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
And this island was a real thorn for them because it meant that without them controlling it, if the English controlled it, they would be able to break this monopoly on the nutmeg trade that the Dutch were so desperate to carve out for themselves.
Jan Keun was the Governor General of the entirety of the Dutch East Indies.
Yeah, well, I mean, a portrait exists of him and he looks absolutely terrifying.
He's got these piercing eyes that are staring directly at you.
And unlike the English, who wanted to try and deal with the native populations of these islands, Jan Koen decided it would be far easier just to massacre the lot, just kill the lot of them and take control of the islands.
And essentially, this is what he tried to do with the Banda Islands.
And we'll come on to the massacre because this is not a pleasant story.
No.
But compare it to the English.
I don't know if I'm getting ahead of myself here, but when the English come to Run Island, what they do, they sign a treaty with the islanders and they bring Run Island under the...
under the control of the English.
And the treaty document still exists.
And I'll just read you.
It says, "'And whereas King James, by the grace of God, "'is King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, "'he is now, by the mercy of God, King of Run.'"
And as one of the sea dogs quipped, I really shouldn't say this, Willie, while you're here, but as one sea dog quipped, Run Island was going to prove far more profitable than Scotland ever had done.
But probably true.
So Nathaniel Courtaubes, who's to play an absolutely sort of central role to the whole story of what happened in the Bandar Islands, he was an employee of the East India Company.
Not much is known about him, his early life, although subsequent to writing the book, I found that his house still exists in Cranbrook in Kent, a beautiful half-timbered Elizabethan mansion.
Anyway, he set sail on one of the East India Company voyages, which was
An extraordinary adventure.
Showing 1141–1160 of 1,435 · page 58 of 72
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