Context: During the Dutch East India Company’s violent takeover of the Banda Islands in the early seventeenth century, Jan Pieterszoon Coen reinforced his European troops with hired Japanese mercenaries, including men described in contemporary sources as samurai, who had experience in organized warfare and siege fighting. These fighters were used in assaults on Bandanese strongholds and in intimidating or eliminating resisting communities as the Dutch imposed their nutmeg monopoly, culminating in the 1621 campaign that devastated the islands’ population through massacres, executions, starvation and forced deportations. The presence of armed Japanese auxiliaries alongside Dutch soldiers and local allies underscores how globalized early modern warfare already was, with Asian mercenaries playing a direct role in one of the most notorious colonial conquests of the spice trade era.
