The Spice of Islands

The only place in the world ... the Spice Islands.

Inhabited for thousands of years with a long history of self-rule, the Maluku islands were in the center of world trade in spices. In the south, the Banda Islands were the world's only source of nutmeg and mace produced from the nutmeg tree.  Cloves were available from nearby island communities and nowhere else in the world. For generation after generation, they traded the spices for food and manufactured goods from India, China, and Arabia.

Banda Islands

When Europeans discovered the market, competition escalated viciously.  In the 16th century, the Portuguese were first to arrive and attempted to monopolize the trade in spices, but failed.  The Dutch East India Company (VOC) attempted the same monopolizing and succeeded.  It was Europe's second joint stock company after the English East India Company, both major landmarks in the development of the modern corporation.

Much like today, the Dutch East India Company coerced the local governments into unbalanced trade agreements that gave them increasing leverage in the local economy and workforce.  When they came to the Banda Islands, however, there was no central government to conquer.  Each community was governed by a council of residents, and they were quite opposed to foreign involvement, so the company killed them.  Corporate genocide.

Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the Dutch governor of Batavia, sailed with a fleet (and company army) to Banda in 1621 and killed almost all of the people there.  He let about a thousand survive to preserve the agricultural knowledge necessary for continued spice production.  He divided the lands into 68 sections which he allocated to company executives and brought in slaves for forced labor.

Such deadly practices were not uncommon and are seen in varying degree among most of the business ventures controlling the new world's trade in their treatment of both colonists and indigenous populations.  Indentured servitude, slavery, and native genocide were corporate initiatives.

Today, it is illegal in most contexts to kill competitors.  With that exception, corporate trade practices continue much as before.

Fair trade efforts have shown some progress, but 'me first' and 'us first' persist to the detriment of most of the world's inhabitants.  Inequality between and within nations is increasing each year.

There's more, of course, with perhaps the key
factors being governance and equality.
North and South Korea provide interesting
examples as did our northern and southern
states up through the mid-20th century.

Public discourse suggests that the only alternative to capitalism is socialism, suggesting the better of the two is the only choice.  That discussion is perhaps simplistic rhetoric rather than informed.  Neither capitalism nor socialism provides a solution, as we well know.  Both leave the lower economic segments of the population in deprivation and inescapable circumstances.

Fortunately, there are numerous alternatives.  For starters, ours is not a pure capitalist economy any more than China is pure socialist.  Both economies have morphed over the years, sometimes beneficially, sometimes not.

Here's hoping we learn along the way and improve appropriately, perhaps virtuously, as has from time to time been our national intent.