The Banda Islands are a volcanic group of ten small volcanic islands in the Banda Sea, about 140 km (87 mi) south of Seram Island and about 2,000 km (1,243 mi) east of Java, and constitute an administrative district (kecamatan) within the Central Maluku Regency in the Indonesian province of Maluku. The islands rise out of 4-to-6-kilometre deep ocean and have a total land area of approximately 172 square kilometres (66 sq mi). They had a population of 18,544 at the 2010 Census and 20,924 at the 2020 Census; the official estimate as at mid 2023 was 21,902. Until the mid-19th century the Banda Islands were the world's only source of the spices nutmeg and mace, produced from the nutmeg tree. The islands are also popular destinations for scuba diving and snorkeling. The main town and administrative centre is Banda Neira, located on the island of the same name.
The United East India Company, commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered trading company and the first joint-stock company in the world. Established on 20 March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies, it was granted a 21-year monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia. Shares in the company could be purchased by any citizen of the United Provinces and then subsequently bought and sold in open-air secondary markets. The company possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies. Also, because it traded across multiple colonies and countries from both the East and the West, the VOC is sometimes considered to have been the world's first multinational corporation.
The Maluku Islands or the Moluccas are an archipelago in the eastern part of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located east of Sulawesi, west of New Guinea, and north and east of Timor. Lying within Wallacea, the Moluccas have been considered a geographical and cultural intersection of Asia and Oceania.
Ambon Island is part of the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. The island has an area of 743.37 km2 (287.02 sq mi) and is mountainous, well watered, and fertile. Ambon Island consists of two territories: the city of Ambon to the south and various districts (kecamatan) of the Central Maluku Regency to the north. The main city and seaport is Ambon, which is also the capital of Maluku province, while those districts of Maluku Tengah Regency situated on Ambon Island had a 2020 Census population of 128,069. By mid 2023 those populations were estimated to have become 354,052 and 128,754 respectively, resulting in an all-island population of 482,806.
North Maluku is a province of Indonesia. It covers the northern part of the Maluku Islands, bordering the Pacific Ocean to the north, the Halmahera Sea to the east, the Molucca Sea to the west, and the Seram Sea to the south. It shares maritime borders with North Sulawesi, Southeast Sulawesi and Central Sulawesi to the west, Maluku to the south, Southwest Papua to the west, and Palau and the Philippines to the north. The provincial capital is Sofifi on the largest island of Halmahera, while the largest city is the island city of Ternate. The population of North Maluku was 1,038,087 in the 2010 census, making it one of the least-populous provinces in Indonesia, but by the 2020 Census the population had risen to 1,282,937, and the official estimate as at mid 2023 was 1,328,594.
The Amboyna massacre was the 1623 torture and execution on Ambon Island of twenty-one men, including ten in the service of the English East India Company, as well as Japanese and Portuguese traders and a Portuguese man, by agents of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), on accusations of treason. It was the result of the intense rivalry between the East India companies of England and the United Provinces in the spice trade and remained a source of tension between the two nations until late in the 17th century.
Maluku is a province of Indonesia. It comprises the central and southern regions of the Maluku Islands. The largest city and capital of Maluku province is Ambon on the small Ambon Island. It is directly adjacent to North Maluku, Southwest Papua, and West Papua in the north, Central Sulawesi, and Southeast Sulawesi in the west, Banda Sea, Australia, East Timor and East Nusa Tenggara in the south and Arafura Sea, Central Papua and South Papua in the east. The land area is 57803.81 km2, and the total population of this province at the 2010 census was 1,533,506 people, rising to 1,848,923 at the 2020 census, the official estimate as at mid 2023 was 1,908,753. Maluku is located in Eastern Indonesia.
South Maluku, also South Moluccas, officially the Republic of South Maluku, is an unrecognised secessionist republic that originally claimed the islands of Ambon, Buru, and Seram, which currently make up the Indonesian province of Maluku.
