by Paul Michael Taylor
Introduction
We present this English translation and digital edition of de Clercq‘s 1890 description of Ternate the island, its Residency and its Sultanate--for four main reasons. First and most importantly, this translation will help alleviate the paucity of source materials available in English on this historically important region. Second, the book bears scrutiny as a well-written example of gentlemanly scholarship by a Dutch colonial civil servant of the time. The author was a truly involved and active amateur in the best sense (and the etymological sense) of that term: he loved his subject-matter. He also cared deeply for the success of the colonial enterprise. Third, the book can just be enjoyed as a vivid and informative account of court life at the historic sultanate of Ternate, joined to a travelogue about the far-flung dependencies of the sultanate, as told by a witty and opinionated observer with many interests--who happened also to be the "Resident" or supreme local representative of the colonial government. This translation tries to convey the detailed data de Clercq presents while also preserving the pungent style with which he leads the reader on this tour of his Residency.
Finally, though this point will quickly be outmoded, the preparation of a digital edition of translated and annotated source material presents a few new challenges to the translator or editor, briefly addressed in the “Notes on Transcription and Translation” below. These challenges arise because the medium is different from print media and because the results must be accessible to larger and more diverse publics. Such issues are central to the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, since they directly affect preservation and dissemination of books in their care, including de Clercq‘s text. Within the Smithsonian‘s Anthropology department, these issues are also being studied in the “AENEID Project” for Source Materials in Asian, European, and Near Eastern Identities (AENEID), including books, archives, images, and other material collections-based resources.
Some translator‘s challenges are more prosaic, such as translating a title. The literal translation of Bijdragen tot de kennis der Residentie Ternate would be an offputting “Contributions to the Knowledge (Understanding) of the Residency of Ternate.” The term "Residency" in this sense is meaningless to most English readers, though it is central to the book and should be preserved in translation; in fact, our added term “Sultanate” is implied by the term Resident. As de Clercq‘s nineteenth-century readership (and today‘s specialists in the region) would understand, a Residency was the domain of a “Resident,” or colonial official attached to a native ruler (or rulers) such as a sultan. Thus the Residency of Ternate is defined by the sultanate(s) to which the Resident is attached, as supreme colonial representative under the Governor of the Dutch East Indies. De Clercq‘s description of this region for which he is responsible includes the neighboring sultanates of Tidore and Bacan; he also mentions claimants to the status of sultan at Jailolo and elsewhere. These sultanates were the responsibility of the Dutch Resident at Ternate, but clearly subsidiary to Ternate in his mind and in this book, and generally brought up by the author in relation to Ternate. (Had we put “sultanates” in the plural, readers might mistakenly imagine that Ternate, whose sultanate is the primary focus of the book, had more than one Sultan!) Thus we arrive at an imperfect but more mellifluous Ternate: The Residency and Its Sultanate, as our title‘s translation.
Those terms, Ternate, Residency, Sultanate, translation, can also structure the questions addressed in the remainder of this introductory essay. First, why was Ternate historically important? De Clercq‘s nineteenth-century Dutch contemporaries, familiar with Ternate‘s role as the source of spices and therefore of the Age of Exploration and subsequent ages of colonization (see Masselman 1963), could have more readily responded to this question than can many of today‘s readers. Second, how did this sultanate, from the tiny and seemingly unpromising island of Ternate, grow to encompass such a large number of far-flung dependencies? Third, how does this book‘s author, F.S.A. de Clercq (1842-1906), who served as Resident of Ternate from 1885 to 1888, fit into a tradition of colonial scholarship? Finally, in the “Notes on Transcription and Translation,” the conventions of this translation and its annotations, including its updated transcription of Malay or other indigenous terms, will briefly be summarized for the reader.
Ternate: History and Sources
The historic importance of Ternate lies in its role as premier trade entrepôt in the northern Moluccas -- the eastern Indonesian islands that were the historic source of the much-sought spices, clove and nutmeg. [1] The clove (Syzygium aromaticum Kuntze) is indigenous only to this area; nutmeg (Myristica fragrans Hout) has been exported from the northern Moluccas throughout recorded history. Local languages still relate clove and nutmeg to their wild antecedents (see, e.g., Taylor 1990:69-70). Burkill (1966[1935]:1550) dates the introduction of nutmeg into Europe from the sixth century A.D. and also notes its apparent antiquity in southern Asia, where vocabularies throughout the region use the Sanskrit term for the spice. The antiquity of clove exportation from the northern Moluccas can clearly be traced to Roman times, for Pliny the Elder describes the clove in his writings of the first century A.D. (see Innes Miller 1969). The Ramayana, written about 200 B.C., also mentions cloves, and general references to unidentified spices occur in Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, and Mesopotamian sources. A recent archeological find suggests that the clove trade to the West may in fact have begun much earlier, for a single clove has been found among charred plant remains on the floor of a burned pantry room at the Mesopotamian site of Terqa, in present-day Syria, dated to 1700 B.C. (Buccellati and Buccellati 1983, cited in Taylor and Aragon 1991:304). Thus, the antiquity of trade is better documented in this region than in any other area of Indonesia.
