Monopoly in the Garden of Eden<\/p>\n
By Andreas Baenziger<\/p>\n
TERNATE, Maluku: The tree is so famous that the inhabitants of
\nTernate gave it a special name: Afo, which translates as \"the
\ngiant.\" It is a gigantic example of the otherwise slim and
\nunremarkable clove tree.<\/p>\n
The Giant has a huge twisted and knotted trunk, and sturdy
\noverhanging branches. Afo is 35 metres high - normal clove trees
\nusually make it to just eight to 12 metres - and is reputed to
\nhave produced 600 kilos of dried cloves in its best years. But
\nnow the 400-year-old giant is approaching death through old age.<\/p>\n
Standing alone and off the little road that leads up the side
\nof Gamalama volcano, the Giant can be found in a quiet, shady
\nwood of light green clove and dark green nutmeg trees. Tall trees
\nform an umbrella which protects the delicate spice trees
\nunderneath them from the sun's powerful rays.<\/p>\n
A delicate aroma of cloves hangs in the humid air and all
\naround is luxuriant greenery. This is Ternate, a roundish island
\nwhich rises out of the ocean like a perfectly shaped verdant
\ndome, just 10 kilometers from side to side.<\/p>\n
Together with its sister-island Tidore it forms the original
\nhome of the clove in the Indonesian Maluku island group - or
\nSpice Islands - 2,200 kilometers east of Jakarta.<\/p>\n
Several hundred metres above Afo the tropical rain-
\nforestceeins, continuing right up to the lip of the volcano. Its
\nremote location and extreme age make Afo an illegal tree: when
\nthey were here, the Dutch colonialists would certainly have
\ntortured the owner to death if they had found it.<\/p>\n
For Afo is a rebel against the spice monopoly which the
\nVereenigde Oostindische Compagnie - the Dutch East India Company,
\nfounded by Dutch merchants in 1602 - tried to impose here.<\/p>\n
Twenty minutes on foot below Afo, Ibu Hamadjen, 72, lives in a
\nmodest longhouse. Things do not look too bright for Ibu Hamadjen:
\nher shirt hangs in tatters and she has no shoes. She was not even
\naware that her country held crucial elections on June 7: visitors
\nmust be rare indeed.<\/p>\n
She has also never the term \"reformasi,\" the catch-all phrase
\nbehind the process of renewal and democratization after the
\ndeparture of dictator Soeharto. But Hamadjen is certainly well
\naware of what happened to his cloves during the Soeharto era.<\/p>\n
In a similar fashion to the Dutch 450 years previously,
\nSoeharto's son Hutomo Mandala Putra - or Tommy, as he is better
\nknown - attempted to create a monopoly on the clove market, in
\nthe process securing an effortless income of some US$100 million
\na year for his own pocket.<\/p>\n
Indonesia produces around 80,000 tons of cloves a year, most
\nof which literally goes up in smoke - because almost the entire
\nproduction goes to the cigarette industry. Cloves are mixed in a
\none-to-three ratio with tobacco to give Indonesia's kretek
\n(clove) cigarettes their distinctive aroma.<\/p>\n
The upshot of Tommy Soeharto's monopoly was a huge price slump
\nand catastrophe for clove farmers. \"Bad prices mean we have
\nnothing to eat,\" Hamadjen says. \"I have only cloves, cinnamon and
\nnutmeg here. I have to buy my rice and other food.\"<\/p>\n
The people on Ternate even started chopping down the clove
\ntrees. The fall of Soeharto, though, meant the end of the
\nmonopoly, one of the crassest examples of mismanagement under the
\nveteran dictator. Now the harvest is once again bought up by
\nChinese traders in Ternate Town, as it was in the days before the
\nmonopoly.<\/p>\n
Prices quickly recovered, to twice what they were before
\nSoeharto Junior's meddling, nutmeg even more. A confident
\nHamadjen says, \"Our vigor has returned.\"<\/p>\n
But she also knows of the suffering brought by the Dutch to
\nTernate and the rest of the Spice Islands. His father told him
