Three hundred and fifty years ago New York was still called Nieuw Amsterdam. And three hundred and fifty years ago, the British had a useless speck of an island in the Banda archipelago. Useless though it was, as the Dutch had destroyed all the nutmeg plantations on the island, which was the original reason for the British to set up shop there, it was a bit of thorn in the side of the Dutch who controlled the rest of the islands and thus the lucrative spice trade. The British, basically, were an irritating nuisance, too close for comfort to the important Spice Islands. The Dutch tried to dislodge them several times, when this didn’t work they burned down all the plantations in order to render the island useless, in short they tried everything to get rid
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