359. Spice Wars: The Birth of New York (Ep 2)

18:04But probably true.

18:05Anita:I mean, it is factually correct. But you've got now sort of this island with the flag of St George fluttering by choice of the islanders. The man, again, who is representative of the British interests, Nathaniel Courthobe. Tell us about him. So Nathaniel Courthobe, who's to play an absolutely sort of central role to the whole story of what happened in the Bander 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 Elizabethan mansion.

18:43Anyway, he set sail on one of the East India Company voyages, which was an extraordinary adventure. They took several years to get to the Spice Islands. Worth reminding listeners of the hazards they faced, storms, the doldrums in the Atlantic where the winds calmed. The ships couldn't move at all.

19:03William:This is the original word that gives us doldrums. Exactly, yes, where there was no wind and your ship just hung around in the heat as you used up your precious foodstuffs on board and your water. And probably got scurvy, which is another perennial problem sailing out over the oceans to run. 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 got incredibly weak and then you died. The other thing was amoebic dysentery or, as I said, the bloody flux I mentioned earlier. This was caused often by contaminated water.

19:44There's accounts of them drinking water on the ships. they'd have to clench their teeth to sieve out all the flora and fodder that was sprouting in the water barrels you know quite disgusting and then of course um 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 percent 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 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.

20:20Anita:But, I mean, he's a man who sort of keeps his surviving cruise, 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. Keeping the men entertained and keeping boredom at bay was a very difficult thing to do. In fact, the captain of the ship on which Nathaniel Courthope sailed, William Keeling, he's one of my favourite characters in this entire story, actually, because he performed Hamlet. He got all his men dressed up in costumes and everything and performed Hamlet on the mangrove shores of West Africa when they were caught in the doldrums.

21:07And he thought, well, this will keep them entertained. So they had to keep the men entertained. They have to keep boredom at bay. And so Nathaniel Courthorpe, 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 Arak, this fiery alcohol, is going to play a very important role in their lives as they struggle to survive on this island.

21:36William:And he arrives in Rennes in 1616 with two ships and 38 men. And almost immediately, the Dutch turn up on the horizon. Yes. So the Dutch, as I said, they control the other five islands in the Bander group, leaving Rennes as this isolated sort of outpost, if you like. The Dutch have dozens of ships in the Bander 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 Courthope on Run Island has one thing in his favour. And that is that Run Island, most of Run Island is surrounded by extremely high precipitous cliffs that are almost impossible to scale.

22:21And there's only one section of the island where it will be possible 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.

22:59Will it be Nathaniel and his men on the island or will the Dutch be able to take this place by force?

23:05Anita: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 Courtois and his men, There is a glimmer of hope at one point, isn't there, Giles, that the siege that the Dutch have so successfully laid around Rhone might be broken with some supplies. What's on this sort of mercy mission that could have turned everything around for them? 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.

23:43And nutmeg jam wears a little bit thin after a while. And so they need supplies from outside. there's also very little fresh water 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.

24:22They'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.

24:31Anita:Not just food, 600 jars of Arak, we're told. That's going to help them along for the next few months. You'd be kind of beside yourself. But if you're getting excited for the poor men looking at those sales across the horizon, Join us after the break to see whether this ends up in an enormous party on the little island of Rann.

24:52William:It's not looking promising by the sound of it. Or not.

25:05Anita: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 English sailors who had made it. These 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? Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. I'm afraid it's not going to end very well for the men on the Solomon. as they come towards Run and the men are watching expectantly they 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 that Arak that they were so desperate for

25:53William:no Arak makes it ashore not even a single jar not even a single jar It's all carted off to the other five Bander 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 Bander 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.

26:32And there was a grill over the top of the dungeon. And this is what he said, Bartholomew Churchman. He said, the Dutch, he said, they pissed and shat on our heads. And in this manner we lay until such time as we were broken up from top to toe like lepers, having nothing to eat but dirty rice and stinking rainwater. And so the Dutch treated their prisoners and the native population with absolute contempt and brutality. And that was to be the story that unfolded for the next few years in the Vanuys. Quickly, Jarls, a question.

27:08William:We've very much sort of demonised the Dutch and we've got the kind of brave, 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? 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. 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.

27:53First 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 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 realises that the Dutch were even more brutal than the English, no one comes out well out of this period of history. It was remarkably brutal.

28:31Anita: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 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. They get intelligence at one point that Nathaniel Courthope is intending to leave Run Island and go to one of the other Bander Islands where he hears there's a lot of unrest amongst the native population.

