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In this episode, we're going to
be talking about a delicious little spice that

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gives your eggnog in your pumpkin pie
that little extra kick. In fact,

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it's one of the five spices that
make up the now ultra famous Pumpkin Spice

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flavor that you just can't get away
from each fall season. But while it's

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a fairly commonplace these days to find
it on almost any grocery store shelf,

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how it got to end up there
is a crazy and twisted tale of greed,

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deception, and even murder. These
are the bizarre but true stories from

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history that in some way involved food. I'm Nick Charlie Key, and this

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is the fantastic history of food.
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let's start at the very beginning. Today,

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we're going to be diving into the
history of nutmeg. Now, nutmeg

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is the seed of the moristica tree, which is native to the Banda Islands,

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a group of small islands in the
Moluccas also known as the Spice Islands

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in Indonesia. Not from the dawn
of time, the Banda Islands were the

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only place in the world where nutmeg
trees grew, and for centuries the people

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of the Banda Islands had a complete
monopoly on the spice, not yet realizing,

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however, the gold mine that they
were sitting on. The earliest evidence

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of the use of nutmeg comes in
the form of a three thousand, five

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hundred year old piece of pottery found
on the island of Pulau Aye, one

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of the Bandanese islands in eastern Indonesia. The Banda Islands themselves consist of eleven

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small volcanic islands. Now, the
spice trade in the Middle East was already

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in full swing more than four thousand
years ago, with Chinese, Arab and

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Malay traders bringing spices to Europe mostly
by camel along the Old Silk Road were

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spices including nutmeg, peppercorn, clove, and cinnamon were highly prized by the

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European aristocracy as a seasoning, but
in a pre modern world without refrigeration,

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these same spices were also used to
disguise the foul taste of rancid food.

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In some instances, these spices were
also believed to hold medicinal properties that could

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cure any number of ailments. By
the sixth century, a d nutmeg was

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being sparsely cultivated on the subcontinent,
spreading first to India and then, thanks

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to the Arab traders, found itself
further west into Constantinople. By the thirteenth

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century, those very same Arab traders, desperate to cash in on this miracle

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spice, without interference, had managed
to pinpoint the origin of their prize nutmeg

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all the way back to the Indonesian
Islands. In what history can only prove

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was an incredibly smart move, these
Arab traders decided not to boast about their

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discovery, choosing instead to keep the
location a secret from their rival European traders.

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Because of this, hundreds of expeditions
were sent out in search of the

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magical Spice Islands that promised so much
in the way of flavor and wealth.

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In fact, Christopher Columbus was trying
to find a route to the Spice Islands

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himself when he accidentally landed in the
Americas instead. Now before long, however,

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it really was only a matter of
time the Banda Islands would become the

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scene of one of the earliest European
conflicts away from European soil. Now,

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an island nearby to the Banda Islands
named Malacca was growing, thriving, and

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getting richer by the day. The
news of the success of this island had

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reached the Portuguese, who had an
already established presence in Indian ports. The

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Portuguese, under King Manuel the First, sent a representative named Diogo Lopez de

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Sequiera to establish contact with the Sultanate
on Malacca. At first, Seqierra was

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well received by Sultan Mahmud Shah,
but the Tamil Muslim community, who had

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already had an established presence in Malacca, convinced the Sultan to eliminate the Portuguese

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based on their treatment of the Muslims
of Goa. This was in reference to

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an attack just one year prior in
which a Portuguese captain named Afonso de Albuquerque

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had ruthsly overrun the Muslim forces there, with some captured prisoners being publicly mutilated

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in the town square. Reacting to
this report, Sultan Mahmud then ordered several

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men from the Portuguese delegation to be
captured and killed, but some of them

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managed to escape with their ships.
Thus, in April fifteen eleven, that

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very same captain, Afonso de Albuquerque, who had committed those atrocities in Goa,

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now arrived in Malacca with his armada
and a very pointed objective. If

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they were only to take Malacca out
of the hands of the so called MUAs

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while then Cairo and Mecha would be
entirely ruined and Venice, a powerful trade

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rival, would also be able to
obtain no spices except from what her merchants

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might buy from Portugal. The Portuguese
launched their first attack on the twenty fifth

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of July fifteen eleven, but this
was met with failure. Albuquerque then launched

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another attack on the fifteenth of August
fifteen eleven. It proved successful, as

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Malacca was captured on that day.
Doubling down on the disrespect, the Portuguese

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then constructed a fortress called Alfamosa,
using rocks and stones taken from Muslim graves,

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mosques and other religious buildings. Several
churches and convents, a bishop's palace,

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and administrative buildings such as the governor's
palace were then also built. So

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that's all good and well, but
it's worth noting why this conquest of Malacca

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was so vital and how it plays
into the bigger narrative of our story.

