Copra Production at the “End” of the World

Often mentioned only as a brief reference, the port town of Ende was a crucial player in a network connecting Arabic, Chinese, Indian, and Javanese merchants with the trade in valuable commodities from Eastern Indonesia. This article explores the cultural and economic exchanges at the heart of Endenese identity through archival research, historical ecology, oral histories, and ethnography. Known to the Dutch as a pirate and slaving centre, Ende was the most significant force in the Savu Sea until 1907. With the local economy reshaped to produce agricultural staples in the early twentieth century, Ende experienced a minor boom by exporting copra, or dried coconut husks. In this article, I reconstruct the complex commodity dynamics that silently shaped Ende. “Invisibilised” by colonial and Indonesian forces, I identify Ende’s peripheralisation as the deliberate consequence of the consolidation of governance power among outside elites and the disempowerment of local groups. I conclude by showing the value of ethnographic tools in retelling the stories of those who were once at the centre of the world.