursued not just genocide but 'omnicide'—the destruction of everything—as they transformed landscapes into 'neo-Europes.' This process violently suppressed Indigenous knowledge systems that viewed land as more than mere resource. While focusing on Europe and the Americas, Ghosh acknowledges that extractivist capitalism now drives elites in Asian and African nations too. The book draws connections between historical colonial policies and modern geopolitical issues like mass migration and environmental degradation. Ghosh advocates for incorporating Traditional Ecological Knowledge and nonhuman perspectives into our relationship with Earth. His work appears in the January & February issue of ArtReview.