Until the sixteenth century, clove production remained indigenous to the northern Moluccan region. As van Fraassen (1981) notes, “cloves existed for the outside world long before the Moluccas did.” Traders -- from elsewhere in Indonesia for millenia, followed by other Asian traders, and then the Portuguese in 1512 -- followed the clove trail to its source in the northern Moluccas. Christopher Columbus, as has often been pointed out, was trying to reach the Ternate region by a roundabout route when he found America by mistake. From the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, as de Clercq‘s bibliography and historical notes suggest, Ternate formed the backdrop for attempts by Portuguese, Spanish, English, and the eventually successful Dutch to dominate the region and its valuable spice trade.
The Portuguese built their first permanent Moluccan settlement on Ternate in 1522. From their base on Ternate they maintained their preeminence in the Moluccan spice trade throughout the sixteenth century. In general, periods of intense conflict with the Ternatese rulers and populace alternated with periods of peaceful cooperation, as Portuguese allied themselves with ambitious Ternatese individuals to extend their trade monopoly.
In the early seventeenth century, Dutch traders competed heavily with Muslim traders from western Indonesia. In 1605 the Netherlands succeeded in capturing the Portuguese forts on Ternate. By 1630 they had set up a rival port in Ambon, the central Moluccan town that was to become much later the capital of a united Moluccan province under the Dutch. In the seventeenth century, the Dutch allied themselves with the Ternatese in opposition to the Portuguese and Spanish -- and also, from the Ternatese point of view, in opposition to the sultanate of Tidore. In effect, however, the ultimate goal of Dutch alliances was control of the spice trade, and this eventually brought them into conflicts with Moluccan rulers, including their former allies in Ternate. By the 1670s, the Dutch East India Company had made strategic alliances with the Bugis leader Arung Palakka leading to a Dutch conquest of the Makassar kingdom of Gowa as well as of both Muslim sultanates of Ternate and Tidore. During the seventeenth century, the Dutch were eventually able to expel all other European and Asian merchants from the Moluccan spice trade.
As part of the late seventeenth-century agreement between the defeated Ternatese sultan and the Dutch East India Company, no more cloves were grown in the northern Moluccas, and the clove trade was instead concentrated on islands around Ambon in the central Moluccas. In general, as van Fraassen writes (1981:11-12), the main goal of Dutch efforts throughout the eighteenth century was to isolate Ternate, Tidore, and other areas of the northern Moluccas from the outside world, and to destroy clove trees throughout the northern Moluccas in favor of the more easily policed regions of the central Moluccas, which the Dutch thoroughly controlled (see Hanna 1978 on the central Moluccan spice monopoly).
From the late seventeenth century onward, the Netherlands was more than just a competing commercial concern in eastern Indonesia; it was an imperial colonial force as well. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Dutch colonial government did its best to retain Moluccan leaders who would cooperate fully with Dutch trading interests. To this end, gifts of European valuables, including coins, armor, weapons, and textiles, were provided to the cooperative courts. Van de Wall‘s (1922) description and catalog of regalia and other possessions in the sultan‘s palace on Ternate lists numerous gifts from Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Dutch monarchs, as well as gifts from other sultans and tribute from Ternate‘s dependencies on Halmahera and elsewhere. In another work, van de Wall (1928) catalogs Dutch antiquities, especially architectural works, in the Moluccas; his extensive chapter on Ternate examines many of the Portuguese or Spanish constructions mentioned by de Clercq as well.
