Prosperity will prevail, Malukans believed, as long as the four pillars and the proper dualism were maintained. By integrating this structure into his narrative, the author avoids a framework governed by European concerns and brings new significance to Malukan events described but only partially understood by European observers.

During the period of the Dutch East India Company's rule of the Spice Islands, Prince Nuku of Tidore stands out as the local hero who opposed the VOC's oppressive trade monopoly. This study analyzes how he succeeded in regaining independence for the Sultanate of Tidore by creating an alliance with the English and his Malukan and Papuan adherents.

In 1999, in the midst of the conflict that caused great suffering, when many people were trapped and 'forced' to be directly or indirectly involved in the raging violence, not a few Moluccans in their own different ways stood their distance and maintained a critical attitude to the conflict. At the same time, they started to fight for peace. The Basudara's Stories of Peace in Maluku is filled with their stories. In addition to being a sign of respect for their actions, this documentation aims to record each of these experiences and personal testimonies, so they do not just evaporate into thin air. Their testimonies also contain very valuable lessons not just for the people of Maluku, but for the whole of humankind, in the present and in the future. It is time that good stories, containing voices for peace (not violent conflict), can be heard more from Maluku. If we really want to see peace, why don't we start to read and write more often about it or talk about it? This book is important reading for the people of Maluku, or other Indonesians who have experienced violent conflict, but also for others who want to avoid the same sort of violent conflict. Policy makers, religious leaders and civilians need to read The Basudara's Stories of Peace in Maluku - they will draw many lessons from these stories.

Between 1999 and 2000, sectarian fighting fanned across the eastern Indonesian province of North Maluku, leaving thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. What began as local conflicts between migrants and indigenous people over administrative boundaries spiraled into a religious war pitting Muslims against Christians and continues to influence communal relationships more than a decade after the fighting stopped. Christopher R. Duncan spent several years conducting fieldwork in North Maluku, and in Violence and Vengeance, he examines how the individuals actually taking part in the fighting understood and experienced the conflict.Rather than dismiss religion as a facade for the political and economic motivations of the regional elite, Duncan explores how and why participants came to perceive the conflict as one of religious difference. He examines how these perceptions of religious violence altered the conflict, leading to large-scale massacres in houses of worship, forced conversions of entire communities, and other acts of violence that stressed religious identities. Duncan's analysis extends beyond the period of violent conflict and explores how local understandings of the violence have complicated the return of forced migrants, efforts at conflict resolution and reconciliation.

In this ambitious successor to The Great Derangement, acclaimed writer Amitav Ghosh finds the origins of our contemporary climate crisis in Western colonialism’s violent exploitation of human life and the natural environment. A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, Amitav Ghosh’s new book traces our contemporary planetary crisis back to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean. The Nutmeg’s Curse argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis, revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials such as spices, tea, sugarcane, opium, and fossil fuels. Our crisis, he shows, is ultimately the result of a mechanistic view of the earth, where nature exists only as a resource for humans to use for our own ends, rather than a force of its own, full of agency and meaning. Writing against the backdrop of the global pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, Ghosh frames these historical stories in a way that connects our shared colonial histories with the deep inequality we see around us today. By interweaving discussions on everything from the global history of the oil trade to the migrant crisis and the animist spirituality of Indigenous communities around the world, The Nutmeg’s Curse offers a sharp critique of Western society and speaks to the profoundly remarkable ways in which human history is shaped by non-human forces.

Ibu Maluku is the unique story of a resolute woman, Jeanne van Diejen-Roemen, who survives the hardships of remote jungles, the horrors of two world wars (including a 3 1/2-year internment by the Japanese), and the life-threatening political upheavals that preceded the birth of the Republic of Indonesia. Her story reminds one of the exploits of Florence Nightingale, for Jeanne is also driven by an overriding sense of duty: to relieve the suffering of her less fortunate fellow-men. During her often extremely difficult life, she distinguished herself as a planter, army nurse, midwife, gardener, and social worker. During the Japanese invasion, her stout-heartedness saved Ternate from total annihilation. After the war, she spearheaded the fight against leprosy, and enabled hundreds of Moluccan lepers to again assume a useful role in the society that had once exiled them. She also implemented plans to bring isolated forest people into the 20th century, and founded a hospital, a school, an orphanage, and a home for the elderly. In recognition of her efforts, Indonesia's first president Sukarno started calling her Ibu Maluku -- Mother of the Moluccas -- and the name stuck. Though she had a carte blanche with Sukarno, her outspokenness finally brought her into conflict with him. This forced her in 1957 to leave the Moluccas and the people who had given her their trust, and she settled in Sittard, in the Limburg Province of the Netherlands. In 1978 she returned to the Moluccas to celebrate her 82nd birthday among her Moluccans. Were it not for other commitments, she would have stayed, for it was there that she truly felt at home. Book jacket.

From 1999 until 2000, the conflict in North Maluku, Indonesia, saw the most intense communal violence of Indonesia’s period of democratization. This book examines this brutal conflict, illustrating in detail how and why previously peaceful religious communities can descend into violent conflict.