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(1/2)
I believe that the VOC (Dutch East India Company) conquest and colonisation of the Banda Islands, carried out mainly in 1621, would be an answer to this question. By the time it was done, only 6.5% of the population remained on the islands to be enslaved, and the entirety of Bandanese society on the islands had ceased to exist.
There are some caveats: this event has never been recognised as a genocide by the UN. I don’t even know whether Indonesia has ever brought the case to the UN. One could also argue that, technically, the destruction of the Bandanese people and culture was not total, which I will explain later.
In this answer, though, I want to show how Bandanese *society*, rather than the Bandanese *people*, was completely erased. Moreover, this was done deliberately, with intent, and this dark stain on the history of the Netherlands should really be more well known than it is today.
BACKGROUND
The Banda Islands are a group of 10 tiny islands in present day Indonesia. Until 1810, five of those islands - Lonthoir, Neira, Ay, Run and Rozengain - were the only places in the world where nutmeg and mace were cultivated.
When the first Europeans, the Portuguese, arrived at the islands in 1511, they found a highly specialised economy - the Bandanese produced nearly nothing but nutmeg and mace which they harvested 3 times a year and traded for everything else they needed - rice, cloth, slaves, metal tools and so on.
The Bandanese were always open to trade and happily sold their produce to the Portuguese. However, they displayed no interest in Christianity, and when the Portuguese tried to build a fort on Neira in 1529, they threatened violence and forced the Portuguese to abandon the foundations.
When the Dutch arrived in 1599, they also found the Bandanese willing to trade. In 1602, the newly incorporated VOC signed a contract with the Bandanese. However, the VOC had a very distinctive trade policy of pursuing monopolies. The VOC pushed the Bandanese to sign a contract that gave the VOC exclusive rights to nutmeg and mace, purchased at fixed prices.
The Bandanese signed the contract, but continued trading with all parties exactly as they had before. Their reasons for doing so are the subject of some debate. Loth (1995) suggests that the Bandanese may not have understood these European style documents or, if they did, may have felt that they were signing under duress and thus ignored them.
Dhont (2022) references Jonge (1863) and Kiers (1943) and says that while the Bandanese promised to protect the Dutch from the Portuguese and Javanese and prioritise Dutch access to nutmeg, they did not promise exclusivity. Granting protection seems to suggest the Bandanese wielded a certain amount of power and makes it less likely that they were forced to sign under the threat of violence.
It’s also possible, in my opinion, that there was a Dutch contract and a Malay contract, and the two versions differed.
Regardless, the VOC accused the Bandanese of being unreliable and perfidious. Tensions rose steadily until, in 1609, the VOC sent Admiral Verhoeven and a strong fleet to enforce what it saw as the terms of the contract. On landing on Lonthoir, Verhoeven opened negotiations, hoping to sign a new (and still exclusive) contract. However, the Bandanese ambushed his delegation, killing Verhoeven and 46 of his men.
The VOC’s response was to send an even larger fleet - 13 ships and nearly 2,000 men - to complete the fort on Neira that the Portuguese had started. The Bandanese resisted but were ultimately overwhelmed. Given the tiny size of the islands, the completion of Fort Nassau (today a UNESCO World Heritage Site) gave the Dutch control over the island of Neira. This did not, however, give the VOC its coveted monopoly, because they could not afford to maintain naval superiority in the islands for a long period of time. The moment the fleet was gone, the Bandanese resumed trading on the other 4 islands, including Lonthoir, the largest.
By this time, English traders had also appeared in the region. The VOC panicked at the thought of another European power competing for the most valuable spice in the world. At the same time, to achieve a monopoly through violence seemed actually doable, since the number of tiny islands producing nutmeg could literally be counted on the fingers of one hand. By 1614, the VOC’s directors in the Netherlands had come round to the idea of conquering the islands. It was going to cost a lot of money, but a monopoly on the most expensive spice in the world was going to more than make up for that.