Though one can speculate on the structure of the northern Moluccan courts prior to European contact, that contact came early and with great force, broadly reducing the political power and economic base of the sultanates over time. Andaya‘s (1993) thought provoking study of European and indigenous Moluccan accounts attempts to reconstruct the differing world views or “cultural realities” of the Europeans and the indigenous Moluccans who came into contact with each other in the Early Modern Period (the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries). As Andaya admits, however, most of the information on early indigenous cultures can only be inferred from European sources.The Ph.D. dissertation of Ch. van Fraassen (1987) uses historical evidence and indigenous accounts to interpret the organization and memberships of the Ternatese soa or descent groups in the region, in relation to a wider symbolic system that he finds reflected in many aspects of Ternatese culture.
The Moluccan author Des Alwi, with Willard A. Hanna, have also produced a vividly written recent account in English of the region‘s history, Turbulent Times Past in Ternate and Tidore (Hanna and Alwi 1990). They contrast the spectacle of the early battles over these once world-famous islands with the situation today:
The cheap and abundant spices of the miniscule kingdoms of Ternate and Tidore offered gold, gore, and glory enough to launch many a Portuguese, English, or Dutch armada. Great thousand-ton Iberian galleons ... clashed not only with Dutch East Indiamen but also with fleets of Moluccan korakora, immense outriggers carrying up to 100 rower-fighters armed with pikes and krises....
The spectacle was stunning; it was also shattering. Inevitably it worked political, economic, and social havoc. In the late eighteenth century the islands were catapulted into depression and obscurity. No twentieth century formula for revitalization has as yet been discovered. (Hanna and Alwi 1990:x-xi)
From this brief summary we may understand that the Ternatese court where de Clercq served as Resident in the 1880s seemed a remote and sleepy place, yet one rich with history that had been extensively, though not consistently, modified and documented by previous European visitors, soldiers, traders, scientists, and colonial administrators. De Clercq himself wrestles with the large number of inconsistencies and inaccuracies in various European published accounts, suggesting corrections based on his observations. Yet in addition to the competing European accounts he cites, de Clercq had a unique opportunity to give voice to surviving indigenous Ternatese accounts of historical events. He published in this book the first extended description of the Ternatese language, and included Ternatese texts in their indigenous script. Today, over a hundred years after its original publication, de Clercq‘s previously untranslated book remains the most extensive publication about the Ternatese language.
When he wrote over a century ago, de Clercq already had access to many historical documents and traveler‘s accounts on the Ternate region; we now have many more. For bibliographic information on the earliest published accounts, including those cited by de Clercq, readers will find invaluable Landwehr‘s (1991) annotated bibliography of publications relating to the Dutch East India Company, 1602-1800. A bibliography of other specialized studies of the region, from de Clercq‘s time to the present, can also be found in Polman (1981), to which Visser (1994) has provided a bibliographic update (cf. Taylor and Tuchrello 1985).
In 1999, Indonesia‘s Maluku province (the Moluccas) was subdivided into two provinces, as part of a larger devolution of authority within the post-Suharto government of Indonesia. Ternate, historically one of the oldest administrative centers within Indonesia, for the first time provisionally became the capital of a province (Maluku Utara, or the North Moluccas) within the Republic of Indonesia.
Ternatese: The Language
De Clercq‘s contemporaries recognized this book‘s unique contribution as a study of the Ternatese language, comprising word lists, grammatical notes, and inclusion of sample texts in Ternatese script. While today this may be admired as an example of giving voice to local histories rather than history from a colonial point of view, de Clercq‘s contemporaries valued his effort for other reasons. For example, Johan van Bemmelen‘s (1898) royally dedicated commemorative volume praising progress in the Netherlands Indies under Queen Emma (1890-1898) mainly commends de Clercq‘s Ternatese study for its role in filling out the classification of Dutch East Indies languages (1898:50-51). The Ternatese language (and its close neighbors) were clearly very different from other Indonesian languages. Van Bemmelen‘s assessment was influenced by earlier attempts, associated with the linguists Holle and Brandes, to classify eastern Indonesian languages into “western” and "eastern" divisions, each with further subdivisions. So by the 1890s the languages of Ternate, Tidore, and some of Halmahera were already recognized as a close grouping, one of four within Brandes‘s eastern-most group of the Eastern Indonesian languages. By providing clear evidence for the classification and description of Ternatese, concluded van Bemmelen, de Clercq had "importantly cleared up this fourth [group]," citing this book alongside other publications by van Baarda, van Dijken and Kern about related languages of Halmahera.
