The conquest culminated in the Banda massacre, which saw 2,800 Bandanese killed and 1,700 enslaved by the Dutch. With the aid of Japanese mercenaries, the Dutch launched several military expeditions against the Bandanese. As the Dutch attempted to form a monopoly over the spices and forbid the Bandanese from selling to any other group, they resisted, and the Dutch decided to conquer the islands by force. The profitability of the spices was heightened by the fact that they grew nowhere else on Earth, making them extremely valuable to whoever controlled them.

A Dutch expedition had already made contact with the islands in 1599, signing several contracts with Bandanese chiefs. The Dutch East India Company, which was founded in 1602 as an amalgamation of 12 voorcompagnies, had extensive financial interests in maritime Southeast Asia, the source of highly profitable spices which were in high demand in Europe. The islands became severely depopulated as a result of the massacres and forced deportations by the Dutch. The Dutch used the death of a Dutch official as a casus belli for a forcible conquest of the islands. The Dutch, having enforced a monopoly on the highly lucrative nutmeg production from the islands, were impatient with Bandanese resistance to Dutch instructions that the Bandanese sell only to them. The Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands was a process of military conquest from 1609 to 1621 by the Dutch East India Company of the Banda Islands.

Does to kill a kingdom have spice