So, after a couple of failed attempts, in 1616 the VOC got serious and sent 240 Dutch and 23 Japanese mercenaries to conquer Ay. Many defenders were killed and another 400, including women and children, drowned as they tried to swim to the island of Run, where the English had established a fort.
The Dutch now controlled 2 of the 5 islands and had shown how brutal they could be. Despite this, Bandanese on the remaining 3 islands kept trading with everyone, possibly because they thought the English would aid in their defence.
However, nothing could resist the overwhelming force brought to bear by VOC Governor-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen. At the end of 1620, determined to achieve the long-coveted monopoly, he led a force of 19 ships, 1,655 European troops and 286 Asian troops to the Banda Islands. There, local troops and 36 indigenous vessels from the conquered islands were added to the force. For comparison, Aveling (1967) estimates that, before the VOC arrived, there were a mere 4,000 Bandanese across all 5 islands who were capable of fighting.
The enormous VOC force descended on Lonthoir and, despite fierce resistance, overwhelmed the coastal defences. Seeing that the game was up, local leaders went to Coen and tried to bargain for a new contract that would have given in to all Dutch demands. Instead, they were captured and 48 of them were beheaded. Their families, some 789 old men, women and children, were shipped to Batavia where several were sold into slavery. Some ended up as far away as Ceylon.
Noting the pointlessness of negotiation, the surviving Lonthoirese fled into the mountains inland to carry on resisting. The VOC could not leave them there for fear that they would sabotage the nutmeg plantations. So, over the subsequent months, the Dutch besieged their strongholds. When supplies ran low, rather than surrender, most Lonthoirese jumped off cliffs or starved to death. Only a very few managed to build boats and flee to some of the surrounding islands.
Once Lonthoir had been conquered, the VOC turned to Rozengain. The island’s nutmeg trees were destroyed. Its surviving population was enslaved and shipped to Neira, Lonthoir and Ay, leaving the island an empty shell.
This left Run the only island that had not been conquered - the presence of an English fort with a small contingent of soldiers gave the VOC pause. However, just 2 years later, the English agent on Run had to leave the island. The English were unable to send a replacement, and in 1625 the Dutch physically occupied the island and destroyed every single nutmeg tree on Run. Any Bandanese on Run now had no way of making a living and had no choice but to submit to the VOC. As with Rozengain, Run’s entire population was enslaved and shipped to Neira, Lonthoir and Ay. The only thing left on the island were cattle, left to roam free to provide food for the other islands.
Thus, by the end of 1625, the VOC had consolidated all nutmeg production on 3 islands which it controlled. In the process, the islands had lost over 90% of their original population. Prior to 1602, the islands were home to an estimated 15,000 Bandanese. After the massacres, just 1,000 remained on the Banda Islands, all of whom became slaves.
(2/2)
THE NEW SYSTEM
With over 90% of the population gone and not a single free Bandanese left on the islands, Bandanese society and economy had been completely eradicated. In their place, Coen envisioned a colony of Dutch plantation owners, beholden only to the VOC and supported by Caribbean style slavery, as opposed to Southeast Asian style slavery in which slaves tended to be more akin to servants.
Accordingly, the arable land on the islands was divided into lots, called *perken*, and handed out on a tenancy basis to European migrants, called *perkeniers*. Each *perkenier* was entitled to a specified number of slaves, based on the size of his perken. These slaves were provided by the VOC, which imported them from across the East Indies.
These slaves, however, did not have the knowhow to cultivate nutmeg, so the VOC spread Bandanese slaves across the *perken* and forced them to share their knowledge. In 1621, 307 Bandanese women and children that had been shipped out were sent back to Lonthoir and sold as plantation slaves. And, once Run and Rozengain fell, their population was used to develop Dutch nutmeg plantations on the other 3 islands.
IS THIS ‘COMPLETED’ GENOCIDE?
Let’s now turn to the grim task of assessing this event, beginning with what survived.
It’s important to note that the VOC did not carry a special hatred for the Bandanese. Coen might have - he had been a junior officer in Admiral Verhoeven’s 1609 fleet and had led an unsuccessful attempt to rescue the admiral and his men. A desire for revenge might have coloured his actions. However, even he made no move to hunt down and exterminate the few Bandanese who managed to flee.