Only much later did van der Veen (1915) clearly demonstrate that the closely related North Halmaheran languages (including Ternatese) were non-Austronesian, thus forming a compact non-Austronesian enclave within the vast region populated by speakers of the Austronesian languages. Wurm (1971, following Cowan, 1957) places eleven closely related languages of the "North Halmaheran Family" into the West Papuan Phylum, noting that “in all studies and discussions of these languages ... they are treated as very closely interrelated languages of a single family displaying far-reaching lexical, structural and typological agreements” (Wurm 1971:614-615). Literature on various Halmaheran languages of this group had been produced by missionaries of the Utrechtse Zendingsvereeniging, who began mission work on the island in 1865 (LPSDGI 1976:3-21; Haire 1981:123-142). Christian missionary activity, including translation of Bible stories, required far more extensive linguistic work than was undertaken among the Islamic speakers of Ternatese or Tidorese. Dictionaries, grammars, and texts from the missionized Halmaheran groups soon surpassed the Ternatese material known only from de Clercq‘s book and a few other published texts or short word-lists. Laycock and Voorhoeve (1971:514-515) listed the source materials available on North Halmaheran languages (including de Clercq [1890], translated here), in addition to “mission literature,” as follows:
...wordlists of Galela (Baarda 1895), Tobelo (Roest 1905), Pagu and Modole (Ellen 1916a,b), Tabaru, Waioli, Ibu, Galela, Loda, and Ternate (Fortgens 1905, 1917); a Tobelo-Dutch dictionary (Hueting 1908c, [supplement:] 1935); a grammatical sketch and a manual of Galela (Baarda 1891, 1908); a grammatical sketch of Tabaru (Fortgens 1928) and Tobelo (Hueting 1936); a comparative study in Loda and Galela grammar (Baarda 1904) and texts in Galela ([Baarda and Dijken], 1895), Tobelo (Hueting 1908b) Pagu and Modole (Ellen 1916c,d) and Tabaru (Fortgens 1928); Hueting (1908a) gave a survey of the North Halmahera languages together with comparative vocabularies. It was later corrected and supplemented by Adriani (1912:300). Further have to be mentioned the history of Ternate, written in the Ternate language (Crab 1878), the Ternate wordlist, texts, and a few grammatical notes by de Clercq (1890), the notes on Galela grammar by Kern (1891), and an article on word taboo in Galela (Kern 1893).
This list should help place de Clercq‘s work within the region‘s linguistic studies during the Dutch period. More recent language studies, including Watuseke‘s (1991) recent brief description of Ternatese, can be found through the general bibliographies (Polman 1981, Visser 1994) cited above.
Voorhoeve (1988) has recently suggested a revised classification of the "North Halmaheran Stock," which he places, along with some languages of the Bird‘s Head Peninsula of Irian Jaya, within the West Papuan Phylum. He divides all languages of the North Halmaheran Stock into only four “languages,” within two families: first is (1) a North Halmaheran family, consisting of three languages, as follows: (1a) Ternate-Tidore; (1b) Sahu; (1c) North-east Halmaheran; (2) the second family consists of a single language, West Makian, which is thus a family-level isolate. Note that Voorhoeve‘s criterion for this classification is the percentage of shared cognates in a 100-item basic wordlist, thus “languages” traditionally treated as distinct (and recognized as distinct by the speakers themselves) are grouped together. So, six separately named languages/dialects spoken on Halmahera (Tobaru, Loloda, Galela, Tobelo, Modole, and Pagu) are grouped into the posited "North-east Halmaheran" language; while Ternatese and Tidorese are grouped as a single language.
Voorhoeve‘s classification at this level thus uses arbitrary cognation percentages to reflect presumed genetic relationships among the languages. This is useful but it does not correspond to any local sense of identity, as reflected in the names people apply to their own diverse languages or cultures (undoubtedly speakers of a potential posited Spanish-Portuguese-Provençal-Italian "language" would understand). For the purposes of the introductory essay, translation, and annotation offered here, Ternatese, Tidorese, Tobelo, etc. are treated as separate languages, following the earlier as well as later authors (e.g. Grimes 1996-1999). Still, Voorhoeve‘s classification does reflect those group identities at lower (“dialect, sub-dialect”) levels of classification; and Voorhoeve also provides much new data on the distribution of the languages themselves. Ternatese, he records in 1988, is spoken “on the islands of Ternate and Hiri, on Talimau and on the southern tip of Moari (the latter two islands are in the Kayoa group), in a number of villages on the west coast of Halmahera and by Ternatese settlers on Obi and Bacan” (1988:183; see also 196-199 for maps, 200-201 for village lists). The 1976 census he cites had shown a (largely immigrant) population of 42,000 in the town of Ternate, with 20,000 Ternatese living on the island outside the town -- leading Voorhoeve to suggest that in 1988 Ternatese speakers on the island of Ternate probably exceed 30,000. The number of Ternatese speakers elsewhere remains unknown. Voorhoeve also did not obtain information about dialectal variations on Ternate but he recognizes that dialectal variation in the little-studied Ternatese language (which he in fact considers a dialect of his posited “Ternate-Tidore” language) undoubtedly exists.
