page_title: Invasion of the Spice Islands
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Invasion of the Spice Islands / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: A commemorative woodwork dedicated to Christopher Cole in Banda Neira
context_page_description: The Invasion of the Spice Islands was a military invasion by British forces that took place between February to August 1810 on and around the Dutch owned Maluku Islands also known as the Spice Islands in the Dutch East Indies during the Napoleonic wars.
  By 1810 the Kingdom of Holland was a vassal of Napoleonic France and Great Britain along with the East India Company sought to control the rich Dutch spice islands in the East Indies. Two British forces were allocated; one to the island of Ambon and Ternate, then another force would capture the more heavily defended islands of Banda Neira, following which any other island that was defended.
  In a campaign that lasted seven months British forces took all of the islands in the region; Ambon was captured in February, Banda Neira in August and Ternate and all other islands in the region later that same month.
  The British held on to the islands until the end of the war. After the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 the islands were handed back to the Dutch, but in the meantime the East India Company had uprooted a lot of the spice trees for transplantation throughout the British Empire.
context_section_description: After the Dutch surrender, Captain Charles Foote (of Piedmontaise) was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the Banda Islands. This action was a prelude to Britain's invasion of Java in 1811 which Cole also took a leading role in planning and executing. This was successfully completed under Rear-Admiral Robert Stopford. For his services, Cole was knighted in May 1812, awarded a specially minted medal, and given an honorary doctorate by the University of Oxford.
  Before the Dutch regained control of the islands, the East India Company used their occupation of the Spice Islands to gather spice seedlings. Thus began a transplantation on an almost industrial scale – most were sent to Bencoolen and Penang, as well as Ceylon and other British colonies. In the previous occupation in the 1790s the EIC had established spice gardens in Penang; by 1805 these contained 5,100 nutmeg trees and 15,000 clove trees. After the occupation in 1815 that number had jumped to 13,000 nutmeg trees and as many as 20,000 clove trees. From these locations the trees were then transplanted to other British colonies elsewhere, notably Grenada and later Zanzibar. As a result, this competition largely destroyed the value of the Banda Islands to the Dutch.
  The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 restored the islands as well as Java to the Dutch. The islands then remained part of the Dutch East Indies, a colony of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, until Indonesia's independence in 1949.
caption: A commemorative woodwork in Banda Neira dedicated to Christopher Cole.
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