Giles Milton
speaker
1,435 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 5d ago
Giles Milton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 3.
Appearances
They have more ships.
They have far more capital behind them.
Many more men.
And they're much more aggressive in pursuit of the spices that are so yearned for in Europe.
And so from this base Bantam in Java, they begin to set sail east, further east to the Moluccas or what are known as the Spice Islands.
Or in the 1600s, they were simply known as the Spiceries.
And some of these islands were known for cinnamon and cloves.
That's Tanati and Tidore.
Others are known exclusively for Nutmeg, and that's the Bounder Islands.
And the Dutch really have a big head start on the English.
They get to the Bounder Islands, first of all, and the first thing they do is build forts on the islands.
Forts which, I have to say, still exist to this day.
These crumbling, vast fortifications.
You find brass cannon lying in the sand in these islands, you know.
You make it sound a very alluring spot.
It's absolutely wonderful.
And the point, the kind of key point of the Bander Islands is, as I said, there are six islands and five of them are all quite close together.
And the Dutch realised if they built strategically placed forts, they could control those five islands and therefore have a virtual monopoly on the nutmeg trade.
But one island, the sixth island in the Bander Islands, Run Island, was about 10 miles from the main group.
And this was the island that the Dutch did not control.
Showing 1121–1140 of 1,435 · page 57 of 72
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