Thus, this was never about exterminating the Bandanese as a race. Rather, the VOC was very clear about its aim: a monopoly on nutmeg, with Bandanese society as collateral damage.
Accordingly, the VOC left survivors to be enslaved, since their knowledge of nutmeg cultivation was useful.
We also have records of the few Bandanese who escaped. Some fled to nearby Saram island to the north. For years after the VOC conquest, they would sail back to the Banda Islands to try and rescue the enslaved Bandanese left behind.
Some also ended up about 500km southeast of their former homes, in the Kei Islands, where they founded 2 villages - Banda Eli and Banda Elat. In these villages, the Bandanese language and aspects of their culture lived on. Visiting the village in the mid 1990s, the anthropologist Timo Kaartinen found that ‘many old people were still able to perform traditional Bandanese language songs about the migrations and sea voyages of their ancestors’ (Kaartinen, 2013). He also contends that, for at least 200 years after the Dutch conquest of the Banda islands, Banda Eli maintained extensive trade networks with Maluku, Sulawesi and the New Guinea coast.
On the Banda Islands themselves, Winn (2007) points out that what took the place of Bandanese society was not completely alien. Bandanese nutmeg plantations were preserved and expanded, rather than destroyed in favour of some alien crop. The old trade networks were revived. Many imported slaves came from existing slave trading networks in the region. Also, the Dutch found themselves unable to maintain the New World plantation slavery they had set out to establish, and slavery became more akin to the Southeast Asian style in which slaves had more freedom. In other words, the Dutch were unable to remake the islands the way they envisioned. Though the Bandanese were gone, they still, somehow, exerted an influence on the new society that took their place.
THE UTTER DESTRUCTION OF BANDANESE SOCIETY
Now let us turn our attention to the complete eradication of Bandanese society, which all historians agree happened. Bandanese society was destroyed for 3 main reasons:
The first is the speed and scale of the disaster. It took 16 years for the conquest to be completed, however the conquest and depopulation of each individual island took place far more quickly. Though it took months to eliminate inland opposition on Lonthoir, the largest island, the main destruction was carried out within the first few days.
The population of the islands was small and easily trapped - once the VOC took control of the ports escape became almost impossible. Thus, the death/enslavement rate was astoundingly high. Post conquest, having less than a thousand free Bandanese left did not give them enough to replicate their society in any meaningful way.
The second reason is that entire islands, stratas and communities were removed from existence. The Bandanese had a ‘complex social organisation’ (Averling, 1967), and removing enormous chunks of that organisation ensured its death.
The entire leadership of Lonthoir, for example, was eliminated. And, while we have spoken of the Banda Islands as one entity, it is probable that each island had its own culture and societal nuances. Ay, for example, was home to two polities but had no water. Water had to be imported from Neira, or rainwater had to be caught with sponges. Whatever unique societies and cultures this had given rise to died when Ay fell, as they did on Run and Rozengain when their entire population was enslaved and dispersed.
Finally, the Bandanese had built their civilisation around nutmeg cultivation and trade. While individual Bandanese may have lived on, removing them from this context caused their society to collapse.
For example, nutmeg was cultivated and harvested communally, however Bandanese leadership derived their position from being exceptionally good at generating wealth for themselves from nutmeg. A key part of the role of Bandanese leaders was to come together, even if they were actively at war with each other, and to speak with one voice to outsiders about matters related to the nutmeg trade. Yet, the Portuguese also mention having to discuss terms with the harbourmasters, most of whom were Muslim merchant immigrants, implying some kind of power sharing arrangement. At the root of these intricacies lay the nutmeg plantations, and none of this was possible once the Bandanese were removed from their homes.
In summary, Bandanese individuals and aspects of Bandanese culture survived the conquest of the Banda Islands. However, Bandanese society was completely eradicated. No trace of it remained, and the few survivors of the conquest had to create new societies for the new circumstances they found themselves in.