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You see, while Malacca itself was
not one of the spice islands, it

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was at that time the very epicenter
of Asian trade. Everything seemed to flow

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through Malacca, and whoever controlled it
controlled the spice trade. Now that Malacca

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was secure, the Portuguese set about
in earnest trying to learn the location of

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the fabled Spice Islands. With locals
hesitant to talk, Albuquerque sent up three

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different expeditions to figure it out once
and for all. In order to make

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sure they got to where they were
going to. They couldn't rely on their

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own pilots to navigate the thousands of
islands in the region, and so forcibly

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conscripted Malaysian sailors to guide them to
the Spice Islands. Within a few months,

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inevitably, they discovered what it was
they were searching for the Banda Islands

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on that first expedition, also claiming
the title of being the very first Europeans

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to even set foot on the Banda
Island. They stayed for just over a

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month, getting a lay of the
land, making maps, and filling their

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ships holds with as much nutmeg and
mace as they possibly could. But the

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Portuguese, despite their control of Malacca, did not have a strong enough force

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in the region to take full control
of the trade, and so had to

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settle for being a mere participant in
an already thriving industry, with nothing more

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than an un steady foothold into what
was considered to be the most lucrative trade

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route in the world. Now it
would be wrong at this point to believe

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that the Bandanese were a simple tribal
folk unaware of the world at large.

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In fact, they were expert traders
who had intentionally and knowingly cornered the market

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for what was widely known to be
one of the world's foremost commodities. After

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the Europeans first arrival, they repelled
and harassedes intruders for over a century.

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When the Dutch East India Company,
however, arrived in the sixteen hundreds,

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they initially tried to ingratiate themselves with
the locals, as the Dutch first encounter

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of the native Bandanese people with their
surprisingly complex society and history of agriculture.

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The Dutch began simply enough by just
establishing a trading post on Bandon Nira,

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and from there slowly set about establishing
their control over the nutmeg trade as well

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as the people themselves. The Dutch
used a variety of tactics to establish their

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control, including building forts, introducing
new crops and livestock, and using force

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to subdue any local resistance. The
Dutch slowly then began to impose heavier and

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heavier taxes on the local populations and
forced the Bandanese to work on Dutch owned

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plantations, leading to widespread resentment and
resistance, and one of the most outrageous

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things the Dutch did was to sign
a treaty with the local leader in which

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they promised to protect the Banda Islands
from their enemies in exchange for a monopoly

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on the nutmeg trade. But instead
of protecting the islanders, the Dutch turned

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on them. They burned their villagers, killed their leaders, and enslaved the

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survivors. They even went so far
as to cut down all the nutmeg trees

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on the other islands so that the
Bandanese would be completely dependent on them for

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spice. And even after this brutal
an openly genocidal campaign nearly wiped out the

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Bandanese, with estimates showing the Bandanese
people's dwindling from their peak at almost fifteen

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thousand to just one thousand. When
the Dutch were done with them, they

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still did not vanish from history,
rather slipping to the peripheries of Dutch control

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to run new trading operations and organize
a bit of their very own nutmegs smuggling.