From this brief summary of the Ternatese language situation, it should be clear that de Clercq‘s study, and the texts published here, are still a major part of the scarce source material available. It is our hope that this work‘s translation and wider dissemination will encourage more study of this language.
Two additional points should be added, to emphasize the importance of the Ternatese language not only within this West Papuan phylum, but more broadly in the cultural history of the region. First, since the Ternatese sultanate occupied a position of respect and cultural preeminence long after its political power declined, Ternatese (or presumed Ternatese) forms predominate in speech forms to which antiquity and authority are ascribed. These local speech forms include the opaque, esoteric formulae widely used among Halmaheran peoples today for magical or curative purposes. I have elsewhere (Taylor 1988) labeled this speech form "neo-Ternatese," after the "neo-Latin" used for much European word-formation; interested readers are referred to that publication for examples of a range of speech registers in which neo-Ternatese is used among the Tobelo of Halmahera, with sample texts. These range from transparent to opaque, paralleling a continuum of contexts from public to private (or esoteric). Secret magical formulae ("mataráa" in Tobelo, cf. Indonesian [from Sanskrit] "mantra"), are at the opaque end of that continuum. Though they are in fact formed from fragments of many languages, these "neo-Ternatese" magical formulae are locally often considered to be an ancient form of Ternatese.
Second, some of our earliest documents in the Malay (or Indonesian) language are from Ternate, thus from an enclave of non-Austronesian languages. The earliest Malay letter known is a 1521 letter from Sultan Abu Hayat of Ternate to King John III of Portugal, dated 1521, now in the Arquivos Nacionais Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (see Gallop 1994:123 for photograph of the letter; 1994:196 for transcription and translation). Such early documents, alongside more study of the contemporary Ternatese language, could help elucidate the history of contact and borrowing in the region. The dialect of Malay/Indonesian currently spoken in the Ternate region, which I have elsewhere called "North Moluccan Malay," is heavily influenced by West Papuan semantics and syntax (see Taylor 1983 for summary description and sample texts).
The Sultanate
Researchers on the Ternatese sultanate (both now and in de Clercq‘s time), unlike researchers of the Ternatese language, can find much more historical information and documentary evidence beyond de Clercq‘s book. Here, after briefly summarizing the organization of de Clercq‘s book about the Ternatese sultanate, we can consider his presentation in light of some other more current questions about this sultanate and its significance.
De Clercq‘s book begins by bringing the reader with him as he journeys through Ternate, describing both the town and the island. The author and reader then sojourn across the straits to Halmahera, then through the islands of Tidore, Makian, Moti, Mare, Kayoa, and on to Sula, Banggai, and other regions of the sultanate. He intersperses many kinds of ethnographic, linguistic, historic, and economic information throughout his text; collectively, his information about the Ternatese court, the sultanate, and its dependencies, are organized within this readable "travelogue" style throughout Part I. Particularly unique to this description are accounts of his personal interactions, as Resident, with the Ternatese sultan and other officials, giving us a snapshot of life in the Ternatese court and its dependencies, in the 1880s. Part II is quite different, as de Clercq reproduces a "Chronicle" of the history of Ternate and of Tidore, in part as his report of local understanding (as conveyed to him) of the sultanate‘s line of succession and of the region‘s history, and in part as his best attempt to summarize and correct prior publications on the topic. Part III, on the Ternatese language, consists of brief grammatical notes and three Ternatese texts with Dutch translations, along with a vocabulary of terms used in those texts. Those texts deal with the 1840 earthquake on Ternate, the 1879 installation of Sultan Ayanhar, and an 1844 speech by Sultan Mohamad Arsad. Finally, the appendices include important source information for regional history and for comparative studies by historians, art historians and textile specialists, anthropologists, linguists, and others; these include a list of rulers and of Ternatese titles (still used in many other areas of the Moluccas), a description of the funeral of Sultan Rajalaut (1751), and a description with drawings of the ceremonial flags of Ternate and Tidore.
