If someone were to ask what kind of nut could start a war, several possibilities might come to mind. Someone in Iran? Perhaps in Pakistan? Not many would think of nutmeg. Giles Milton (see below) called it "that withered little nut" It was, in fact, for a long time a prime disturber of international peace. It has been called "the nut that changed the world".

The next time you put nutmeg into eggnog or a pudding think about Nathaniel Courthope, a 17th Century British East India Company factor. He was the hero of the nutmeg wars on Run and other Indonesian islands. More about him later.

The evergreen nutmeg tree, known to botanists as myristica fragrans, and its product known to French chefs as la muscade, was native to Indonesia but was eventually transplanted by British interests to Sri Lanka and Singapore.

The tree grows 15 to 20 metres high and produces what are called 'drupes', a fleshy apricot-like fruit that is formed around a hard pit. Plums, cherries and olives are also drupes. When the nutmeg hardens into a 'nut' it can be knocked down with a long pole. Split open, the outer part makes the more powerful mace which is favoured by some people, especially by law enforcement personnel. The pit is ground to produce nutmeg. The twin products were the cause of the colonial wars.

It is strange that the tree, the blossoms of which fill the spice islands with fragrance, should have attracted so much gun smoke and the death of the likes of Nathaniel Courthope.

Giles Milton in Nathaniel's Nutmeg (Hodder and Stoughton, 1999) tells his story and others. Between their discovery by the Portuguese in 1512 and their capture by the Japanese in the Second Great War the islands in the Banda Sea were occupied by the Dutch and the English who together pushed the Iberians out of the spice trade.

Back then, nutmeg was "something more than a flavouring for rice pudding", says James Ferguson, author of A Traveller's Guide to the Caribbean. In Grenada, where nutmeg is now grown in this hemisphere, it is, he says, called "the retirement tree". Its culture provides a genteel occupation and extra income for the superannuated.

In Nate Courthope's day the spice was used to make palatable meat that was past its "best before" date. It was also thought to be an aphrodisiac and to convey the benefits that Viagra provides for a certain section of the population today.

Ten pounds of nutmeg could be bought on Run or other of the Molucca (Maluku) Islands for a penny. In either London or Amsterdam it fetched two hundred times that much in shillings or guilders. It is not surprising that European fleets and navies set out to buy nutmeg or to control its cultivation and shipping.

Governments became involved in giant joint-stock operations. The regulation and defence of trading companies became synonymous with the national interest. Courthope, an employee of the British East India Company, chartered by Elizabeth I in 1600, found himself circa 1650 having to defend the small island of Run against a superior Dutch force. The Dutch soon controlled the trade but Courthope, who lost his life in the struggle, became a legendary figure in company annals.

By the Treaty of Breda in 1667 Charles II of England (Latin 'Carolus') after whom Charleston and the Carolinas are named, relinquished all English claim to the islands of the Dutch East Indies.

England turned to oversea investment and battles elsewhere.

Dutch-English rivalry had also included a struggle to control the territory around the Hudson River in North America.

It had been explored by Henry Hudson but its mouth came to be guarded by the guns of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. The English captured that settlement in 1664. By the Treaty of Breda the Dutch, in return for possession of the spice islands, gave up Manhattan. Peter Stuyvesant's town was renamed for the Duke of York, later James II.

Giles Milton, cited above, could not resist saying that England may have lost some nutmeg but she gained the Big Apple. Since then, cinnamon and/or nutmeg plus Hudson Valley apples have caused many other things to be dubbed "as American as apple pie". Well, as British-American, anyway.

Courthope learned that, in Indonesia at any rate, "you can't beat the Dutch". He contended bravely with volcanic eruptions and head-hunters, malaria, tropical storms and fellow European traders acting like savages. All the while he was introducing the natives of that part of the world to the rapacity of sea raiders from Northern Europe who seemed determined to divide up the world between them and to subject it to the bane of mercantile greed. Plus ça change.

The use of myrisitca fragrans and its products was not only to provide flavouring for pies and puddings. It was advertised as both a preventative of and a cure for the common cold and for the bubonic plague, the frequent pandemic that, unknown to physicians at the time, was carried by parasites on the very rats that travelled the world in the ships of the spice traders and other adventurers.

The equivalents of the modern pharmaceutical companies pushed nutmeg and other spices as such health benefits. The mega-profits from the trade financed the expansion of colonialism and built many of the stately homes of England and elsewhere.

Irma Rombauer advised those who prepare food to use nutmeg often but sparingly. After 80 years her "The Joy of Cooking" is probably the most referenced cookbook in the world. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency notes that those who are allergic to tree nuts usually tolerate nutmeg. Technically, and Giles Milton to the contrary, nutmeg is not a nut; it is a seed.

What is not generally known is that, ingested in large amounts, it has a mind-altering effect and can cause an acute toxic psychosis that may require hospitalisation.

Nathaniel Courthope's enterprise and adventures are also chronicled in John Keay's more recent The Spice Route (2006).

Other than Geri Halliwell, 'Ginger', Britain's Spice Girls could have chosen spicier stage names.