Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of nutmeg, responsible for more than 70% of global output. The tropical climate of ...

Nutmeg was so lucrative that Europeans fought for market dominance for hundreds of years. In the early 1600s, the Dutch controlled the trade of nutmeg by capturing all but one of the Banda Islands.

When the Dutch had first landed on the Banda Islands, they behaved like traders. In 1599, they paid a port fee and bartered nutmeg for cotton and other manufactured goods.

It was nutmeg that first brought foreigners to the Banda Islands, but that's far from their only delight. For centuries a tiny cluster of tropical islands were a near-mythical Eldorado.

Here’s the vice and the nice on this captivating spice. Double Agent Nutmeg from the tropical evergreen plant, native to the Banda Islands of Indonesia, is actually a combo spice.

Nutmeg was so lucrative that Europeans fought for market dominance for hundreds of years. In the early 1600s, the Dutch controlled the trade of nutmeg by capturing all but one of the Banda Islands.

The residents of the Banda Islands repelled repeated attempts, until finally the Dutch in 1620 embarked with a force of more than 1,900 to massacre the Bandanese. The most notorious and tragic ...

Though it is hard to tell by visiting the Bandas today, these miniscule islands played a pivotal role in global economic history. That’s because of what grows on them: nutmeg. For centuries, the ...

In the Banda Islands, two soldiers who slept under a nutmeg tree were said to have awakened with hangovers and two other soldiers were said to have gone half-mad after eating five nutmegs.

For a long time, these high prices made nutmeg a terrible object of desire — terrible because the Dutch East India Company’s ambition to seize a monopoly of the spice of the Banda Islands from ...