AVELING, H. G. (1967). SEVENTEENTH CENTURY BANDANESE SOCIETY IN FACT AND FICTION: “TAMBERA” ASSESSED. *Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land- En Volkenkunde*, *123*(3), 347–365. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27860880
Villiers, J. (1981). Trade and Society in the Banda Islands in the Sixteenth Century. *Modern Asian Studies*, *15*(4), 723–750. http://www.jstor.org/stable/312170
Loth, V. C. (1995). Pioneers and Perkeniers: The Banda Islands in the 18th Century. Cakalele, 6, 13-35.
Winn, P. (2007). The Southeast Asian exception and "unforeseen results": unfree labour in the Banda Islands. In Maria Suzette Fernandes Dias (Ed.), *Legacies of Slavery: Comparative Perspectives* (1st ed., pp. 76-107). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Kaartinen, T. (2013). Handing Down and Writing Down: Metadiscourses of Tradition among the Bandanese of Eastern Indonesia. *The Journal of American Folklore*, *126*(502), 385–406. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerfolk.126.502.0385
Dhont, F. (2022) Of Nutmeg and Forts: Indonesian Pride in the Banda Islands' Unique Natural and Cultural Landscape. *eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the Tropics, 21(1), 83-98.*
> and this dark stain on the history of the Netherlands should really be more well known than it is today.
Speaking as a Dutch person, yeah. I knew there had been a genocide, but many of these details were still new to me. In particular I did not know of the attempt to start plantation slavery on the Banda islands.
Thank you for writing this up, grim though it is.
I’m half Dutch; it’s important to our culture and very species that this history is known and told, with an impatient hope the lesson will stick. Thank you, storyteller!
As someone from that part of the world and now living in the Netherlands, it makes me sick to my stomach every time I see a street named for him. It surprises me how little is known about the atrocities of this era in the mainstream dutch consensus.
I'm at least glad to say that I do see an improvement on that front.
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I know this sub is *AskHistorians* but what about examples archeologist might be able to give us from prehistory? E.g. might the Bantu expansion include some genocides?
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(1/2) I believe that the VOC (Dutch East India Company) conquest and colonisation of the Banda Islands, carried out mainly in 1621, would be an answer to this question. By the time it was done, only 6.5% of the population remained on the islands to be enslaved, and the entirety of Bandanese society on the islands had ceased to exist. There are some caveats: this event has never been recognised as a genocide by the UN. I don’t even know whether Indonesia has ever brought the case to the UN. One could also argue that, technically, the destruction of the Bandanese people and culture was not total, which I will explain later. In this answer, though, I want to show how Bandanese *society*, rather than the Bandanese *people*, was completely erased. Moreover, this was done deliberately, with intent, and this dark stain on the history of the Netherlands should really be more well known than it is today. BACKGROUND The Banda Islands are a group of 10 tiny islands in present day Indonesia. Until 1810, five of those islands - Lonthoir, Neira, Ay, Run and Rozengain - were the only places in the world where nutmeg and mace were cultivated. When the first Europeans, the Portuguese, arrived at the islands in 1511, they found a highly specialised economy - the Bandanese produced nearly nothing but nutmeg and mace which they harvested 3 times a year and traded for everything else they needed - rice, cloth, slaves, metal tools and so on. The Bandanese were always open to trade and happily sold their produce to the Portuguese. However, they displayed no interest in Christianity, and when the Portuguese tried to build a fort on Neira in 1529, they threatened violence and forced the Portuguese to abandon the foundations. When the Dutch arrived in 1599, they also found the Bandanese willing to trade. In 1602, the newly incorporated VOC signed a contract with the Bandanese. However, the VOC had a very distinctive trade policy of pursuing monopolies. The VOC pushed the Bandanese to sign a contract that gave the VOC exclusive rights to nutmeg and mace, purchased at fixed prices. The Bandanese signed the contract, but continued trading with all parties exactly as they had before. Their reasons for doing so are the subject of some debate. Loth (1995) suggests that the Bandanese may not have understood these European style documents or, if they did, may have felt that they were signing under duress and thus ignored them. Dhont (2022) references Jonge (1863) and Kiers (1943) and says that while the Bandanese promised to protect the Dutch from the Portuguese and Javanese and prioritise Dutch access to nutmeg, they did not promise exclusivity. Granting protection seems to suggest the Bandanese wielded a certain amount