The
islands formerly known as the Moluccas - the Spice Islands - are five islands of volcanic
origin (Ternate, Tidore, Moti, Makian, and Bacan). They are found off of the west coast of
the island of Halmahera, in the Indonesian archipelago.
These
islands were the only ones in the world where, at the time of the arrival of the
Portuguese (c. 1510), cloves grew wild. Clove is an aromatic spice of the family
Myrtaceae, whose botanical name is Caryophyllus Aromaticus (in full, Eugenia
Caryophyllata, Syzygium Aromaticum).
This
singular condition made the Moluccas islands famous since the ancient times. Clove was one
of the most important trading commodities. It was traded in the Asian markets (i.e.,
Arabic-speaking countries, and China and India) and also the European ones. Its oil was
used for the treatment of food as well as like essence to perfume the breath, and as an
anesthetic for toothache.
The
Moluccas had this key, lucrative commodity, but had to import most of their foodstuffs
from other islands: sago and rice, for example, came from Halmahera, Ambon and Bacan.
Cloves were exchanged for clothing, silk, porcelain, gold, silver, knives, glass, and
other items.
All the
Moluccas are dominated by high volcanoes, some of which are still active. Beyond the five
main islands, there are also three smaller volcanic ones: Hiri to north of Ternate,
Maitara between Ternate and Tidore, and Mare between Tidore and Moti.
The Moluccas, from the
"Livro das Plantas das Fortalezas, Cidades e Povoaçoes do Estado da India Oriental
1600s.
Because of the continuous trade contacts between the Moluccas and
Muslim merchants from Arabia and elsewhere in Asia, Islam made its entry in the islands
around 1430-1460, with the conversion of various local kings. With the subsequent arrival
of Christianity with the Portuguese, these two religions represented an important,
“elitist” element, although the majority of the population still remained
animist.
In 1512, when the Portuguese
first arrived, two main kingdoms controlled the Moluccas: the Sultanate of Ternate, and
the Kingdom of Tidore. Ternate one controlled, in addition to the island by the same name,
half of the island of Moti; the northern side of the island of Halmahera (called by the
Portuguese Moro); the island of Ambon; the east part of Ceram; and the northeast area of
Sulawesi.
Tidore controlled, in
addition to Tidore itself, the other half of the island of Moti; the island of Makian; the
greater part of the island of Halmahera; and the western side of New Guinea. Control on
these islands was exercised directly or through vassalage.
Two other smaller states also
existed: Bacan and Jailolo. Bacan, whose main village was on the island of Kasiruta,
extended its influence over the archipelago of Bacan and to the northern side of Ceram.
Bacan was a great producer of sago, the basic food of the sparsely populated islands.
Jailolo in the past had been
the more important of the two entities, but by the 1500s it was in decline and controlled
only the northwestern side of Halmahera. Jailolo essentially was annexed by Ternate and
the Portuguese in 1551.
In 1522, the sultan of
Ternate make an alliance with the Portuguese, asking for and obtaining the construction of
a Portuguese fortress on the island. The first stone of the fortress was laid on the feast
day of Saint John the Baptiste, on 24 June 1522. Thus, the fort was called "São
João Baptista de Ternate". The alliance with the Portuguese tipped the balance in
favor of Ternate in its struggles with Tidore. As a result, the king of Tidore asked in
turn for the help of the Spaniards when Magellan’s expedition stopped at Tidore.
A 1714 map of the Moluccas.
As is well
known, starting with the Magellan expedition of 1521, the Spaniards tried several times to
gain control of the “Spice Islands” to thwart the Portuguese, with whom they
often nearly came to blows. The Spaniards established alliances with the sultans of Tidore
and Jailolo, and Spanish troops were present in the islands during the years 1527-1534 and
again between 1544-1545. However, the failure to discover a return passage through the
Pacific prevented the Spanish from competing with the Portuguese as a naval power.
Earlier, in 1529, in an attempt to defuse the situation, an agreement was reached between
Spain and Portugal, the Treaty of Saragozza. Under the terms of this treaty, the king of
Spain had at least nominally abandoned the right for a Spanish presence on the islands in
exchange for a sum of money.
The first period of
Spanish interest in the Moluccas was characterized by fights against the Portuguese for
the control of the islands. It began with the arrival of the Magellan expedition, and
ended in 1545 with the surrender to the Portuguese by Villalobos’ army. Between these
two expeditions, the Spaniards had sent other fleets, including those of Loaisa (1527) and
Saavedra (1528), in addition to the unlucky expedition of Grijalva (1538). The expedition
of Villalobos was launched after the Treaty of Saragozza; thus it was directed to seek
commerce with unspecified islands, in other words, those not occupied by Portugal. The
center of activity for the Spaniards remained for the whole period the island of Tidore.
This first period of interest for the Spaniards in the
Moluccas, covering the years 1521-1606, can be divided into two distinct parts: the first
part was that above, characterized by fights against the Portuguese for control of the
islands, beginning with the arrival of Magellan’s expedition in 1521 and ending in
1545 with the surrender to the Portuguese of the men of Villalobos.
The second part of this first period took place during
the union between the crowns of Spain and Portugal. At this time, Spanish expeditions
departed from Manila in the Philippines and were organized with the aim of helping
Portuguese troops defeat their Ternate enemies, who were rebelling against Portuguese
control, and who had managed to expel them from the island. The main objective of these
expeditions was the "reconquista" of the Portuguese fortress of Ternate. None of
six successive Spanish attempts reached this objective, however.
