Inventing the English massacre: Amboyna in history and memory

Abstract

Massacres - the mass slaughter of people - might seem as old as time, but the word itself is not. It worked its way into the English language in the late 16th century, and came to signify a specific type of death, one characterised by cruelty, intimacy, and treachery. How that happened is the story of yet another place, Amboyna, an island in the Indonesian archipelago where English and Dutch merchants fought over the spice trade. There a conspiracy trial featuring English, Japanese, and Indo-Portuguese plotters took place in 1623 and led to the beheading of more than a dozen men in a public execution. Inventing the English Massacre shows how the English East India Company transformed that conspiracy into a massacre through printed works which ensured the story's tenacity over four centuries.