Free Republic

On February 27,* 1623, the Dutch East India Company beheaded twenty who had been waterboarded into confessing to a terrorist plot. As in modern times, this scenario originated with resource competition in the Muslim world … in this case, competition for spice, in Indonesia. European colonialism had pitted the Dutch East India Company against its British counterpart on the archipelago, both scrabbling after the lucrative trade in cloves and pepper, with garnishes of nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, and ginger. The two rival powers had, as we lay our story, recently come to a tense truce, dividing the commerce between them —...

PEMBA, Tanzania — It's springtime on this green, hilly island, and the pungent, sweet smell of cloves spices the air. Zaharan Salim's father, who crossed the turquoise water from Oman to settle here nearly 100 years ago, taught him as a boy that the annual bouquet signaled harvest time. His father planted a small grove of clove trees to support the family, and Salim expanded the plantation into one of Pemba's largest, with more than 2,000 of the tall evergreens sprouting from the fertile soil. But it's unclear whether the family business will last into a third generation. The groves...