Summary of Simon Winchester's Krakatoa

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The original holy trinity of the Asian spice trade was pepper, clove, and nutmeg. Pepper was used extensively by the Romans, and was the primary ingredient in their cuisine.

#2 The Romans used coins denominated in Pepper, but they were actually paid out in large numbers. The cost of pepper was so high and so much in demand that the Romans had to drain their empire of fifty million sesterces each year.

#3 Pliny the Elder, a Roman official, was sent to investigate piracy in the Bay of Naples in AD 79. He died of asphyxiation by volcanic gases on 24 August, leaving behind him a vast reputation and a single word in the lexicon of modern vulcanology: Plinian.

#4 Pepper was used as a preservative and seasoning. It was imported into England in the tenth century, and the Guild of Peppers was established in London in 1180.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822543812

IRB Media

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Insights on Simon Winchester's Krakatoa

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The original holy trinity of the Asian spice trade was pepper, clove, and nutmeg. Pepper was used extensively by the Romans, and was the primary ingredient in their cuisine.

#2

The Romans used coins denominated in Pepper, but they were actually paid out in large numbers. The cost of pepper was so high and so much in demand that the Romans had to drain their empire of fifty million sesterces each year.

#3

Pliny the Elder, a Roman official, was sent to investigate piracy in the Bay of Naples in AD 79. He died of asphyxiation by volcanic gases on 24 August, leaving behind him a vast reputation and a single word in the lexicon of modern vulcanology: Plinian.

#4

Pepper was used as a preservative and seasoning. It was imported into England in the tenth century, and the Guild of Peppers was established in London in 1180.

#5

The Dutch and the English, with their skills for shipbuilding, began to outrun and outgun the Portuguese vessels. The balance of maritime power in the East started to change.

#6

The first formal treaty between the Dutch and the Javanese was signed in 1579. The Dutch were initially happy with their relationship with the Javanese, but they would soon become resentful and insensitive toward the primitives they met.

#7

The first Dutch expedition to bring back black Java pepper from Indonesia marked the beginning of the end for Portugal’s imperial role in the East. The floodgates opened once and for all in 1598, when a fleet twice the size of de Houtman’s returned to Texel with enough pepper for its backers to realize a 400 percent return on their investment.

#8

The Dutch had established fourteen ports in the East Indies by the end of 1601. The Dutch were on to something big. Banten, though it was once the largest city in South-East Asia, is now little more than a collection of shanties and ruins.

#9

The towers are man-made homes for the local birds called swiftlets, members of the genus Collocalia. The owner is a Chinese restaurateur from Jakarta. He thinks it most unlikely that any client would ever realize that the soup he serves comes not from nests plucked in the traditional manner from dangerous clifftops in Thailand, but from those farmed weekly inside a cement blockhouse in a former Dutch pepper port.

#10

By the end of the sixteenth century, when the Dutch were poised to sail in from Texel to try to wrest the spice monopoly from the Mediterranean powers, every major island between the Maldives and the coast of China was illustrated, reasonably correct in outline, place and size.

#11

The map itself has a curious