One intriguing question about this Sultanate that de Clercq and previous scholars cited by him did not address, however, is the basic question that van Fraassen (1994:23) poses:
When we read, in Valentijn‘s (1724) description of the Moluccas, about all the islands and areas belonging to the realm of Ternate at the end of the seventeenth century, a representation that has never been seriously criticized by later writers and Dutch colonial authorities, the question arises how could a small island like Ternate, with only a small number of inhabitants ... be the centre of such a vast empire. To what extent was the supremacy of Ternate over the many islands and regions, which in literature and in colonial terminology are called dependencies of Ternate, only pretension and to what extent was it reality?
Van Fraassen cautions against identifying the historic acquisition of dependencies by Ternate, in the period 1500-1900, as total military submission or complete control of the subjugated areas. Still, a successful raid for plunder did in many cases form the basis for a lasting but unenforced claim to sovereignty. Any region that ranked as a subordinate to a claimed dependency was then also considered an (indirect) dependency of Ternate. He also notes that the Ternatese sultanate expanded by intervening in internal conflicts; and also sometimes by opposing, and sometimes by joining forces with, European powers in battles for conquest of surrounding islands.
However, van Fraassen also credits the Ternatese court‘s careful cultivation of external contacts and the emphasis on the "pomp and circumstance" of the court (still clearly visible in the 1880s from de Clercq‘s account) with playing a role in the sultanate‘s acquisition of dependencies.
It was probably not too difficult for Ternate to overawe neighbouring islands with all the goods attained and all the knowledge derived from external contacts. This may have induced the inhabitants of neighbouring regions to acknowledge the superiority and authority of Ternate by a demonstration of respect and deference (hormat) in their relations, without having been made to do so by force of arms. (van Fraassen 1994:25)
The source of this cultural authority may originally have derived from the Ternatese sultanate‘s extensive contacts with foreigners for the clove trade; but it persisted in de Clercq‘s time after the Ternatese clove trade had ceased.
The dependencies provided Ternate with tribute, taxes (in the form of goods), and manpower for the sultanate‘s public works and, in times of warfare, for battle. By the nineteenth century, the Dutch had agreed in bilateral treaties with the Sultan to formally recognize his authority over many dependencies; thus the Dutch reluctantly had to intervene in local revolts against the abuses of Ternate or its representatives in the dependencies (ibid, p. 28). Nevertheless, Dutch recognition of these vast and unenforceable claims of the sultanates of Ternate and Tidore did historically serve a very important function. It allowed the Dutch to deny other European powers any legal basis for entering the region or concluding separate treaties with leaders of "dependent" islands. In general, therefore, Ternate‘s claims to be the center of this great realm were not just fictional, nor were they necessarily based on force of arms. The extent and nature of the sultanate‘s claims, their integration into bilateral treaties with the Dutch, the issues of taxation and avoidance of abuses or revolts in the dependent areas -- all these were critical issues on de Clercq‘s mind as he leads readers on his tour of the Sultanate of Ternate in this book.
De Clercq‘s book also provides insights for the study of arts and material culture within Indonesia‘s courts, such as the court (Kadaton) of Ternate. The role of Indonesia‘s court arts within Indonesian art traditions has generally been considered to derive from the courts‘ role as trade emporia. As noted above, the Ternatese sultanate‘s ascribed cultural superiority, which was expressed in court arts and in the "pomp and circumstance" of the court, has been considered partly due to its contact with more modern" western powers, and has been used to interpret some of the Ternatese sultanate‘s historic acquisition of dependencies. Courts had long provided the entryway for foreign ideas, including the Hindu and Buddhist concepts of divine kingship around which Indonesian rulers originally organized courts, as well as the Islamic religion to which the court‘s rulers and populations converted (see Taylor & Aragon 1991:279-306 on court arts in outer-island Indonesia; also Jessup 1990).
Thus, Indonesia‘s courts frequently served as the avenue for introducing prestigious foreign artistic techniques and aesthetic motifs to artists among their upriver hinterland "dependents." Of course, the real dependency was mutual, for every court required a hinterland. Even in antiquity, an Indonesian court‘s role was to mediate between the populations of its hinterland and the bearers of international trade. Court arts, as a result, were enriched by foreign aesthetic ideas and techniques but still express indigenous Indonesian themes. De Clercq‘s book adds to the limited source material available for interpreting the relation between court and hinterland in the northern Moluccan region‘s art and material culture.
