Indonesia’s Spice Islands

Discover the tiny island of Banda Neira in eastern Indonesia: it’s obscure, it’s beautiful – and it was once the epicentre of the richest company the world had ever known.

Banda Neira is a spectacular island just over three kilometres long. It’s hilly and jungle-clad and there’s an eponymous town on the southern end that’s home to 7,000 people. The island has a fledgling tourist industry and some of the finest diving in the world. And 400 years ago, it tipped the world a degree or two on its axis.

So why have we never heard of it?

Well, geography may have played a part. Banda Neira is one of 10 islands called the Banda group, adrift in the turquoise waters of the Banda Sea. They’re part of the Malukus – the ‘Spice Islands’ – at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, and unsurprisingly, getting here is an adventure in itself. You can arrive by plane, taking a 15-seater aircraft, or by boat, either on a luxury sailing charter or an overnight ferry.

I first see Banda Neira from the sea, just as visitors have done for millennia. On one side of a narrow lagoon is a strip of rusted tin roofs and palm trees, glowered over by a 17th-century fort. On the other side, seemingly added at the whim of an artist, is a 600-metre volcano emitting a thin cloud of smoke.

Arriving at a timber wharf, I find myself in a busy market where fishermen are selling yellow-fin tuna and barracuda. They haggle in an ancient Malay dialect and the majority of them are Muslim; not so far from their brightly painted boats is a silver-domed mosque gleaming in the hot sun.

A little further into the cramped lanes of commerce, I find a tatty booth selling old paraphernalia – rusted tools used in harvesting, woven baskets, and a magnificent round platter with cracked blue glaze. “How much is the plate?” I ask. The merchant types a number on her calculator: $300. As if to account for the price, she utters a single word: “Dutch.”

In the early 1600s, this tiny town became the jewel in the crown of the Dutch empire. It was an El Dorado that helped make the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie – the Dutch East India Company, or VOC – the richest company in the world.

Thousands of vessels flying the VOC flag were moored throughout the ‘Spice Islands’. They traded cloth and knives for pepper, cloves and cinnamon, selling them in Europe for huge profit. The most prized spice was nutmeg, which grew nowhere else except three islands: Banda Neira and its neighbouring isles, Ai and Run. With such limited supply, nutmeg sold for its weight in gold.

There’s no missing the town’s cultural backstory amongst its streets. And high over the town is the mighty Fort Belgica with its five bastions. On my way to visit, I climb an earthen mud track through a small, shady plantation. Half of the island still earns money from spice, and the plantation owner shows me his nutmeg crop. Today, the islanders are paid $8 for a kilo of nutmeg. Four hundred years ago, however, nutmeg cost the Bandanese dearly.

At Fort Belgica, I peer down from battlements that once bristled with 50 cannons. In the 1600s, Governor Jan Pieterszoon Coen wanted to teach the Bandanese a lesson when he discovered they’d been trading nutmeg with the British. He brought in 13 ships with troops and mercenaries from Japan. The samurais were directed to dismember 44 native chiefs – an event that’s depicted in a grisly painting hung in a museum called the Rumah Budaya.

It was the start of a genocide that would see the island population reduced to fewer than 1,000. To replace the island workforce, slaves were brought from all over Indonesia and from as far as China and India. The cash crop was divided into 68 plantations and given to Dutch ‘managers’ – including common soldiers who grew rich enough to build the villas that can still be seen.

I only have two days on Banda Neira and it’s not nearly enough. I could have done the punishing climb up the beautiful volcano Mount Api to look over surrounding islands. I could have joined one of the local operators hosting keen divers from all over the world – a chance to look for schooling hammerhead sharks and dive a unique ‘lava tube’ at the foot of Mount Api. For that matter, I could have gone back and haggled with the merchant for the beautiful blue platter.

But the stories I’ve collected on this obscure island are souvenir enough. And this next story is my most treasured.

The Dutch governors of Banda Neira ruled from what’s now called the ‘Mini Palace’, a mansion of heavy timbers, lofty ceilings and wildly overgrown gardens. It’s here I learn about the 1667 Treaty of Breda, when the Dutch persuaded the British to give up the neighbouring island of Run, which also grew nutmeg. If the British relinquished all title to Run, they could keep a marshy island off the east coast of America called New Netherlands, including its garrison town, New Amsterdam. The Brits agreed, and maps were redrawn. The American island reverted to its native name of Manhattan. ‘New Amsterdam’ was renamed ‘New York’.

I happen to love the smell of nutmeg. But I had no idea it was so powerful.