Ternate

This article is about an island and town in Indonesia. See also Ternate, Cavite, in the Philippines and Ternate (VA) in Italy.

A 1720 depiction of Ternate. The inset shows a Portuguese-built fort on the island.

Ternate is an island and town in the Maluku Islands (Moluccas) of eastern Indonesia, located off the west coast of the larger island of Halmahera. In the precolonial era, Ternate was the dominant political and economic power over most of the "Spice Islands" of Maluku. Today, Ternate is the largest town in the province of North Maluku.

The island

Ternate is dominated by the volcanic Mount Gamalama (1715 m). The volcano erupts regularly, covering the island with volcanic dust. Major past eruptions of Gamalama include 1673, when a large, but undetermined number of people were killed, and 1772, when about twenty inhabitants died. The largest recent eruption of Gamalama was in September 1980, when 30,000 of the islands 56,000 residents were forced to temporarily flee to nearby Tidore. The town is located at 0°47′N 127°22′E.

History

Up until the Dutch completed the colonization of Maluku in the nineteenth century, the sultans of Ternate ruled an extensive empire that at the time stretched across the archipelago, from Sulawesi to Papua. The peak of its power came near the end of the sixteenth century, under Sultan Baabullah, when it had influence over most of the eastern part of Sulawesi, the Ambon and Seram area, and parts of Papua. It frequently engaged in fierce competition for control of its periphery with the nearby sultanate of Tidore. According to historian Leonard Andaya, Ternate's "dualistic" rivalry with Tidore is a dominant theme in the early history of the Maluku Islands.

In part as a result of its trade-dependent culture, Ternate was one of the earliest places in the region to which Islam spread, probably coming from Java in the late fifteenth century. Initially, the faith was restricted to Ternate's small ruling family, and spread only slowly to the rest of the population.

The first Europeans to stay on Ternate were part of the Portuguese expedition of Francisco Serrão out of Melaka, which was shipwrecked near Seram and rescued by local residents. Sultan Abu Lais of Ternate heard of their stranding, and, seeing a chance to ally himself with a powerful foreign nation he had heard about, he had them brought to Ternate in 1512. The Portuguese were permitted to build a fort on the island, but relations were strained from the start. Portuguese inhabitants of the fort felt free to appropriate supplies from the Ternaten population without payment, and responded violently when the local population objected. Portugal was finally expelled in 1575 amid Ternaten anger with zealous Christian missionaries, and Portuguese meddling with the Ternaten throne. At the time, European power in the region was very weak; after the expulsion of the Portuguese, Ternate was able to substantially increase its military reach across the region for a time.

Spanish forces captured the former Portuguese fort in 1606, deported the Ternate Sultan and his enturage to Manila. In 1607 the Dutch came back in Ternate where with the help of Ternateans built a fort in Malayo. The island was divided between the two powers: the Spaniards were allied with Tidore and the Dutch with their Ternaten allies. For the Ternaten rulers, the Dutch were a useful, if not particularly welcome, presence that gave them military advantages against Tidore and the Spanish. Particularly under Sultan Hamzah (r. 1627-1648), Ternate expanded its territory and strengthened its control over the periphery. Dutch influence over the kingdom was limited, though Hamzah and his son and successor, Sultan Mandar Syah (r. 1648-1675) did concede some regions to the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in exchange for help controlling rebellions there. The Spaniards remained in Ternate and Tidore until 1663. In the eighteenth century Ternate was the site of a VOC governorship, which attempted to control all trade in the nortern Moluccas.

By the nineteenth century, the spice trade had declined substantially. Hence the region was less central to the Netherlands colonial state, but the Dutch maintained a presence in the region in order to prevent another colonial power from occupying it. After the VOC was nationalised by the Dutch government in 1800, Ternate became part of the Government of the Moluccas (Gouvernement der Molukken). Ternate was occupied by British forces in 1810 before being returned to Dutch control in 1817. In 1824 became the capital of a residency (administrative region) covering Halmahera, the entire west coast of New Guinea, and the central east coast of Sulawesi. By 1867 all of Dutch-occupied New Guinea had been added to the residency, but then its region was gradually transferred to Ambon (Amboina) before being dissolved into that residency in 1922.

Like the rest of Indonesia, Ternate was occupied by Japanese forces during World War II; eastern Indonesia was governed by the Navy. After Japan surrendered in August 1945 and Indonesia declared independence, Ternate was reoccupied in early November 1945 by Allied forces intending to return Indonesia to Dutch control. It became part of Maluku province when Indonesia became independent.

In 1999 and 2000, Ternate suffered from the same religious violence between Muslims and Christians that wracked many parts of Maluku, particularly Ambon and Halmahera.

References

• Andaya, Leonard Y (1993). The world of Maluku: eastern Indonesia in the early modern period. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1490-8
• Cribb, Robert (2000). Historical atlas of Indonesia. Surrey: Curson. ISBN 0-7007-0985-1.
• Hanna, Willard Anderson and Des Alwi (1990). Turbulent times past in Ternate and Tidore. Banda Naira: Yayasan Warisan dan Budaya.
• Wallace, Alfred Russel (1858). "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type"
  • The famous naturalist wrote the "Ternate essay", an early discussion of natural selection, while on the island in 1858.

External links

• The Portuguese in Indonesia: the Moluccas and the Lesser Sunda islands