Pepper wars
The sixteenth and seventeenth century struggles by Portugal, the Netherlands and England to control the spice trade.
Also: spice wars, Portuguese pepper monopoly, Dutch spice monopoly, VOC
From 1498 the Portuguese tried to seize the Indian Ocean spice trade by force, building forts at Goa, Kochi, Malacca and the Moluccas. The Dutch East India Company, the VOC, founded in 1602, drove them out and in turn sought a monopoly in cloves, nutmeg and mace, destroying trees outside controlled islands and, in 1621, massacring or enslaving most of the people of Banda. The English East India Company, founded in 1600, competed in pepper and later turned to textiles and tea. Smuggled seedlings, notably by the French, eventually broke the monopolies by planting spice in Mauritius, Grenada and Zanzibar. The wars shaped the modern map of colonial power.