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- [00:01]
A
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:29]
B
Hello and welcome to Empire with Anita
- [00:33]
A
Anand and me, William Durrymple. And today's episode, the second in our amazing story of the voc, the forgotten East India Company that we always omit from stories when we talk about the English East India Company is I think one of the most extraordinary and little known stories in the history of Empire. At least little known in English speaking world. It's about the death rivalry between the English and the Dutch and the two East India companies, these two corporations that were empires, these incredibly rich precursors to the great and incredibly powerful corporations of our day. And the story revolves around a spice so valuable that they were willing to torture and kill for it. And the story culminates in a 17th century deal with that changed the fortune of Manhattan forever.
- [01:30]
B
When we say valuable, I mean just. I just want to give you an idea of how valuable. Okay. And honestly, this doesn't speak well of the kind of reading that I've been doing, but weight for weight, it's interesting. In the 1600s, nutmeg was more valuable than cocaine is today. Let that sit with you for a second. I did the sums, that's all I did.
- [01:51]
A
Did you, did you experiment?
- [01:52]
B
No, I just thought I'd get there very, very quickly. I did the sums to guide us through this extraordinary story. We've got exactly the right man for the job. You know, he's one of the finest narrative historians working in Britain today. Giles Milton is the man and his book, Nathaniel's Nutmeg is an absolute rip roaring read, which can I tell you, he refers to as Nat's Nuts when he's not working, which made me laugh so much. Nat's Nuts. Nathaniel's Nutmeg, a fine tome currently being developed for television.
- [02:25]
C
It is indeed. Yeah, dear. Russell Crowe has got the rights and is doing something with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm not quite sure where we're at with it, but I'm told it's, it's rolling along. So coming to your screens in the next couple of years, hopefully.
- [02:40]
B
What a tale. First of all, I mean, William, do you, do you want to sort of remind us about the monopolies that existed at the time? Because we need a little bit of context.
- [02:49]
A
So for those of you that missed the last episode with the wonderful Harold Van Der Linde, my traveling companion in Sumatra. Last week, we paddled up the rivers of Sumatra together and ended up with Herold eating kneecap, which is something that I have to say, I avoided. I opted for noodles instead.
- [03:08]
B
Giles, I wasn't there for this recording and I'm quite glad because I think it crossed a gamut of.
- [03:14]
C
Have you never eaten kneecap?
- [03:16]
B
No, I haven't. Anyway, on you go. Yeah, so. Go on, Willy.
- [03:20]
A
So the story we told, or rather the story Harold amazingly educated us about, was the story of how the Dutch did the first stock market, invented the ipo, also invented how to fiddle it, and did the first stock market short, invented financial regulations. All of which meant that the Dutch East India Company had far more. I think the word is capitalization, had far more cash in its coffers than the English East India Company and grew at an incredible rate far faster than its English competitor. And we ended the episode with the English and the Dutch in competition in Batavia and Jakarta, with the two sides slightly facing off, which is where Giles story will begin today.
- [04:10]
B
Yeah. And it revolves around this tiny dried sea that you might have seen in your kitchens. I mean, if you've ever made a bechamel sauce or mulled wine or pumpkin pie, or in India, very much use masala chai. I mean, a staple of everyday nutmeg is your go to spice.
- [04:26]
A
Of course, masala chai's got nutmeg in it.
- [04:28]
B
Masala chai's got nutmeg. If it's a good masala chai, it will have cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon. You know, it was attributed, or it was. It was credited with so many magical powers, Giles. I mean, I was looking up cure for flatulence, cure for dysentery, a hallucinogen, blood poisoning. I mean, was there anything they thought it didn't do?
- [04:50]
C
It did it all. It did. It all cured the bloody flocks, as they said, the dysentery that they were all getting. But I think, really, yeah, as you say, aphrodisiac. I mean, when you're trying to sell something for vast prices, you, you know, add all these properties, properties onto it, and I suppose nutmeg in the sort of 1600s was a cross between Viagra and cocaine, you know, which you mentioned earlier. And this made it extraordinary valuable, but particularly that physicians claimed it could cure the plague, the pestiferous pestilence, as it was called, which, of course, you know, cut a sway through the population of London at the time. And so they claimed that if you had a bit of nutmeg, stuffed it into your. These. These bizarre nasal caps that they wore. They used to breathe through this sort of concoction of spices, of which nutmeg was the key ingredient.
- [05:39]
A
When you go to Venice and you see those sort of beaks that they sell for Venetian outfits, that. That I think was also an anti plague sort of nutmeg holder, was it?
- [05:50]
C
Yeah, you're absolutely right. Those beaks were filled with spices and it was claimed that if you breathe through those spices, you wouldn't get the plague. Now, obviously this was complete nonsense, but everyone believed it at the time and that was the important bit, because it meant that everyone wanted these spices, which meant that the prices remained extraordinarily high
- [06:09]
B
and they had celebrity believers as well. I mean, Peeps is one of those people who swore by the stuff. He said, you know, this is the only thing that saved me while others have died around me.
- [06:17]
C
Yeah. I mean, there's a wonderful account in my book, actually. Pepys going down to the docks on a late one night and sort of doing this backhanded deal in the darkness where he shoves a few gold coins into the hands of some sea dog and in exchange he's given a small sackload of nutmeg. So, yeah, this was, you know, almost black market industry was going on in London at the time. Such was the value of this spice.
- [06:42]
A
I love the idea of Pepys being the sort of David Beckham influencer of the day.
