Maluku Islands
Most of the islands are mountainous, some with active volcanoes, and enjoy a wet climate. The vegetation of the small and narrow islands, encompassed by the sea, is very luxuriant; including rainforests, sago, rice and the famous spicesâ€"nutmeg, mace and cloves, among others. Though originally Melanesian, many island populations, especially in the Banda Islands, were killed off in the 17th century during the Spice wars. A 2nd influx of Austronesian immigrants began in the early twentieth century under the Dutch and continues in the Indonesian era.
The Maluku Islands formed a single province since Indonesian independence until 1999 when it was split into two provinces. A new province, North Maluku, incorporates the area between Morotai and Sula, with the arc of islands from Buru and Seram to Wetar remaining within the existing Maluku Province. North Maluku is predominantly Muslim and its capital is Ternate. Maluku province has a larger Christian population and its capital is Ambon.Between 1999 and 2002, conflict between Muslims and Christians killed thousands and displaced half a million people.
Spice Islands" most commonly refers to the Maluku Islands and often also to the small volcanic Banda Islands, once the only source of mace and nutmeg. This nickname should not be confused with Grenada, which is commonly known as the "Island of Spice". The term has also been used less commonly in reference to other islands known for their spice production, notably the Zanzibar Archipelago.
The name Maluku is thought to have been derived from the Arab trader's term for the region, Jazirat al-Muluk.
The Maluku Islands were a single province from Indonesian independence until 1999 when they were split into North Maluku and Maluku.
North Maluku province includes Ternate, Tidore, Bacan, Halmahera (the largest of the Maluku Islands) Morotai, the Obi Islands, and the Sula Islands. The residual Maluku province includes Ambon and the other Lease Islands; the much larger islands of Seram and Buru; the smaller islands lying south and east of Seram the Banda Islands, Gorong Islands, Watubela Islands, Kai Islands and Aru Islands; and in the far south the Babar Islands, Damar Islands, Romang, Kisar, the Leti Islands, Tanimbar Islands, and Wetar.
| Maluku's population is of Indonesia's | about 2 million, less than 1% population. |
The native Bandanese people traded spices with other Asian nations, such as China, since at least the time of the Roman Empire. With the rise of Islam, the trade became dominated by Muslim traders, one ancient Arabic source appears to know the location of the islands, describing them as fifteen days' sail East from the "island of Jaba"â€"presumably Javaâ€"but direct evidence of Islam in the archipelago occurs only in the late 14th century, as China's interest in regional maritime dominance waned. With Muslim traders came not just Islam, but a new technique of social organisation, the sultanate, which replaced local councils of rich men on the more important islands, and proved more effective in dealing with outsiders. (See Ternate & Tidore).
By trading with Muslim states, Venice came to monopolize the spice trade in Europe between 1200 and 1500, through its dominance over Mediterranean seaways to ports such as Alexandria, after traditional overland connections were disrupted by Mongols and Turks. The financial incentive to discover an alternative to Venice's monopoly control of this lucrative business was perhaps the single most important factor precipitating Europe's Age of Exploration. Portugal took an early lead charting the route around the southern tip of Africa, securing bases and outposts en route, even discovering the coast of Brazil in the search for favorable southerly currents. Portugal's eventual success and the establishment of its own empire provoked envy among other European countries. Spain was the 1st to challenge the Portuguese control over the islands.
Because of the high value that spices had in Europe and the large profits rendered, combined with Portugal's growing internal problems, the Dutch and English joined in the conflicts around 1600, to try to gain a monopoly over the trade and expel Portugal. The fighting for control over these small islands became very intense in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Dutch even giving the island of Manhattan to the British in exchange for, among other things, the tiny island of Run which gave the Dutch full control over the Banda archipelago's nutmeg production. Manhattan was a distant and isolated post compared with the highly lucrative Run island. The Bandanese people lost the most in the fighting with most of them being either slaughtered or enslaved by the European interlopers. Over 16,000 were killed during the height of the Spice wars.
The goal of reaching the Spice Islands, eventually to be enveloped by the Dutch East Indies Empire, led to the accidental discovery of the West Indies, and lit the fuse of centuries of rivalry between European maritime powers for control of lucrative global markets and resources. The tattered mystique of the Spice Islands finally vanished when France and Britain successfully smuggled seeds and plants to their own colonial dominions on Mauritius, Grenada and elsewhere, making spices the commonplace affordable commodity of today.
The earliest archaeological evidence of human occupation of the region is about thirty-two thousand years old, but evidence of even older settlements in Australia may mean that Maluku had earlier visitors. Evidence of increasingly long-distance trading relationships and of more frequent occupation of many islands, begins about ten to fifteen thousand years later. Onyx beads and segments of silver plate used as currency on the Indian subcontinent around 200BC have been unearthed on some of the islands. In addition, local dialects employ derivations of the Malay word then in use for 'silver', in contrast to the term used in wider Melanesian society, which has etymological roots in Chinese, a consequence of the regional trade with China that was developed in the 6th and 7th centuries.
Maluku was a cosmopolitan society where spice traders from across the region took residence in settlements, or in nearby enclaves, including Arab and Chinese traders who visited or lived in the region. Social organization was usually local, and relatively flatâ€"a general populace guided by a council of elders or rich men, or Orang kaya.
