Spice Islands
The term Spice Islands is most commonly used to refer to the Maluku Islands (formerly the Moluccas), which lie on the equator, between the Celebes and the New Guinea islands (see: map of southeast Asia), though it has also been used in reference to other islands known for their spice production, notably the Tanzanian group consisting of Zanzibar, Mafia Island and Pemba.
This article looks at the history of the idea of the Maluku Islands in other cultures, that is, as The Spice Islands, rather than the islands' internal history, for which the Maluku Islands article serves.
The Moluccas were, until the late 18th century, the only source of economically significant spices including clove, nutmeg and mace. Archaeological and linguistic evidence places Spice Island traders within a trading circuit reaching as far as mainland India around 200 BC. Pliny describes cloves not long afterwards. Javanese and Chinese merchants were also involved in the spice trade. Spices reached Europe only after passing through many merchants' hands, with an important centre of trade at Alexandria, Egypt.
For this reason, spices appeared in the European imagination as a miraculously expensive natural commodity. Their location was probably unknown to the Arabic traders of Alexandria, but wild stories were invented about the exotic conditions necessary for their cultivation, and the extreme hazards endured to harvest them. This heady mixture of myth, romance and incredible riches was an El Dorado in Europe's pre-Columbian consciousness.
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 only occurs in the late 1300s, as China's interest waned in regional maritime dominance. 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 some islands, but not on others.
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. 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 a route around the southern tip of Africa, securing various bases en route, and accidentally grazing the coast of Brazil in the search for favourable Southerly currents. Portugal's eventual success - see Ferdinand Magellan - provoked other maritime powers in Europe, especially Spain, England and Holland.
The idea of the Spice Islands, soon to be enveloped by Holland's 'Dutch East Indies' empire, had prompted the accidental discovery of the West Indies, and lit the fuse of centuries of rivalry between European maritime powers for control of lucrative global resources. The tattered mystique of the Spice Islands finally died when France and Britain successfully smuggled plants to their own dominions on Mauritius, Grenada and elsewhere, making spices a more commonplace agricultural commodity.
Further reading