The "Residency" and the "Resident"
This book‘s author, Frederik Sigismund Alexander de Clercq (1842-1906), was the Resident (or direct representative of colonial authority under the Governor of the Dutch East Indies) attached to the court of Ternate from 1885 to 1888. [2] His sense of place in history seems clear as he adds his name in the Appendix listing Residents at the court, along with his lists of Sultans and others. Here, we briefly consider the effects that his position and perspective as Resident may have had on the book presented here, and particularly we examine de Clercq‘s place within the no-longer-familiar traditions of colonial scholarship. The day-to-day activities and the authority of the Resident varied greatly throughout the archipelago, as did the kinds of local rulers and courts to which they were attached. [3] De Clercq‘s book is the best guide to his own duties and activities in the Residency of Ternate.
Certainly this Resident provides his reader with a privileged view of the sultanate. When de Clercq describes the highly orchestrated Sultan‘s visits to the Resident and viceversa, or his own official travels, he clearly speaks from experience. As an administrator he peppers his descriptions of contemporary life with citations from treaties or regulations that seem to be outdated or to need clarification; sometimes his descriptions border on "to do" lists for future administrative reforms or treaty re-negotiations. Yet he seems to recognize that such reforms like everything else in the region cannot proceed too quickly or unilaterally. As a colonial scholar, he seems to want to present an impartial description of conditions in the Residency; this tendency sometimes conflicts with his role as an activist and reformist administrator. As he guides the reader through his tour of dependencies, for example, he notes places where government subjects were granted temporary license to reside on sultan‘s land but seem to have taken it over; immediately he interrupts his description to suggest that when the time comes for the next treaty with the Sultan, this is one of the topics that really must be addressed.
It is useful to compare, as Anderson (1992) has admirably done, the "ecology" of Southeast Asian studies as experienced by the civil-servant/scholar of de Clercq‘s time and the graduate student or academic of today. Anderson notes that scholars working in the humanities and social sciences today find it normal to cite with admiration the works of colonial scholars of de Clercq‘s generation; when compared to the "shelf-life" of most contemporary studies, this fact should (but does not) seem remarkable. Anderson finds reasons for the strengths and weaknesses of colonial scholarship in the differing scholarly “ecology” then (1992:25-26):
The "ecology" in which these scholars lived and worked was quite different from the one with which we are experientially familiar. To start
with, very few of them had doctorates..., and only a small minority played a substantial role in the mediocre universities the colonial powers began setting up.... They were, first and foremost, civil servants—colonial bureaucrats.... They were not highly paid, but the cost of colonial living was low, and they had solid pensions.... Promotions came slowly but regularly, calibrated largely by seniority. They rarely had what we think of now as "large research grants," but many of their studies were financed out of the colonial budget, the allocating of which was mainly determined by their fellow bureaucrats. It was not of great matter to their employers whether or not they published a great deal, provided the required reports kept steadily coming in.... Furthermore, they typically lived for many years, often for their scholarly lifetimes, in the countries they studied.... Most of the "greats" were fluent in the contemporary mainstream vernaculars.... "Access" to people and materials was not a big problem because, after all, they were officials of an autocratic state.
These "ecological conditions," which also seem to have included the fight against boredom in the days before radio and television, led many colonial administrators to become gentlemanly nineteenth-century-style scholars of precolonial history, archaeology, epigraphy, philology, linguistics, and related fields (ibid.). Their contributions to these fields of study also served practical colonial needs for dictionaries, grammars, and other forms of "intellectual access" to peoples who were governed but not trained, in any major way, to speak Dutch or the other colonial languages. Anderson also notes, as today‘s academics will appreciate, that colonial civil servants could count on the backup of the colonial state‘s archives and libraries (to which they usually had easy access), "free" research assistants among the administration‘s armies of native clerks, and low-wage labor of many kinds. Such perks, not acknowledged in de Clercq‘s book, would surely have been available to him since he reached the highest ranks of the civil service.
One of the drawbacks of this kind of scholarship was what Anderson (1992:28) calls a "general innocence of sociological or political theory"; since theories were of little interest to the scholars‘ employers and since they lived far from the theory-encouraging environment of universities. By approaching this justified criticism through Anderson‘s discussion of the "ecology" of regional studies, one gains perspective on the advantages and disadvantages of this colonial scholarship, in comparison with the scholarship produced by some of today‘s academics, struggling for short-term visas and research grants, able to spend little time in the field, working through translators – who nevertheless regularly produce theory-driven works.
