What do you think of this fact?
Imagine you had to choose: an island that’s now packed with skyscrapers and home to Wall Street, or a tiny island full of nutmeg trees. Easy call? In the 17th century, it went the other way around. In 1667, England handed the nutmeg island of Run to the Dutch and kept Manhattan instead.
A spice worth more than gold
Run sits in the Banda Sea in Indonesia and is one of the Banda Islands. For a long time, nutmeg grew only on these few islands, which made it insanely sought after. According to National Geographic, the spice was once worth its weight in gold and helped drive Europe’s Age of Exploration. In Europe, nutmeg was believed to protect against the plague, among other things, which pushed demand even higher.
Whoever controlled nutmeg made a fortune. The Dutch East India Company wanted a monopoly, and Run was a problem: in 1616, its inhabitants had accepted the English king as their sovereign. That turned a speck of an island into a dispute between two world powers.
The Breda deal
After the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Treaty of Breda was signed in 1667. For England, that meant Manhattan, where the English turned New Amsterdam into New York. For the Dutch, it meant Run, and with it full control of nutmeg.
According to Wikipedia, after taking over, the Dutch even cut down every nutmeg tree on the island to keep the English from retaking it.
According to Wikipedia, Englishman Nathaniel Courthope defended Run against the Dutch for 1540 days starting in 1616.
Who won?
In the long run, the plan didn’t work out. The British later planted nutmeg trees in other colonies, and the monopoly collapsed. According to Onmanorama, nutmeg now also grows in places like southern India. According to National Geographic, Run is a quiet island with about 1,000 residents, no cars and no reliable electricity.
New York, meanwhile, became New York. And nutmeg now sits in your spice rack for a few bucks.