The Moluccas (Maluku Islands)

Assembled from 12 blocks · 1 evidence · 8 related

1. Story
2. The small volcanic archipelago in eastern Indonesia that was, before transplantation, the only place on Earth where cloves, nutmeg and mace grew. Cloves came from a handful of islands off western Halmahera — Ternate, Tidore and their neighbours — and nutmeg and mace from the tiny Banda group further south. That extreme geographical concentration is the whole economic logic of the period: a commodity that grows in one archipelago, is light, does not spoil, and is wanted everywhere, will support any transport cost and will attract force. The islands were consequently the object of the first attempt in history to define ownership of the far side of the world, since the Tordesillas line implied an antimeridian that nobody could locate, and both crowns could argue the Moluccas fell on their side of it. Later Dutch policy pushed the logic to its conclusion by attempting to confine clove and nutmeg cultivation to islands it controlled and destroying the trees elsewhere.
3. Knowledge
4. The Moluccas (Maluku Islands)
5. Connections
6. Malacca (Melaka)
7. Albuquerque takes Malacca
8. The Magellan expedition sails from Sanlúcar
9. The Victoria completes the first circumnavigation
10. The Treaty of Zaragoza settles the Moluccas by sale
11. Evidence
12. The principal contemporary narrative of the 1519–1522 circumnavigation: the departure, the strait, the Pacific crossing, Magellan's death at Mactan and the Victoria's return. V55 verification basis: NOT consulted in this session. Dates and the survivor count attributed to it in this pack are from the author's knowledge of the standard editions and require checking. Pigafetta is a partisan witness, favourable to Magellan and hostile to Elcano, which a reader should weigh.