Nutmeg, The Spice Trade, and New York

God, glory, and greed. Those are the motives for exploration we learn and teach in world history.

The greed involved the money to be made on spices, especially nutmeg.  The Dutch East India Company formed to handle the trade.

Two video clips, one from the PBS NewsHour, and the other from National Geographic, review the importance of the spice trade between 1450 and 1750.

The PBS NewsHour clip, in honor of Thanksgiving, reviews the history of nutmeg. It came from one tiny Banda island in Indonesia called Run. The Dutch controlled the island and the nutmeg trade but the British went to war to gain control for herself. The treaty ending the war gave the Dutch  the nutmeg trade and ceded Britain control of New Amsterdam.

EAT, the Story of Food, also includes a segment on the history and importance of the spice trade. You can find the clip in the EAT video by scrolling to 11:49 minutes.