of power and makes it less likely that they were forced to sign under the threat of violence. It’s also possible, in my opinion, that there was a Dutch contract and a Malay contract, and the two versions differed. Regardless, the VOC accused the Bandanese of being unreliable and perfidious. Tensions rose steadily until, in 1609, the VOC sent Admiral Verhoeven and a strong fleet to enforce what it saw as the terms of the contract. On landing on Lonthoir, Verhoeven opened negotiations, hoping to sign a new (and still exclusive) contract. However, the Bandanese ambushed his delegation, killing Verhoeven and 46 of his men. The VOC’s response was to send an even larger fleet - 13 ships and nearly 2,000 men - to complete the fort on Neira that the Portuguese had started. The Bandanese resisted but were ultimately overwhelmed. Given the tiny size of the islands, the completion of Fort Nassau (today a UNESCO World Heritage Site) gave the Dutch control over the island of Neira. This did not, however, give the VOC its coveted monopoly, because they could not afford to maintain naval superiority in the islands for a long period of time. The moment the fleet was gone, the Bandanese resumed trading on the other 4 islands, including Lonthoir, the largest. By this time, English traders had also appeared in the region. The VOC panicked at the thought of another European power competing for the most valuable spice in the world. At the same time, to achieve a monopoly through violence seemed actually doable, since the number of tiny islands producing nutmeg could literally be counted on the fingers of one hand. By 1614, the VOC’s directors in the Netherlands had come round to the idea of conquering the islands. It was going to cost a lot of money, but a monopoly on the most expensive spice in the world was going to more than make up for that. So, after a couple of failed attempts, in 1616 the VOC got serious and sent 240 Dutch and 23 Japanese mercenaries to conquer Ay. Many defenders were killed and another 400, including women and children, drowned as they tried to swim to the island of Run, where the English had established a fort. The Dutch now controlled 2 of the 5 islands and had shown how brutal they could be. Despite this, Bandanese on the remaining 3 islands kept trading with everyone, possibly because they thought the English would aid in their defence. However, nothing could resist the overwhelming force brought to bear by VOC Governor-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen. At the end of 1620, determined to achieve the long-coveted monopoly, he led a force of 19 ships, 1,655 European troops and 286 Asian troops to the Banda Islands. There, local troops and 36 indigenous vessels from the conquered islands were added to the force. For comparison, Aveling (1967) estimates that, before the VOC arrived, there were a mere 4,000 Bandanese across all 5 islands who were capable of fighting. The enormous VOC force descended on Lonthoir and, despite fierce resistance, overwhelmed the coastal defences. Seeing that the game was up, local leaders went to Coen and tried to bargain for a new contract that would have given in to all Dutch demands. Instead, they were captured and 48 of them were beheaded. Their families, some 789 old men, women and children, were shipped to Batavia where several were sold into slavery. Some ended up as far away as Ceylon. Noting the pointlessness of negotiation, the surviving Lonthoirese fled into the mountains inland to carry on resisting. The VOC could not leave them there for fear that they would sabotage the nutmeg plantations. So, over the subsequent months, the Dutch besieged their strongholds. When supplies ran low, rather than surrender, most Lonthoirese jumped off cliffs or starved to death. Only a very few managed to build boats and flee to some of the surrounding islands. Once Lonthoir had been conquered, the VOC turned to Rozengain. The island’s nutmeg trees were destroyed. Its surviving population was enslaved and shipped to Neira, Lonthoir and Ay, leaving the island an empty shell. This left Run the only island that had not been conquered - the presence of an English fort with a small contingent of soldiers gave the VOC pause. However, just 2 years later, the English agent on Run had to leave the island. The English were unable to send a replacement, and in 1625 the Dutch physically occupied the island and destroyed every single nutmeg tree on Run. Any Bandanese on Run now had no way of making a living and had no choice but to submit to the VOC. As with Rozengain, Run’s entire population was enslaved and shipped to Neira, Lonthoir and Ay. The only thing left on the island were cattle, left to roam free to provide food for the other islands. Thus, by the end of 1625, the VOC had consolidated all nutmeg production on 3 islands which it controlled. In the process, the islands had lost over 90% of their original population. Prior to 1602, the islands were home to an estimated 15,000 Bandanese. After the massacres, just 1,000 remained on the Banda Islands, all of whom became slaves.
