Spice Islands

History of the Spice Islands 

Our story begins long before the European vessels arrived in the Indian Ocean in 1498. For centuries there was a thriving trade in spices in the far east. The spices were traded with Chinese silk, Indian cotton, Arabic coffee and African ivory. In the middle ages the spices were also available in Europe but the prices were very high because they were shipped overland and every trader made profit on it, once arrived in Venice, the chief point between Europe and the East they were worth 1000% more then the price paid on the spice islands. The Europeans began buying from the spice islands directly in the 1520s.The Portuguese where the first and controlled the trade, they demanded very high prices. 

Then the English made their first spice voyage in 1598 but two out of three ships where lost, but still this voyage made an enormous profit. In 1599 the Dutch arrived and competed with the Portuguese. They conquered Ambon and Tidore when the Dutch East India Company allied with the sultan of Ternate and in 1605 expelling the Portuguese. The Dutch ruled the trade in spices through a ruthless policy including the conquest of the Banda Islands in 1621 and they eliminated the English in Ambon. During the French revolutionary was and the Napoleonic wars, the British forces captured the islands in 1796 and kept them until 1817. In that time they started uprooting the spice trees and transplanted them throughout the British empire.