29:07And 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 place. This is to prove an absolutely fatal mistake. He sets off at night with his boy William, as he was called. His boy William is his son or his sort of cabin boy? It's a sort of cabin boy come slave servant who's helping him. Manservant, really, or boy servant.

29:49Williams always have the rough end of things on Empire. It's a very tragic story. So 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 two o 'clock or three o 'clock in the morning where they see dimly glowing in the night. They see Nathaniel Kortope's lantern and they wait until they're almost upon him and then they open fire. Kortope immediately fires back. There's a running gun battle takes place on the water, but then Kortope's gun jams and in disgust he throws it into the water and he's caught defenceless. And of course, what do the Dutch do?

30:29He's a sitting duck. They gun him down. and he was last seen falling into the water. Nathaniel Courtauld is never seen again. His corpse is never found. And we, well, he died clearly, but we don't know what happened to his body.

30:43Anita:I mean, 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.

30:53William:Is Russell going to be playing the role of Nathaniel? Well, I was just thinking, it's kind of,

30:57Anita:do you know what? It's a Terminator moment, isn't it? With a man's hand is the last thing seen, never vanishes forever.

31:04William:Arnie could play the Dutch captain and we'll have Russell as Nat with his nuts.

31:10Anita:So with Courtois gone, you know, the siege, I guess, you know, just collapses because, you know, who's there to stop him? What happens? Well, you know, every siege survives 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. 40, 540. Yes, exactly. And once he was no longer there, all the resistance collapsed. The men just decide to throw in the towel. They can't face holding on any longer. Their araks run out. There's no food. They realise that, you know, they've got no alternative but to throw in the towel.

31:51And that's what they do. It's a desperately tragic situation. And 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 lay down their lives for the flag of St George. For Keir Starmer. 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 nutmeg.

32:35William:So we saw that the Brits were pretty ghastly to the Banderese, but you already flagged that the Dutch are worse. What happens now that the Dutch have got complete control of 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 head men of the Bander Islands. There's to be no dealings with the local population. They are simply to be exterminated. And thus begins one of the most brutal episodes in the history of the Bander Islands, where Jan Kern and his Dutch troops simply come ashore. They arrest all of the key head men of these islands.

33:14And 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. How have they come into the picture? Where have they got their samurai from?

33:32Anita:Swords for hire. Are they sell swords? I mean, they're just floating around, are they? 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 the Portuguese, long before the Dutch and English, in fact, yeah, they got to Japan. They formed trading bases there as well. The Dutch rather more successfully than the English, it had to be said. But of course, Japanese are also travelling over this area of the East Indies. And the Dutch bring them onto their payroll, if you like, and use them as hired mercenaries and executioners.

34:09And so they play a key role in this genocide that takes place in the Bander 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.

34:26William: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 Bander Islands and that they were part of the shipment that got sent off to the Cape. Indeed, they're shipped off all over the place. But what's kind of remarkable is the population of the Bander Islands in this period, the sort of 1620s, early 1620s, was about 15 ,000 native Bandanese. By the time Jan Kern has finished his genocide, there are fewer than a thousand left on the Bander Islands. It's an extraordinarily sweeping genocide that really wipes out the native population.

35:08Anita:It also becomes sort of a battle plan. It becomes a plan that is repeated again and again. And you can see, you know, always when you see people being wiped out, you see a dehumanization of them. So, what he says about the Bandanese 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 Amboina in 1623. So this is another island, Giles. Tell us about Amboina.

35:44William:Yeah, for a cheery chap, Giles, you choose your genocides. 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've finished with the Bundar Islands. Take us to Amboina.

35:56Anita:But Amboina also, it's not a nutmeg island either, is it? No. Amboina, a little way to the north of the Bander 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. there were some Japanese who happened to be allied with the English on Amboina. Japanese are all over the place at this point. The Japanese are all over the place.

36:34And 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 Amboina. 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 the English wiped out and thus begins what became known as the Massacre of Amboina.

37:09William:And became very famous at the time. I mean, we've forgotten it today, but it was a kind of horror story in London and was long remembered, wasn't it? 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 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 drowning was to drink the water.

37:49And I'm talking gallons and gallons and gallons of water until these men would become, their bodies would become totally swollen, completely grotesque.

37:58William:That was originally a Portuguese torture, I believe. It was used by the Inquisition, first of all, in Goa.

38:03Anita:So, I mean, what we can surmise is that we have always been really shitty to each other. I mean, throughout history, this is awful. They also did fire torture. So describe what fire torture is, because we have waterboarding, but we don't have the equivalent in fire, do we? 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.

