This is the third in a series of six e-mails on spices. Before reading this e-mail, I recommend that you read the e-mail of 9 Oct 2015, which provides useful background.
(Continued in Part 2)
The Geographic Background
Prior to modern times, cloves grew widely in the Molucca Islands but were primarily found on five islands--Ternate, Tidore, Moti, Makian, and Bacan [Turner, p. xv]. These island are just west of the island of Halmahera. The first map below shows the big picture, where the red dagger points to Ternate. The second picture shows more detail; you can see that Ternate, again marked by the red dagger, is just off the west coast of the contorted island of Halmahera, and you can see New Guinea at the right edge and Borneo at the left edge, with the even more contorted island Celebes (aka Sulawesi) in the mid-left. The third picture is a close-up that shows Ternate, Tidore, and Makian; Halmahera is the landmass to the right. (Moti is the unnamed little island just north of Makian, and Bacan is off the map to the south.) "Pulau" means island in the Malay language. Ternate is the most famous of these islands and is often used to refer to all of the clove islands collectively; Tidore is also frequently mentioned since it is very close to Ternate, and the two islands were habitually at war. Each of these clove islands has its own volcano [Keay, p. 198]. In the last map the red dagger shows the location of the island of Ambon (also called Amboyna and Amboina [Keay, p. 234]).
The Plant
The clove tree is an evergreen that grows to a height of 25-48 feet. The clove tree is the species Syzygium aromaticum in the family Myrtaceae. This is often called the myrtle family and includes the eucalyptus, guava (2 Nov 2014), and feijoa (23 Nov 2014).
The flower buds start off pale, turn green, and finally turn a bright red. You can see the cap on the flower bud. If this flower bud is not picked and the flower opens, the stamens, which carry the pollen, push the cap off. In some of the pictures the extended stamens make the flower look fuzzy.
The fruit of the clove tree is called mother of clove and is about half an inch long.. The first picture shows it ripening, and the last two show it ripe.
A clove tree starts producing when about five years old and keeps producing for about fifteen or 20 years. It produces about one kilogram of dried spice per year.
History
An ambiguous reference by Pliny the Elder indicates that cloves might have been known in Rome in the first century A.D. [Keay, p. 76]. It is well established that cloves had appeared in Europe by the 4th century A.D. For the next millenium, Arab traders kept Europe scantily supplied with this expensive luxury. The Arabs only lost this monopoly after Vasco da Gama reached India in 1498 and the Portuguese pushed further to the east.
The Portuguese, after they established a base in Malacca in 1511, continued their exploration of the Far East, and they reached Ternate in 1512. The subsequent relations between the Portuguese and the clove islanders are described by Krondl [p. 220], where "Estado da India" was the name given to the Portuguese presence in the East:
In 1522, the Portuguese built a fort at Ternate, spitting distance from the sultan's palace. They then proceeded to depose or kill one ruler after another, poison the heirs, and remove whole royal families to the Estado da India's stronghold in distant Malacca. Finally, the assassination of the ruling sultan in 1574 proved to be one murder too many for the locals. They rose up the following year and expelled the foreigners from their island. Not surprisingly, when the Dutch arrived in 1599 promising help against the Portuguese, the Moluccans jumped at the opportunity of an alliance.
While the Island of Ternate, which is just to the west of the island of Halmahera, is the most famous site of cloves and is often thought of as the center of clove cultivation, in fact cloves grow widely in the Molucca Islands [Burnet, p. 37].
In the 16th century the Portuguese had superintended the rise of clove production on Ambon and Ceram. (In the last map above, Ambon is the Island to which the red dagger points; Ceram is the much larger island almost touching it and to its northeast. You can perhaps just make out Ternate, which is about 250 miles north of Ambon.) Partly this was based on seedlings transplanted from Ternate and partly on improving cloves that grew wild on Ceram [Keay, p. 234]. In 1605 the Dutch took Ambon, Ternate, and Tidore from the Portuguese [Keay, p. 235-36]. The Dutch were much more thorough and unrelenting in their exploitation of the clove monopoly than the Portuguese. Since the Dutch could control clove production and unauthorized trading at Ambon much more easily than at Ternate and Tidore, they encouraged the former and discouraged the latter as described by Keay [p. 237]:
Under a policy succinctly known as "Extirpation", clove-farming villages were burnt, clove pickers hunted down by the hundred, and clove trees uprooted in their tens of thousands. Favoured villages, especially in Ambon, were force to cultivate cloves and nothing else, so rendering them dependent on the Dutch for all foodstuffs. Less favoured villages, especially in the north Moluccas, were forbidden to cultivate cloves on pain of death and destruction.
In short, the Dutch suppressed clove production on Ternate and Tidore through a combination of cash and the threat of force, and the "... inevitable rebellions were mercilessly put down" [Turner, p. 290]. Many have compared the Dutch rule unfavorably to slavery [Turner, p. 290].
The English did manage to trade for a shipload of cloves in 1608. The cloves were purchased for 3000 pounds from a middleman off the coast of Celebes and sold for 36,000 pounds in London [Milton, p. 150].
I am an aficionado of Dutch history, but I have to admit that the Dutch cut a poor figure in the Spice Islands. Strange to say, Alfred Russell Wallace, a leading figure in the history of biology who lived in the East Indies for years, gives an entirely different interpretation and defends the Dutch [p. 237].
When the Dutch established their influence in these seas, and relieved the native princes from their Portuguese oppressors, they saw that the easiest way to repay themselves would be to get this spice trade into their own hands. For this purpose they adopted the wise principle of concentrating the culture of these valuable products in those spots only of which they could have complete control. To do this effectually it was necessary to abolish the culture and trade in all other places, which they succeeded in doing by treaty with the native rulers. These agreed to have all the spice trees in their possessions destroyed. They gave up large though fluctuating revenues, but they gained in return a fixed subsidy, freedom from the constant attacks and harsh oppressions of the Portuguese, and a continuance of their regal power....
It is no doubt supposed by most Englishmen, who have been accustomed to look upon this act of the Dutch with vague horror, as something utterly unprincipled and barbarous, that the native population suffered grievously by this destruction of such valuable property. But it is certain that this was not the case. The Sultans [before the coming of the Dutch] kept this lucrative trade entirely in their own hands as a rigid monopoly, and they would take care not to give their subject more than would amount to their usual wages.... Now the absorption of so much labour in the cultivation of this one product must necessarily have raised the price of food and other necessaries; and when it was abolished, more rice would be grown, more sago made, more fish caught, and more tortoise-shell, rattan, gumdammer, and other valuable products of the seas and forests would be obtained. I believe, therefore, that this abolition of the spice trade in the Moluccas was actually beneficial to the inhabitants, and that it was an act both wise in itself and morally and politically justifiable.
(Continued in Part 2)