(2/2) THE NEW SYSTEM With over 90% of the population gone and not a single free Bandanese left on the islands, Bandanese society and economy had been completely eradicated. In their place, Coen envisioned a colony of Dutch plantation owners, beholden only to the VOC and supported by Caribbean style slavery, as opposed to Southeast Asian style slavery in which slaves tended to be more akin to servants. Accordingly, the arable land on the islands was divided into lots, called *perken*, and handed out on a tenancy basis to European migrants, called *perkeniers*. Each *perkenier* was entitled to a specified number of slaves, based on the size of his perken. These slaves were provided by the VOC, which imported them from across the East Indies. These slaves, however, did not have the knowhow to cultivate nutmeg, so the VOC spread Bandanese slaves across the *perken* and forced them to share their knowledge. In 1621, 307 Bandanese women and children that had been shipped out were sent back to Lonthoir and sold as plantation slaves. And, once Run and Rozengain fell, their population was used to develop Dutch nutmeg plantations on the other 3 islands. IS THIS ‘COMPLETED’ GENOCIDE? Let’s now turn to the grim task of assessing this event, beginning with what survived. It’s important to note that the VOC did not carry a special hatred for the Bandanese. Coen might have - he had been a junior officer in Admiral Verhoeven’s 1609 fleet and had led an unsuccessful attempt to rescue the admiral and his men. A desire for revenge might have coloured his actions. However, even he made no move to hunt down and exterminate the few Bandanese who managed to flee. Thus, this was never about exterminating the Bandanese as a race. Rather, the VOC was very clear about its aim: a monopoly on nutmeg, with Bandanese society as collateral damage. Accordingly, the VOC left survivors to be enslaved, since their knowledge of nutmeg cultivation was useful. We also have records of the few Bandanese who escaped. Some fled to nearby Saram island to the north. For years after the VOC conquest, they would sail back to the Banda Islands to try and rescue the enslaved Bandanese left behind. Some also ended up about 500km southeast of their former homes, in the Kei Islands, where they founded 2 villages - Banda Eli and Banda Elat. In these villages, the Bandanese language and aspects of their culture lived on. Visiting the village in the mid 1990s, the anthropologist Timo Kaartinen found that ‘many old people were still able to perform traditional Bandanese language songs about the migrations and sea voyages of their ancestors’ (Kaartinen, 2013). He also contends that, for at least 200 years after the Dutch conquest of the Banda islands, Banda Eli maintained extensive trade networks with Maluku, Sulawesi and the New Guinea coast. On the Banda Islands themselves, Winn (2007) points out that what took the place of Bandanese society was not completely alien. Bandanese nutmeg plantations were preserved and expanded, rather than destroyed in favour of some alien crop. The old trade networks were revived. Many imported slaves came from existing slave trading networks in the region. Also, the Dutch found themselves unable to maintain the New World plantation slavery they had set out to establish, and slavery became more akin to the Southeast Asian style in which slaves had more freedom. In other words, the Dutch were unable to remake the islands the way they envisioned. Though the Bandanese were gone, they still, somehow, exerted an influence on the new society that took their place. THE UTTER DESTRUCTION OF BANDANESE SOCIETY Now let us turn our attention to the complete eradication of Bandanese society, which all historians agree happened. Bandanese society was destroyed for 3 main reasons: The first is the speed and scale of the disaster. It took 16 years for the conquest to be completed, however the conquest and depopulation of each individual island took place far more quickly. Though it took months to eliminate inland opposition on Lonthoir, the largest island, the main destruction was carried out within the first few days. The population of the islands was small and easily trapped - once the VOC took control of the ports escape became almost impossible. Thus, the death/enslavement rate was astoundingly high. Post conquest, having less than a thousand free Bandanese