Ambon's spice islands (BT 2008)

Published on The Brunei Times (http://www.bt.com.bn/en)

A sweet whiff of Ambon's spice islands
Liz Price
AMBON, INDONESIA

Sunday, May 11, 2008


I LOVED the smells wafting out of the markets in Ambon. The most pungent was clove, but other spices were subtly making their presence known. I liked to put my hands in the sacks and let the various spices trickle through my fingers as the sweet scents pervaded the air.

Ambon is the capital of Maluku province. Together with the separate North Maluku province, they form Maluku, which straddles the equator, lying between Sulawesi and New Guinea in Indonesia. Once known to Europeans as The Moluccas, they are also called the Spice Islands.

Since the first Gregorian century or possibly earlier, these Indonesian islands were known to spice traders from India, Arabia and China, and around the 16th century became known as The Spice Islands, due to the cloves, nutmeg and mace which grow here. It was these East Indies that Columbus was looking for when he accidentally found America in 1492.

The original settlers are thought to be Melanesians, and later Arab and Chinese traders, as well as Malays. The local Bandanese controlled the spice trade. By the 16th century the spices were worth their weight in gold, and grew nowhere else. It was literally money growing on trees.

Spices were necessary to preserve foods before the days of ice and refrigerators.

The spices reached Europe via a tortuous caravan route through India and the Persian Gulf. Then the Europeans started their colonising trips and to look for their own source of spices. The Portuguese arrived in Maluku in the 16th century following their conquest of Malacca in 1511. They firstly settled in Ternate, then spread to Ambon, Seram and Banda, but were never able to control the local spice trade.

Ambon is not a main producer; some of the other islands such as Banda and Saparua grow more of these spices. The Bandanese controlled the trade with the Portuguese, and when the Dutch arrived in 1599 they found discontent with the natives against the Portuguese who were trying to dominate the spice trade.

Ambon sided with the Dutch and installed a Dutch governor, so the Portuguese left to set up a new trading station at Macassar in Sulawesi.

The Dutch were able to create a stranglehold over the spice trade creating many uprisings between the European countries. The English arrived and were soon involved in conflicts with the Dutch to try and gain a monopoly over the region. However the Dutch saw them off and soon had control over the Banda archipelago. This resulted in a massacre when the Dutch brutally killed uncooperative islanders. Possibly over 6,000 were killed during the Spice Wars and the workers were replaced by Dutch-owned slaves.

The spice monopoly made a fortune for Holland until it collapsed in the late 1700s.

This was a disaster for the Moluccas spice trade as the British took spice tree seedlings and planted them in their colonies in Malay and Ceylon. Maluku lost its important trade as the spices were being produced cheaper elsewhere. Zanzibar (Tanzania) is now the world's chief producer of cloves.

Today the Spice Islands are peaceful and cloves and nutmeg are still grown. The word spice means a dried seed, fruit, root, or bark. Spices are used in cooking, in medicines, cosmetics and perfumes, and also for religious rituals.

I was particularly keen to see the spices growing naturally, as in Malaysia I've only seen them in botanical gardens. On Pulau Seram I saw groves of nutmeg trees, but none were fruiting. It was only on Pulau Saparua that I got to see the fruit which hang singly from the trees and resemble apricots. Nutmegs (Myristica sp) are evergreen trees and are important for two spices derived from the fruit, nutmeg and mace. Nutmeg is the actual seed of the tree whilst mace is the dried "lacy" reddish covering of the seed. I remember from childhood days, grating nutmeg over rice pudding to give it that extra tang.

Nutmeg (pala) is grown in many places and is so important to Grenada that it features on the national flag. It is used as a flavouring for foods, especially in cakes, sauces and some liqueurs.

Mention cloves to me and I think of the dentist and apples. Clove oil is an old-fashioned remedy for toothache and was commonly used for dental emergencies. The reason I think of applies is because my mother used cloves when preparing dishes containing apples.

Cloves are the aromatic dried flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae. Cloves are native to Indonesia, but are now grown in Tanzania and Madagascar, as well as Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka. The name derives from French clou, a nail, as the buds vaguely resemble small irregular nails in shape.

The clove tree is an evergreen which grows to a height of 10-20m, and has large oval leaves and crimson flowers. The flower buds are at first of a pale color and gradually become green, after which they develop into a bright red, when they are ready for collecting. Unfortunately none of the trees were flowering during my visit.

Cloves (cengkeh) are used as pickling spices as well as flavourings, in foods, vermouths and tobacco in kretek cigarettes. In Maluku cloves are made into attractive souvenirs. The first time I saw such an item was in the Ambon museum. It was a sailing ship made out of cloves and when I first glanced at it, I thought it was wood, until I was told to look closely. Now many shops sell many items made using cloves, and I am the owner of one — a long-stemmed rose made entirely of cloves. It is a fitting reminder of my trip to the Spice Islands.

The Brunei Times

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http://www.bt.com.bn/en/en/travel/2008/05/11/a_sweet_whiff_of_ambons_spice_islands