Run is one of the smallest islands of the Banda Islands, which are a part of the Moluccas, Indonesia. It is located within Banda District (kecamatan) in Central Maluku Regency.
Francisco Serrão was a Portuguese explorer and a possible cousin of Ferdinand Magellan. His 1512 voyage was the first known European sailing east past Malacca through modern Indonesia and the East Indies. He became a confidant of Sultan Bayan Sirrullah, the ruler of Ternate, becoming his personal advisor. He remained in Ternate where he died around the same time Magellan died.
The Dutch Empire is a term comprising different territories that were controlled by the Netherlands from the 17th to 20th centuries. They settled outside Europe with skills in trade and transport. In the late 16th century, the Netherlands reclaimed their lead at sea, and by the second half of the 17th century, dominated it. This hundred-year period is called the Dutch Golden Age. The Dutch built their empire with corporate colonialism by establishing the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company (GWC), following Britain's footsteps, which led to war between both empires. After the French Revolutionary Wars, the Netherlands lost most of its power to the British after the French armies invaded the Netherlands and parts of the Dutch colonies. Hence, Dutch leaders had to defend their colonies and homeland. Between 1795 and 1814, the French restored the VOC in Indonesia and Suriname which remained under Dutch control.
Company rule in the Dutch East Indies began when the Dutch East India Company appointed the first governor-general of the Dutch East Indies in 1610, and ended in 1800 when the bankrupt company was dissolved and its possessions were nationalized as the Dutch East Indies. By then it exerted territorial control over much of the archipelago, most notably on Java.
The Sultanate of Ternate, previously also known as the Kingdom of Gapi is one of the oldest Muslim kingdoms in Indonesia besides the sultanates of Tidore, Jailolo, and Bacan.
Fort Oranje is a 17th century Dutch fort on the island of Ternate in Indonesia.
The economic history of Indonesia is shaped by its geographic location, its natural resources, as well as its people that inhabited the archipelago that today formed the modern nation-state of the Republic of Indonesia. The foreign contact and international trade with foreign counterparts had also shaped and sealed the fate of Indonesian archipelago, as Indians, Chinese, Arabs, and eventually European traders reached the archipelago during the Age of Exploration and participated in the spice trade, war and conquest.
The Banda Islands were a governorate of the Dutch East India Company. The governorate comprised Banda Neira, Banda Besar, Pulau Ai, Run, Banda Api, and some smaller islands.
The Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands was a process of military conquest from 1609 to 1621 by the Dutch East India Company of the Banda Islands. The Dutch, having enforced a monopoly on the highly lucrative nutmeg production from the islands, were impatient with Bandanese resistance to Dutch demands that the Bandanese sell only to them. Negotiations collapsed after Bandanese village elders deceived and murdered the Dutch representative Pieter Willemsz Verhoeff. Under the command of Jan Pieterszoon Coen the Dutch resorted to a forcible conquest of the islands, which became severely depopulated as a result of Coen’s massacres, forced deportations, and the resulting starvation and disease.
This is a timeline of the 17th century.
The invasion of the Spice Islands was a military invasion by British forces that took place between February and August 1810 on and around the Dutch owned Maluku Islands also known as the Spice Islands in the Dutch East Indies during the Napoleonic wars.
Nuku was the nineteenth Sultan of Tidore in Maluku Islands, reigning from 1797 to 1805. He is also known under the names Sultan Muhammad al-Mabus Amiruddin Syah, Saifuddin, Jou Barakati, and Kaicili Paparangan. He led a resistance against Dutch colonialism in Maluku and Papua from 1780 which was eventually successful. Being a leader with great charisma, he gathered discontents from several ethnic groups and strove to restore Maluku to its pre-colonial division into four autonomous kingdoms. Nuku used global political conflict lines by allying with the British against the French-affiliated Dutch and helped them conquer the Dutch stronghold in Ternate in 1801. In modern Indonesia he is commemorated as a pahlawan nasional.
