A DROP IN THE OCEAN

SAILING THE ISLANDS OF EASTERN INDONESIA, SAKI KNAFO FINDS NATURE AT ITS MOST PRISTINE—AND A SURPRISING HISTORY THAT TODAY RESONATES MORE THAN EVER.

- SAKI KNAFO

YOU PROBABLY haven’t heard of them. You almost certainly wouldn’t be able to find them on a map. But there’s a case to be made that eastern Indonesia’s tiny Banda Islands—or the Spice Islands, as they were once known in the West—have done more to shape the last 500 years of human history than any other place on Earth. I’ll come right out and say it: the Banda Islands are the birthplace of modern capitalism. Whatever you think of the economic system that rules the world and likely your life, you may find it intriguing to learn that it could have originated about 966 kilometres north of Australia, on a cluster of palm-fringed volcanic formations smack in the middle of an azure sea—a place that could hardly feel more distant from our overcrowded, hyperconnected centres of commerce.

My trip to see them began, as all my trips do, in the throbbing heart of capitalism itself. In late 2019—mere months before the pandemic stopped the world—I flew from New York to Hong Kong, and from Hong Kong to Bali, and then from Bali to a town called Maumere, on the eastern Indonesian island of Flores. There I availed myself of one of the world’s extravagant pleasures—a luxury cruise.