This is the Spice Island history according to Indonesia colonizer history, some true, some are not

the world loves spice the exotic ingredients in so many of our favorite dishes have revolutionized the way we eat but the search for these amazing tastes now found in every kitchen cupboard changed the course of history this is a journey to find out how spices shaped our modern world I'm going to be visiting some of their exotic birth places and traveling the globe to discover just how these spices made it to our tables [Music] I'll be meeting the people whose lives depend on them and following the trail of the first spice explorers empires built and destroyed immense fortunes made and countless lives lost during one of the most exciting periods of discovery in the history of the Western world and all in the name of spice [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] there are two spices that push the boundaries of expiration further than they had ever been pushed before they redrew the world map and sparked a war of horrifying brutality in one of the remotest corners of the earth these spices were cloves and nutmeg in 16th century Europe these spices were treasured as exotic foods and medicine thought to ward off the plague but they were also the ultimate status symbol a kind of med evil bling a small sack of nutmeg like this could buy a grand house in London but the problem back then was finding these spices the only source of nutmeg and cloves was on a tiny cluster of remote islands surrounded by treacherous seas on the other side of the world they're mysterious and far-flung location accounted for their astronomical price I'm heading east to find the home of these spices a mere speck within the archipelago of 17,000 islands we now call Indonesia I'm starting on the island of Java its capital Jakarta was an important hub for those searching for the route to the Spice Islands even with modern-day transport there's no direct reliable way of getting there so I'm going for the more traditional option [Music] [Music] [Applause] this boat will follow the trail of the Europeans to eastern Indonesia and the Banda Islands in the 17th century two European nations entered the spice race with a vengeance the Dutch and the English both nations set up private companies to search for spice both wanted the fame of finding the islands but more importantly the enormous fortune that securing the monopoly on trade in this region would bring these maverick merchants were heavily armed and ready to kill any rivals who stood in their way but they still needed the help of the locals because they were the only ones who knew the exact location of the islands the Europeans wanted so badly to find [Music] so they would have done the journey with a series of local pilots all asking for enormous amounts of money and who can blame them it is an astonishing skill I think navigation by the Stars [Music] which which way this way starboard [Music] in the spring of $15.99 it was the Dutch that beat the English to this archipelago of 10 tiny volcanic islands after a long and treacherous journey they had finally found the land where gold grew on trees it was the search for these very islands and most importantly the trees that grow on them that inspire people to take these crazy journeys and to risk their lives and their fortunes please are the banned islands and that is good on a pea it means Fire Mountain and it is a volcano and very often crews reported that when they arrived here it was belching fire and smoke and they must have wondered have we really arrived in heaven or is this gonna be hell the eruption of the volcano was not the only thing to greet the Dutch on arrival [Music] [Applause] all foreign visitors to these lands would have been welcomed by a flotilla of korokoro canoes [Music] [Applause] nowadays teams from neighboring islands race each other in an impressive show of strength and stamina even the friendly display with which they greeted me was well a little intimidating it must have been even more so for those early Europeans who would never have seen anything like it before [Music] [Applause] this is bandanaira the capital of the Banda Islands and it's where the Dutch discovered the source of their precious nutmeg a secret closely guarded by Arab and Asian traders for centuries today these islands produce up to 500 tons of nutmeg a year mainly fruity and this you see these flowers and this is you see this not Papa Osman is a fifth-generation nutmeg farmer who has a large orchard of over 200 trees this you see this madman open the trees so this is the ripe nutmeg yes and can you use this part of the fruit can you use that for anything this fruit for a jam aha see rope and nutmeg candy candy and you can see this the red inside yeah yeah you see right there yeah this rate nice that's the mate so that's like the casing that goes around and that making also poor cosmically for cosmetics yeah the mace nice yeah inside mice not be in for nutmeg at is for cooking for medicine and I didn't know for everything that's England hundred years before come to bind up for what it made them a fortune many money [Laughter] so show me show me how it works Guzman is an exception to the rule here because he actually owns the land his trees grow on but he has to pay a hefty 30 percent tax to the government for the privilege is this right this men okay yeah hi this I give my little very smart but you are yeah yeah it's like a jewel like opening a jewel box how do I take it off here your beautiful bands are not there should not make you see this black this for mice you see [Applause] [Music] nutmeg is a funicular little plant which requires specific conditions to grow and these islands provide all it needs it likes warm humid weather well-drained fertile soil and an annual rainfall of more than a hundred and fifty centimeters the rich volcanic soil hot Sun and frequent downpours here in the Banda Islands