MUSEUM NASIONAL JAKARTA

On April 24, 1778, a group of Dutch intellectuals established a scientific institution under the name Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, (Royal Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences). This private body had the aim of promoting research in the field of arts and sciences, especially in history, archaeology, ethnography and physics, and publish the various findings.

One of the founders – JCM Radermacher – donated a building and a collection of cultural objects and books, which were of great value to start off a museum and library for the society. Due to the growing collections, General Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles built a new premises on Jalan Majapahit No. 3 at the beginning of the 19th century and named it the Literary Society. In the 1862 the Dutch East Indies government decided to build a new museum that would not only serve as an office but also could be used to house, preserve and display the collections.

The Museum was officially opened in 1868 and popularly known as Gedung Gajah (Elephant Building) or sometimes called Gedung Arca (The house of Statues). It was called Gedung Gajah on account of the bronze elephant statue in the front yard – a gift to Batavia from King Chulalongkorn of Siam in 1871. It was also called Gedung Arca because a great variety of statues from different periods are on display in the house.

In 1931, the museum's collections were shown in a world cultural exhibition in Paris. Unfortunately, a fire in the exhibition hall demolished the Dutch East Indies' exhibition pavilion and destroyed most of the objects. The museum received some insurance money as compensation and the following year these funds were used to build the old ceramics room, the bronze room, and both treasure rooms on the second floor.

On February 29, 1950 the institution became the Lembaga Kebudayaan Indonesia (Indonesian Culture Council). On September 17, 1962 it was handed over to the Indonesian government and became known as Museum Pusat (Central Museum). By decree of the Minister of Education and Culture No. 092/0/1979 May 28, 1979 it was renamed the Museum Nasional.

In 2007, a new building to the north side of existing building was opened, featuring many artifacts from prehistoric times to modern times. This new building, called Gedung Arca (Statue Building), provides a new exhibition wing. The old building is named as Gedung Gajah (Elephant Building).

MALUKU ETHNOGRAPHY

The native Bandanese people traded spices with other Asian nations, such as China, since at least the time of the Roman Empire. With the rise of Islam, the trade became dominated by Muslim traders, one ancient Arabic source appears to know the location of the islands, describing them as fifteen days' sail East from the 'island of Jaba' but direct evidence of Islam in the archipelago occurs only in the late 14th century, as China's interest in regional maritime dominance waned.

By trading with Muslim states, Venice came to monopolise the spice trade in Europe between 1200 and 1500, through its dominance over Mediterranean seaways to ports such as Alexandria, after traditional overland connections were disrupted by Mongols and Turks. The financial incentive to discover an alternative to Venice's monopoly control of this lucrative business was perhaps the single most important factor precipitating Europe's Age of Exploration. Portugal took an early lead charting the route around the southern tip of Africa, securing bases and outposts en route, even discovering the coast of Brazil in the search for favourable southerly currents. Portugal's eventual success and the establishment of its own empire provoked the other maritime powers in Europe—Spain, England and the Netherlands—to challenge and eventually overcome the Portuguese position.

Maluku History

The earliest archaeological evidence of human occupation of the region is about thirty-two thousand years old, but evidence of even older settlements in Australia may mean that Maluku had earlier visitors. Evidence of increasingly long-distance trading relationships and of more frequent occupation of many islands, begins about ten to fifteen thousand years later. Onyx beads and segments of silver plate used as currency on the Indian subcontinent around 200BC have been unearthed on some of the islands. In addition, local dialects employ derivations of the Malay word then in use for 'silver', in contrast to the term used in wider Melanesian society, which has etymological roots in Chinese, a consequence of the regional trade with China that was developed in the 6th and 7th centuries.

Maluku was a cosmopolitan society where spice traders from across the region took residence in settlements, or in nearby enclaves, including Arab and Chinese traders who visited or lived in the region. Social organization was usually local, and relatively flat - a general populace guided by a council of elders or rich men, or Orang kaya.

Arabic merchants began to arrive in the 14th century, bringing Islam. Peaceful conversion to Islam occurred in many islands, especially in the centres of trade, while aboriginal animism persisted in the hinterlands and more isolated islands. Archaeological evidence here relies largely on the occurrence of pigs' teeth, as evidence of pork eating or abstinence therefrom.

