How Chinese traders – and war over an aphrodisiac – led to a multicultural Indonesia

Much of Indonesia’s history and ideology can be traced back to the Banda Islands, a group of remote, small volcanic islets some 4,000km from the capital of Jakarta.

At 180 sq km, the islands are small compared to the archipelago’s main islands of Java, Sumatra, and Borneo. Banda’s position also makes it isolated; the islands consist of 11 islets, four of which are unpopulated, spread out in the middle of the Banda Sea, about six hours sailing from Maluku’s mainland. However, in the heyday of the spice wars in the 17th century, Banda played an important role as the world’s top producer of nutmeg, a once-precious commodity that brought Europe’s major powers to the Southeast Asian nation. The conquest of Banda, and the bloody Dutch colonial rule that followed, ultimately shaped Indonesia into the multicultural and pluralist, albeit flawed, country it is today.

Nutmeg was Europe’s most sought after spice in the 17th century. It was considered an aphrodisiac, and could be used as a food preservative; it was also thought to be a cure for the deadly plague that ravaged the continent at the time. The demand was so high around the world that its price surpassed gold. The commodity grows best in Banda’s volcanic, near-the-sea soil, where it had for centuries been sought by foreign traders from China, Persia and Arabia, among other nations. Historians say the Chinese discovered the islands between 2,000BC and 3,000BC, long before the Persians or Arabs.

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“Banda was a very pluralist society, even before the Dutch colonial era,” Usman Thalib, a historian with Pattimura University in Maluku, said in Banda: the Dark Forgotten Trail, a documentary depicting Banda’s history now showing in cinemas. “The Chinese influence is very strong in our tradition and religion.”