The Fascinating History of the Spice Islands
Deep in the Indonesian archipelago lie the Maluku Islands. Here, where the mountains are pretty, the waters sublime, and the people friendly, this group of islands little visited by tourists is where I would be spending this upcoming X’mas festive period.
A Long Long Time Ago
The islands of Maluku are collectively known as the Spice Islands. Why? To answer this, we have to go back 500 years. Back then, the islands were ruled by various sultanates that grew powerful through trade of the spices uniquely found on the island: nutmegs and cloves. The sultanates of Ternate, Tidore, Bacan and Jailolo had been trading spices with the Chinese and later the Islamic World (hence the conversion of locals to Islam and the formation of the Muslim Sultanates) pre-16th century. The Arabs of that time, essentially the Mamluks (1250-1517), the Ottomans (1281-1924) and the Safavids of Persia, transported these valuable spices and traded from the Mediterranean coast to Venice. The Republic of Venice hence enjoyed a monopoly of the spice trade, and grew powerful from trade with the rest of the European powers.
Of course, the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and British wanted a piece of the pie, and sent explorers to find the source of the spices, in the hopes of setting up their own trade route. This was the Renaissance Period, and individual empires had the financial clout to send expeditions around Africa and through to Asia.
Spice Wars
No, that‘s not the title of the latest Facebook game. It’s the almost comical yet tragic occupations of the Maluku by the colonial powers of the time. The Portuguese were the first to find Maluku, after colonizing Malacca in 1511. They made their way to Ternate, Bacan and Tidore, and set up trading posts and forts. They didn’t make themselves too popular, proselytizing Christianity to the locals, helping themselves to the spice production, beheading one of the Sultans, and in general making total pricks of themselves. The ramifications were inevitable. The local populace kicked them out of their main base on Ternate, and the Portuguese ended up setting shop further south in Ambon.
The Spanish were already in Maluku, coming in a few years after the Portuguese. Despite a treaty (Treaty of Zaragoza, 1525) between the two stating that the Spanish will not lay claim to Maluku, they continued to shadily trade spices with the locals.
The Portuguese in the meantime, weren’t doing very well in Ambon either. Successive revolts from pissed-off locals on Ambon eventually ended up in a full out assault by the Ternate sultan and his allies from the Sultanate of Mataram, Java. Already licking their wounds, they encountered the Dutch. The belligerent Dutch came along, besieged Ambon and kicked out the Portuguese from the region for good in 1605.
Pick Your Allies Carefully
And where were the locals in all this? The Sultanates of Ternate and Tidore were inconsequentially bickering with each other, oblivious to the European powers desire to completely take over the spice trade. With the Portuguese gone, the Spanish filled the power vacuum and occupied both Tidore and Ternate. As with their predecessors, the Spanish weren’t too popular either, controlling the cloves production. Ternate, eager to put one up against their southern rivals, allied themselves (stupidly) with the Dutch, and proceeded to square off against Tidore, who (even more stupidly) were allied with the Spanish.
The stronger power won, and to the victor, the spoils. The Dutch monopoly of the Maluku spice trade grew with the establishment in 1602 of the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie), more commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, to take advantage of the spice trade. Meanwhile the influence of the Spanish and Tidore waned. The Spanish removed themselves from Maluku in 1663.
A Massacre at the Bandas
The Dutch weren’t saints either. They were now the superpowers of the region, and proceeded to flex their muscles. They quelled any uprising around the islands violently. They restricted the production of cloves to only Ambon Island in order to protect their trade. Of course the locals’ livelihood was affected and their revolt was again spectacularly put down. One of the Moluccan heroes was the Pattimura, Thomas Matulessy, a local from Ambon who led a failed revolt in 1817. He was hanged by the Dutch. His last words were: ‘I wish you all a pleasant stay’.
The epitome was probably in 1621, when the Dutch forcibly occupied the Banda Islands and massacred its entire population (15000!). They resettled the island with imported slaves from Java and elsewhere in Indonesia. Before this, the interaction was treaty based, but after the Banda massacre, it was full out occupation by the Dutch.
The British were also in the middle of these shenanigans. Latecomers to the show, they set up their forts in the islands of Rum and Ai. They were paying higher prices for the spices, which seriously undermined the Dutch. So, the Dutch did what they do best, invading Ai in 1615 and causing a full scale rivalry with British revenge attacks. In 1623, the Dutch murdered a bunch of British merchants on Ambon, which probably made things worse. Things only got better after the British seceded control of the Bandas to the Dutch in 1667.
You Would Trade Manhattan for One of These Islands???!!
Amazingly, the Dutch wanted to complete their Pokemon collection (gotta catch them all!) of all the Banda Islands. The last island of Run was traded with the British, after the second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665–1667, where under the Treaty of Breda (1667), the Dutch got Run in exchange for what is now Manhattan Island in New York. Seriously. They MUST have regretted that decision ever since.
Anyway, the sly Brits smuggled out the spices to their colonies in Sri Lanka, Singapore and replanted them there, thereby ending the Dutch monopoly of the spice trade. The Maluku islands fell to obscurity, and the sultanates were abolished by the Dutch.
Modern History
After the Japanese occupation, and when Indonesia gained independence, the Maluku people were surprisingly pro-Dutch. These nederlandophiles had what I would think is a case of Stockholm Syndrome. They set up a secessionist movement in 1950, creating the unrecognized Republic of South Maluku. Matters weren’t helped by the silly idea to transmigrate Indonesians from elsewhere to Maluku. There was actually an incident in 2000 where local Muslims and Christian Ambonese fought each other. Today, things are OK, the sultanates reinstated, and the Maluku Islands are peaceful little visited historically important sites. (And a great dive paradise too, I might add).
The impact of the colonial powers’ rule was many: Portuguese words such as bendera (flag), meja (table), sabun (soap) exist in the Indonesian language. Locals in Ambon have Portuguese sounding surnames like de Souza and de Fretes. And many immigrants formerly from Ambon and the rest of the Maluku islands have been assimilated and are living in Holland.
To read my post about the other Spice Islands, of the Zanzibar Archipelago, click here: http://www.thefuriouspanda.com/2010/02/25/87-%E2%80%93-zanzibar-the-places-just-gets-more-and-more-exotic/
References:
Carboni, Stefano. Venice and the Islamic world, 828-1797: Yale University Press, 2007
Timeline : Molucca Islands http://www.zum.de/whkmla/region/seasia/tlmoluccas.html
Various Wikipedia entries
