Spice Islands
This article covers the history of the idea of the Maluku Islands in other cultures, that is, as The Spice Islands. For the islands' internal history, see Maluku Islands.Spice Islands most commonly refers to the
Maluku Islands (formerly the
Moluccas), which lie on the
equator, between
Sulawesi (Celebes) and the
New Guinea in what is now
Indonesia. The term has also been used in reference to other islands known for their spice production, notably the
Tanzanian group off East Africa consisting of
Zanzibar,
Mafia Island and
Pemba.
The Moluccas were, until the late eighteenth century, the only source of economically significant
spices including
clove,
nutmeg and
mace.
Archaeological and
linguistic evidence places Spice Island traders within a seaborne circuit reaching as far as mainland India and Arabia around 200 BC.
Pliny the Roman author describes cloves not long afterwards, while Rome traded for spices along India's Malabar Coast.
Javanese and
Chinese merchants were heavily involved in the
spice trade, and spices reached Europe only after passing through many foreign hands, with the main western terminus of the trade at
Alexandria in
Egypt.
For this reason, spices appeared in the European imagination as a miraculously expensive natural commodity. Their location was probably unknown to the Muslim traders of Alexandria, but wild stories were invented about the exotic conditions necessary for their cultivation, and the extreme hazards endured to harvest and transport them. This heady mixture of myth, romance and fabulous riches was the
El Dorado of Europe's pre-Columbian consciousness.
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Islands of northern Indonesia and southern Philippines, commonly called the Spice Islands |
One ancient Arabic source appears to know the location of the Islands, describing them as fifteen days' sail East from the 'island of Jaba' - presumably
Java — but direct evidence of Islam in the archipelago occurs only in the late 1300s, as China's interest in regional maritime dominance waned. With Arabic traders came not just
Islam, but a new technique of social organization, the
sultanate, which replaced local councils of rich men (
orang kaya) on the more important islands, and proved more effective in dealing with outsiders (See
Ternate &
Tidore articles).
Venice came to monopolise the spice trade in Europe between 1200 and 1500, through its dominance over
Mediterranean seaways to ports such as
Alexandria, after traditional land connections were disrupted by Mongols and Turks. The financial incentive to discover an alternative to Venice's
monopoly control of this lucrative business was perhaps the single most important factor precipitating Europe's
Age of Exploration.
Portugal took an early lead charting the route around the southern tip of Africa, securing various bases en route, even accidentally discovering the coast of Brazil in the search for favourable Southerly currents. Portugal's eventual success - see
Ferdinand Magellan - and the establishment of its own absolutist monopoly provoked the other maritime powers in Europe, Spain and France, England and the Netherlands to challenge the Portuguese position.
The ideal of the Spice Islands, eventually to be enveloped by the
Netherlands'
Dutch East Indies empire, had led to the accidental discovery of the
West Indies, and lit the fuse of centuries of rivalry between European maritime powers for control of lucrative global markets and resources. The tattered mystique of the Spice Islands finally died when
France and
Britain successfully smuggled seeds and plants to their own dominions on
Mauritius,
Grenada and elsewhere, making spices a more commonplace and affordable commodity.
*
An interesting article linking British possession of Run, a Banda Island, with the history of New York*
Jeremy Seabrook on the same theme*
Inter-Faith Alliances in the Moluccas
