The book reviews for ‘East Indies’ have started coming out and here is what they say:

East Indies —- Book Review

When you read East Indies by Ian Burnet, you can almost smell exotic spices over salt spray and wet wood of the ships that transported the goods back to Europe.

Following on from his previous book, Spice Islands, in which Ian documented the history of the spice trade in the Maluku  and Banda Islands in Indonesia, where two very important and highly sought spices – cloves and nutmeg – originated, East Indies looks at the impact of the European explorers and traders.

When Vasco da Gama’s fleet rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1497, it was a game changing moment. Over the next 100 years, the Portuguese concentrated on growing their monopoly in the Eastern Seas from Goa in India as far east as the Moluccas and Timor in Indonesia, and as far north as China and Japan, trading in spices, sandalwood, silks, gold, silver, porcelains and other exotic oriental goods.

Things began to get more complicated when the Dutch East India Company and English East India Company began to challenge Portugal’s monopoly. Wars were fought. Cities were bombarded and captured. Gunboat diplomacy reigned. The English gained prominence in the tea trade over the Dutch and, of course, they were not above leveraging the illegal sale of opium to ensure their supply of tea from China remained uninterrupted.

Ian has once again researched his topic thoroughly, and East Indies is beautifully illustrated, filled with gorgeous maps and pictures evoking the age of sail.

Highly recommended.

Melanie Ryan

Limelight Book Reviews

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East Indies  —– Book Review

Ian Burnet has followed his scholarly and eminently readable book, Spice Islands, with his follow up East Indies. Burnet has been enthralled with the history of the Spice Islands and Indonesia to the point of extensive travel and living in the region.

Where his first book examined the great spread of history of the development of the spice trade and its impact on Europe (not to mention the islands themselves), the second book focuses on the struggles for dominance over 200 years between the great trading and naval powers of the Portuguese, Dutch and the English.

The book provides a wonderful snapshot of European activity in the East Indies including the establishment of Singapore and Hong Kong as significant trading ports. This book will appeal to readers who want to take further their understanding of the development of the region.

Paul Talbot

Afloat Magazine

The hardback version of East Indies is available on order from your favorite bookstore or from the usual online retailers, the e-book is now available in Kindle, Apple, EPUB and PDF versions

More details are available on the author website at http://www.ianburnetbooks.com