On March 21st of last year, the Netherlands’ Malukan community commemorated the 70th anniversary of the arrival in the port of Rotterdam of the Kota Inten, the first of a series of ships carrying Malukan soldiers who served in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) and their families to the Netherlands. Television programs, news... Continue Reading →
The neighborhood children in Masohi used to warn me about the various ghosts and monsters lurking in the dark. They shared stories of beasts as tall as the palm trees, the ghost of a mother searching for her children, and a host of other setan (devils) and hantu or spok (ghosts) [1]. They advised me... Continue Reading →
It is an understatement to say that these are exceptional times. The spread of Covid-19 and the havoc it has wreaked on our healthcare systems and the political landscape has greatly limited our ability to meet and to travel. For those in academia, this means that many of us have had to cancel plans to... Continue Reading →
“Taking them island by island: Makasar, Butun and Banggawi, / Kunir, Galiyahu and Salaya, Sumba, Solot and Muwar, / As well as Wandan, Ambwan, Maloko and Wwanin, / Seran and Timur as the main ones among the various islands that remembered their duty.” (Desawarnana 14:5, translated by Stuart Robson, 1995:34). The islands and towns of... Continue Reading →
“Oh! Look who controls all the islands. It’s the Mahajapit! [X] Majahapit! [X] Mapajahit! [X] Mahapajit! [X] Mapajahit! [X] Maja-pahit? [✓]” – Bill Wurtz in “history of the entire world, i guess” About two years ago, a strange phenomenon occurred: friends and family members from across the United States suddenly seemed to be aware of... Continue Reading →
There are relatively few local non-European written sources on the history of Maluku and Ambon in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that themselves can be traced to those centuries. The seventeenth century Malay-language Hikayat Tanah Hitu written by the Hituese imam Rijali is one of those few written sources. Composed while Rijali was in exile... Continue Reading →
Full disclosure: Animal History is not my area of expertise and I do not intend to turn my current research in that direction. Perhaps, this may inform a future project. That being said, I was recently browsing the pages of the Treatise on the Moluccas, a mid-16th century Portuguese administrator/sailor’s description of present-day North Maluku... Continue Reading →
This past summer, I participated in a month-long series of courses and workshops based at Columbia University as well as various museums and archives across the Netherlands. The primary purpose of this program was for me to learn seventeenth century Dutch vocabulary and paleography (historical handwriting) and to familiarize myself with resources in the Netherlands.... Continue Reading →
Welcome to my first blog post! I have been wanting to begin an academic blog for quite some time and I now finally found some time to begin this “exercise”. I wanted to initiate this blog by simply stating what I think its purpose is. To put it briefly, this website’s purpose is to describe... Continue Reading →
Benjamin L. Moseley 