Diplomacy in the Villages

The aim of the article is to analyse how colonial diplomacy worked on a local level in a supposedly ‘marginal’ area, in an early modern setting. The VOC created a comprehensive diplomatic network which also involved the people of the Aru Islands in Southeastern Maluku, who were approached by the VOC after 1623 and who exported a range of valuable sea and forest products, such as birds of paradise, lorises, turtle-shell, pearl shells, trepang, and sagu. The efforts to create stable alliances with the villages were complicated by several factors, including the dualism between the Ulisiwa-Ulilima moieties; the rivalry between the VOC -influenced western and the fiercely autonomous eastern villages; the existence of pela alliances with other Malukan groups; and practical difficulties in maintaining VOC commercial monopolies. The article discusses the inception of diplomatic relations; the violent conflict that arose in the early phase of VOC domination; and the efforts to maintain stability using local negotiatory practices, which finally broke down in the 1780s.