Alone in the Deep Blue Sea: A comparison of Indonesian Colonial Period nutmeg plantations and New World plantations

Summary

Plantations on the nutmeg-bearing Banda Islands are contemporaneous with early North American plantations and are an excellent place to investigate cross-cultural responses to colonialism. The Banda Islands were the world’s sole source of nutmeg in the 16th century and control over this spice was a major goal for European powers during the Age of Expansion. Consequently, the Banda Islands were the location of early experiments in colonialism by European powers and can provide information for cross cultural studies of the different responses to colonialism, as suggested by Deetz (1991). Using models of ethnogenesis and resistance developed from the study of New World plantations, I review how well these models fit the archaeological record from three colonial era nutmeg plantations in the Banda Islands, Maluku Province, Indonesia.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage