If you owned Manhattan island and were, er, persuaded to trade it away, what would you hope to get in return?

So these are the Banda Islands of modern-day Indonesia. You can see Run all the way over there on the left.

"In the 17th century, nutmeg was considered precious -- it grew only on the Banda Islands in the East Indies and was thought to protect against plague. With the Treaty of Breda, which ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch (who had prevailed militarily) secured a worldwide monopoly on nutmeg by forcing England to give up Run, the most remote of the Banda Islands. But the English did manage to get a little something in return: a lightly inhabited New World island called Manhattan."

-- from "Lessons from the Past," David Goodstein's American Scientist
review of Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History

by Ken

This came as news to me. I always thought of the English just taking the colony of New Amsterdam away from the Dutch and leaving them crying. (Not so much the people living in New Amsterdam, who were there to make money, mind you, and pretty much went right ahead with their plan once they had a different flag flying over their heads. But I figure the Dutch owners took it personally. Like if you were the Dutch governor general of the little colony, you were out of a job.) Who knew that the English eventually forked over what we today would call "compensation," and not in the form of draft choices. Following the ancient precepts of island-trading (this part I'm just making up), they gave an island for an island (this part, however, I'm not making up).

BEHOLD THE ISLAND OF RUN

It's pronounced, we're told, to rhyme with "dune," and is also known as Rhun and Pulo Run. It's seen here from an approaching boat.

All photos by Muhammad Fadli via National Geographic

Writer Janna Dotschkal explains in "The Spice Trade’s Forgotten Island," an installment in National Geographic's "PROOF: Picture Stories" series, that "there’s just something about an isolated island that captures my imagination." Which apparently mad her a sucker for the Run story.

Run isn't the "important trade lynchpin" it was back in the 17th century, when it supplied nutmeg to a nutmeg-crazy world. (One assumes that back then nutmeg lovers knew that you have to grate the stuff to order off a little nutmeg nut -- that the flavor of the powedered you get in the little cans and bottles pretending to be nutmeg bears no relation to the real stuff.) Nowadays, in fact, Run is way off the beaten travel path. You don't just log onto Travelocity and book a flight there, or even a bracing ferry ride from some convenient destination port. As Janna learned in her e-correspondence with photographer Muhammad Fadli, who we're told "is part of the Arka Project, a photography collective based in Indonesia," it took him "a four-hour flight, an eight-hour voyage on a passenger liner, and a rickety boat ride" to get there, with the goal of "captur[ing] its isolation."

AND ONCE MUHAMMAD GOT THERE?

Here's what Janna learned via e-conversation:

JANNA DOTSCHKAL: How did you first hear about Run island? Why did you want to photograph it?

MUHAMMAD FADLI: I am a big fan of history and I read a lot of it, regardless [of] the genre. Several years ago, I stumbled across a short magazine article written by a famous Indonesian author. He wrote a brief passage about the swapping of Run for Manhattan. I haven’t let it go since then. Run is an important part of my larger ongoing project about the Banda archipelago, a group of ten tiny islands in the middle of [the] Banda Sea.

JANNA: Tell me more about the history of Run. Why is it important?

MUHAMMAD: It was the setting of some of the earliest European ventures in Asia and played a central role in the economic history of the world. It was all because of nutmeg, [considered] the most precious of all spices—once worth its weight in gold—which was almost exclusively grown in the Banda.


National Geographic caption: Djamal Sabono, a fisherman and nutmeg farmer, stands on one of Run’s beaches.

Finding the Banda and the rest of the Spice Islands was the main motivation behind Europe’s age of exploration. The Dutch succeeded in controlling most parts of the Banda, while the English laid their claim on Run, which was considered one of their first colonies overseas.

And then the tale about Run’s swapping with Manhattan. This is a key point that can probably help people connect with the story. Everyone knows Manhattan but not Run, even though they share one history.

JANNA: What’s it like to live on the island now?

MUHAMMAD: Life in Run is pretty simple. There’s no mobile phone signal or cars, and electricity only runs for a few hours in the evening. Coming from Jakarta, it was quite difficult for me to adjust at first. I had a hard time sleeping at night because it was all too silent. There was a strange feeling of isolation too.

JANNA: How did you want to capture the mood on the island?

MUHAMMAD: I love making portraits and landscapes. I chose to photograph Run like this because I was dealing with the past—which is now essentially nothingness. So I needed to focus on all its subtleties, whether it’s a landscape, details, or people. It’s mostly just wandering around and hoping to find something valuable. In Run, I spent more time photographing the people because they are part of the history. I think the story would fall apart if I didn’t collaborate with them.


National Geographic caption: A newlywed couple in Run. The groom comes from the island of Ambon but decided to hold the wedding in Run.

JANNA: Did you have any interesting or unusual experiences on the island?

MUHAMMAD: When I asked how to get to the nutmeg farm in the forest, most people were hesitant to answer. It turned out that just a few weeks earlier, a farmer was found dead and dismembered in the forest. People said it was a supernatural phenomenon, making the argument that no predators inhabit the island. In Indonesia, the biggest Muslim country in the world, Islam is still intertwined with local beliefs. Especially in remote places, people still believe ancestors’ spirits are everywhere. Run is one of those places.

In the end I managed to go to the farms, but for the sake of my safety the villagers insisted that I be accompanied by a local. Ridiculously enough, they sent a ten-year-old boy to go with me.


National Geographic caption: Lapase shows off his catch of the day, a nearly 21-pound yellowfin tuna.

JANNA: What do you hope to show people with this project?

MUHAMMAD: I want to show how the history of global trade shaped people’s fate and how it might not be as glorious as we’ve heard. The spice trade brought fortunes for the seafaring Europeans, but it acted like a curse for the islanders. Once [nutmeg] lost its value, they were all forgotten. It is a kind of reflection on what is still so common, even today. While history clearly provides us certain lessons, we only can learn them if we are aware of it. I’m not hoping for some sort of sudden change to happen because of my photographs. As long as I can make people aware of the story, that’s enough for me.

To see more photos, and to see these in larger format, visit the article onsite.

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Hey, kids, cramming for your Geography final? Don't forget Snoopy Island!

Twittter user @tekken8810

@etienneeshrdlu: "Exactly as Nostradamus predicted. A new Snoopy-shaped island rises from the sea near Tokyo"

"Hiroshi Ito, a volcanologist with the Japanese coastguard, said the island could erode after the eruptions cease. 'But it could also remain permanently,' he told the FNN news network."

-- from "Japanese 'Snoopy' island created by
volcanic eruption," in The Guardian

by Ken

Boy, you can bet the creationists will have a field day with this one. As our pal Mai Armstrong, the indefatigable blogger of the (NY-NJ) Working Harbor Coalition, writes:

An undersea volcanic eruption off the coast of Japan sprouted a brand new island from the waters around the Ogasawara island chain in recent weeks.

Active lava flow has grown the new island quite rapidly. Expanding to merge with neighboring Nishinoshima island, a new landmass has emerged with a familiar silhouette.

It’s Snoopy!

Hey, kids, don't try this at home!

Through the miracle of time-lapse photography . . .

From TV pulpits all across the land we can expect to hear of this miracle wrought by that indefatigable prankster God, creating an island in the shape of (I'm guessing) his favorite cartoon character.

According to Wikipedia, the Nishinoshima we know, or knew, was itself largely the creation of volcanic eruptions in 1973-74, which significantly expanded "a small, green island which had no eruptions in the past 10,000 years." The latest round of island-building began in November, producing a small new island. By Christmas Eve, The Guardian's Justin McCurry reports from Osaka:

A massive undersea volcanic eruption had resulted in the new island linking with Nishinoshima at its two southern corners. In between sits of a pool of reddish seawater -- Snoopy's perfectly positioned collar.

Experts said that volcano remains highly active, as red magma continued to rise, raising the possibility that it will lose its endearing shape as it expands.

News coverage, including aerial photographs, has created a worldwide network of fans of the new island.


Snoopy Island -- or "greater Nishinoshima Island," if you insist, now that the new island has merged with the old one to form our old friend Snoopy -- is in the Ogasawara (aka Bonin) volcanic-island chain, some 620 miles south of Tokyo.

The Guardian's Justin McCurry reports further:

Some speculated how long it would be before China claimed sovereignty over the island – a reference to a longstanding dispute over ownership of the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea.

Though meant as a joke, the comments did not entirely miss the mark: Japan plans to build port facilities and transplant fast-growing coral fragments onto Okinotorishima, a pair of tropical islets located even farther south of Tokyo in a resource-rich area of ocean coveted by China.

And Japan's chief government spokesman, Yoshihide Suga, welcomed the prospect that Japan's borders could stretch, if only by a few hundred metres. "If it becomes an island, our country's territorial waters will expand," he told reporters after the island was discovered last month.

"No doubt aware of the media buzz surrounding Snoopy island," McCurry writes, "Japan's coastguard warned that the area was still very dangerous and told would-be tourists to stay away." This warning was presumably what tweeter @astralpouch had in mind in this tweet:

"Holy crap . . . Snoopy island . . . I don't care what they say I'm going over there."

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I need to say something about HBO's "The Pacific," but I'm not sure what

Historical Background, Part 8: Iwo Jima

by Ken

I keep thinking I ought to write something about the Steven Spielberg- and Tom Hanks-produced HBO series The Pacific, especially as tonight, finally, we reach a name that everybody knows, Iwo Jima. (Air time is Sundays at 9pm ET/PT, with innumerable repeats, but as always, check your local listings.)

This follows two episodes devoted to a battle that I suspect hardly any Americans have heard of: the incredibly bloody fight for the inconsequential island of Peleliu, in the Palau Islands, whose airstrip was seen as a gateway to the Philippines. Possession of that airstrip, the strategic thinking went, was "do or die" for any chance to retake the Philippines from Japanese control. But unfortunately U.S. intelligence had no inkling of the elaborate network of heavily fortified (and manned) caves and tunnels in the hills above the airstrip, and so the marines dispatched to take the island literally had no idea what they were going up against. The casualty figures are numbing. According to the Stamford Historical Society's account of the Battle of Peleliu (Sept. 15-Nov. 25, 1944):

The Americans suffered 2336 killed and 8450 wounded. The Japanese suffered 10,695 killed and 202 captured, only 19 of which were Japanese, the others were Korean and Okinawan laborers. The assault on Peleliu resulted in the highest casualty rate for any amphibious assault in the entire Pacific campaign.

For those who haven't been watching, the way The Pacific works, the opening minutes are devoted to some quick background on the historical moment, including pieces of interviews with marines who survived the action in question. I love this stuff. In the case of Peleliu, for example, it's impossible to describe the force of the quiet horror of those marines' recollection of an action expected to take two or three days which stretched to more than ten weeks. Of course the survivors remember the horrible losses. But there's something about the way they recall the absence of water, pointing out that the human body can go surprisingly long without food, but not that long at all without water.

You see the Palau Islands in the Central Pacific Area, north of New Guinea and east of the Philippine island of Mindanao? (You can click on the map to enlarge it.) That's the group that includes tiny, inconsequential Peleliu, the site of unimaginable carnage in the battle for its airstrip, which then went unused -- see update below.

I never heard of Peleliu, so I can say that The Pacific serves a useful educational function. (UPDATE: At the start of Part 8, we learn that Peleliu, once captured, was never used for any military purpose. Even in the planning for an invasion of Japan, General MacArthur decided on a different plan. Which perhaps explains why most of us have never heard of Peleliu. The battle might as well never have happened, except for the fact of the very real losses incurred there.)

Still, the series is able to present only such a tiny, selective portion of the War in the Pacific, and it does so with that always-nervous-making mix of fact and fiction in the dramatized depictions that fill out each episode, so that I never know quite where we're supposed to be going here. That war is hell really shouldn't be news to anyone, should it? And yet Spielberg seems to have gotten away with having nothing more on his mind than that in the making of Saving Private Ryan. But then, I'm the only person I know who thought that a decidedly dubious and largely un-educational undertaking.

Still, as I've gotten to know the characters (I think the producers of series like this forget how long it takes viewers to sort out the individual characters), I've found myself more compelled by the drama -- without enough personal knowledge of the events to know how well or badly I'm being informed historically. The shows have a feeling of authenticity, but that doesn't count for much.

I was surprised, rummaging around the show's page on the HBO website, to find that Eugene Sledge and Robert Leckie, two of our central characters, are real persons, who've written real books, Sledge's With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawaand Leckie's Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific, about the real war they observed and participated in, on which -- I now discover! -- the series is at least partly based. Maybe all of the characters are based on real people. As with so many other things about the show, I (and I suspect most viewers) just don't know.

When I mentioned to Howie that in tonight's episode (Part 8, as I recall) we get to Iwo Jima, he said he thought I was going to say that tonight we find out who won the war. And again, I can't tell you what function the series has set out to fill. I certainly have the feeling that, while there is a small subset of Americans who remain fascinated by World War II, by and large the war has receded into dim memory, and I guess I think this is a bad thing, though I can't tell you why exactly, beyond the ways in which ignorance of the past is a bad thing generally, and equips us poorly to make decisions about the present and future.

Howie also asked if the show has devoted much attention to the Japanese perspective, an issue he's had with a book on Afghanistan he's reading, Seth Jones's In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan,which devotes careful attention to the life background of many of the American servicepeople it chronicles while treating all the Afghans as interchangeable anonymities. I had to think. On the whole the portrayal of the Japanese in The Pacific has seemed to me limited to the incarnation-of-evil image in the minds of most of the American fighting forces. But then, is there any other way to fight a war? If you're sending soldiers, or sailors or marines, into battle, can they fight with any attitude other than, "It's them or us"? Is there a "nuanced" way to fight a war? (One of the hellish things about war is that it reduces us to beings who think about geopolitical issues and other people in such cartoonish terms.)

Of course nuance is desperately important when it comes to the people who get us into wars and then strategize them. I think an awful lot of us have long had the feeling that we got into both Iraq and Afghanistan without even the most rudimentary knowledge of what was at stake in either region or how it's seen from local perspectives, and this is a singularly terrible way to run a war machine. In addition, in prosecuting any war it's certainly important for all concerned to have given detailed thought to what is and what isn't permissible behavior.

Those issues don't come up in The Pacific, and I'm not sure they should. I know that I will come away from the series knowing more about the War in the Pacific than I knew. What I'm not so sure about is how much of what I need to know about the Pacific war I'll come away knowing. I'm really curious to know what other people's experience of the series has been -- including those who chose to give it a pass, as I almost did.

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