THE MOLUCCA ISLANDS*. 
After tbe fertile and valuable island of Java, the Moluccas form the most 
important part of our possessions to the East of the Cape of Good Hope. Un- 
derr the name of the Molucca islands, are compieheDded Amboyna, Banda, 
Tenate, Tidore, and the smaller neighbouring islands. The greater part of 
these islands were discovered by the Portuguese, who were in possession of 
them at the commencement of the 16th century. 
It was not until the end of the same century, in 1598, that the Dutch 
flag shewed itself there for the first time, under the command of Etienne 
Verbaege and Vice-Admiral Jacques de Heemskerk who were received by the 
inhabitants with open arms, concluded treaties of commerce with the princes 
and orang kayas (native chiefs) and departed with rich cargoes of spices. 
The first times of our commerce and of our sojourn in these countries were ml 
however, at all peaceable, on the contrary they required a policy sustained by nu¬ 
merous combats, chiefly against the inhabitants of the Banda islands, who often 
broke the treaties, committing tbe greatest cruelties upon the Dutch, and were at 
this period constantly excited and abetted by the Portuguese and the English, our 
contemporaries and rivals in the Asiatic Archipelago, until about the year 1665 
when the war which broke out in Europe between England and the Low Coun¬ 
tries, allowed our East India Company to terminate with vigour the struggle 
•which had existed for so many years between it and tbe English Company, and 
to secure at last by formal contracts with the different indian nations, the ex¬ 
clusive supremacy of the Moluccas. The Governors General Both, Reinst, 
Koen and Van Diemen, themselves directing the forces of the company, and 
visiting these places, successively contributed to augment and to fix the power 
of this company at that time so prosperous, and which might have turned it 
to good advantage if, by their cruel and desolating system, to assure the mono¬ 
poly of apices on the Moluccas, they bad not prohibited all other culture or 
commerce whatever. 
It is a fact unfortunately too well known and which it would serve no purpose 
to pasB over in silence, that to ensure the exclusive commerce in these article#, 
the company caused to be rooted out and destroyed at a great cost, often by force 
of arms, all the nutmeg and clove trees, except the number necessary to pro¬ 
duce the quantity of spices which it could sell. 
To execute such a devastation, it was necessary to commit much violence, to 
maintain expensive garrisons, to build forts, to pay pensions to the native princes, 
and to forego all the other sources of revenue in the country. 
It would have been well, if these results had secured considerable advantages ; 
but the Company was never able to sell, in an average year in Europe, cloves, 
nutmegs and mace, for more than two millions of florins, while it was obliged in 
order to obtain them to spend often more than three millions, at the same time 
ruining these beautiful countries, from wuich it might have derived immense 
advantages under a good management. 
The cruel effects of this fatal system upon the countries and the people who 
had the misfortune to find themselves subject to it were not long in being felt; 
however, let us hasten to say that a healing balm has been poured iuto these 
bleeding wounds, and the first foundations have been laid upon which in process 
of time an edifice may be raised more in accordance with the present times and 
opinions. 
No point of the colonial system has perhaps excited greater attention in the 
supreme Government of the Indies, than the problem of the advantage or disad¬ 
vantage of the monopoly of spices in the Moluccas, and perhaps no point has 
elicited more opposite opinions. 
* Translated, from Count HogenAorp's Coup d' Oeil sur L'Ue de Java 
1830, 
