Giles Milton
speaker
1,435 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 5d ago
Giles Milton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 3.
Appearances
So a kind of sack full of nutmeg.
That would sell for something like two pounds and 10 shillings when you brought it back on the three-year voyage back to England.
The markup is absolutely staggering, whopping.
I mean, what Bondi corporation wouldn't want a markup of 60,000%?
This is why, you know, to bring back even a small amount
would set you up for life, you're going to be extremely rich.
I have to say it didn't really preserve meat either.
In fact, it didn't do very much.
In fact, it was basically good for mulled wine and bechamel sauce, you know, but they didn't realise that at the time.
And so, but Willie, you've made a very important point because the whole point of these voyages is if you could sail to the Bander Islands and then make it back home alive again, you've cut out five middlemen, all of whom double or treble the price of the thing on the way.
So you stand to make a huge amount of money.
This is all about money, finance and business.
But most of all, it's about a monopoly because if you control everything,
Those six bander islands, you control the global supply of nutmeg and that makes you a big cheese in this story.
Yes, so both the English and the Dutch, they set up what are known as factories, but are not really factories at all.
They're like fortified warehouses, which are their headquarters.
And they're in Bantam at the time, which is a port just down the coast from Jakarta.
And as you say, rivalries are intense there.
They're both after the same thing.
And from the very word go, I think the Dutch are far more powerful.
Showing 1101–1120 of 1,435 · page 56 of 72
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