The puzzle of why Holland and other Europeans coveted spices from the East Indies often perplexed me. The common explanation, that the spices were used to cover the smell of rotten meat during winter, did not satisfy me because the meat was unlikely to be all that rotten, and if it was, the Dutch would not eat it. Also, they were unlikely to spend phenomenal amounts of money simply to mask an unwholesome taste. The VOC shipyards as they are today in Jakarta While I was in Taiwan, I had …
