‘Anti-Catachronistic’ Views of Dutch Colonialism in Amitav Ghosh’s The Nutmeg’s Curse

Abstract

In The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis (2021), Amitav Ghosh reconstructs the seventeenth-century annihilation of the Bandanese by Dutch settlers and the consequent exploitation of the Banda Islands in the Indo-Malayan archipelago – all primarily due to the nutmeg trade. Drawing on Carla Benedetti’s recent study of apocalyptic narratives and on Srinivas Aravamudan’s notion of ‘catachronism’ (to be meant as an inversion of ‘anachronism’), this article argues that Ghosh’s representation of Dutch colonialism may be defined as ‘anti-catachronistic’, that is to say, anything but metaphysically inevitable or inescapable. It aims to show how The Nutmeg’s Curse works toward decolonising the Western episteme and rethinking the concept of the Anthropocene – challenging the ruling narratives about both colonisation and planetary crisis. Finally, by underlining this text’s blending of fictional and non-fictional techniques, this contribution wishes to encourage a debate on the future directions of literature.