After a swift Bandanese surrender, the victors rounded up local leaders. They signed treaties that turned the Bandanese into Dutch subjects, then tortured them for confessions revealing alleged plots to attack the Dutch. Thousands were killed, others enslaved, and many who fled to the mountains were starved out. “The population of around 15,000 Bandanese was decimated to just a few hundred in a few months,” said Adam Clulow, a historian and professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “The Dutch company was later accused of carrying out what some describe as the first instance of corporate genocide.” “And it was all for nutmeg,” he said.
I find this a bit suspicious. The Dutch aren't known for being cruel conquerors and genocidal maniacs. There is the Belgian Congo, but that was the actions of one very specific lunatic that basically convinced the Belgians to abandon colonialism altogether.
This is especially odd considering there were no such genocides conducted by the English or Portuguese that were literally next to them. There is a specific massacre (-ish) that seemed to have led to the death of a couple thousand people.
The natives surrendered already, before this attack took place, then they had to surrender again to the rampaging and burning... Dutch.
This seems a little bit crazy, to be honest. I would suspect that some kind of deportation of the population took place, as people sought refuge in English controlled territory, and the population needed to be stabilized with imported slaves.
There seems to be two things that suggests to me that there was at least some Dutch brutality: and the first part seems to be that the Dutch did massacre and English garrison in an earlier conflict on the island; also that the island's population were islamic. Considering the conflict with the American conflict with the Barbary Caliphate, it's possible that there may have been violent cross actions conducted against "infadels", but I don't have evidence of this. That being said, if the Dutch were exposed to Islamic levels of interpersonal violence, I could see why they would use fire to suppress the population... but then, why not try to properly Christianize it. Something's off.
Frankly, there's not much evidence here generally. I'm not sure how the University of Hawaii professors (very sus) discovered that the population of the Island was 15,000 when even the Dutch didn't bother to count.
I find this a bit suspicious. The Dutch aren't known for being cruel conquerors and genocidal maniacs. There is the Belgian Congo, but that was the actions of one very specific lunatic that basically convinced the Belgians to abandon colonialism altogether.
This is especially odd considering there were no such genocides conducted by the English or Portuguese that were literally next to them. There is a specific massacre (-ish) that seemed to have led to the death of a couple thousand people.
The natives surrendered already, before this attack took place, then they had to surrender again to the rampaging and burning... Dutch.
This seems a little bit crazy, to be honest. I would suspect that some kind of deportation of the population took place, as people sought refuge in English controlled territory, and the population needed to be stabilized with imported slaves.
There seems to be two things that suggests to me that there was at least some Dutch brutality: and the first part seems to be that the Dutch did massacre and English garrison in an earlier conflict on the island; also that the island's population were islamic. Considering the conflict with the American conflict with the Barbary Caliphate, it's possible that there may have been violent cross actions conducted against "infadels", but I don't have evidence of this. That being said, if the Dutch were exposed to Islamic levels of interpersonal violence, I could see why they would use fire to suppress the population... but then, why not try to properly Christianize it. Something's off.
Frankly, there's not much evidence here generally. I'm not sure how the University of Hawaii professors (very sus) discovered that the population of the Island was 15,000 when even the Dutch didn't bother to count.