The Amboyna massacre[1] (also known as the Amboyna trial)[2] was the 1623 torture and execution on Ambon Island (present-day Ambon, Maluku, Indonesia) of twenty-one men, including ten in the service of the English East India Company, as well as Japanese and Portuguese traders and a Portuguese man,[3] by agents of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), on accusations of treason.[4] It was the result of the intense rivalry between the East India companies of England and the United Provinces in the spice trade and remained a source of tension between the two nations until late in the 17th century.