La Ville Amboine Capital de Iles Molucques.

Superb c.18th hand coloured engraved view of Ambon with numerous Dutch ships engaged in the spice trade.

The backbone of the Dutch spice trade was the large VOC East Indiaman (retourschip), supported by fluyts and smaller regional vessels operating within the Asian trading network. These ships sailed the Cape Route from the Netherlands to the Cape of Good Hope, across the Indian Ocean to Batavia forming one of the most important commercial sea routes of the early modern world. The Fluyt was the classic three-masted square-rigged merchant ship of the c.17th built to be extremely economical in operation, carrying the largest cargo and smallest crew possible.

In 1603, the Dutch East India Company admiral, Steven van der Hagen launched his second voyage to the Indies, van der Hagen’s fleet consisting of 12 fleets left Holland in December 1603, visited several ports of the Malabar coast and Ceylon, stopped at Aceh and Bantam before arriving in Amboina in 1605. In February 1605, van der Hagen allied with the raja of Hitu in an improvised attack and capture of Amboina, when 14 Dutch sail appeared before Amboina on 22 February 1605, the last Portuguese commander of Amboina, Gaspar de Mello quickly surrendered the castle of Nossa Senhora de Anunciada with everything they had there under a treaty, leaving Amboina under Dutch control, and after capturing the Portuguese fort in Amboina. The Dutch established Fort Victoria as their administrative and military headquarters in the southern Moluccas, making Ambon a strategic base for controlling regional clove production.  The VOC enforced a strict monopoly system. Indigenous growers were required to sell cloves exclusively to the Company at fixed prices. To maintain high market value in Europe, the Dutch implemented the policy of extirpatie—the destruction of clove trees on islands not under direct VOC control—thereby restricting supply. Annual inspection voyages, known as hongi tochten, were carried out in armed vessels to ensure compliance. Ambon functioned within a wider commercial network centred on Batavia (Jakarta), from which spices were shipped to the Netherlands aboard large retourschepen (East Indiamen). From there, cloves were redistributed across Europe at substantial profit.