Run Island

Run is a small island roughly three kilometres by one at the outer western edge of the Banda group, and it is famous for a story that is almost right. The popular version says England traded Run for Manhattan in 1667. What the Treaty of Breda, signed on 31 July 1667 and ratified that August, actually did was apply uti possidetis: each side kept whatever it physically held as of 20 May 1667. The Dutch held Run, having thrown the English off in 1620 and destroyed its nutmeg groves. The English held Manhattan, taken in 1664. No clause swapped one for the other. The Dutch also kept Surinam in the same settlement, which at the time was the larger prize, and England's claim to Run was a paper title dating from 1616 rather than a functioning colony.

The man behind that title was Nathaniel Courthope, who landed on 25 December 1616 with two ships, got the islanders to accept James I as sovereign, and held the island with thirty nine Europeans and Bandanese allies for nearly four years until the Dutch ambushed his boat at night in October 1620 and he went over the side. (The widely repeated figure of 1,540 days does not fit the dates.)

There is very little to see. A village, nutmeg, a walk up the hill where Courthope's fort stood, and snorkelling. There is no monument, no plaque and no preserved ruin, and travel writing that implies otherwise is filling space. What you get is the boat ride, the reef on the way, the sandbar at neighbouring Nailaka, and the odd feeling of standing on the speck of land once judged a fair swap for New York.