38:36And in fact, John Dryden, who obviously a famous poet, one of his more famous pieces was a play called the Massacre of Amboina, which really struck a chord with the English public at the time. And this gave rise to huge anti-Dutch sentiment in England.

38:55Anita:Despite the Dryden play, despite the outrage, the English government ends up, Giles, doing precisely nothing about it. Well, the question is, what can they actually do? Because the Dutch now have complete control of the Bander Islands. Short of sending an absolutely enormous armada out to the spiceries to the spice islands uh the english can't really get back their beloved run island and as as willie 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 only no one

39:32William: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 in the kind of you know the uh the the game plan at all for the east india company until they get thrown out by the uh 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 these Sydney companies fortune, because from this point, spices begin to decline in value because they're not going through five hands anymore.

40:13William:And the process by which, you know, 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.

40:50Anita:This situation where the Dutch dominate a trade from Banda and the islands around it, nutmeg is flowing into Amsterdam in huge quantities. It's making the Dutch East India Company enormously wealthy. So you've got this situation where the Dutch just maintain this hold on this very lucrative trade. Years passed. Amsterdam gets richer and richer. 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.

41:47Throughout 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 essentially Manhattan, around there. And this is their toehold in North America. Now, at one point, at one of the many, many peace treaties, Rennes is given, delivered back to the English under the terms of the treaty, but the Dutch refused 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.

42:24James, Duke of York, the brother of

42:26William:Charles, the King Charles, who incidentally we've met before 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.

42:39Anita:His initials burned into people's chests, D-O-Y, Duke of York. Yes, 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 Amboina, he sends ships across the Atlantic and seizes the Dutch held territory of New Amsterdam. He says, 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 a peace negotiations

43:21William:between the English and the Dutch and he has to talk to this is the important personality we need to introduce tell us Giles about peg leg Pete Peter Peter Stuyvesant who is the governor of New Amsterdam at the time. The Dutch cannot defend this swampy and rather worthless island on the Atlantic Sea. Who would want it? Who would want it? Who would want it? I mean, you know, 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 thing that in return for the Dutch being allowed to keep the island of Rann in the Bander 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

44:24Anita:and that's how it happened ladies and gentlemen I love stories like that and Charles the Charles 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."

44:37William:King Charles talking to the Duke of York about New York. What could possibly go wrong? Exactly.

44:46Anita:Isn't it amazing, though? You know, sort of like if it's... I have 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. OK, 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? 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?

45:20But actually, 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 Bander Islands and 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 Bander Islands and managed to propagate them. And this is why, in fact, most of the nutmeg you find today, rumoured to be one of the key ingredients in Coca-Cola, it now comes largely, largely from the West Indies.

46:08William:So, Giles, when you wrote this book, this was a book that really made your career, wasn't it? It was a book which took off in a spectacular way and in America as well as in Britain. It did. I mean, happily, it went mad globally. It was a fantastic success at the time. One I wasn't expecting at all. I think even my publisher was completely taken by surprise that this eccentric story about nutmeg should take off. We had the same agent at the time. I remember her saying, oh, your books aren't doing that in those days. But since then, 25 years later, and you've just had two years ago, the 25th anniversary edition of Nat's Nuts, which has got a brilliant new introduction.

46:48William:A brilliant forward by somebody called William Dalrymple. in that time a lot has changed in the world but in particular we've seen the rise of these giant corporations that have annual profit margins the size of the GDP of entire continents do you see warnings from this period and and parallels with that period today 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.

47:31And it's also a story about who pays the price when these global corporations get involved in a place. And we see that in the Bander Islands, which ended in the massacre of some 90 % of the population, the original population of the Bander 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.

47:57Anita: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 nats nuts uh nathaniel's nutmeg you you created this extraordinary piece of art um you got it you got it to hand i have show it so this is where it becomes show and tell yeah um so so um i my passion apart from writing is rapuse metalwork which is slightly eccentric so i've done uh 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 We have Nathaniel's nutmeg.

48:40Nathaniel caught Tope in the middle here, all beaten out of metal. Nutmeg from the Bander Islands here, set into the cover. Beautiful eye-like crystal. And on the reverse, you have Inspired by Elizabethan Astrolabe. There we have it with a leather-bound spine. So that was my little way of marking the 25th anniversary of this book.

48:58William:So if you can't get enough of art connected to Nat's nuts, because sadly Giles' Rapusee 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 favorite 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.

49:42William:So join the Empire Club. You'll find the link in the description. and if you can't get enough of art connected to gnats 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

50:01Anita:you'll find the link in the description 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 from me, Anita Arnon.

50:15William:And goodbye from me, William Durrenpul.