the spice trade: focus on indonesia
TRANSCRIPT
Mollucas/Maluku: The original spices islands
• What do you know about the spices islands?
• What made the spices islands so famous and important in the past?
Why so important?
• Flavoring food. • Preserving food. • Perfumes and cosmetics. • Medicine. • Magical spells and rites. • Embalming.
• “He who controls the spice, controls the universe.”
• No man should die who can afford cinnamon.”
• A few nutmeg nuts could be sold for enough money to enable financial independence for life.”
• “A pound of nutmeg = 7 fat oxen.”
The arrival of Europeans in the Spices Islands
• Portuguese arrived in 1512 and became the major player in the clove market. They could not monopolize the spice trade.
• Dutch arrived in 1599, better organized than the Portuguese and tried to monopolize. – Run exchanged for Manhattan. – The Banda massacre. – Uprooting all clove trees in Ternate and Tidore.
Spice monopoly ended
● French smuggled clove seeds and planted them in their colonies.
● Dutch was involved in wars: Anglo-Dutch, Napoleon.
● British briefly occupied spice islands, and transplanted them in their colonies.
● Less heavy spices in European food.
What does it mean for Indonesia?
● Loss of freedom. ■ Colonized by the Portuguese, the Dutch, the
British, the Japanese. ● Exploitation.
■ Our wealth and hard work is not for us. ● Introduction to Christianity. ● Tipping the balance of power.
■ New alliances, new frictions.