"The Bloody Spice – The genocide committed for a nut that cures the plague" tells the dark micro-history of the nutmeg. In the 17th century, nutmeg grew only on the tiny Banda Islands in Indonesia and was worth more than gold, rumored to cure the Bubonic Plague. To secure a monopoly, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) did not just trade; they enslaved and massacred almost the entire indigenous population of the islands. Historian Emily Thorne traces the brutal economics of the spice trade. She details the pivotal moment when the Dutch traded the island of Manhattan (then a small outpost) to the British in exchange for the island of Run, just to control the nutmeg supply. "The Bloody Spice" is a stark reminder of how consumer demand in Europe led to atrocities on the other side of the world. It reveals the blood that stains the history of global commerce and connects the spice in your pumpkin pie to one of history's first corporate genocides.