Apart from some relatively minor cultural influences, the most significant lasting effects of the Portuguese presence was the disruption and reorganisation of the Southeast Asian trade, and in eastern Indonesia—including Maluku—the introduction of Christianity. The Portuguese had conquered the city state of Malacca in the early 16th century and their influence was most strongly felt in Maluku and other parts of eastern Indonesia After the Portuguese annexed Malacca in August 1511, one Portuguese diary noted 'it is thirty years since they became Moors'- giving a sense of the competition then taking place between Islamic and European influences in the region. Afonso de Albuquerque learned of the route to the Banda Islands and other 'Spice Islands', and sent an exploratory expedition of three vessels under the command of António de Abreu, Simão Afonso Bisigudo and Francisco Serrão. On the return trip, Francisco Serrão was shipwrecked at Hitu island (northern Ambon) in 1512. There he established ties with the local ruler who was impressed with his martial skills. The rulers of the competing island states of Ternate and Tidore also sought Portuguese assistance and the newcomers were welcomed in the area as buyers of supplies and spices during a lull in the regional trade due to the temporary disruption of Javanese and Malay sailings to the area following the 1511 conflict in Malacca. The spice trade soon revived but the Portuguese would not be able to fully monopolize nor disrupt this trade.

Allying himself with Ternate's ruler, Serrão constructed a fortress on that tiny island and served as the head of a mercenary band of Portuguese seamen under the service of one of the two local feuding sultans who controlled most of the spice trade. Such an outpost far from Europe generally only attracted the most desperate and avaricious, and as such the feeble attempts at Christianisation only strained relations with Ternate's Muslim ruler. Serrão urged Ferdinand Magellan to join him in Maluku, and sent the explorer information about the Spice Islands. Both Serrão and Magellan, however, perished before they could meet one another. In 1535 Sultan Tabariji was deposed and sent to Goa in chains, where he converted to Christianity and changed his name to Dom Manuel. After being declared innocent of the charges against him he was sent back to reassume his throne, but died en route at Malacca in 1545. He had however, already bequeathed the island of Ambon to his Portuguese godfather Jordão de Freitas. Following the murder of Sultan Hairun at the hands of the Europeans, the Ternateans expelled the hated foreigners in 1575 after a five-year siege.

The Portuguese first landed in Ambon in 1513, but it only became the new centre for their activities in Maluku following the expulsion from Ternate. European power in the region was weak and Ternate became an expanding, fiercely Islamic and anti-European state under the rule of Sultan Baab Ullah (r. 1570 - 1583) and his son Sultan Said The Portuguese in Ambon, however, were regularly attacked by native Muslims on the island's northern coast, in particular Hitu which had trading and religious links with major port cities on Java's north coast. Altogether, the Portuguese never had the resources or manpower to control the local trade in spices, and failed in attempts to establish their authority over the crucial Banda Islands, the nearby centre of most nutmeg and mace production.

Following Portuguese missionary work, there have been large Christian communities in eastern Indonesia through to contemporary times, which has contributed to a sense of shared interest with Europeans, particularly among the Ambonese. By the 1560s there were 10,000 Catholics in the area, mostly on Ambon, and by the 1590s there were 50,000 to 60,000, although most of the region surrounding Ambon remained Muslim. The Spaniard missionary Francis Xavier also played an important role in Maluku Christianization.

Other Portuguese influences include a large number of Indonesian words derived from Portuguese which alongside Malay was the lingua franca up until the early 19th century. Contemporary Indonesian words such as pesta ('party'), sabun ('soap'), bendera ('flag'), meja ('table'), Minggu ('Sunday'), all derive from the Portuguese. Many family names in Maluku are derived from the Portuguese including da Lima, da Costa, Dias, da Freitas, Gonsalves, Mendoza, Rodrigues, and da Silva. Also of partly Portuguese origin are the romantic keroncong ballads sung to guitar music.

The Dutch arrived in 1599 and noted the native discontent with Portuguese attempts to monopolise their traditional trade. After the Ambonese helped the Dutch to construct a fort at Hitu Larna, the Portuguese began a campaign of retribution against which the Ambonese invited Dutch aid. After 1605 Frederik Houtman became the first Dutch governor of Ambon.

The Dutch East India Company was a mercantile corporation with three obstacles in its way: the Portuguese, the aboriginal populations, and the English. In time the Dutch would overcome all three and achieve almost complete control of the islands down to modern times, leaving smuggling as the only native alternative to the European monopoly. Among other events of the 17th century, the Bandanese attempted independent trade with the English, and the East-India Company's response was to decimate the native population of the Banda Islands sending the survivors fleeing to other islands and then installing slave labour.

Tanimbar warriors

Though other groups resettled the Banda Islands, the rest of Maluku remained uneasy under foreign control and after the Portuguese had a new trading station at Macassar there were native revolts in 1636 and 1646. Under East-India Company's rule northern Maluku was administered by the Dutch residency at Ternate, and the southern half by "Amboyna" (Ambon). During the Japanese occupation in World War II, the Moluccans fled to the mountains but began a campaign of resistance also known as the South Moluccan Brigade. After the war's end the island's political leaders had successful discussions with the Netherlands about independence. Complicated by Indonesian demands, the Round Table Conference Agreements were signed in 1949 transferring Maluku to Indonesia with mechanisms for the islands to choose or opt out of the new Indonesia. The Agreements granted Moluccans the right to determine their ultimate sovereignty.

Kei handicraft