Arabic merchants began to arrive in the 14th century, bringing Islam. Peaceful conversion to Islam occurred in many islands, especially in the centres of trade, while aboriginal animism persisted in the hinterlands and more isolated islands. Archaeological evidence here relies largely on the occurrence of pigs' teeth, as evidence of pork eating or abstinence therefrom.
Apart from some relatively minor cultural influences, the most significant lasting effects of the Portuguese presence was the disruption and reorganization of the Southeast Asian trade, and in eastern Indonesiaâ€"including Malukuâ€"the introduction of Christianity. The Portuguese had conquered the city state of Malacca in the early 16th century and their influence was most strongly felt in Maluku and other parts of eastern Indonesia. After the Portuguese annexed Malacca in August 1511, one Portuguese diary noted 'it is thirty years since they became Moors' - giving a sense of the competition then taking place between Islamic and European influences in the region. Afonso de Albuquerque learned of the route to the Banda Islands and other 'Spice Islands', and sent an exploratory expedition of three vessels under the command of Antxnio de Abreu, Simxo Afonso Bisigudo and Francisco Serrxo. On the return trip, Francisco Serrxo was shipwrecked at Hitu island in 1512. There he established ties with the local ruler who was impressed with his martial skills. The rulers of the competing island states of Ternate and Tidore also sought Portuguese assistance and the newcomers were welcomed in the area as buyers of supplies and spices during a lull in the regional trade due to the temporary disruption of Javanese and Malay sailings to the area following the 1511 conflict in Malacca. The spice trade soon revived but the Portuguese would not be able to fully monopolize nor disrupt this trade.
Allying himself with Ternate's ruler, Serrxo constructed a fortress on that tiny island and served as the head of a mercenary band of Portuguese seamen under the service of one of the two local feuding sultans who controlled most of the spice trade. Such an outpost far from Europe generally only attracted the most desperate and avaricious, and as such the feeble attempts at Christianisation only strained relations with Ternate's Muslim ruler. Serrxo urged Ferdinand Magellan to join him in Maluku, and sent the explorer information about the Spice Islands. Both Serrxo and Magellan, however, perished before they could meet one another. In 1535 Sultan Tabariji was deposed and sent to Goa in chains, where he converted to Christianity and changed his name to Dom Manuel. After being declared innocent of the charges against him he was sent back to reassume his throne, but died en route at Malacca in 1545. He had however, already bequeathed the island of Ambon to his Portuguese godfather Jordxo de Freitas. Following the murder of Sultan Hairun at the hands of the Europeans, the Ternateans expelled the hated foreigners in 1575 after a five-year siege.
The Portuguese 1st landed in Ambon in 1513, but it only became the new centre for their activities in Maluku following the expulsion from Ternate. European power in the region was weak and Ternate became an expanding, fiercely Islamic and anti-European state under the rule of Sultan Baab Ullah and his son Sultan Said. The Portuguese in Ambon, however, were regularly attacked by native Muslims on the island's northern coast, in particular Hitu which had trading and religious links with major port cities on Java's north coast. Altogether, the Portuguese never had the resources or manpower to control the local trade in spices, which were frequently diverted to operations in Morocco and failed in attempts to establish their authority over the crucial Banda Islands, the nearby centre of most nutmeg and mace production.
Following Portuguese missionary work, there have been large Christian communities in eastern Indonesia through to contemporary times, which has contributed to a sense of shared interest with Europeans, particularly among the Ambonese. By the 1560s there were 10,000 Catholics in the area, mostly on Ambon, and by the 1590s there were 50,000 to 60,000, although most of the region surrounding Ambon remained Muslim. The Navarrese missionary Francis Xavier also played an important role in Maluku Christianization.
Other Portuguese influences include a large number of Indonesian words derived from Portuguese which alongside Malay was the lingua franca up until the early 19th century. Contemporary Indonesian words such as pesta, sabun ("soap"), bendera ("flag"), meja ("table"), Minggu ("Sunday"), all derive from the Portuguese. Many family names in Maluku are derived from the Portuguese including da Lima, da Costa, Dias, da Freitas, Gonsalves, Mendoza, Rodrigues, and da Silva. Also of partly Portuguese origin are the romantic keroncong ballads sung to guitar music.
The Spanish set up forts on Tidore in 1603 to trade spices and counter Dutch encroachment in the archipelago. The territory was incorporated into the Spanish East Indies but the actual administration of the territory was by an indigenous regime. The Catholic missionary, Francis Xavier had worked in Maluku in 1546â€"1547 among the peoples of Ambon, Ternate and Morotai, and laid the foundations for the Christian religion there. The Spanish presence lasted until 1663, when the settlers and military were moved back to the Philippines. Some of the Ternatean population chose to leave with the Spanish, settling near Manila in what later became Ternate, Cavite.
The Dutch arrived in 1599 and noted the native discontent with Portuguese attempts to monopolise their traditional trade. After the Ambonese helped the Dutch to construct a fort at Hitu Larna, the Portuguese began a campaign of retribution against which the Ambonese invited Dutch aid. After 1605 Frederik de Houtman became the 1st Dutch governor of Ambon.
Related Sites for Maluku Islands
- Maluku Islands - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia read Maluku Islands
- maluku | eBay - Electronics, Cars, Fashion, Collectibles, Coupons ... read Maluku Islands
- Maluku, Indonesia - Travel Guide, Info & Bookings â€" Lonely Planet read Maluku Islands
- Maluku: Stamps | eBay - Electronics, Cars, Fashion, Collectibles ... read Maluku Islands