- [06:48]
B
So shall we talk about where you got these things? Because for something that was so sought after that everybody wanted to get their hands on, it was bloody difficult to get your hands on. Where did it grow? Exactly?
- [06:58]
C
And this is where the story really revolves around this, because nutmeg in the 1600s only grew on six islands in the world. And these islands, known as the Banda Islands or the Banda Archipelago, are impossibly remote. They are literally in the middle of nowhere to sort of paint a picture. They're 12, 1200 miles east of Java. If people can place that on a map, they're 600 miles west of Australia.
- [07:25]
A
They're kind of nearer to Papua New guinea than anywhere else, aren't they?
- [07:28]
C
Yeah, that's the nearest place, Papua New Guinea. But even today, they're extremely hard to get to. But in the 1600s, you know, when you're sailing in a wooden ship halfway across the world, they were not only difficult to get to, but extremely dangerous to get to, because you're contending not only with the elements, with the storms, with monsoons, with reefs, with sunken Reefs. But you're also contending with the Portuguese, the Spanish and of course the Dutch, none of whom want you to find these islands and kind of break the monopoly that they're trying to carve out on this space.
- [08:02]
B
I mean, difficult to find the islands, but also they're a bucket to grow. Do you want to know some? Would you like an nutmeg tree? Fact they take about six to seven to nine years to fruit. So, you know, it's not the kind of kidnap crop that you could, if you are a colonial, as we've discussed with tea and other things that you could sort of sneak off and take a cutting and start your own industry. These things. Things have to be. These trees, Giles, have to be established, they have to be mature.
- [08:25]
C
They do. And they're very, very fussy trees. So they require a particular type of volcanic soil, they require a particular microclimate, which is why they were confined to these islands. And it was extremely difficult actually to try and transplant these. These plants just to paint a little picture of the tree because most people won't have seen one. They're very, very beautiful. They look rather like a lemon tree and in fact they're not make fruit is this beautiful lemony golden fruit that hangs off the tree and it's inside that fruit you break open the flesh and inside you have this withered little nut which is the nutmeg, which is entirely surrounded by a very beautiful bright red, lacy sort of thing, which is mace, which is very similar in taste and flavour.
- [09:11]
A
In fact, mace and nutmeg come from the same fruit.
- [09:14]
C
They. They come from exactly the same fruit. Yeah. The nut is covered in this stuff. Yeah. In the mace.
- [09:19]
B
And Indian cooking also uses mace a great deal. I don't know any other cooking that does. We have little pots of it.
- [09:25]
A
Can you, can you eat it or not?
- [09:27]
C
Nutmeg obviously used in cooking. Mace is used in cooking as well. Yeah. And of course the, the flesh of the fruit in the Banda Islands is made into j, sort of jams and marmalades and chutneys and things like that. So every bit of the fruit can be used. And it should be said that these six islands in the Banda Islands, they are entirely, or they were entirely covered in forests of groves of nutmeg trees. And the smell, the scent of these trees is quite extraordinary. So when you're on a boat approaching these islands, hanging in the air is this almost kind of extraordinary perfume that that pungent smell of nutmeg hangs in the air. So they're magical places. But as we will hear they are, they were also extremely dangerous places.
- [10:14]
B
Right. So I mean, we should talk about, we've talked a little bit about the cocaine value. If we measure everything in cocaine value, which we don't on this podcast, I know, making us sound a lot cooler than we are.
- [10:22]
A
You sound like your life.
- [10:25]
B
Much more peppy than I actually deserve to be. But we're talking about an enormous markup of roughly sort of 60,000%. Because Giles, when you, when you, when you buy them from the islanders, I guess how much were people spending on it and how much were they selling, selling it in, in the streets of London?
- [10:42]
C
So yeah, it was about less than one English penny would get you ten pounds of nutmeg. So a kind of sack full of nutmeg that would sell for something like two pounds and ten shillings. When you brought it, when you brought it back on the three year voyage back to England. The markup is absolutely staggering, whopping. I mean, what, what bond a corporation wouldn't want a markup of 60, 000%? This is why, you know, to bring back even a small amount would set you up for life. You're going to be extremely rich.
- [11:12]
A
And we should perhaps explain, I mean, I'm sure people know this, but for anyone that doesn't, why there is this massive markup is that traditionally the nutmeg would be shunted from the Banda Islands to somewhere like Srivijaya, modern Sumatra. From there, Indian sailors would take it to somewhere like Kerala, whereupon Arab sailors would take it up the Red Sea to Cairo. And then the Venetians would take it from Cairo to Venice. Venice was the great center of the spice trade in Italy. And then Northern Europeans, the English or the Dutch would buy it from Venice. And at each stage there'd be a 200% markup. So it went through five different hands originally before it got to northern Europe where it was useful for stopping as well as Viagra and so on, and plagues and all these other uses, particularly useful for curing meats in winter at a time when you didn't have refrigeration.
- [12:08]
B
First of all, I don't think it helped with plague at all. It was just kind of like a belief that if you get plague, go see a doctor. Can I just say it's a public health announcement.
- [12:16]
C
I have to say it didn't really preserve meat either. In fact, it didn't do very much. In fact, it was basically good for mulled wine and bechamel sauce, you know, but, but they didn't realize that at the Time. And so. But, but, but, Willie, you've made a very important point, because the whole point of these voyages is if you could sail to the Banda Islands and then make it back home alive again, you've cut out five middlemen, all of whom double or treble the price of the thing on the way. So you stand to make a huge amount of money. This is all about money, finance and business. But most of all, it's about a monopoly, because if you control those six Banda islands, you control the global supply of nutmeg. And that makes you a big cheese in this story.