produce what many people still consider to be the highest quality of all the world's Nutmeg [Music] once the nutmeg is picked there's a lot of hard work still to be done before it's ready for market during harvest season the women of Banda get together to separate the fruit the mace and the nutmeg whilst catching up on all the local gossip and having a bit of a laugh [Music] do you always open and then that is Parliament yeah then I made a discovery the women told me that what I thought was nutmeg was actually the shiny outer casing a third layer hiding the true prize is you've got these multi layers you've got it's outside the mace then you've got the kind of shell and inside the shell sits for nutmeg it's amazing isn't it that this funny little weekly thing was worth describable amounts of money I made all those Mad Men sail all the way around the world it's really interesting because it seems like after the Dutch came here and turned everything into nutmeg farms it really has gone back to the old style so all the women here and the Pala trees in the mountain that's right yeah so everyone has their trees there go and collect the Nutmeg how many trees do you ran to sports directors in my food or 150 trees but even a hundred and fifty trees are not enough to sustain a family which is why most people have other jobs and why we have to work flat-out to work so she's gonna cut my salary Oh am I married it's been a fun noisy morning and an insight for me into the importance of nutmeg to the families of bandar today but the story of nutmeg is not all smiles [Music] it's a dark tale with a brutal ending there is evidence of the Dutch colonists all around the island and of the Dutch East India Company known as the vo sea it was one of the world's first corporate empires and its initials soon became a symbol of fear and hatred for the people of Bandar [Music] when you wander around here all the colonial architecture is Dutch it looks pretty but the Dutch legacy is one of horror the most fearsome Dutch governor was a man who arrived here in 1607 his name was Yan Peterson kun and his reign heralded an era of Dutch brutality that started with the mass murder of all the tribal chiefs of this very Island in 1621 governor Cohen hired Japanese mercenaries to execute the island Chiefs known as the orang kaya their bodies were impaled on bamboo poles as a warning to anyone who dared oppose him this was the beginning of his master plan of domination by extermination a form of systematic genocide by the end of the massacre the population was reduced from 15,000 to just 1,000 people and then governor Cohen repopulated the island with slave workers from Java all in the name of nutmeg it's a story that's still fresh in the minds of the people of band at some of the massacre Chiefs are buried here two of Banda's leaders handy and pack doula are on a rare visit to this sacred site [Music] the people of the village want to start preparing the rituals they perform to honor the dead Chiefs but first they need to ask permission from the ancestors can you tell me why the people of banda today are so determined to remember the massacre this is our memory from long long time ago and then we still remember the young Peter son cool they killed 44 Oren kya and Township people Banda in Holland they said young Peter is here oh the bring lot of gold but our bandulus said he's the bad man this is his terrorists God [Music] in the village of rattu everyone is getting ready for the performance of a dance called the Chuckle Ailey it's a centuries-old ritual to keep the memory of the murdered Chiefs alive after the massacre the Dutch restricted the Bandon E's army numbers to just five these young men represent what was left of their ravaged army every single item of this eclectic costume is connected to the trade in nutmeg the helmets a gift from Europe the textiles from Indian traders and these gold flowers in their mouths are a symbol of how the banda knees were left without a voice [Laughter] [Music] today the Islanders have regained their voice and also some control over their nutmeg [Music] these predominantly Muslim islands are ruled from Jakarta and the government has returned the nutmeg trees to the Bandon EES people but the Islanders are still campaigning to regain full control of their land as well I've come to one of the oldest nutmeg forests on the island some of the trees in this former Dutch plantation date back hundreds of years to the time of the Dutch masters now after the massacre of the tribal chiefs and indeed most of the population of Bandar governor-general Cohen's set about turning the island into a giant series of nutmeg farm run by imported slaves and overseen by ruthless Dutch masters this glorious wild looking forest was one of those plantations and the reason I can say that with such confidence is this magnificent tree it's a wild almond and the Dutch planted these to shave the nutmeg tree there's this huge pigeon that lives on these islands massive thing dark green wings very good gorgeous birds and they eat the wild almonds they're also partial to a spot of nutmeg and their droppings scatter the nutmeg seeds all over this forest so it's a very very important spreader of these all-important trees and a responsible properly planting more trees than any English Dutch or Bandar knees farmers have ever more than 200 years ago European traders smuggled lucrative nutmeg seedlings off the islands they were spread around the world and grown in tropical regions like the Caribbean and India as a result banned and lost its monopoly on nutmeg and the price plummeted today the industry in bandar is just enough to keep the locals going and even the children join in by foraging for windfalls like a nutmeg treasure-hunt no good [Music] [Music] [Music] surely do I get the thumbs up for that one look at that one is that good oh you just me you can eat that one okay try try just when I found my perfect nutmeg