These attempts began in 1582 with the expedition of
Francisco Dueñas. This first expedition was only an information-gathering exercise,
designed to learn more about the military situation on the islands. Francisco Dueñas
remained in the Moluccas for approximately two months between March and April of 1582. The
next expedition was that commanded by Juan Ronquillo, between 1582 and 1583, in which the
Spaniards collaborated with the Portuguese in some punitive expeditions. In 1584, Pedro
Sarmiento went, and then in 1585 Juan de Morón as well. Neither of these two expeditions
had the hoped-for result: the fortress of Ternate was attacked, but without result. A
larger and better assembled army left Manila in 1593 under the command of the governor of
the Philippines, Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas. A rebellion and the murder of Dasmariñas
before reaching the Moluccas cancelled the operation. The final Spanish expedition of this
period was that sent from Manila to aid the fleet of the Portuguese admiral André Furtado
de Mendonça. The Spanish assistance was commanded by Juan Juárez Gallinato, and left
Manila at the end of 1602. A combined Spanish-Portuguese attack against the fortress of
Ternate yielded no success.
What was instead successful was the attack by the Dutch
on the fortress of Tidore in 1605. It was conquered on 19 May 1605. But without a
sufficient number of men to garrison the conquered fort, the Dutch commander, vice admiral
Cornelis Bastiaensz, was limited to leaving just a few men stationed at a small trading
post. A Spanish response to the sudden Dutch presence was not late in arriving. In 1606,
an expedition led by the governor of the Philippines, Pedro de Acuña, reestablished
Iberian control on the Moluccas.
After his rapid victory, Acuña deported to Manila the
sultan of Ternate, Said Barakat, with his son the prince, and all his dignitaries, in
total about thirty persons. The Spanish remained on Ternate for 57 years, from 1606 until
1663 (although on the island of Siau, a very small Spanish garrison remained from 1671 to
1677). The Spanish also occupied a few smaller spice islands as well.
This period was characterized by continuous fighting
against the Dutch, who nearly always had the upper hand at sea and better arms as well as
more soldiers and ships. For most of the period the Spaniards had a faithful ally in the
sultan of Tidore, while the Dutch had the same in that of Ternate.
Ternate by Francois Valentijn,
1726. This print also shows a map of the Spanish town of Nuestra Señora del Rosario
(Gammalamma).
After the
conquest of Ternate in 1606, the Spaniards were nominally masters of the Spice Islands.
However, they did not succeed overall, in contrast to the Dutch, who returned again and
formed an alliance with the rebels on Ternate. In fact, the Spanish presence was mainly a
military one thanks to the intransigent hostility of the Ternate rebels and the tenacious
Dutch, who were more battle-trained in any case.
Starting
from the year 1607, the Dutch extended their control over the more profitable and
desirable part of the Moluccas. In 1607 they constructed a fort on the same island of
Ternate just a few kilometers from the Spanish city. It was first known as Fort Malayo and
later Fort Orange (Benteng Orange,
in the city of Ternate). On the same island in October 1609, the Dutch built a fort at
Tacome (Fort Willemstadt). The fort of Tacome was situated in the northern side of the
island, in an area rich of cloves. A third fort also was constructed, in 1612, at Tolucco
(Fort Hollandia). The main Dutch
base in the Moluccas remained, however, Fort Malayo. In a few years, practically the
greater part of the island of Ternate had been lost to Spanish control. Great aid was
rendered to the Dutch from their natural allies on Ternate. In the same years when these
forts on Ternate were built, Dutch control was extended also to the other islands of the
archipelago. From 1608, the island of Makian also was occupied by the Dutch, who
constructed three fortresses along the coasts of the island. Makian was the richest island
in the area, and very much desired by the Dutch, who aimed to control its commerce in
spices. Another fortress, Fort Nassau, was built in 1609 on the island of Moti (Motir),
situated between Tidore and Maquiem (Machian). This island also was rich in cloves. Also
in 1609, the Spanish fort of Bachan was captured by the Dutch commander, Vice Admiral Simon Jansz Hoen.
After 1606, and between 1607 and 1610, the Dutch with
their native allies succeeded in putting the Spanish on the defensive and took control of
the greater part of the islands. Under Spanish control remained only the southern side of
the island of Ternate (with its main town of "Nuestra Señora del Rosario"); the
entire island of Tidore; and some ports on the islands of Halmahera and Morotai. The
Spanish garrisons had their headquarters in the islands of Ternate and Tidore. It is often
difficult to understand by the documents where they were situated. The Spanish
"presidios", were sometimes called by different names, causing not a little
difficulty in understanding which was which.
In addition to several fortified places on Ternate and
Tidore, the Spanish from time to time sporadically maintained garrisons also on the
peripheral islands of Halmahera, Morotai and Sulawesi. These were strategic locations for
maintaining garrisons. The islands were sources of sago and other indispensable food for
the maintenance of the garrisons and the population of the islands of Ternate and Tidore, two islands where difficult
terrain and constant state of war did not allow the cultivation of such products. The
Spanish garrisons depended on restocking of their food, clothing and ammunition supplies
almost exclusively from the so-called fleet of "soccorro" that was sent every
year from the Philippines. If one of these fleets was late, or worse still, was captured
by the Dutch or shipwrecked in bad weather, there ensued enormous want on the part of both
the Spanish soldiers of the garrisons and the population of the city of Ternate.
In spite of these deprivations and the high human and
material cost, the Spanish maintained garrisons in Ternate, Tidore and other islands until
1663, when the governor of the Philippines, Manrique de Lara, decreed the dismantling and
abandonment of all the garrisons of the Moluccas.