- [13:00]
A
Now, in the last episode, we told the story of how the Dutch managed to short the Portuguese, who were already in this area, and take over the spice trade and make an enormous sum of money on the way. But paint us a picture of the early 1600s with this cold war developing between these two nations that had been, in a sense, allies up to this point. They're both Protestant nations. They're both fencing off against the Catholics, whether it's the Spanish or the Portuguese. But next to each other, with rival companies with rival warehouses on either side of a river in Batavia, things begin to get nasty.
- [13:47]
C
Yes. So the. Both the English and the Dutch, they set up what are known as factories, but are not really factories at all. They're like fortified warehouses, which are their headquarters. And they're in Bantam at the time, which is a port just down the coast from Jakarta. And as you say, rivalries are intense there. They're both after the same thing. And from the very word go, I think the Dutch are far more powerful. They have more ships, they have far more capital behind them, many more men, and they're much more aggressive in pursuit of the spices that are so yearned for in Europe. And so from this base, Bantam in Java, they begin to set sail east, further east to. To the Moluccas, or what are known as the Spice Islands. Or in the 1600s, they were simply known as the spiceries. And some of these islands were known for cinnamon and cloves. That's Tanati and Tidore. Others are known exclusively for nutmeg, and that's the Banda Islands. And the Dutch really have a big head start on the English. They get to the Banda Islands first of all, and the first thing they do is build forts on the islands, forts which I have to say, still exist to this day. These crumbling, vast fortifications. There are still. You find brass cannon lying in the sand in these islands.
- [15:07]
A
You know, you make it sound a very alluring spot.
- [15:10]
C
It's absolutely wonderful. And the point, the kind of key point of the Banda Islands is that as I said, there are six islands and five of them are all quite close together. And the Dutch realize if they built strategically placed forts, they could control those five islands and therefore have a virtual monopoly on the nutmeg trade. But one island, the Six island in the Banda Islands Run island was about 10 miles from the main group. And this was the island that the Dutch did not control. And this island was a real thorn for them because it meant that without them controlling it, if the English controlled it, they would be able to break this monopoly on the nutmeg trade that the Dutch were so desperate to carve out for themselves.
- [15:53]
B
Yeah, I mean, describing it as a cold war. The Iceman, if you like, the iceman from the Dutch side. I know you talked about him in the last episode, Willy, but Jan Petersen Kern.
- [16:04]
C
Jan Kern was the Governor General of the entirety of the Dutch East Indies,
- [16:09]
B
to use the parlance that we do sometimes use on this podcast, was an asshole. I mean he's sort of like a Calvinist, so deeply religious and couches everything he says in sort of, you know, God has given unto us the Dutch, this bounty.
- [16:23]
A
It reminds me of certain people today who are making similar claims.
- [16:27]
B
Couldn't possibly comment but you know, look, so he made a big show of like, you know, don't drink, don't womenize, don't swear. But you know, this is the same man who had a 12 year old girl flogged to death in Batavia and he's a monster. What more do we need to know about this man? Just remind us, Giles, about you know, the personality of the guy who basically did for the Dutch.
- [16:51]
C
Yeah, well, I mean a portrait exists of him and he looks absolutely terrifying. He's got these, these piercing eyes that are staring directly at you. And unlike the English who wanted to try and deal with the native populations of these islands, Jan Kern decided it would be far easier just to massacre the lot. Just kill a lot of them and take control of the islands. And essentially this is what he tried to do with the Banda Islands. And we'll come on to the massacre because this is a knot of the. A pleasant story but, but compare it to the English. I don't know if I'm getting ahead of myself here, but when, when the English come to Run island, what they, they do, they sign a treaty with the islanders and they bring Run island under the, under the control of the English and the, the treaty document still exists. And I'll just Read you it says, and whereas King James, by the grace of God, he's king of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, he is now, by the mercy of God, king of Run. And as one of the sea dogs crypt. I really shouldn't say this will Willie while you're, while you're here. But as one sea dog quipped, Run island was going to prove far more profitable than Scotland ever had done.
- [18:05]
B
Probably true, it is factually correct. But you've got, you've got now sort of this, this island with the flag of St. George fluttering by, by choice of the, of the island man again, who is representative of the, the British interests. Nathaniel Courthope. Tell us about him.
- [18:23]
C
So Nathaniel Courthobe, who's to play an absolutely sort of central role to the whole story of what happened in the Banda Islands. He was an employee of the East India Company. Not much is known about him, his early life, although subsequent to writing the book I found that his house still exists in Cranbrook in Kent. A beautiful half timbered, you know, Elizabethan mansion. Anyway, he set sail on one of the East India Company voyages which was an extraordinary adventure. They took, you know, several years to get to the Spice Islands. Worth reminding listeners of the, the hazards they face. Storms, the doldrums in the, in the Atlantic where the winds calmed and there was no, the ships couldn't move at all.
- [19:03]
A
This is the original word that gives us doldrums.
- [19:07]
C
Exactly, yes. Where, where there was no wind and your ship just, just hung around in the heat as you used up your precious foodstuffs on board and your water
- [19:16]
A
and, and probably got scurvy, which is another perennial problem. Sailing out over the oceans to run.
