|
Indonesia EUROPEAN INTRUSIONS
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to come in
significant
numbers to the archipelago. The golden age of Portuguese
exploration and conquest in Asia began with Vasco da
Gama's voyage
to India in 1497-99 and continued through the first half
of the
sixteenth century. Faith and profit, nicely harmonized,
motivated
these early European explorers. The papacy charged
Portugal with
converting Asia to Christianity. Equipped with superior
navigational aids and sturdy ships, the Portuguese
attempted to
seize rich trade routes in the Indian Ocean from Muslim
merchants.
They established a network of forts and trading posts that
at its
height extended from Lisbon by way of the African coast to
the
Straits of Hormuz, Goa in India, Melaka, Macao on the
South China
coast, and Nagasaki in southwestern Japan. The Portuguese
came to
Indonesia to monopolize the spice trade of the eastern
archipelago.
Nutmeg, mace, and cloves were easily worth more than their
weight
in gold in European markets, but the trade had hitherto
been
dominated by Muslims and the Mediterranean city-state of
Venice.
Combining trade with piracy, the Portuguese, operating
from their
base at Melaka, established bases in the Maluku Islands at
Ternate
and on the island of Ambon but were unsuccessful in
gaining control
of the Banda Islands, a center of nutmeg and mace
production.
Indonesian Muslim states wasted no time in trying to
oust the
intruders. During the sixteenth century, the sturdy
Portuguese fort
of A Famosa (the Famous One) at Melaka withstood repeated
attacks
by the forces of the sultans of Johore (the descendants of
the
ruler of Melaka deposed by the Portuguese), Aceh, and the
Javanese
north coast state of Jepara, acting singly or in concert.
The
Portuguese were minimally involved in Java, although there
were
attempts to forge alliances with the remaining
Hindu-Buddhist
states against the Muslims. The Portuguese goal of
Christianizing
Asia was largely unsuccessful. Saint Francis Xavier, a
Spaniard who
was an early member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits),
established
a mission at Ambon in 1546 and won many converts whose
lineal
descendants in the early 1990s were Protestant Christians.
The
small enclave of Portuguese (East) Timor, which survived
three
centuries surrounded by Dutch colonialism only to be
formally
absorbed into Indonesia in 1976, was largely Roman
Catholic.
Given Portugal's small size, limited resources, and
small labor
pool, and its routinely brutal treatment of indigenous
populations,
Portugal's trading empire was short-lived, although
remnants of it,
like Portuguese Timor, survived into the late twentieth
century.
Although numerically superior Muslim forces failed to
capture
Melaka, they kept the intruders constantly on the
defensive. Also,
the dynastic union of the Portuguese and Spanish crowns in
1580
made for Portugal a new and increasingly dangerous enemy:
the
Dutch.
Data as of November 1992
|
