45 - A Spice Worth Killing For

There is a spice we use so commonly today that it's hard to believe that at one time, wars were fought, people were killed and entire civilizations almost wiped out, simply so that the strongest force could get their hands on this prized spice.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
In this episode, we're going tobe talking about a delicious little spice that
gives your eggnog in your pumpkin piethat little extra kick. In fact,
it's one of the five spices thatmake up the now ultra famous Pumpkin Spice
flavor that you just can't get awayfrom each fall season. But while it's
a fairly commonplace these days to findit on almost any grocery store shelf,

(00:21):
how it got to end up thereis a crazy and twisted tale of greed,
deception, and even murder. Theseare the bizarre but true stories from
history that in some way involved food. I'm Nick Charlie Key, and this

(00:44):
is the fantastic history of food.Another week's sponsor is Full Sigmatic. It's
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almost anywhere in the world. Solet's start at the very beginning. Today,

(03:02):
we're going to be diving into thehistory of nutmeg. Now, nutmeg
is the seed of the moristica tree, which is native to the Banda Islands,
a group of small islands in theMoluccas also known as the Spice Islands
in Indonesia. Not from the dawnof time, the Banda Islands were the
only place in the world where nutmegtrees grew, and for centuries the people

(03:23):
of the Banda Islands had a completemonopoly on the spice, not yet realizing,
however, the gold mine that theywere sitting on. The earliest evidence
of the use of nutmeg comes inthe form of a three thousand, five
hundred year old piece of pottery foundon the island of Pulau Aye, one
of the Bandanese islands in eastern Indonesia. The Banda Islands themselves consist of eleven

(03:46):
small volcanic islands. Now, thespice trade in the Middle East was already
in full swing more than four thousandyears ago, with Chinese, Arab and
Malay traders bringing spices to Europe mostlyby camel along the Old Silk Road were
spices including nutmeg, peppercorn, clove, and cinnamon were highly prized by the
European aristocracy as a seasoning, butin a pre modern world without refrigeration,

(04:12):
these same spices were also used todisguise the foul taste of rancid food.
In some instances, these spices werealso believed to hold medicinal properties that could
cure any number of ailments. Bythe sixth century, a d nutmeg was
being sparsely cultivated on the subcontinent,spreading first to India and then, thanks
to the Arab traders, found itselffurther west into Constantinople. By the thirteenth

(04:36):
century, those very same Arab traders, desperate to cash in on this miracle
spice, without interference, had managedto pinpoint the origin of their prize nutmeg
all the way back to the IndonesianIslands. In what history can only prove
was an incredibly smart move, theseArab traders decided not to boast about their
discovery, choosing instead to keep thelocation a secret from their rival European traders.

(05:01):
Because of this, hundreds of expeditionswere sent out in search of the
magical Spice Islands that promised so muchin the way of flavor and wealth.
In fact, Christopher Columbus was tryingto find a route to the Spice Islands
himself when he accidentally landed in theAmericas instead. Now before long, however,
it really was only a matter oftime the Banda Islands would become the

(05:25):
scene of one of the earliest Europeanconflicts away from European soil. Now,
an island nearby to the Banda Islandsnamed Malacca was growing, thriving, and
getting richer by the day. Thenews of the success of this island had
reached the Portuguese, who had analready established presence in Indian ports. The
Portuguese, under King Manuel the First, sent a representative named Diogo Lopez de

(05:47):
Sequiera to establish contact with the Sultanateon Malacca. At first, Seqierra was
well received by Sultan Mahmud Shah,but the Tamil Muslim community, who had
already had an established presence in Malacca, convinced the Sultan to eliminate the Portuguese

(06:12):
based on their treatment of the Muslimsof Goa. This was in reference to
an attack just one year prior inwhich a Portuguese captain named Afonso de Albuquerque
had ruthsly overrun the Muslim forces there, with some captured prisoners being publicly mutilated
in the town square. Reacting tothis report, Sultan Mahmud then ordered several
men from the Portuguese delegation to becaptured and killed, but some of them

(06:35):
managed to escape with their ships.Thus, in April fifteen eleven, that
very same captain, Afonso de Albuquerque, who had committed those atrocities in Goa,
now arrived in Malacca with his armadaand a very pointed objective. If
they were only to take Malacca outof the hands of the so called MUAs
while then Cairo and Mecha would beentirely ruined and Venice, a powerful trade