- [19:23]
C
Scurvy was a perennial problem, a hideous disease caused of course by lack of citrus fruit, lack of vitamin C. Your teeth fell out, your skin got purple, blotches you took, you got incredibly weak and then you died. The other thing was amoebia dysentery or as I said, the bloody flux I mentioned earlier. This was caused often by contaminated water. There's accounts of them drinking water on the ships. They'd have to clench their teeth to sieve out all the flora and fauna that was sprouting in the water barrels. You know, quite disgusting. And then of course there were storms, there was attacks by the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch and in the early voyages only one in three ships made it home again and about 80% of the men on board would die. So you're taking a massive risk when you travel on one of these voyages and it gives some idea of the value of the spices and the money they hoped to make, you know, when they got home again, that they were prepared to take the risk.
- [20:21]
B
But I mean, he's a man who sort of keeps his surviving crews, you know, spirits up by sort of giving them sort of regular doses of arak and reading from the Bible regularly. I mean, it's sort of quite an English thing to do, isn't it? Cheers and cheers.
- [20:38]
C
Keeping the men entertained and keeping boredom at bay was a very difficult thing to do. And one of the. In fact, the captain of the ship on which Nathaniel Courthope sailed, William Keeling, he's one of my favorite characters in this entire story, actually, because he performed Hamlet. He got all his men dressed up in. In costumes and everything and performed Hamlet on the mangrove shores of West Africa as a way where they were caught in the doldrums. Yeah. And he thought, well, this will keep them entertained. So this was. Yeah, they had to keep the men entertained. They have to keep boredom at bay. And so Nathaniel Court top when he arrives on Run island, he's faced with a problem here. Run island, it should be pointed out, is a very, very small island. It's a couple of miles wide, a mile or so long. And they're going to be stuck on this island for a very long time. So arrow, this fiery alcohol is going to play a very important role in their lives as they try struggle to survive on this island.
- [21:37]
A
And he arrives in Run in 1616 with two ships and 38 men. And almost immediately the Dutch turn up on the horizon.
- [21:48]
C
Yes. So the Dutch, as I said, they control the other five islands in the Banda group, leaving Run as this isolated sort of outpost, if you like. The Dutch have. Have dozens of ships in the Banda Islands at time. They have thousands of soldiers. And so this is a classic sort of David versus Goliath struggle that's going to take place. But Nathaniel Courtaub on Run island has one thing in his favor, and that is that Run island, most of Run island, is surrounded by extremely high, precipitous cliffs that are almost impossible to scale. And there's only one section of the island where it will be possible for the. For the Dutch to land. And you know, Nathaniel knows enough about cannon and warfare to know where to strategically place the cannon from his two ships to defend the island. The Dutch then instigate a complete blockade on Run Island. They try on repeated occasions to try and take the island by force. But Nathaniel's cannon see them off, you know, a few shots over into the sea and the ships have to retreat. And so the siege of Run will begin. And it's going to last for a very long time indeed. And it's really a question of who can hold out longer. Will it be Nathaniel and his men on the island or will the Dutch be able to take this place by force?
- [23:05]
B
I mean, when you say a very long time, we're talking 1,540 days. I mean, that's just unthinkable. We're going to go to a break soon. But, you know, with conditions getting worse and worse for Courtope and his men, there is a glimmer of hope at one point, isn't there, Giles, that, you know, the siege that the Dutch have so successfully laid around rhen might be broken with some supplies. What's on this sort of mercy mission that could have turned everything around for them?
- [23:35]
C
Yes, I mean, Nathaniel and his men have been on the island for many, many months. By now they are extremely hungry. There's no food on the island apart from nutmeg. And nutmeg jam wears a little bit thin after a while while, and so they need supplies from outside. There's also very little fresh water on. On Run Island. It's collected in the monsoon. There's no natural water source on the island. It's too small for that. And so they're looking out at the horizon every day, desperately hoping that a ship, a relief vessel is going to come. And then suddenly they see on the horizon, sails. And this is not just a ship, but it is an English ship. It's a Solomon. And it is full of supplies that have been sent from Bantam in Java, and it's coming to relieve them. And the men standing on the cliffs, they all give out a huge cheer. They've not been forgotten. They are going to be relieved. They've got support coming, they've got food coming. And this for them is the best possible news.
- [24:32]
B
Not just food. 600 jars of arak, we're told.
- [24:36]
C
I mean, that's going to help them along for the next few months.
- [24:38]
B
You'd be kind of beside yourself, but if you're getting excited for the. For the poor men looking at those sails across the horizon. Join us after the break to see whether this ends up in an enormous party on the little island of Run.
- [24:52]
A
It's not looking. Not looking promising by the sound of it or not.
- [25:06]
B
Welcome back. So just before the break, we were talking about, you know, this relief voyage of the Solomon that might have made all the difference to the. The English sailors who had made at least 38 men with courthope waiting for something with nothing to drink, nothing to eat, and this would have been everything that they needed. Giles, what happens? Does it make it to the shore?
- [25:25]
C
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I'm afraid it's not going to end very well for the men on the Solomon. The as they come towards Run and the men are watching expectantly, they turn to. Their turn to the east and they see a Dutch fleet coming towards the Solomon. And unfortunately the Solomon is attacked by the Dutch. It's overwhelmed and literally under the cliffs of Run, it's captured by the Dutch and the men on board and all the supplies and the arrack that they were so desperate for.
- [25:53]
A
No arrack makes it ashore. Not even a single jar.
