In the early 17th century, the VOC (Dutch East India Company) sought to maintain its monopoly on spices like nutmeg. They mandated that any nutmeg taken out of the Banda Islands must first be soaked in limewater to destroy its embryo and render it infertile, preventing it from being grown anywhere outside VOC control.
Violators of this rule could face the death penalty. When protests broke out among the Bandanese, the VOC carried out a massacre. All males over the age of 15 were beheaded, and the population plummeted from around 15,000 when the VOC first arrived to just 600 people 15 years later.
Finally, in 1769, a horticulturist named Pierre Poivre successfully smuggled viable nutmeg seeds to Mauritius. Later, the British EIC (East India Company) also succeeded in acquiring and planting nutmeg trees in Penang, Singapore, India, and Grenada. Causing the end of the Nutmeg monopoly by the Dutch
Note: the painting in the meme is just an illustration of the condition. It's actually a famous painting "Execution of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico" by a french painter Édouard Manet.
submitted by /u/Own_Friend6252[link] [comments]