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Finely executed copper plate engraving, depicting the infamous torture of British inhabitants of the island of Ambon, when it was retaken by the Dutch in the early 17th Century. The Portuguese were the first European nation to visit Ambon. They established a factory there in 1521, but did not obtain peaceable possession of it until 1580, and were dispossessed by the Dutch in 1609. About 1615 the British formed a settlement onthe island at Cambello, which they retained until 1623, when it was destroyed by the Dutch. In sacking the British settlement, the Dutch inflicted severe tortures on the unfortunate British inhabitants. In 1654, after many fruitless negotiations, Oliver Cromwell compelled the United Provinces to give the sum of 300,000 gulden, together with a small island, as compensation to the descendants of those who suffered in the Ambon Massacre. In 1673 the poet John Dryden produced his tragedy Amboyna; or the Cruelties of the Dutch to the English Merchants. In 1796 the British, under Admiral Rainier, captured Ambon, but restored it to the Dutch at the peace of Amiens, in 1802. It was retaken by the British in 1810, but once more restored to the Dutch in 1814. Ambon used to be the world center of clove production; until the nineteenth century, the Dutch prohibited the rearing of the clove-tree in all the other islands subject to their rule, in order to secure the monopoly to Ambon.
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