- [25:56]
C
Not even a single jar. It's all carted off to the other five Banda islands by the Dutch. And actually rather worse than this is, the crew of the Solomon are taken prisoner by the Dutch and the Dutch show absolutely no mercy. And they're all imprisoned on what became known as Fort Revenge, which was one of the forts that I mentioned earlier that could still be seen in the Banda Islands. And I don't know how sensitive the ears are of your listeners, but I don't know if I can just read a very, very short thing of one of the prisoners who was housed in the dungeons of this fort. And there was a grille over. Over the top of the. Of the dungeon. And this is what he said, Ben Bartholomew Churchman, he said they. The Dutch, he said they pissed and shat on our heads. And in this manner we lay until such time as we were broken out from top to toe like lepers, having nothing to eat but dirty rice and stinking rainwater. And so. So that the Dutch treated their prisoners and the. The native population with absolute contempt and brutality. And that was to be the story that unfolded for the next few years in the van.
- [27:07]
A
Quickly, Giles, a question. We've very much sort of demonized the Dutch and we've got the kind of brave little English in their dungeon, but how did the English behave to the actual native inhabitants whose island they had taken for their king?
- [27:21]
C
So when I was researching the book in the India Office archives, I came across the diary of a factor one of the merchant adventurers based in Bantam by a man called Edmund Scott. And the fact the English factory had come under attack at one point, the native inhabitants had tried to burn it down, in fact. And Edmund Scott captured one of these guys and in his diary, over the course of about five or six pages he describes in gruesome detail how he tortured this man to death. First of all, he ripped out his fingernails, then he burnt him, then he crushed his bones, then he pulled out his bones, then they blew off bits of his body with dust, dynamite. The poor man was still alive. They tied him to a stake, got the horrendous white ants and put them into his wounds. So this, of course, was an age of great brutality. Everyone was brutal. And when I read that, the fact that he recorded it so matter of factly in his diary truly shocked me. And when one realizes that the Dutch were even more brutal than the, the English, no one's, no one comes out well out of this period of history. It was remarkably brutal.
- [28:31]
B
I mean, one person, though, that you can admire at least for their tenacity, is Nathaniel Courthope, who's having to hold the line and have his men hold the line with, you know, watching men taken from the Solomon, watching any hope of supply. And he does manage to do this. He's enough of a threat that there is this plan, this ambush plan set up by the Dutch in October 1620 to bump him off. So tell us how that works.
- [28:58]
C
They get intelligence at one point that Nathaniel Courtope is intending to leave Run island and go to one of the other Banda islands, where he hears there's a lot of unrest amongst the native population. And he thinks this could herald the beginnings of a general uprising against the Dutch. So it's a sort of vitally important moment for him. And so he takes the risk, really the very great risk. In October 1620, he's been on the island for like four years to try and cross the channel of water to the next island and find out what's taking taking place. This is to prove an absolutely fatal mistake. He sets off at night with his boy, William, as he was called.
- [29:37]
A
His boy William is his son or his is sort of a cabin boy
- [29:41]
C
or it's a sort of cabin boy come slave servant. Who, who's helping him? Man servant really, or boy servant.
- [29:49]
A
Williams always have the rough end of things on Empire. It's a very tragic story.
- [29:54]
C
So, so the two of them, the two of them get into their rowing boat, they're rowing out across the open water and the Dutch have laid an ambush. It's about 2, 2 o' clock or 3 o' clock in the morning where they see dimly glowing in the night, they see Nathaniel Courtope's lantern and they wait until they're almost upon him and then they open fire. Courtope immediately fires back. There's A running gun battle to takes place on the water. But then Courtope's gun jams and in disgust he throws it into the water and he's caught defenseless. And of course, what do the Dutch do? They, he's a sitting duck. They gun him down. And he was last seen falling into the water. Nathaniel Court Hope is never seen again. His corpse is never found. And we, we. Well, he died clearly, but we don't know what happened to his body.
- [30:43]
B
I mean you've got, you've got to do this for cinema. Can you just tell this? Look. Okay, so there he is, he's there slumped. Taking another bullet. Taking another bullet. And then he sinks beneath the water.
- [30:53]
A
Is Russell gonna be playing the role of Nathaniel in this?
- [30:56]
B
Well, I was just thinking it's kind of. Do you know what, it's a Terminator moment, isn't it? Where the man's hand is the last thing seen, never vanishes forever.
- [31:04]
A
Arnie could play the Dutch captain and we'll have Russell as the, as Nat with his nuts.
- [31:11]
B
So with Courtope, God, you know, the siege, I guess, you know, just collapses because you know, who's, you know, who's there to stop him. What happens?
- [31:21]
C
Well, you know, every siege survives on the, or fails on the leadership of the person in charge. And Nathaniel was a brilliant leader of men. He kept his men going for, you know, as you say, 1,500 and whatever it was days on the island.
- [31:33]
B
40, 540.
- [31:35]
C
Yes, exactly. And once he was no longer there, the all resistance collapsed. The men just decide to throw in the towel. They can't, they can't face holding on any longer. Their araks run out, there's no food. They realize that, you know, they, they've got no alternative but to throw in the towel. And that's what they do. It's a desperately tragic situation, Nathaniel, really, I think inspired by patriotism. I mean in the letters that have survived, he talks about, he's doing this for England. You know, extraordinary. Very few people these days, I think would give lay down their lives for the flag of St. George.
- [32:10]
A
For Keir Starmer.
- [32:13]
C
Exactly. But that's precisely what he did. Anyway, the men throw the towel and you know, within a few days the Dutch have taken over Run island and they have got what they always wanted, which is the six Bander Islands under their firm control. They have secured by doing this a monopoly over the global supply of nuts make.