I get trumped not a perfect mmm-hmm those pigeons know what they're doing [Music] up to now I've been on the main Bandar Islands that were occupied by the Dutch but there was one piece of nutmeg real estate the Dutch hadn't seized a tiny island taken over by their bitter rivals the English now the English were in this part of the world for the same reason as the Dutch to make a fortune from nutmeg they set up a company to rival the vo C the English East India Company which was to become the engine that launched the British Empire and this was their first target 10 miles west of Banda this almost inaccessible speck in the ocean 2 miles by half a mile wide was to become the first ever English colony the island of rim you have no idea how lucky we are this stretch of seat can be absolutely brutal and you can see it slow tonight at the moment because this spit of land is very exposing there are waves breaking on that reef and reefs around this whole island and it was the ruin of many and English the man the company chose to win this island for the crown was an unlikely hero captain Nathaniel Cort hope was a swashbuckling fearless adventurer and also a bit of a thief he'd purloined 600 pounds from the company been punished for the crime and was ready to redeem himself on the island of rune when captain court hope arrived in 1616 he was warned to heed the following advice at your arrival at rune show yourself courteous and affable for they are a peevish perverse diffident and perfidious people and apt to take disgust upon small occasions and are being moved more cumbersome than wasps Wow I'm looking forward to this welcome [Music] [Music] so we should be pretty good today I found the reception to this particular English visitor anything but peevish and diffident captain port hopes negotiations with the locals in broken English and sign language which changed the course of history by offering them protection against the hated Dutch he persuaded them to hand over control of the island to the English crown when news reached King James he was so ecstatic that he changed his title to King of England Scotland Ireland and rune [Laughter] the pact with the Islanders gave England an exclusive export deal with rune court hope set up plantations and filled flotillas of ships with nutmeg which went directly to England all this happened under the noses of the infuriated Dutch and they set out on a four-year campaign of ferocious battles to destroy court hope in the end the Dutch tricked captain Kourt Hope into an ambush at sea we fought for his life but he was outgunned and outmanned and finally he was shot his story goes that he threw himself overboard and was never seen again the English thorn in the Dutch side was finally removed there's little sign that the English were ever here there's these few crumbling rather unloved ruins but there's no monument there's nothing that remembers court hopes brave but futile stand against the Dutch but neither is there a memorial to the many islanders who died in a bitter battle between two foreign nations to control the trade of runes nutmeg with caught up out of the way the Dutch were now totally in control of the Nutmeg trade but the story doesn't end there to uncover the next chapter I need to travel a hundred miles across the Banda sea to the seat of Dutch power in the 17th century the island of Ambon despite their stranglehold on the region and the trade the Dutch were obsessed with the idea that someone somewhere was plotting to oust them these crumbling walls are all that remain of the once mighty Dutch fort where many of the Dutch bigwigs hold up protected by heavily armed soldiers a [Music] handful of Englishmen also lived on the island at the time it numbered just 18 a motley band of merchants and sailors there was a barber and a tailor they were all utterly broke and desperate to leave so they were hardly a threat to anyone yet such was the Dutch paranoia that they believed that this little band of bankrupts had a conspiracy to overthrow them so the Dutch governor had them thrown in Chains horribly tortured for many days until they confess to a conspiracy none of them had any notion of and in early 1623 every single one of them was beheaded in front of a paying crowd governor general Cohen's master plan of domination by extermination was well on track finally to add insult to injury the Dutch sent the English the bill for the cost of the blood-stained velvet from the executioner's block after the massacre at the fort it was all-out war between the Dutch and the English and the locals were stuck in the middle today Ambon is a busy Seaport where residents enjoy all the trappings of modern life whilst retaining strong links to the islands past at the height of Dutch rule any rebellious Islanders who dared to resist were tortured and many were executed the memory of this brutality is still an open wound and is remembered by the Anthony's today this is the ancient ritual called beating brooms two teams of men both armed with strips of palm leaves compete against each other it looks indescribably brutal but it's actually a show of brotherhood as all the men in the village have come together to test their ability to withstand pain [Laughter] [Music] the Dutch controlled the Nutmeg trade here until the middle of the 17th century but they hadn't bargained on the resilience of the local people and it's that that gave them the patience to bide their time until they could once again take control of their nutmeg [Music] the final chapter in our story of Nutmeg is taking me back to England's first colony that tiny island of roon unlikely though it seems it was from here that a huge shift in global power was about to begin in 1620 after the death of captain court hope England lost this nutmeg rich Island to Holland almost 50 years passed before England's King Charles the second took his revenge he sent a fleet across the Atlantic in retaliation and took a