Political dynamics and religious change in the late pre-colonial Banda Islands, Eastern Indonesia

2000/04/01 by Peter V. Lape · 4 citations
Social Sciences · #Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies #Asian Studies and History

paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/004382400409934

openalex publication_date 2000/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

Recently completed archaeological survey and excavation, in conjunction with a re-analysis of historical documents and oral histories, brings to light new evidence about the pre-colonial (tenth to seventeenth centuries) society of the Banda Islands, once the world's sole source of nutmeg. The new data challenge historical assumptions about settlement, Islamization and the nature of trade networks in pre-colonial Banda. They also have implications for the history of conflict between Bandanese and European colonizers, which resulted in genocide, enslavement or forced migration of the Bandanese population in the 1620s, and the beginning of the colonial era in what is today Indonesia.

Citations

• Trade and Society in the Banda Islands in the Sixteenth Century
• The Austronesians: Historical and Comparative Perspectives

Cited by

• New Perspectives in Southeast Asian and Pacific Prehistory
• Rethinking the Neolithic in Island Southeast Asia, with Particular Reference to the Archaeology of Timor‑Leste and Sulawesi
• Zones of refuge: Resisting conquest in the northern Philippine highlands through environmental practice
• Banda Islands [wikipedia]