East India Company – The Curse of the Nutmeg

Travelers report that anyone who heads to the island of Run by speedboat will be greeted by a sweet, intoxicating scent while they are on the high seas. It descends from the blossoms of tall, slender trees that grow on hills behind the boat dock and a pretty little village. Here on the remote island in the Banda Sea in the Pacific no-man’s land between the islands of Celebes and Papua and Australia is the home of the nutmeg.

The crop is the wealth of the three square kilometer islet, but also its curse. The residents traded regionally with nutmegs for centuries until Run became known on the other side of the world.

Plague and profit

At the end of the 16th century, pestilence was once again rampant in the densely populated, smelly juggernaut of London. Tens of thousands of people were killed. For those who fell ill, it was usually a death sentence. However, a miracle cure was touted, which the playwright Thomas Dekker pointed out when he mocked the doctors’ advice: “Their antidotes had not so much power to hold life and soul together as a mug of Pindar’s Ale (a strong beer, d.Red.) and nutmeg.” In fact, priests wore them in amulets around their necks, doctors put a nut in their mouths before visiting plague patients, and Extremely expensive tinctures allegedly containing the exotic spice were making the rounds. A pharmacist justified the high price like this: “Of course it costs a lot, but medicine, no matter how cheap it is, costs death.”

Today it is believed that the pungent smell of nutmeg may have kept the vector of bubonic plague – a rat flea – at a distance. This is not proven. Regardless of its actual use, nutmeg was a rare commodity in London because it only grew on the legendary Run Island and a handful of the neighboring Banda Islands. The huge increase in demand during the epidemic caused the price to shoot through the roof. The exotic spice was more valuable than gold, with profit margins of up to 60,000 percent. This brought the rising class of merchants into action: While the nutmeg had previously reached the British capital via convoluted routes and various intermediaries, they should be able to organize it themselves. In September 1599, a group of merchants decided to send a fleet of ships to the “rich islands of the Spice Lands.” A project that, as the minutes of the meeting said, was intended to “bring glory to our homeland.”

However, the implementation was not easy: it required investors who were prepared to invest a lot of money in an incalculable risk, as well as experienced teams for a suicide mission. A ship journey to the East Indies and back could take years, because the so-called spice route led from Europe around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope to the Indian subcontinent and from there past Sumatra and Java to the Spice Islands. It was more than uncertain that they would return unscathed and financially successful because of pirates, competing powers, disease and “horrible weather.” At that time, on average, one in three ships was either captured, sank in a storm, or was abandoned because there were no crew to operate it.

The East India Company

Erst als Königin Elisabeth I. am 31. Dezember 1600 den »Governors and Company of merchants of London trading to the East-Indies“Granted a monopoly to handle all English trade in the East Indies, as a huge area in the Pacific was called, for 15 years, things got serious. This was the birth of the East India Company, which would lay the foundation of the British Empire and dominate large parts of East and Southeast Asia for more than two centuries.

But they started small: the company equipped five ships that set sail in April 1601. Two and a half years later, four returned home loaded with nutmegs and cloves, purchased from traders in India or Sumatra. They had made contacts and brought with them the valuable information that the spices became cheaper the further east they sailed. The fact that half of the crew, including two of the captains, had died en route from scurvy, dysentery, “blood flow” or tropical diseases was of no consequence. The fifth ship tried to reach Run, after months of wandering the remaining crew landed there as castaways and were warmly welcomed by the locals.

The spice trade was based on the classic merchant principle of taking as much as possible and giving as little as possible.

After the initial success, the company sent out further expeditions. Ships were built in their own shipyard and a network of factories was set up in port towns along the route – trading bases that often only consisted of a storage shed. And, sealed by a treaty with the local chiefs, they had their first colony: Run.

The spice trade was based on the classic merchant principle of taking as much as possible and giving as little as possible. “Woolen stuff” that was dirt cheap in England could be exchanged for large quantities of nutmeg, cloves and pepper in ports in Southeast Asia. The company was pleased that “we are able to trade without having to carry money with us, which is what we seriously desire,” as the historian Giles Milton quotes in his book “Nathaniel’s nutmeg.”

Colonial competition

But things didn’t continue that way. Also attracted by the prospect of profits, the Dutch East India Company set up shop in the Banda Islands. Their competitive advantage was brutal methods: “protection contracts” were forced on indigenous chiefs, according to which the spices could only be sold to the Dutch. They built forts and stationed armed troops. They “pursued their goals with a brutality that shocked even their own compatriots,” writes Milton. “Torture, brutality and gratuitous slaughter” were the norm. According to current estimates, at least 15,000 residents were murdered or fled during punitive actions. In the end, Dutch settlers occupied the plantations, had them worked by imported slaves, and made a fortune. Between 1633 and 1638 alone, more than four million pounds of nutmegs were brought to Europe.

The English competition was also sometimes treated with violence. Run in particular was a thorn in the side of the Dutch. After two failed attempts, they conquered the island, which was difficult to access and secured with English ship cannons, and cut down all the nutmeg trees. Now they had a de facto monopoly on the spice trade.

The English East India Company was virtually at an end in 1657. Hardly any spices came to England anymore, most of the factories were closed down, and the shipyard was forcibly sold. Shortly before the dissolution, rescue came: the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell and Parliament approved the formation of a joint stock company. This enabled the company to significantly expand the group of investors, because since they were not liable with their assets, the investment was less risky. In addition, there was the right to acquire territories, command troops and form their own judiciary.

And so things went into overdrive: instead of spices, there was trade in cotton and silk fabrics, tea, saltpeter (as a raw material for gunpowder), but also opium and human slaves. Instead of only trading through bases near the coast, a private army was used to conquer Bengal and later other areas on the Indian subcontinent from 1757 onwards. Own factories were built. Indian manufacturers were exploited, but English weavers were also ruined by a low price for exports.

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With government support, a clever spice trading start-up became a diversified giant with considerable military power. In his book “The Corporation that changed the world,” Nick Robins described the company as a pioneer of modern multinational corporations and a “corporate state.” Colonization was nothing more than a “business deal.”

Normal operation of colonialism

Recently, some historians have been painting a different picture: for Mark Cartwright of the University of York, the company was “the pointy end of the British imperial stick.” The company was used by the state for its own purposes, and when it increasingly became a burden to it in the 19th century, it was first disempowered and completely dissolved in 1874. The island of Run, which the British exchanged for Manhattan, no longer had anything to do with it. At the beginning of the 18th century, the plague disappeared from Europe – for reasons that are still unclear today. Nutmeg became a cheap spice.

Since the last Dutch left, peace has returned to Run. Today, around 15,000 descendants of slaves live on the Banda Islands, which belong to the Indonesian province of Maluku Utara. Nutmeg is a common spice available worldwide. The residents of Run will hardly regret that no one sees the island as a gold mine anymore.

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