Ambon, Maluku
Ambon was colonized by Portugal in 1526. The Portuguese were driven out by the Dutch in 1609. Except for brief periods of British rule, the island remained under Dutch control until Indonesia's independence in 1945.
During the Dutch period, Ambon was the seat of the Dutch resident and military commander of the Maluku Islands. The town was protected by Fort Victoria, and a 1911 Encyclopxdia characterized it as "a clean little town with wide streets, well planted". The population was divided into two classes, orang burger and orang negri (villagers), the former being a class of native origin enjoying certain privileges conferred on their ancestors by the old Dutch East India Company. There were also, except the Dutch, some Arabs, Chinese and a few Portuguese settlers.
On 22 December 1902, the Apostolic Prefecture of Dutch New Guinea was established in the city, later to be promoted as the Diocese of Amboina.
Ambon Island was the site of a major Dutch naval base, captured by the Japanese in 1942. Ambon was a center of Christian missionary activity, and Ambon and the surrounding islands have many Christians as well as the Muslims that predominate in most of Indonesia.
In 1950 Ambon was the center of an uprising against Indonesian rule, caused by the rebellion of Republic of the South Moluccas. Indonesia reasserted control just in few weeks.
In April and May 1958 during the Permesta rebellion in North Sulawesi, the USA supported and supplied the rebels. Pilots from a Taiwan-based CIA front organisation, Civil Air Transport, flying CIA B-26 Invader aircraft, repeatedly bombed and machine-gunned targets in and around Ambon. On 27 April a CIA raid set fire to a military command post, a fuel dump and a Royal Dutch Shell complex. The attack on Shell was deliberate: the CIA had orders to hit foreign commercial interests in order to drive foreign trade away from Indonesia and undermine its economy. The next day, the same CIA pilot bombed Shell interests at Balikpapan in East Kalimantan on Borneo, which persuaded Shell to suspend tanker services from there.
On 15 May a CIA B-26 attacked a small ship, the Naiko, in Ambon Bay. Naiko was merchant ship that the Indonesian Government had pressed into military service, and she was bringing a company of Ambonese troops home from East Java. A CIA bomb hit the Naiko's engine room, killing one crew member and 16 infantrymen and setting the ship on fire. The B-26 then attacked Ambon city, aiming for the barracks. Its 1st bomb missed and exploded in a market-place next door. The next landed in the barracks compound but bounced and exploded near an ice factory. The B-26 in the May air raids was flown by a CAT pilot called Allen Pope. On 18 May Pope attacked Ambon again. First he raided the airstrip again, destroying the C-47 and P-51 that he had damaged on 7 May. Then he flew west of the city and tried to attack one of a pair of troop ships being escorted by the Indonesian Navy. Indonesian forces shot down the B-26 but Pope and his Indonesian radio operator survived and were captured. Pope's capture immediately exposed the level of CIA support for the Permesta rebellion. Embarrassed, the Eisenhower administration quickly ended CIA support for Permesta and withdrew its agents and remaining aircraft from the conflict.
As part of the transmigration program in the 1980s, the Suharto government relocated many migrants, most of them Muslim, from densely overpopulated Java.
Between 1999 and 2002, Ambon was at the centre of sectarian conflict across the Maluku Islands. There was further religious violence in 2011.
| The city is divided into below with their 2010 Census | five districts, tabulated population. |
Related Sites for Ambon, Maluku
- Muck Diving Critters Ambon Indonesia read Ambon, Maluku
- Ambon - fica.org read Ambon, Maluku
- Ambon Map | Indonesia Google Satellite Maps read Ambon, Maluku
