Before New York was New York, it was a bargaining chip — swapped by the Dutch for a tiny Indonesian island most people have never heard of, all because of a spice that once cost more than gold and started wars across three continents. This week we follow the nutmeg trail from the volcanic Banda Islands to a conference table in 1667 where two exhausted empires horse-traded half the future world, and nobody in the room understood what they were giving away. It's the deal that makes Waldseemüller's map mistake look like a rounding error.