- [32:36]
A
So we saw that the Brits were pretty ghastly to the Bandinese. But you already flagged that the Dutch are worse. What happens now that the Dutch have got complete control of?
- [32:46]
C
Run. So we mentioned Jan Kern, the monstrous Governor General of the Dutch East India Company. He decides that there's to be no dealings with the, with the head men of the Banda Islands. There's to be no dealings with the local population. They are simply to be exterminated. And thus begins one of the most, most brutal episodes in the history of the Banda Islands where Jan Kern and his, and his, his Dutch troops simply come ashore, they arrest all of the key headmen of these islands and using Japanese mercenaries, very interestingly, they have a band of Japanese executioners who they used to do the dirtiest of their dirty work who simply round up the headmen and have them all decapitated.
- [33:28]
A
How have they, they come into the picture? Where have they got their samurai from?
- [33:33]
B
Swords for hire. They sell swords. I mean, is that they're just floating around, are they?
- [33:36]
C
No, no. It's worth recalling of course, by this point, you know, the Dutch have got to Japan, the Dutch and the English have got to Japan and the Portuguese and, and the Portuguese long before the Dutch and English in fact. Yeah, they've got to Japan. They've. They've formed trading bases there as well. The Dutch rather more successfully than the, than the English at home had to be said. But of course Japanese are also traveling over this area of the East Indies and the Dutch bring them under their, onto their payroll if you like and use them as hired mercenaries and executioners. And so they play a key role in the, this genocide that takes place in the Banda Islands. They're the ones that execute all the headmen of the island. The rest are either executed, they're sold into slavery, they're shipped off to Jakarta, Bantam and Jakarta in Java.
- [34:27]
A
Some end up in South Africa, don't they? I've got a memory of. I've met somebody who said that they were. Their family were originally from the Banda Islands and that they were part of the shipment that got sent off to the Cape.
- [34:40]
C
Indeed, they're shipped off all over the place. But what's kind of remarkable is the population of the Banda Islands in this period, the sort of 1620s, early 1620s was about 15,000 native Bandinese. By the time Yankee has finished his genocide, there are fewer than a thousand left on the Banda Islands. It's a extraordinarily sweeping genocide that really wipes out the native population.
- [35:08]
B
It's also become sort of a battle plan. It becomes a plan that is repeated again and again. And you, you can see you know, always when you see a people being wiped out, you see a dehumanization of them. So Kern, what he says about the Bandenese is they're indolent people of whom little good can be expected. And now he has a modus operandi. You know, we can get rid of them. We can import slave labor from Java, from China. They can do the work. And that is probably the thinking that leads to one of the worst massacres of Amboyna in 1623. So this is another island. Giles, tell us about Amboyna.
- [35:45]
A
Yeah, for a cheery chap, Giles, you choose your genocide. We've had you first on with Smyrna when the whole population of Smyrna got wiped out. Now we're wiping out various other. We finished with the Banda Islands. Take us to Amboyna.
- [35:57]
B
But Amboyna also. It's not a nutmeg island either, is it?
- [36:00]
C
No. Amboina. A little way to the north of the Banda Islands was another headquarters of the Dutch East India Company in this part of the world. There were a very small number of English traders on the island at the time. When I say small, I mean 10 precisely. And the Dutch want to get rid of them. They see them, for some reason, they see them as a threat. And they capture one of the English allies, or there were some Japanese who happened to be allied with the English on Amboyna.
- [36:31]
A
Japanese are all over the place at this point.
- [36:33]
C
The Japanese are all over the place and under torture, one of the Japanese men says, yes, indeed, the English are going to try and take control of this Dutch fort, which frankly, is utterly absurd. The Dutch have got hundreds of troops in this fort on Amboyna. They've got tons and tons of weaponry. The English are merchants there. They've got about six guns. You know, they couldn't. In their wildest dreams, they couldn't hope to take control of this place, and nor would they want to. However, Jan Kern wants to. The English wiped out and thus beguns what became known as the Massacre of
- [37:08]
A
Amboyna and became very famous at the time. I mean, we've forgotten it today, but it was a kind of. A kind of horror story in London and was long remembered this wasn't it?
- [37:19]
C
It was long remembered partly because of the horrific treatment that was meted out during torture to the English. And one of the notable tortures that the Dutch. Dutch used was what essentially is waterboarding. They would tie somebody to a chair, they would tie a waxed canvas bag up over their head, and they would. They would proceed to fill this bag with water until it reached your mouth and nostrils. And the only way to stop yourself from, from drowning was to drink the water. And I'm talking gallons and gallons and gallons of water until these men would become. Their bodies would become totally swollen, completely grotesque.
- [37:58]
A
That was originally a Portuguese torture. I believe it was used by the Inquisition first of all in Goa.
- [38:04]
B
So I mean what, what we can surmise that we have always been really shitty to each other. I mean throughout history. This is, this is awful. They also did fire torture. Is that, you know. So describe what fire torture is because we have waterboarding, but we don't have the, the equivalent in fire, do we?
- [38:17]
C
Just when you get out of the water, they light candles underneath your arms and legs and thighs and what have you and burn the fat and the muscle in your body. Quite revolting. Now I have to say that the point of this, this is not just gratuitous to talk about this violence. The point of it is that this caused an absolute outrage when it reached England. And in fact John Dryden, who obviously famous poet. One of his more famous pieces was a play called the Massacre of Amboyna which really struck a chord with the English public at the time. And this gave rise to huge anti Dutch sentiment in England.