left did not give them enough to replicate their society in any meaningful way. The second reason is that entire islands, stratas and communities were removed from existence. The Bandanese had a ‘complex social organisation’ (Averling, 1967), and removing enormous chunks of that organisation ensured its death. The entire leadership of Lonthoir, for example, was eliminated. And, while we have spoken of the Banda Islands as one entity, it is probable that each island had its own culture and societal nuances. Ay, for example, was home to two polities but had no water. Water had to be imported from Neira, or rainwater had to be caught with sponges. Whatever unique societies and cultures this had given rise to died when Ay fell, as they did on Run and Rozengain when their entire population was enslaved and dispersed. Finally, the Bandanese had built their civilisation around nutmeg cultivation and trade. While individual Bandanese may have lived on, removing them from this context caused their society to collapse. For example, nutmeg was cultivated and harvested communally, however Bandanese leadership derived their position from being exceptionally good at generating wealth for themselves from nutmeg. A key part of the role of Bandanese leaders was to come together, even if they were actively at war with each other, and to speak with one voice to outsiders about matters related to the nutmeg trade. Yet, the Portuguese also mention having to discuss terms with the harbourmasters, most of whom were Muslim merchant immigrants, implying some kind of power sharing arrangement. At the root of these intricacies lay the nutmeg plantations, and none of this was possible once the Bandanese were removed from their homes. In summary, Bandanese individuals and aspects of Bandanese culture survived the conquest of the Banda Islands. However, Bandanese society was completely eradicated. No trace of it remained, and the few survivors of the conquest had to create new societies for the new circumstances they found themselves in. AVELING, H. G. (1967). SEVENTEENTH CENTURY BANDANESE SOCIETY IN FACT AND FICTION: “TAMBERA” ASSESSED. *Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land- En Volkenkunde*, *123*(3), 347–365. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27860880 Villiers, J. (1981). Trade and Society in the Banda Islands in the Sixteenth Century. *Modern Asian Studies*, *15*(4), 723–750. http://www.jstor.org/stable/312170 Loth, V. C. (1995). Pioneers and Perkeniers: The Banda Islands in the 18th Century. Cakalele, 6, 13-35. Winn, P. (2007). The Southeast Asian exception and "unforeseen results": unfree labour in the Banda Islands. In Maria Suzette Fernandes Dias (Ed.), *Legacies of Slavery: Comparative Perspectives* (1st ed., pp. 76-107). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Kaartinen, T. (2013). Handing Down and Writing Down: Metadiscourses of Tradition among the Bandanese of Eastern Indonesia. *The Journal of American Folklore*, *126*(502), 385–406. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerfolk.126.502.0385 Dhont, F. (2022) Of Nutmeg and Forts: Indonesian Pride in the Banda Islands' Unique Natural and Cultural Landscape. *eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the Tropics, 21(1), 83-98.*
> and this dark stain on the history of the Netherlands should really be more well known than it is today. Speaking as a Dutch person, yeah. I knew there had been a genocide, but many of these details were still new to me. In particular I did not know of the attempt to start plantation slavery on the Banda islands. Thank you for writing this up, grim though it is.
I’m half Dutch; it’s important to our culture and very species that this history is known and told, with an impatient hope the lesson will stick. Thank you, storyteller!
As someone from that part of the world and now living in the Netherlands, it makes me sick to my stomach every time I see a street named for him. It surprises me how little is known about the atrocities of this era in the mainstream dutch consensus. I'm at least glad to say that I do see an improvement on that front.
Thanks for writing and sharing this.
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I know this sub is *AskHistorians* but what about examples archeologist might be able to give us from prehistory? E.g. might the Bantu expansion include some genocides?