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village chiefs, the concept of exclusivity was either not accepted or (maybe) not understood by the Bandanese, who continued selling their nutmeg to other traders at the highest offered price—a concept they did understand.
    The response by the Dutch was ruthless. A fleet of ships, hundreds of men, and the first of a number of large forts appeared in the Bandas, all designed to control the trade in nutmeg. After a series of attacks, counterattacks, massacres, renewed contracts, and further broken treaties, the Dutch acted even more decisively. Groves of nutmeg trees were destroyed except around where the Dutch forts had been built. Bandanese villages were burned to the ground, the headmen were executed, and the remaining population was enslaved under Dutch settlers brought in to oversee nutmeg production.
    The lone remaining threat to the VOC’s complete monopoly was the continued presence of the English on Run, the most remote of the Banda Islands, where years before the headmen had signed a trade treaty with the English. This small atoll, where nutmeg trees were so numerous that they clung to the cliffs, became the scene of much bloody fighting. After a brutal siege, a Dutch invasion, and more destruction of nutmeg groves, with the 1667 Treaty of Breda the English surrendered all claims to the island of Run in exchange for a formal declaration renouncing Dutch rights to the island of Manhattan. New Amsterdam became New York, and the Dutch got nutmeg.
    In spite of all their efforts, the Dutch monopoly in the trade in nutmeg and cloves did not last. In 1770 a French diplomat smuggled clove seedlings from the Moluccas to the French colony of Mauritius. From Mauritius they spread all along the East African coast and especially to Zanzibar, where cloves quickly became the major export.
    Nutmeg, on the other hand, proved notoriously difficult to cultivate outside its original home on the Banda Islands. The tree requires rich, moist, well-drained soil and hot, humid conditions away from the sun and strong winds. Despite the difficulty competitors had in establishing nutmeg growth elsewhere, the Dutch took the precaution of dipping whole nutmegs in lime (calcium hydroxide or slaked lime) before export, to prevent any possibility of sprouting. Eventually the British managed to introduce nutmeg trees into Singapore and the West Indies. The Caribbean island of Grenada became known as “the Nutmeg Isle” and is now the major producer of the spice.
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    The great worldwide trade in spices would doubtless have continued were it not for the advent of refrigeration. With pepper, cloves, and nutmeg no longer needed as preservatives, the huge demand for piperine, eugenol, isoeugenol, and the other fragrant molecules of these once exotic spices has gone. Today pepper and other spices still grow in India, but they are not major exports. The islands of Ternate and Tidore and the Banda group, now part of Indonesia, are more remote than ever. No longer frequented by great sailing ships seeking to load their hulls with cloves and nutmeg, these small islands slumber in the hot sun, visited only by occasional tourists who explore the crumbling old Dutch forts or dive the pristine coral reefs.
    The lure of spices is in the past. We still enjoy them for the rich, warm flavor their molecules impart to our food, but we rarely think of the fortunes they built, the conflicts they provoked, and the amazing feats of exploration they inspired.

2. ASCORBIC ACID
    T HE EAGE OF DISCOVERY was fueled by molecules of the spice trade, but it was the lack of another, quite different molecule that almost ended it. Over 90 percent of his crew didn’t survive Magellan’s 1519-1522 circumnavigation of the world—in large part due to scurvy, a devastating disease caused by a deficiency of the ascorbic acid molecule, dietary vitamin C.
    Exhaustion and weakness, swelling of the arms and legs, softening of the gums, excessive bruising,