The Moluccas (Maluku Islands)

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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.