VOC Spice Trade Expansion in the 1620s

Timeline

1. 1621Banda Islands · Banda IslandsIn 1621 VOC governor Jan Pieterszoon Coen conquered the Moluccan Banda Islands by force, ending local chiefs' control of the nutmeg trade; the conquest involved large-scale massacres and deportations of the Bandanese, giving the VOC a monopoly over the world's most prized nutmeg-producing region.
2. 1622–1624Hormuz and Taiwan · AsiaIn 1622 the VOC and the English East India Company jointly captured Portuguese-controlled Hormuz, opening the Persian Gulf trade route; in 1624 the VOC built Fort Zeelandia in Tainan, entering East Asian trade and controlling the re-export route to Japan. The VOC's network of Asian bases expanded rapidly in the 1620s.
3. 1625–1630Batavia and Amsterdam · North HollandIn the latter half of the 1620s, the VOC combined control of nutmeg from Banda, cloves from the Moluccas, and pepper from Java with the Batavia re-export system to achieve a near-monopoly on Europe's spice supply in the Amsterdam market; after successfully defending Batavia in 1628–1629, Asian expansion entered a period of stable returns.