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Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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NO
TRADING OF
BREDA: What happened in OTL: In 1667, Britain and Holland arranged a
trade, in the form of the Treaty of Breda --
Britain gave up the Indo-Pacific island of Breda; in return for which,
the Dutch gave the British the island of Manhattan. To people of the time, the Dutch got the
better deal. Breda was an island in
the Moluccas island group. And, to
make that mean something, even two hundred years ago, the only source of the
spice nutmeg was the Moluccas. One of the things the Dutch did if any
other Great Powers trespassed on their land in the Moluccas, was to destroy
every single nutmeg tree on the island. When
it came to protecting their property, the Dutch policy seemed to be “nutmeg
delenda est.” They (the
Dutch) were also particularly fierce with the native peoples of the islands, who
were themselves friendly to the British. The British, by the way, offered better
prices in Europe for buyers of nutmeg. What happened in an ATL: Why in God’s good Name would anyone
want to give up a productive plot of money-generating property, if the only gain
was a grim slab of rock that had no realistic profit margin in sight? Therefore, the British refuse any offer
of treaty-making with the Dutch, and continue their works in the Moluccas,
dealing with the Bandanese. British
islands in the region become strongholds of Bandanese survival, even as the
Bandanese in Dutch regions come perilously close to survival. As in OTL, when the numbers of Bandanese
laborers drop too low, the Dutch in this ATL simply bring in slaves to do the
same work. It might be conceivable
that, in this ATL, the Dutch might be kicked out by British-backed and
British-armed Bandanese uprisings. And, whether or not the Dutch are kicked
out, the Moluccas offer a convenient stepping-stone for the British…linking
India with Australia (which, if
some maps sold to English Kings are to be believed, was found by Portugese
sailors in the early 1600s). ~ Sources: ‘Narcotic of Empire’ – found in the anthology ‘The Boilerplate Rhino’ by David Quammen.
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