\nthe story, and she has passed it on to her children and
\ngrandchildren.<\/p>\n
The Dutch East India Company under its bloodthirsty governor,
\nJan Pieterszoon Coen, decided on a whim to move clove production
\nto Ambon island to make it easier to exercise control over the
\nflourishing trade in spices. The trees on the other islands were
\nfelled.<\/p>\n
That was the first monopoly, and the reason for Afo being
\nplanted high up in the rainforest out of reach of the grasping
\nDutch.<\/p>\n
Under the new colonizer-traders, Ternate quickly descended
\ninto poverty - its barter economy having been robbed of its
\nresources. Previously the Dutch, Javanese and Chinese sailors had
\nbrought food and staples to the island and took cloves away with
\nthem in return.<\/p>\n
The Dutch, and before them the Portuguese, however, had no
\nintention of entering into any trading niceties: they wanted the
\ncloves, the only things the islanders of Ternate and Tidore
\npossessed, for themselves. And they were prepared to take it by
\nforce if they had to.<\/p>\n
Banda<\/p>\n
The people of Banda island, a few hundred kilometers further
\nsouth, were also proud owners of nutmeg trees; but what they
\nendured was far, far worse. The entire population was either
\nmurdered or sold into slavery - a total of 15,000 men, women and
\nchildren.<\/p>\n
Banda was repopulated by Dutch settlers and their slaves.
\nTernate only managed to escape this fate because at the time it
\nwas an nominally independent state with an army and a ruling
\nsultan.<\/p>\n
The sultan's title still exists today, and is borne by
\nMudaffar Syah, a distinguished gentleman in his mid-60s who
\nsports an elegantly trimmed beard.<\/p>\n
\"We were on Ternate for so many years,\" the sultan recalls of
\nhis people's experiences under the Dutch and later the Indonesian
\ncolonists. \"Then the Dutch turned up suddenly. They took away our
\nrights and forced us to obey. That caused us great pain, but we
\ncould not protect ourselves - after all, we didn't have any
\ncanons or anything like that.<\/p>\n
\"And then the republic came - and that was far worse. They
\nalso took away our rights, our products, and determined how much
\nwe were paid for our spices: the Dutch, the republic, my own
\nnation, both Presidents Soeharto and Sukarno.\"<\/p>\n
Sultan Mudaffar Syah, who is standing as a candidate for
\nSoeharto's ruling Golkar party this month, is the direct
\ndescendant of one Sultan Hairun who was treacherously murdered by
\nthe Portuguese in 1570.<\/p>\n
\"The Portuguese wanted to set up a trading monopoly and when
\nHairun said no they simply killed him,\" he says. But the
\nPortuguese suffered on account of the murder: Hairun's successor
\nBabullah besieged their fortress for five years until they were
\nforced to surrender. \"We beat the Portuguese and drove them out,\"
\nsays Mudaffar Syah.<\/p>\n
In the beginning, the Maluku stood for what Indonesia is
\ntoday. Today's Jakarta - Batavia to the Dutch - was merely a
\nservice station on the way to the Spice Islands.<\/p>\n
But then, almost overnight, Ternate, Tidore and Banda islands
\nslipped from memory when the Frenchman Pierre Poivre succeeded in
\nstealing clove and nutmeg cuttings. He planted the trees on the
\nFrench-held island of Mauritius, and later on Zanzibar, which is
\nwhere the Europeans buy them now.<\/p>\n
Today Ternate has reverted to what it once was: a little-known
\nGarden of Eden somewhere in the Far East. Only Ambon, the Dutch
\ncolonists' favorite Maluku island, regularly hits the headlines -
\nboth for its struggles for independence and its sectarian
\nviolence. But that too is little more than a late consequence of
\nits colonial past.<\/p>\n
-- Sueddeutsche Zeitung<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/monopoly-in-the-garden-of-eden-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }