FOR LOVE OF GAIN^147
lands to Amboina, destroying their trees beforehand, the better to
control them and prevent them from selling to non-Dutch buyers. In
the language of the VOC, only the Amboinese were "privileged" to
grow cloves.
This privilege entailed the obligation to cut down trees on demand;
also to buy all foodstuffs from the company at company (that is, high)
prices. On the company side, the VOC was free to set the price for the
clove crop. The aim presumably was to give the grower as little as pos
sible, but not so little as to drive him out of business. Needless to say,
the VOC, in its instinctive greed, did not pay enough, and the "privi
leged" Amboinese lost interest in their privilege. When the Dutch
found clove output lagging demand in 1656, they made the people of
the island plant more trees. But then in 1667 further planting was for
bidden, and in 1692 and 1697 the growers were made to cut trees
down. In the mid-eighteenth century demand picked up again, so the
company imposed new planting, only to follow that a few years later by
more cutting. By this time, growers were impoverished and disgusted,
and the population of Amboina had fallen by a third. Meanwhile the
British and French had started cultivating cloves in their own territo
ries. The Dutch monopoly was broken, and spices in general faded as
a precious commodity.^15
Coffee is another, more egregious example of what Adam Smith
called "so perfectly destructive a system."^16 Coffee was first brought to
Holland in 1661, and from 1696 attempts were made to cultivate the
coffee tree in Java. Native growers were paid some 10 stuiver a pound,
and at that price took eagerly to the new crop. So the company, always
on the alert for economies, reduced the price to 2.5 stuiver, whereupon
the natives began cutting coffee trees down, even in the face of pun
ishment. So the company introduced compulsory cultivation and de
livery, while raising the price; but later, when pepper gained in value,
the company told the growers to cut down the coffee trees and sub
stitute pepper. In 1738 it was decided to reduce the area under coffee
by half, and the next year the company fixed the purchase quota at 2.7
million pounds. But when it became clear that the Netherlands alone
would take 6 million, the company raised its quota to 4 million—al
ways playing it safe. Yet it paid the Javanese grower so little that in
1751, it was able to buy less than 1 million pounds. Coffee trees take
four years to mature, and these alternate plantings and cuttings pre
cluded a flexible, rational response to changing demand.
Over the course of the eighteenth century the Dutch East India
Company saw trade volume fall (spices were down) and profits with it;