(06:59):
rival, would also be able toobtain no spices except from what her merchants
might buy from Portugal. The Portugueselaunched their first attack on the twenty fifth
of July fifteen eleven, but thiswas met with failure. Albuquerque then launched
another attack on the fifteenth of Augustfifteen eleven. It proved successful, as
Malacca was captured on that day.Doubling down on the disrespect, the Portuguese

(07:20):
then constructed a fortress called Alfamosa,using rocks and stones taken from Muslim graves,
mosques and other religious buildings. Severalchurches and convents, a bishop's palace,
and administrative buildings such as the governor'spalace were then also built. So
that's all good and well, butit's worth noting why this conquest of Malacca

(07:41):
was so vital and how it playsinto the bigger narrative of our story.
You see, while Malacca itself wasnot one of the spice islands, it
was at that time the very epicenterof Asian trade. Everything seemed to flow
through Malacca, and whoever controlled itcontrolled the spice trade. Now that Malacca
was secure, the Portuguese set aboutin earnest trying to learn the location of

(08:03):
the fabled Spice Islands. With localshesitant to talk, Albuquerque sent up three
different expeditions to figure it out onceand for all. In order to make
sure they got to where they weregoing to. They couldn't rely on their
own pilots to navigate the thousands ofislands in the region, and so forcibly
conscripted Malaysian sailors to guide them tothe Spice Islands. Within a few months,

(08:24):
inevitably, they discovered what it wasthey were searching for the Banda Islands
on that first expedition, also claimingthe title of being the very first Europeans
to even set foot on the BandaIsland. They stayed for just over a
month, getting a lay of theland, making maps, and filling their
ships holds with as much nutmeg andmace as they possibly could. But the

(08:46):
Portuguese, despite their control of Malacca, did not have a strong enough force
in the region to take full controlof the trade, and so had to
settle for being a mere participant inan already thriving industry, with nothing more
than an un steady foothold into whatwas considered to be the most lucrative trade
route in the world. Now itwould be wrong at this point to believe

(09:07):
that the Bandanese were a simple tribalfolk unaware of the world at large.
In fact, they were expert traderswho had intentionally and knowingly cornered the market
for what was widely known to beone of the world's foremost commodities. After
the Europeans first arrival, they repelledand harassedes intruders for over a century.

(09:28):
When the Dutch East India Company,however, arrived in the sixteen hundreds,
they initially tried to ingratiate themselves withthe locals, as the Dutch first encounter
of the native Bandanese people with theirsurprisingly complex society and history of agriculture.
The Dutch began simply enough by justestablishing a trading post on Bandon Nira,
and from there slowly set about establishingtheir control over the nutmeg trade as well

(09:50):
as the people themselves. The Dutchused a variety of tactics to establish their
control, including building forts, introducingnew crops and livestock, and using force
to subdue any local resistance. TheDutch slowly then began to impose heavier and
heavier taxes on the local populations andforced the Bandanese to work on Dutch owned

(10:11):
plantations, leading to widespread resentment andresistance, and one of the most outrageous
things the Dutch did was to signa treaty with the local leader in which
they promised to protect the Banda Islandsfrom their enemies in exchange for a monopoly
on the nutmeg trade. But insteadof protecting the islanders, the Dutch turned
on them. They burned their villagers, killed their leaders, and enslaved the

(10:33):
survivors. They even went so faras to cut down all the nutmeg trees
on the other islands so that theBandanese would be completely dependent on them for
spice. And even after this brutalan openly genocidal campaign nearly wiped out the
Bandanese, with estimates showing the Bandanesepeople's dwindling from their peak at almost fifteen
thousand to just one thousand. Whenthe Dutch were done with them, they

(10:54):
still did not vanish from history,rather slipping to the peripheries of Dutch control
to run new trading operations and organizea bit of their very own nutmegs smuggling.

