spice-islands

Updated: June 28, 2025

Then dividing about a million florins' worth of booty among his men, who doubtless found such cruising among the spice-islands more attractive than wintering at the North Pole, he sailed in the carrack for Macao, where he found no difficulty in convincing the authorities of the celestial empire that the friendship of the Dutch republic was worth cultivating.

John Lothrop Motley - History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce, 1602-03

For as thereby we might better have consulted our own profit and satisfaction, than by the other loose roving way of life; so it might probably have proved of publick benefit to our Nation, and been a means of introducing an English Settlement and Trade, not only here, but through several of the Spice-Islands, which lie in its neighborhood.

- The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55: Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the: Islands and Their Peoples, Their History and Records of: The Catholic Missions, As Related in Contemporaneous Books: and Manuscripts, Showing the Political, Economic, Commercial: and Religious Conditions of Those Islands from Their: Earliest Relations with European Nations to the Close of: the Nineteenth Century, Volume XXXIX: 1683-1690

Then dividing about a million florins' worth of booty among his men, who doubtless found such cruising among the spice-islands more attractive than wintering at the North Pole, he sailed in the carrack for Macao, where he found no difficulty in convincing the authorities of the celestial empire that the friendship of the Dutch republic was worth cultivating.

John Lothrop Motley - History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce — Complete (1600-1609)