- [38:55]
B
Despite the Dryden play, despite the outrage, the English government ends up Giles, doing precisely nothing about it.
- [39:02]
C
Well, the question is what can they actually do? Because the. The Dutch now have complete control of the Banda Islands. Short of sending an absolutely enormous armada out to the, to the Spiceries, to the Spice Islands, the English can't really get back back their beloved run island. And as. As Willy will be able to tell the next chapter of the story, all attentions now begin to turn towards India. India becomes the great goal of the East India Company by default.
- [39:31]
A
Only no one, no one particularly wants India at this point. And we always talk about the East India Company today, but it's originally the company of London merchants trading with the East Indies, which means not India but Indonesia in our modern terms. India simply isn't in the, in the kind of, you know, the game plan at all for the East India Company until they get thrown out by the. By the Dutch. And this is, it turns out in the long and we'll go come back to this in future episodes. This is the thing that actually makes the East India Company's fortune because from this point spices begin to decline in value because they're not going through five hands and anymore. And the process by which you can buy nutmeg for five Quid in Sainsbury's today or Asda is already beginning to take place. But the English In India, 1640, this sort of period is when the Taj Mahal is coming up. The Moguls are at their peak. A million looms are at work in Bengal and the English as their consolation prize without anything better to do because they've been thrown out from what they actually want, end up completely by chance with the richest possible colony and trading partner imaginable.
- [40:50]
B
This situation where the Dutch dominate a trade from, from Banda and the islands around it and nutmeg is flowing into Amsterdam in huge quantities. It's making you know, the Dutch East India Company enormously wealthy. So you've got this situation where you know, the Dutch just maintain this, this, this, this hold on this very lucrative trade. Years passed. Amsterdam gets richer and richer. The, you know, the East India Company, the Dutch East India Company, the richest corporation on earth. Everybody's desperate to get their hands on the nutmeg. And then you have sort of 1664 A swapsies of sorts. Now this is really very, very tantalizing. Just, just tell us a little bit about first of all. Well, New Amsterdam because that's what we want to know about. And that sort of muscle flex of having a New Amsterdam somewhere where a lot of people might actually have been
- [41:47]
C
throughout this whole period. There are endless Anglo Dutch wars going on. They're extremely complicated. There's wars, there's peace treaties, there's wars again. But of course, as Anita you mentioned, the Dutch have formed a colony, New Amsterdam, which is a city essentially Manhattan around there. And this is their toehold in North America. Now at one point, at one of the many, many peace treaties run is given, delivered back to the English under the terms of the treaty, but the Dutch refuse to give it up. And the English really are really fed up by now with the Dutch and they decide to teach them a lesson. James, Duke of York, the brother of Charles the King Charles, who incidentally we
- [42:30]
A
met before in, in the very dodgy action of setting up the Royal Africa Company which is the big slave trading operation which the royal family have a monopoly in.
- [42:40]
B
Well it's his, his initials burned into people's chests. D O Y, Duke of York.
- [42:44]
C
Yeah, that one, yes. So, so the Duke of York, fed up that the Dutch haven't handed back, run under the terms of the treaty and also still nursing the grievances or whipping up the grievances from the massacre of Amboyna, he sends ships across the Atlantic and seizes the Dutch held territory of New Amsterdam. He says, tis high time to put the Dutch out of a capacity of doing mischief again. And so he seizes this island and over the course of the coming months, there will be peace negotiations between the English and the Dutch.
- [43:23]
A
And he has to talk to. This is the important personality we need to introduce. Tell us, Giles, about Peg Leg Pete.
- [43:33]
C
Peter. Peter Stuyvesant. Yes. Who is the governor of New Amsterdam at the time. The Dutch cannot defend this swampy and rather worthless island on the. On the Atlantic Sea. Yeah.
- [43:46]
A
Who would want it? Who would want it?
- [43:48]
C
Who would want it? I mean, you know, they. They get skins and furs there, but it's not very profitable at all. But anyway, they come to negotiations at Breda, the town of Breda in Holland, and they discuss what they're going to do. And the ensuing Treaty of Breda decides the following, that in return for the Dutch being allowed to keep the island of Rh in the Banda Islands, the English will get to control and keep New Amsterdam, which they decide in honour of James, Duke of York, to name New York.
- [44:25]
B
And that's how it happened, ladies and gentlemen. I love stories like that.
- [44:28]
C
And Charles II says to his brother, tis a place of great importance, he says, we've got the better of it. And tis now called New York.
- [44:37]
A
King Charles talking to the Duke of York about New York. What could possibly go wrong?
- [44:45]
C
Exactly.
- [44:46]
B
Isn't it amazing, though? You know, sort of like if it's. I had the theme tune going through my head of New Amsterdam, I want to have no part of it, New Amsterdam. And then suddenly you've got the new iteration, New York. Nobody will be able to get enough of it. Okay, so the Treaty of Breda, the Dutch keep run, the English keep Manhattan. They've done this marvellous swap season. Everybody's happily ever after. Giles, is that what happens?
- [45:11]
C
But actually, everyone's saying to the English, what have you done? Why do we want this worthless piece of real estate, you know, on a swampy island on the Atlantic seaboard of North America? But actually, of course, of course, the British get the last laugh on this because for a number of factors, but not least, as Willie hinted at, the price of spices has decreased enormously. So nutmeg is not worth anything like it was before. And the English rather cleverly, have taken seedlings from the Banda Islands and they. They've transplanted them to India and also to the West Indies. Now, we mentioned right at the beginning that nutmeg is a very, very difficult crop, a tree to grow. But they've taken Seedlings encased in earth from the Banda Islands and managed to propagate them. And this is why in fact most of the nutmeg you find today rumored to be one of the key ingredients in Coca Cola, it now comes largely, largely from the, from the West Indies. Yeah.
