Banda Islands
Group of islands in IndonesiaWikipedia
31
MENTIONS
9
EPISODES
8
PODCASTS
Search complete. 31 mentions across 9 episodes found for "Banda Islands".
Nov 2, 2026
Patrick O'HalloranGUEST
But they had colonies and they were brutal colonies.
Patrick O'HalloranGUEST
They found the Banda Islands, little islands off of Indonesia that produced nutmeg.
Patrick O'HalloranGUEST
Nutmeg was worth so much.
Patrick O'HalloranGUEST
Mace being the little covering on the outside of the nutmeg.
6 MINS LATER
Patrick O'HalloranGUEST
The Pope said to the rivals, Portugal and Spain, Portugal, you can go east.
Patrick O'HalloranGUEST
Spain, you can have everything west.
Patrick O'HalloranGUEST
And that's how they set off to find a new route to the Spice Islands, the Banda Islands.
Patrick O'HalloranGUEST
And they ended up, you know, discovering America colonizing Mexico, which is a whole nother, um, a whole nother story that I love to tell, um, how Cortez came and with intent.
Stephanie GeorgieffHOST
And again, the Dutch named that.
Stephanie GeorgieffHOST
These were called the Moluccas or the Banda Islands.
Stephanie GeorgieffHOST
And European traders introduced these spices to Europe during the Middle Ages, and this is one of the big benefits of the Crusades, as well as trading, which was very much brought into focus by christian pilgrimages to jerusalem but there was a lot of intercontinental trading going on throughout history throughout our known history and this is base basically between between you know, countries and continents of the Mediterranean, but also from spice routes that were made possible by people such as Alexander the Great, who conquered a lot of Asia, but opened up trade routes.
Stephanie GeorgieffHOST
And so you'll see spices in a lot of ancient Roman recipes, as well as early Middle Ages.
speaker_2GUEST
Hi.
Tony RobinsonNARRATOR
This boat will follow the trail of the Europeans to Eastern Indonesia and the Banda Islands.
Tony RobinsonNARRATOR
In the 17th century, two European nations entered the spice race with a vengeance, the Dutch and the English.
Tony RobinsonNARRATOR
Both nations set up private companies to search for spice.
Tony RobinsonNARRATOR
After a long and treacherous journey, they had finally found the land where gold grew on trees.
Tony RobinsonNARRATOR
It was the search for these very islands, and most importantly, the trees that grow on them, that inspired people to take these crazy journeys and to risk their lives and their fortunes.
Tony RobinsonNARRATOR
These are the Banda Islands, and that is Gunung
Kate HumbleHOST
Api.
Stephen ReaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
He's a foremost global thinker on how the beginnings of our contemporary crisis can be traced back to the onset of modernity with the emergence of a rapacious global imperial and capitalist system.
Stephen ReaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
His compulsively readable book, The Nutmeg's Curse, Parables for a Planet in Crisis, it's like reading a shadow text on Ireland, even though it is set in the Banda Islands in Indonesia.
Stephen ReaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Amitav has alerted us to the vast importance of ecocide, the deliberate destruction of ecosystems and environments.
Stephen ReaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
We in Ireland know something of that.
Stephen ReaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
The great poem Kilcash uses that destruction as metaphor for colonial and ecocidal damage.
Stephen ReaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
What shall we do without our timber? The last of our woods are felled.
Stephen ReaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
It's a great honor for me to welcome Amitav Ghosh from the Banda Islands to our green damp sponge here in Ireland.
Stephen ReaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Amitav.
Chris StewartHOST
He was found guilty, and his sentence was death by beheading.
Chris StewartHOST
But fortunately, it was commuted to banishment to the Banda Islands, where he lived until 1674, when the Stadthouder of the Netherlands, Willem III, allowed him to return home under the condition that he never again set foot in the East Indies.
Chris StewartHOST
When he arrived in Amsterdam, he published a book that purported to tell the true story of the loss of Formosa.
Chris StewartHOST
It found a ready readership.
Chris StewartHOST
He was found guilty, and his sentence was death by beheading.
Chris StewartHOST
But fortunately, it was commuted to banishment to the Banda Islands, where he lived until 1674, when the Stadtholder of the Netherlands, Willem III, allowed him to return home under the condition that he never again set foot in the East Indies.
Chris StewartHOST
When he arrived in Amsterdam, he published a book that purported to tell the true story of the loss of Formosa.
Chris StewartHOST
It found a ready readership.
Terry SimpsonHOST
But think about where that nutmeg came from.
Terry SimpsonHOST
A small group of islands in what is now Indonesia, the Banda Islands.
Terry SimpsonHOST
Those monks in Constantinople had probably never seen a nutmeg tree.
Terry SimpsonHOST
They may not have even known where or how nutmeg grew, but somehow it had traveled thousands of miles, passing through merchants, port ships, and markets, and eventually ended up in a monastery kitchen.
Terry SimpsonHOST
And what did it want? Profit.
Terry SimpsonHOST
And some of the most profitable products were spices, peppers, cloves, mace, and nutmeg.
Terry SimpsonHOST
Now, nutmeg comes from a native tree to the Banda Islands, and here's something interesting about that tree.
Terry SimpsonHOST
Nutmeg is the seed.
Amitav GhoshGUEST
That was the kind of value that they had.
Amitav GhoshGUEST
So the Portuguese, after they entered the Indian Ocean, went straight to Ternate, Tidore, and then to the Banda Islands, which they reached in 1511.
Amitav GhoshGUEST
But they were more or less content to trade because, you know, the Portuguese just didn't have enough people to try and grab the whole place.
Amitav GhoshGUEST
But in 1600, the Dutch appeared.
Amitav GhoshGUEST
And the Dutch were, you know, well, they had the power of early capitalism behind them.
Amitav GhoshGUEST
And they were, you know, very determined people.
Amitav GhoshGUEST
So in 1600, when, you know, the Banda Islands, they have this wonderful volcano called Gunungapi, which means fire mountain.
Amitav GhoshGUEST
And it's said that when Gunungapi saw the Dutch approaching, it erupted.
Anna Sulan MasingGUEST
Like, what happened in the colonies affected, you know, the working class of Britain.
Poppy TookerHOST
I had absolutely no idea until I read your book about how pepper from India went through Sumatra to China, and then all of a sudden, the Banda Islands in the Indonesian archipelago get involved, and with nutmeg, mace, and cloves.
Poppy TookerHOST
I mean, this is very complicated human history-
Anna Sulan MasingGUEST
Yeah