If you owned Manhattan island and were, er, persuaded to trade it away, what would you hope to get in return?
So these are the Banda Islands of modern-day Indonesia. You can see Run all the way over there on the left."In the 17th century, nutmeg was considered precious -- it grew only on the Banda Islands in the East Indies and was thought to protect against plague. With the Treaty of Breda, which ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch (who had prevailed militarily) secured a worldwide monopoly on nutmeg by forcing England to give up Run, the most remote of the Banda Islands.
