A spice worth more than gold
For centuries, the global supply of nutmeg and mace came from a single source: the fruit of the evergreen tree Myristica fragrans. This tree grew exclusively on the Banda Islands, a tiny volcanic group in the Maluku province of Indonesia. In 17th-century Europe, the spice was worth more than its weight in gold, used for flavoring and also as a food preservative and a supposed cure for the bubonic plague. The markup from Asia to Europe could be as high as 60,000 percent. Arab traders kept the location of the "Spice Islands" a secret for centuries, but their discovery by the Portuguese in 1512, and the subsequent arrival of the Dutch and English, led to a violent struggle for control.
The Dutch East India Company (VOC), a powerful multinational corporation, sought a total monopoly. This campaign culminated in the Banda Massacre of 1621. Under the command of Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the Dutch systematically depopulated the islands. Of an original population estimated at 15,000, over 90 percent were killed, enslaved, or forced to flee. Coen's forces killed an estimated 14,000 Bandanese people. The VOC then established a plantation system, dividing the land among Dutch planters (perkeniers) who used enslaved labor to cultivate the nutmeg.
The Manhattan transfer
By the 1660s, one island remained outside of complete Dutch control: the small island of Run, held by the English. After years of conflict, the two powers negotiated the Treaty of Breda on July 31, 1667. In what has been called the "real estate deal of the millennium," the Dutch offered to trade their distant, commercially unimportant outpost of New Amsterdam for the island of Run. The English agreed. The Dutch secured their complete monopoly on nutmeg, and New Amsterdam was officially renamed New York.
The Dutch monopoly would last for another century. It was finally broken in 1770 when a French horticulturalist named Pierre Poivre successfully smuggled nutmeg seedlings out of the islands and cultivated them on Mauritius. The British later captured the islands in 1810 and planted seedlings in Sri Lanka, Singapore, and India, ending Banda's exclusive hold on the valuable spice forever.