Another common drawback Anderson finds in colonial scholarship is provincialism, especially a lack of comparison with the field of study (politics, ethnology, etc.) in other nearby colonial systems. De Clercq‘s chosen subject-matters, however, have not allowed him the comfort of provincialism; this historical study of the Ternatese sultanate required him to consider the Portuguese and Spanish periods as well. His later book on the North Coast of New Guinea (de Clercq 1893a; cf. also 1893b), published as a result of a tour of duty there, includes comparisons of the Dutch colonial administration in western New Guinea to the English administration on the eastern half of the island.
A final common drawback of colonial scholarship, in Anderson‘s assessment, is the "almost complete neglect of political science/government, modern history, and sociology... [because] serious scholarly enquiry in these fields would inevitably have called into question the autocratic colonial project itself." If this was generally characteristic of colonial scholarship, de Clercq does not seem to have realized it, and as will be clear from reading this book the colonial project frequently becomes the subject of his study. That colonial project is treated as an on-going effort. In part, this may be a requirement of his narrative format -- this mixture of traveler‘s account and analysis -- which requires that each place "visited" be briefly described. Just as the historical ruins allow for reflections on the region‘s history, so artifacts of the colonial project, whether material settlements or local rules, events, rituals, or classifications of places and people, are inherently important to his descriptions and stimulate reflection on the colonial enterprise. He distinguishes between people who are subjects of the government (directly ruled) and subjects of the Sultan, with references to the statute books that give them differences in forms of taxation. Describing communities on Ternate, he notes they still owe statute labor to the places they came from. For example, leading the reader on his ethnographic tour of Ternate, he comes to the settlements of the untaxed so-called "Makassarese" inhabitants of Ternate (who may or may not have any ancestry from Makassar). Far from ignoring the colonial enterprise, de Clercq fixes on the layering of historical statues that created this exemption and this ethnic fiction, apparently to lure Javanese Moslem settlers to Ternate, and calls it "unsuccessful" for everyone including the "Makassarese" themselves, whose debilitating "life of ease" derives, in de Clercq‘s opinion, from their exemption from taxation.
Recently, de Clercq‘s early efforts to reform the colonial enterprise have gotten some credit in the environmental sector as well. Cribb‘s (1997:388) study of the early history of Indonesia‘s environmental protection credits de Clercq, "the former Resident of Ternate," as providing the first warning that overhunting of birds of paradise (whose external trade was centered upon Ternate) could lead to their extinction. In an 1890 article cited by van Houten (1896:19-20), de Clercq predicted, "Now that the birds are almost never found along the coast and the killing has moved into the interior, it will not be long before nothing remains of these most glorious products of Creation, which are a delight to ornithologists and a wonder to the whole world." Cribb documents that de Clercq‘s complaints, along with other Dutch press reports, led to a long effort to try to identify appropriate means of regulating, and much later prohibiting, the extensive bird of paradise trade. This required adopting de Clercq‘s style of frankly re-assessing the traditional prerogatives of indigenous rule (including the plume trade), and urging renegotiation and reform in the interests of an improved colonial enterprise -- which in this case corresponded to improved environmental protection.
In this narrative, then, de Clercq sees the personages and overall court culture of the Ternate sultanate as selectively and creatively adjusting, over time, to a large number of external influences from European powers. He recognizes his own role as the latest in a series of representatives for whom these adjustments are creatively being made. On occasion, he even conscientiously holds up his portion of the on-going colonial enterprise for his own, and the reader‘s, examination.
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[1] This discussion follows Taylor and Aragon 1991:303-306.
[2] For some scant biographical data see entry, “Clercq (Frederik Sigismund Alexander de)” in: Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch Oost-Indië (2nd rev. ed., 1917, Vol. 1:493-494). See also the anonymous obituary published in Wereldkroniek, no. 22 (15 August 1906). I am grateful to Dr. David Stuart-Fox of Leiden’s National Museum of Ethnology for locating an original clipping of that obituary, from which the portrait of de Clercq has been reproduced here.
[3] On interpretations of the Resident within the Dutch East Indies governmental organization, see e.g. Furnivall 1944:esp. 89-92; Vandenbosch 1944:126-128.
__________
Paul Michael Taylor, Director Smithsonian Institution, Dept. of Anthropology, Asian Cultural history Program MRC 112, PO BOX 37012, Washington DC 20009 USA
Source: www.sil.si.edu