Dutch held island called New Amsterdam two years later the two sides got together to try and establish some sort of peace but it looked impossible the English were demanding roon back the Dutch were categorically refusing and it looked like deadlock until one bright spark said look why don't you just hang on to the islands you already have so the English reluctantly said okay we'll keep New Amsterdam you the Dutch you have room and so that's what they did the English turned their backs on the Spice Islands renamed New Amsterdam New York and a whole new period of colonization began while the English may have focused their attentions on another part of the globe the Spice Islands remained a highly desirable target for other European powers early spice explorers didn't come all this way just for one spice they also came in search of the other most highly desired spice of the time the equally exotic companion to nutmeg cloves [Music] it was treasured for its flavor and as a wonder drug and even as an aphrodisiac [Music] [Music] to find out more about this spice I'm heading 300 miles north and across the equator to the original home of cloves the island of turn at a the story of the European quest for this spice starts even earlier than nutmeg but it was fueled by the same ambition to cut out Arab and Asian middlemen and control the source of the spice itself and the first explorers to this part of Indonesia were not the Dutch it was the Portuguese when they arrived here they found ancient kingdoms at war with one another the Portuguese had come for cloves and the rival kingdoms wanted weapons it was a perfect match tonight a is one of a string of volcanic islands that used to be the only places on earth where you could find cloves each one is ruled by a sultan and rivalry between the main islands for nattai and its near neighbor to door a was and remains fierce so when the Europeans first arrived the Portuguese both Sultan 'its were keen to get them on side because an alliance with these rich well-armed strangers would give them the upper hand it was the sultan of - not a who won the day and the portuguese trade and gave them the monopoly over cloves for over half a century the intense nose tickling aroma of cloves pervades everything these little black twigs are actually the dried flower buds from the clove trees it feels like the entire island is made of clothes in the 16th century tonight.a was the most prosperous trading port in the whole of Indonesia and the Sultan was hugely powerful Europeans arrived with weapons and luxury trinkets in the hope of winning his favour even today nobody does anything on this island without the permission of the Sultan I don't have any cannons or armor or fancy goods to trade but if I'm going to get under the skin of this island I need to request an audience from the Sultan [Music] when the early European traders arrived protocol demanded they present themselves to the Sultan before any negotiations could begin today I've secured an invitation to the palace so that I can do the same [Music] [Laughter] [Music] before I enter the palace it's been suggested nicely but firmly that I change into something more suitable to meet a king wasn't expecting a collar like this I know Elvis must have felt like tonight a has the longest surviving Islamic Sultanate in the whole of Indonesia Sultan madatha is the 48th Sultan in a line that extends back over 800 years the Sultan has decided to award me one of his highest honors and adopt me as an honorary citizen of tenet a but then the Queen gives me a sash emblazoned with the word princess not just a citizen I'm now royalty missus people humble black Madhavi princess sultanate of karate dream on [Music] terima Qatari man terima cha voluntary morena no Isha Dhammapada hot de la maracas severe tomorrow Hungary lie empanada with my new title come certain responsibilities I'm now an emissary of clothes for two not a to the world should I know something about like a nun make sure that I do nothing but I didn't come here to dress in sequence and hobnob with royalty I'm here to see exactly what drew the European explorers to - not a in the first place the Sultan gave me an introduction to one of his courtiers venero you ceman whose family have been farming clothes for generations they live at the foot of mount gamma lama walking through the woods here it's like walking through the exotic section of a supermarket papaya tree their clothes cocoa so the guys come up to their trees on the slopes of the volcano and it was about I would say a good hour and a half really steeped wine and then their working day begins yeah it's so pretty they're like sort of [Music] the aromatic shade of these majestic trees is the perfect place to escape the scorching heat of the day [Music] the flowers must be picked before they blossom it's when the buds are beginning to turn pink that they have the most fragrance it's an amazingly labor-intensive valera and I are doing the beginners picking the lower branches but they pick em right up at the top this traditional method of harvesting cloves hasn't changed since the time of the Portuguese it involves a complicated matrix of rope work and branch pulling to dislodge the topmost flowers and reach the buds on the furthest away branches back in the village everyone pitches in with the next stage of the clove harvest basically we are stealing the clothes and that's the sort of local phrase for doing this for separating the clothes from the stalks you kind of pinch the the stalks together and then you put them in your hands and snap them back and that breaks all the clothes off the stalk and the cloves go in one pile and the stalks go in another we have a walnut tree at home it had the most fantastic crop of walnuts this year so just before I came to Indonesia we picked a whole load and think of them and one of the things that you use in pickling walnuts is clothes but I just had no idea of the