(11:18):
This episode is presented by Chemists inthe Kitchen by lab X a YouTube
video series spotlighting the power of chemistryand how science and food can bring people
together. In each episode, realscientists walk you through things like making your
own pickles, the chemistry behind ceviche, or the formula for perfect homemade pretzels,

(11:39):
and so much more. Essentially,it's a love letter to science,
cooking, and individuality with some greattips on how you can apply real scientific
principles to your everyday cooking. Ontop of that, it's just a lot
of fun. Season two is airingright now, and you can catch up

(12:00):
with every episode for free on YouTubeby searching Chemists in the Kitchen or by
simply going to YouTube dot com slashlab x nas. Again, that's YouTube
dot com slash lab x nas.From their own records, it seems that

(12:24):
sometime in the early centuries of thesecond millennium, the Bandanese began actively cultivating
their own variety of nutmeg, eitherdue to the quality of their products the
Bandanese nutmeg is now the standard forflavor and potency, or simply clever economic
maneuvering. They quickly became the keyport for the nutmeg trade frequented by Chinese,
Malay, Javanese, and then bythe fifteenth century. The Persian merchants,

(12:46):
whose accounts inspired European dreams of theSpice Islands. Now after the Dutch
aggression towards them. With the Dutchbelieving they had subdued them, the Bandanese
decided they would now in fact strikedeals with English force in direct opposition to
the Dutch and as a way tocounteract some of the danger that the Dutch
forces posed, with fresh conviction andbelief behind the Bandanese people. Because of

(13:09):
this, local officials pulled off atruly memorable switcheroo. When a Dutch official
showed up in sixteen o nine withone thousand soldiers and Japanese mercenaries at his
back, I rated local tribal leadersfor supposedly breaking their monopoly deals. The
Bandanese tricked him into leaving most ofhis weapons and troops on a beach and
then walking inland to meet with him. Once they had the Dutch official alone,

(13:31):
with only a small ceremonial force accompanyinghim, they massacred him and his
soldiers in order to send a messageto the Dutch leadership as a whole.
This Bandanese European conflict finally boiled over. In sixteen twenty one, jan Peizoon
Cohen, the man in charge ofthe Dutch East India Company operations in the
region, decided to test out histheory that the nutmeg trade would be easier

(13:54):
to control if the Dutch could simplyclear out the Bandanese and replace them with
company linked set He found a pretextto attack band Basar, the largest island
and a hotbed of resistance, withone thousand and six hundred Dutch troops,
eighty Japanese mercenaries, and some regionalslaves. Now, despite fierce resistance,
they swarmed the island, cut dealswith local defectors, and managed to take

(14:16):
the island within days. His troopsthen scourged the islands, burning the villagers
and enslaving almost eight hundred people,who were mostly sent back to Batavia,
a trade center on Java. ManyBandanese, now too proud to give themselves
up, reportedly jumped off cliffs ratherthan surrender. The Dutch then divided the

(14:45):
Banda Islands into sixty eight plantations,but a large number of the ever enterprising
Banders hid in the jungles and waiteduntil Cohen had left with his forces before
building canoes and paddling to other nearbyislands to re establish their own trade network.
In what would be the first stepsin the downfall of this trade monopoly,
in the late eighteenth century, aFrench explorer named Pierre Poivre managed to

(15:09):
covertly smuggle nutmeg tree seeds out ofthe Banda Islands under penalty of death and
bring them to the island of Mauritius. From there, the seeds were taken
to other tropical locations such as Granadaand Penang, and nutmeg trees were planted
widely. Suddenly, the monopoly ornutmeg was broken and the spice became more
widely available. But there is onepiece of Bandanese history that still sticks out

(15:33):
like a sore thumb, and onethat is a great place for us to
end our story today. In themiddle of all these conflicts, when the
English had wrestled control of islands fromthe Dutch and the Dutch desperately wanted them
back again, the two parties cametogether to see if they could come to
some sort of an accord, atrade agreement, if you will. The
Dutch were desperate to once again controlthe Banda Islands, which at the time

(15:56):
were the center of the economic world. The Dutch had also poured so many
resources into this area that they woulddo almost anything to get it back again.
So the English, perhaps realizing thatthey wouldn't be able to hold onto
the land forever, struck a dealwith the Dutch. They would hand over
control of the banded islands back tothe Dutch in return for a small,

(16:21):
barely one square mile speck of landthat at this point was still somewhat swampy.
And if you're thinking at this pointthat this sounds like a terrible deal,
well you'd be right. And alsoyou'd be wrong, because perhaps the
English had more foresight than any ofus. That little swampy speck of land
that they've traded for happened to benone other than Manhattan. This show is

(16:51):
made entirely by me, Nick CharlieKey, with our theme music having been
made by the Enigma that is,the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If you'd like
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(17:12):
you'll help me keep producing the showand in return, you'll get your
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