The World of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modern Period

by Leonard Y. Andaya

It was the coveted trinity of spices - clove, nutmeg, and mace - that first lured European and other foreigners to Maluku (the Moluccas) in eastern Indonesia. There, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, Europeans recorded their activities and observations in minute detail. The descriptions of events and customs they left us, though colored by European assumptions, individual perceptions, and national concerns, represent the only written accounts of indigenous traditions.
The World of Maluku encompasses three centuries of European presence in Maluku and critically evaluates a wide sweep of Iberian and Dutch sources in an ambitious attempt to understand the intellectual milieu in which European and Malukan interactions took place. Leonard Andaya argues that a general Western conception of the center and periphery based on ancient classical and Christian European traditions underlay European views of the people of Maluku. His own documentation of the changes and continuities that occurred in local societies supports a different interpretation of center-periphery relations that emphasizes the four principal Malukan kingdoms or "pillars" and the dualism between two centers, Ternate and Tidore. Prosperity will prevail, Malukans believed, as long as the four pillars and the proper dualism were maintained. By integrating this structure into his narrative, the author avoids a framework governed by European concerns and brings new significance to Malukan events described but only partially understood by European observers.
This highly readable book is an important contribution to the historiography of Southeast Asia. It provides a deeper understanding of culture contact and will become a standard history of a relatively unknown and complex region.

306 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1993

Reviews

[Bob Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Tale of Two Islands

If you are looking for a detailed history of the Maluku islands (also known in English as the Moluccas) in eastern Indonesia, you have come to the right place. This is the only academic study in English that I know of, the product of a great amount of research in archives in many countries. The Malukans themselves have not produced much in the way of written history, so Western authors have always been the ones to do it. Andaya prefaces and underlines throughout the fact that the views of Europeans who came in contact with Maluku from 1512 to the beginning of the 19th century (the time period covered here) are formed by their own societies and their own cultures' view of Others. Hence, the comments and narratives of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English visitors or colonial occupiers must be understood with this in mind. Of course, nobody, whether historian or anthropologist, can escape this caveat entirely.
The story of Maluku is one of a very strange rivalry of two tiny islands, neither of which is much bigger than a few towns put together here in eastern Massachusetts. Nevertheless they dominated the history of the area for centuries all because they happened to be the natural habitat of the clove tree, the only one in the world. If cloves also did grow on a few adjacent islands, it was the rulers of Ternate and Tidore who built ports and developed commercial ties with the trading networks that stretched as far as Syria even 1,700 years before our era. The two sultans of the two tiny islands sat at the center of a spice empire that connected to Malaya, India, Arabia, and ultimately Europe. It was the arrival of the latter that touched off a complex, violent period of history that is the subject of this book. The world view of the Malukans held that peace and prosperity would follow only if the original four "pillars" or four original kingdoms lasted. The Portuguese, Spaniards, and Dutch each intervened, had their days of power, and saw them wane. Over time, the four kingdoms became two---again Ternate and Tidore---which fought each other, but also intermarried and maintained a kind of strange dualism. Each required the other in order to be a whole. The two islands used the Europeans to fight their own battles, allying themselves with rival European powers. The Dutch insisted on a policy of clove tree eradication for decades---wasting enormous resources in a vain attempt to control the price by limiting the supply. Islam came late to the islands, arriving perhaps only a few years before the Europeans arrived and tried to spread Christianity. Both religions achieved a certain success, but the fighting was usually about power, wealth and prestige, not religion. Today Ternate holds 200,000 people while Tidore is considerably smaller. The myriad names of islands, of sultans, of local bigwigs, and European intruders may overwhelm the non-professional reader. OK, it's not bedtime reading, but it's a fascinating glimpse at a part of the world you really can't learn about except by reading THE WORLD OF MALUKU. It is an important addition to the history of Southeast Asia and of course, the world. And, I would conclude, a great feat of scholarship.
[The author is an old friend of mine.]

[Safar Nurhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

melihat Maluku tidak mesti menggunakan sudut pandang Asia Tenggara, lihat dari Pasifik mestinya bisa. Andaya memberi pesan itu.

[Alfonso · Rating 3 out of 5]

Si eres una persona normal no te lo recomiendo. Por momentos es un ladrillazo y hay mucho nombre indonesio.
Ahora bien, si por lo que sea te interesan las Molucas durante la Edad Moderna, este es tu libro. He leído mucho sobre el tema para el TFG y esta es sin duda la obra más completa. Hace un buen uso de las fuentes y, sobre todo, da voz a los propios malucos, algo que no he visto en casi ninguna otra fuente.