The History of the Spice Islands

About 17 million years ago the Australian continent (which together with New Guinea is known as the Sahul Shelf) was colliding with Southeast Asia (known as the Sunda Shelf) following its breakup with Antarctica. 

This breakup was the final dramatic act of the fragmentation of Gondwana. The collision provided opportunity for biotic exchange between the northern and southern hemispheres. Many plants and animals moved south to the Sahul Shelf and prospered in the new lands. Lillypillys are one of the few lineages that moved in the other direction. Along with our songbirds, lillypillys stand as a rare example of an Australian group that set out from these shores and achieved major evolutionary success abroad.

The collision of the Sahul plate with the Sunda plate caused the rising of the New Guinea highlands, and probably was the basis of the Wallace Line, which demarcates the different ecosystems NW and SE of it (as discovered by Alfred Russel Wallace).

Associated with that collision is a number of active volcanoes, which we will see on the cruise, including Ternate and sixteen volcanoes on the Halmahera volcanic arc.

The rich volcanic soil, and the arrival of lillypillies from Australia created the cloves that are the dried flower buds of an Indonesian lillipilly – the aptly named Syzygium aromaticum.

Clove buds

The main clove islands were Bacan, Makian, Moti, Ternate, and Tidore.

The main nutmeg islands were the Banda Islands.

Run in the Banda Islands is where nutmeg grew native.

There was a thriving trade in spices and other goods in the Far East for centuries before European vessels arrived in the Indian Ocean in 1498. Spices were bought with Chinese silks, Indian cottons, Arabian coffee and African ivory. 

ABC Radio National podcast: The Kitchen Table - Spice

The Spice Trade. Spices had been available in Europe throughout the Middle Ages but the prices were very high because they had to be shipped expensively overland through the hands of many traders. Each trader made a profit and by the time the spices arrived in Venice (the chief point of trade contact between Europe and the East) they were often worth 1000% more than the original price paid for them in the Spice Islands.

The Spice Route before the Fall of Constantinople

The Fall of Constantinople in 1453 led to many consequences. One was the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, which triggered the Renaissance as many scholars fled to western Europe. Another was the disruption of trade between the East, including India, China and present-day Indonesia. This triggered the Age of Exploration. 

After Vasco da Gama discovered a sea route to India (1497–1499), it wasn't long before other expeditions made their way further east and discovered the Spice Islands.

The Spice Route after the 16th century

The Spice Islands (Malaku, or the Moluccas) are a small group of islands to the north-east of Indonesia, between Celebes (now called Sulawesi) and New Guinea. They include Halmahera (the largest), Seram, Buru, Ambon, Ternate, Tidore and the Aru and Kai island groups. They were known for being the largest producers of mace, nutmeg, cloves and pepper in the world.

The Portuguese established several bases on the Spice Islands in 1512. Soon a bidding war ensued between the British, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese for control of these islands. After many clashes, the Dutch emerged victorious at the end of the Dutch–Portuguese War (1598–1663), also known as the Spice War. 

Portuguese galleon fighting Dutch and English warships

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was then in control of the spice monopoly. They were the only ones who could deliver nutmeg or cloves and also had control over the price. This monopoly was only challenged in 1769 when a Frenchman (called Pierre Poivre) smuggled young nutmeg tree seedlings out of the Spice Islands and succeeded in cultivating them in Mauritius. 

There were a series of wars between Britain and the Netherlands between 1652 and 1784. 

After the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667), England and the Netherlands agreed in the Treaty of Breda (1677) to the status quo: the English kept the island of Manhattan, which the Duke of York (the future James II, brother of Charles II), had occupied in 1664, renaming the city on that island from New Amsterdam to New York. In return, Run was formally abandoned to the Dutch. The exchange of Manhattan for Run is historically known as The Manhattan Transfer. What seems like an unbelievable exchange today was seen as a very strong deal for the Dutch who secured their monopoly on the rarest and most demanded spice.

Near the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1810, Britain invaded the Spice Islands and routed the Dutch.

In a campaign that lasted seven months British forces took all of the islands in the region; Ambon was captured in February, Banda Neira in August and Ternate and all other islands in the region later that same month.

The British held on to the islands until the end of the war. After the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 the islands were handed back to the Dutch, but in the meantime the East India Company had uprooted a lot of the spice trees for transplantation throughout the British Empire.

Thus began a transplantation on an almost industrial scale – most were sent to Bencoolen and Penang, as well as Ceylon and other British colonies. In the previous occupation in the 1790s the EIC had established spice gardens in Penang; by 1805 these contained 5,100 nutmeg trees and 15,000 clove trees. After the occupation in 1815 that number had jumped to 13,000 nutmeg trees and as many as 20,000 clove trees. From these locations the trees were then transplanted to other British colonies elsewhere, notably Grenada and later Zanzibar. As a result, this competition largely destroyed the value of the Banda Islands to the Dutch.

Maluku Islands

Historical sites in Maluku

Republic of South Maluku. The islands around Ambon, Buru and Seram are known as South Maluku. The South Moluccan people are predominantly Christian, unlike most regions in Indonesia which are overwhelmingly Muslim. Indonesian republicans included South Maluku as part of the independent Indonesia they declared in 1945. But in 1950, a revolt occurred which featured the declaration of a "Republic of South Maluku" (RMS). The Indonesian Government invaded. The RMS was disbanded, with some of the RMS troops being removed to the Netherlands. They have sometimes been involved with terrorist activities in the Netherlands, most recently in the 1970s.

Maluku sectarian conflict with particularly serious disturbances on the islands of Ambon and Halmahera. Religious and ethnic conflict erupted across the islands in January 1999. The subsequent 18 months were characterized by fighting between local groups of Muslims and Christians against jihadist groups from Java and the Indonesian military backing them, leading to the destruction of thousands of houses, the displacement of approximately 500,000 people, the loss of thousands of lives, and the segregation of Muslims and Christians. Generally peaceful since 2002.

Ian Burnet's Spice Island blog

Explore the Archipelago of Spices. Indonesia has the second largest mega bio diversity in the world. There are over 30,000 species of spices that can be found in the archipelago. 

Cloves (Syzygium aromaticum) The finest quality of cloves are found in Indonesia. Originally grown in Ternate and Tidore, cloves are also grown in East Java. Cloves used as hint of spicy-sweet taste for meat and fish and sometimes used in food preservation. Read more about Cloves here. 

Nutmeg or Pala (Myristica fragrans) from Eastern Indonesia. Myristica fragrans (fragrant nutmeg) or locally known as pala is a dark-leaved evergreen tree cultivated for spices derived from its fruit: nutmeg, from its dried seed, and mace, from the dried seed covering. Read more about Nutmeg here.

How Did Nutmeg Cause Wars In Indonesia?