Several hundred miles to the northeast of Bali, the Moluccas and Banda islands were once highly prized spiceries fought over by the Dutch, English and Portugese in the 16th & 17th Centuries. It is no exaggeration to say that the age of exploration, with far-reaching consequences, was launched in search of spices, with pepper and nutmeg so valuable in London's markets that sailors and merchants willingly risked their lives on extraordinarily arduous voyages. Today these small islands are only footnotes on the world map, but to illustrate their importance, 17th century copper plate maps show islands in the spiceries out of all proportion to their size.
