In the Spice Islands, today’s Maluku (Indonesia), European trade stimulated a great boom in slave raiding. Many enslaved people were passed from Maluku elites to Europeans and shipped westward to work in plantations and mines as well as in personal service. Yet the meaning and practice of enslavement was contested in Maluku. This talk considers the emergence of the commodification of human beings within the interaction of Europeans, Maluku elites, and the “Papuan raiders” who procured most of the enslaved—as well as suffering enslavement themselves.