amount of labor involved in getting one little clove it's funny isn't it I mean they've become so ordinary to us and yet when you see it like this and you see that an entire family and entire communities lives rely on the little things that I was sticking in my walnut pickle just makes you appreciate them a little bit more [Music] everywhere I walk around this island I come across cloves lining the streets drying in the Sun this is one sack of cloves I think they weigh about 20 kilos and it took all of us what were there five or six of us just about an hour quite satisfying though [Applause] the moodini Salameh vita re through spring 3e M asam here okay so this will lie here for three days as well as the buds the clove stalks are in demand and their most prominent use is in one of Indonesia's biggest industries the number one use for cloves today is to flavor cigarettes crushed clove stalks are mixed with tobacco to create the hugely popular Crytek cigarette [Music] it's such a massive business that multinationals like more bruh are now part of this lucrative trade watching these women work is absolutely dizzying I mean it looks almost like I'm seeing them sort of speed it up ten times but that's actually the speed that they're working lease has been working here for 16 years and like all the other women on this factory floor she'll roll about 400 cigarettes in one hour and one little fact I found out is not a single one of these women smoke I sort of want to have a go and I sort of really don't I hadn't rolled a cigarette for six years at least bit more like that so push it in like that stop these women have three months of training to be able to do this what am I doing wrong now okay let's try again come on please work please work what do you think inspector despite the fact that most of the countries clove crop goes up in smoke Indonesia is still one of the largest producers of cloves in the world [Music] and it's now a global trade whose roots go all the way back to the Portuguese adventurers who changed it forever when they came here they enjoyed several years of good business dealings with the locals [Music] but then they turned nasty and demanded total domination it was from this Portuguese fort that a series of horrifying events took place and it started when the Portuguese kidnapped the Sultan so in 1570 they killed him now as you can imagine the Islanders were up in arms they rushed to this fort but they couldn't take the Portuguese on at war because the Portuguese had guns and they didn't so instead button a Tian's blocked off all the exits to the fort and the Portuguese were under siege for five years finally starvation forced them to surrender [Music] it was the end of the Portuguese stranglehold here in turn at a in a village near the palace young children are learning a war dance the Sultan's head of music is hassan ali he is teaching them the soyah soyah [Music] today be related to JD variety ramblings my idea by the late 1500s after the murder of the Sultan and they're embarrassing force surrender Portuguese influence dwindled the new Sultan was only too willing to woo another foreign power to his Shores so who stepped into the breach it was the Dutch that took over the clove trade from the Portuguese the Dutch arrived here in May $15.99 eager to take over another highly lucrative trade but in a highly unorthodox way cloves also grew on the Dutch controlled island of Ambon to dominate the market they decided to limit it therefore pushing up the price in Europe an bond would keep its cloves but every single tree on tonight a would be destroyed [Music] now obviously the sultan wouldn't have let them just cut the trees down so they had to be a little bit sneaky about it they told the people of tonight a that the Europeans didn't want cloves anymore they wanted whole branches and then they wanted bark and then they wanted the root so that one by one the clove trees of tonight.a started to die apart from this one which was a little sapling being kept in the Sultan's Palace and even today it sort of serves as an arboreal up yours to the colonizers because the Dutch aren't here and clothes are certainly our turn at Ian's believe that every single clove tree on the island descends from this very tree being here during the harvest month I've seen how cloves permeate every aspect of daily life [Music] the women of the village are preparing a special Thanksgiving meal called salamat and placed on coconut duty this is the most fantastic am I doing this right yeah it's good this is what we need when we won coconuts on the coconut shy things drinker please and of course cloves play a central part in this feast there mixed with the coconut to create a delicious rice dish it looks like the volcano doesn't it yeah it's rice sculpture Amira lampion is a party pass Alton so this one is a symbol of the people and this is the symbol of the Sultan [Music] my time in Indonesia is almost over it's been an emotional and sometimes horrifying journey but all along I've been welcomed and given a glimpse into how nutmeg and cloves continue to shape the lives of the people here [Music] and I've become a princess I didn't get to keep the outfit though [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's astonishing to think that these tiny islands that barely feature on the map and their spices which are now found on every supermarket shelf have had such a major impact on world history and global trade yet today they remain as remote and exotic as they were half a millennium ago [Music] exploring our human planet with a visit to the river people say on BBC HD tonight at 11:00 but first it's EastEnders coming up next [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Paul Souisa

Views: 208,747

Rating: 4.7155557 out of 5

Keywords: E2, The, Spice, Trail, Nutmeg, Cloves, YouTube

Id: ZmSMVr2Wkfs

Length: 58min 50sec (3530 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 19 2012