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00:11:18,240 --> 00:11:22,200
This episode is presented by Chemists in
the Kitchen by lab X a YouTube

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dot com slash lab x nas.
From their own records, it seems that

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sometime in the early centuries of the
second millennium, the Bandanese began actively cultivating

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their own variety of nutmeg, either
due to the quality of their products the

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Bandanese nutmeg is now the standard for
flavor and potency, or simply clever economic

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maneuvering. They quickly became the key
port for the nutmeg trade frequented by Chinese,

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Malay, Javanese, and then by
the fifteenth century. The Persian merchants,

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whose accounts inspired European dreams of the
Spice Islands. Now after the Dutch

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aggression towards them. With the Dutch
believing they had subdued them, the Bandanese

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decided they would now in fact strike
deals with English force in direct opposition to

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the Dutch and as a way to
counteract some of the danger that the Dutch

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forces posed, with fresh conviction and
belief behind the Bandanese people. Because of

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this, local officials pulled off a
truly memorable switcheroo. When a Dutch official

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showed up in sixteen o nine with
one thousand soldiers and Japanese mercenaries at his

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back, I rated local tribal leaders
for supposedly breaking their monopoly deals. The

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Bandanese tricked him into leaving most of
his weapons and troops on a beach and

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then walking inland to meet with him. Once they had the Dutch official alone,

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with only a small ceremonial force accompanying
him, they massacred him and his

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soldiers in order to send a message
to the Dutch leadership as a whole.

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This Bandanese European conflict finally boiled over. In sixteen twenty one, jan Peizoon

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Cohen, the man in charge of
the Dutch East India Company operations in the

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region, decided to test out his
theory that the nutmeg trade would be easier

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to control if the Dutch could simply
clear out the Bandanese and replace them with

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company linked set He found a pretext
to attack band Basar, the largest island

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and a hotbed of resistance, with
one thousand and six hundred Dutch troops,

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eighty Japanese mercenaries, and some regional
slaves. Now, despite fierce resistance,

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they swarmed the island, cut deals
with local defectors, and managed to take

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the island within days. His troops
then scourged the islands, burning the villagers

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00:14:22,799 --> 00:14:26,039
and enslaving almost eight hundred people,
who were mostly sent back to Batavia,

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a trade center on Java. Many
Bandanese, now too proud to give themselves

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up, reportedly jumped off cliffs rather
than surrender. The Dutch then divided the

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Banda Islands into sixty eight plantations,
but a large number of the ever enterprising

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Banders hid in the jungles and waited
until Cohen had left with his forces before

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building canoes and paddling to other nearby
islands to re establish their own trade network.

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In what would be the first steps
in the downfall of this trade monopoly,

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in the late eighteenth century, a
French explorer named Pierre Poivre managed to

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covertly smuggle nutmeg tree seeds out of
the Banda Islands under penalty of death and

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bring them to the island of Mauritius. From there, the seeds were taken

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to other tropical locations such as Granada
and Penang, and nutmeg trees were planted

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widely. Suddenly, the monopoly or
nutmeg was broken and the spice became more

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widely available. But there is one
piece of Bandanese history that still sticks out

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00:15:33,840 --> 00:15:35,919
like a sore thumb, and one
that is a great place for us to

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end our story today. In the
middle of all these conflicts, when the

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English had wrestled control of islands from
the Dutch and the Dutch desperately wanted them

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00:15:43,879 --> 00:15:48,279
back again, the two parties came
together to see if they could come to

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some sort of an accord, a
trade agreement, if you will. The

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Dutch were desperate to once again control
the Banda Islands, which at the time

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were the center of the economic world. The Dutch had also poured so many

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resources into this area that they would
do almost anything to get it back again.

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So the English, perhaps realizing that
they wouldn't be able to hold onto

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the land forever, struck a deal
with the Dutch. They would hand over

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00:16:15,919 --> 00:16:19,919
control of the banded islands back to
the Dutch in return for a small,

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barely one square mile speck of land
that at this point was still somewhat swampy.

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And if you're thinking at this point
that this sounds like a terrible deal,

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well you'd be right. And also
you'd be wrong, because perhaps the

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English had more foresight than any of
us. That little swampy speck of land

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that they've traded for happened to be
none other than Manhattan. This show is

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made entirely by me, Nick Charlie
Key, with our theme music having been

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made by the Enigma that is,
the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If you'd like

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to support the show, the simplest
way to do that is over on our

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Patreon account. There's just one option, so for just two bucks a month,

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you'll help me keep producing the show
and in return, you'll get your

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name forever etched onto our supporters Wall
of Fame over on our website, and

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then maybe listen out for your name
in an upcoming episode. So until next

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time, bau petito Yeah,