- [46:08]
A
So Giles, when you wrote this book, this was a book that really made your career. Wasn't. Was a book which took off in a spectacular way and in America as well as in Britain it did.
- [46:19]
C
I mean, happily, it went mad globally. It was, it was a fantastic success at the time, one I wasn't expecting at all. I think my, even my publishers completely taken by surprise that this eccentric story about nutmeg should take off.
- [46:31]
A
We had the same agent at the time and I remember him, her saying, your books aren't doing that those days. But since then, 25 years later, and you've just had two years ago, the 25th anniversary edition of Gnats Nuts, which has got a brilliant, brilliant new introduction
- [46:49]
C
forward by somebody called William Dalrymple.
- [46:53]
A
In that time, a lot has changed in the world, but in particular we've seen the rise of these giant corporations that have, have annual profit margins the size of the GDP of entire continents. Do you see warnings from this period and parallels with that period today?
- [47:12]
C
Well, I think the reason why it remains relevant because on the one hand it's a rather quaint if rather violent story from the 1600s. But really underlying all this, this is a story of corporate power, it's a story of monopolies, it's a story of a corporation like Google with an army behind it enforcing its will. And it's also a story about who pays the price when these, these global corporations get involved in a place. And we see that in the Banda Islands, which ended in the, the massacre of some 90% of the population, the original population of the Banda Islands. So I think that yes, while this is a story from 400 years ago, it remains deeply and increasingly relevant in the world we live in today.
- [47:58]
B
It's such a pleasure always to have you on. I just feel like I want to share something more about you with our listenership because they may not know this about you, Giles, but as well as writing beautiful history, you're quite at the dab hand at the metalwork. And you know, this 25th anniversary of Nat's Nuts, Nathaniel's nutmeg, you created this extraordinary piece of art. Have you got it tanned?
- [48:22]
C
I have, yeah.
- [48:23]
B
Show it, show it.
- [48:24]
C
I think it's lovely. This is where it begins. Becomes show and tell. Yeah. So, so I. My passion apart from writing is Repousse metalwork, which is slightly eccentric. So I've done Nathaniel's Nutmeg. You know these books you get from the, from the 15 and 1600s, they're beautifully adorned with jewels and everything. So here we have Nathaniel's Nutmeg, Nathaniel Courttope in the middle here, all beaten out of metal nutmeg from the Banda Islands here set into the COVID beautiful Iolite crystal and on the reverse you have inspired by Elizabethan astrolabe. There we have it with the leather bound spine. So that was my little way of marking the 25th anniversary of this book.
- [48:59]
A
So if you can't get enough of art connected to Gnat's Nuts, because sadly, Giles's Repousse Metalwork edition is not for sale. If your appetite is still there, you can go to our bonus episode where we have the wonderful Andrew Graham Dixon, who's my favourite writer on art, full stop, absolute genius, talking about the Dutch Golden Age, particularly talking about Vermeer. He gave this lecture on Vermeer and his theory that ties together all these paintings that we know so well, like the Girl with the Pearl Earring and so on at Jaipur. And although it has really only tangential links to Empire, I was determined to get him on because he's just one of the great, great speakers. So join the Empire Club. You'll find the link in the description. And if you can't get enough of art connected to Nat's Nuts, we have a wonderful bonus episode on the Dutch Golden Age and how it changed the history of art for club members. So join up now. You'll find the link in the description.
- [50:04]
B
Yep, sort of a gilded art for a golden age. Listen, thank you so much for being with us again. That's it from us. So till the next time we meet, it's goodbye. Goodbye from me, Anita Anand.
- [50:16]
A
And goodbye from me, William Durand.
- [50:26]
C
Why did we really go to war with Iraq?
- [50:28]
D
And did Saddam Hussein really have weapons of mass destruction?
- [50:33]
A
I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist.
- [50:35]
D
And I'm David McCloskey, author and former CIA analyst. We are the hosts of the Rest is classified. Classified. And in our latest series, we are telling the true story of one of history's biggest intelligence failures, Iraq WMD.
- [50:49]
A
In 2003, the US and UK told the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But they were wrong.
- [50:58]
D
This wasn't a simple lie. It was something far more complicated, far more interesting and far more dangerous.
- [51:04]
A
Spies who believed their sources, politicians who wanted the public to believe in the threat and a dictator who couldn't prove he'd already destroyed the weapons.
- [51:15]
D
In this series, we go deep inside the CIA and MI6, go into the rooms where decisions were made, and look at the sources who fabricated the intelligence that took us to war.
- [51:27]
C
The Iraq war reshaped the Middle east
- [51:29]
A
and permanently weakened public trust in governments and intelligence. Intelligence agencies and its consequences are still playing out today.
- [51:36]
D
Plus, in a Declassified Club exclusive, we are joined by three people who were at the heart of the decision to go to war. Former head of MI6 Richard Dearlove, Tony Blair's former communications director Alistair Campbell, and former acting head of the CIA, Michael Morell.
- [51:52]
A
So get the full story by listening
- [51:54]
C
to the rest is classified and subscribing
- [51:57]
A
to the Declassified Club. Wherever you get your podcasts.