The Scents of Eden – A History of the Spice Trade. Based on archival material, this book presents the history of the military, diplomatic and economic power struggle for control of the world’s most lucrative food stuffs, and domination of the Indian Ocean.

The spice trade of Southeast Asia was hotly contested among European powers between the 16th and 19th centuries and was at the heart of the early colonization competition among them. Corn, an American travel writer, has assembled a remarkably seamless narrative of the trade, stringing together Portuguese, Dutch, British, and, finally, American efforts.

Corn takes the reader from the founding of Malacca by Sumatran refugees right through the successive waves of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English invasions (the first English colony in the world, on the tiny island of Pulau Run, gave them a presence in the area, which they relinquished in 1667 at the Peace of Breda in exchange for Manhattan).

Corn details the roles of such figures as Magellan, Francis Xavier, the infamous Jan Pieterszoon Coen, and Francis Drake. But this book is more than a chronicle of voyages and invasions as Corn endeavors to show how the spice trade was the catalyst of the expanding world economy, the bridge between feudalism and capitalism.