o - Aceh Books website

TERNATAN-TIDORESE 781
system of annual allowances was maintained. Under Dutch protection Ternate,
Tidore and Bacan remained semi-autonomous states until Indonesia's independence
in 1949.
The Indonesian government has pursued a policy of total integration of the
sultanates into the modern state. The autonomous sultanates gradually have been
abolished by integrating the internal administration within the provincial administration
of the Moluccas; on the death of the last sultans appointed by the Dutch,
no successors will be appointed. The sultanates virtually have ceased to exist
now, and institutions of the former sultanates survive only in folklore, not as
politically significant elements.
The most lasting influence of the Moluccan sultanates is the spread of Islam.
The Islamization of Ternate, Tidore, Bacan and Jailolo began in the fifteenth
century as a result of contacts with Javanese and Malays, and in the sixteenth
century the process became intensified as a result of the political competition
between the Portuguese and the Moluccan sultans, both parties using religion
as a political device. The Portuguese were finally defeated by the Moluccans
and made no lasting significant results in propagating Christianity.
From Ternate and Tidore, Islam spread to the islands off the west coast of
Halmahera, to the coastal areas of Halmahera and of the Sula islands Bum and
Ceram, to the Raja Ampat islands and to the east coast of Sulawesi. In this way
the foundation was laid for a certain amount of cultural homogeneity over a vast
area of Ternate and Tidore as the main political and cultural centers. Politically,
Ternate and Tidore were rivals, but culturally Ternate and Tidore did not differ
very much. Only the populations of the interior of Halmahera, Sula, Buru, Ceram
and Irian Jaya never accepted Islam, though recognizing the political authority
of Ternate and Tidore. The Dutch accepted the religious situation as they found
it at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Only in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries did the pagan island population become the object of private missionary
societies.
Ternatan and Tidorese identify themselves by means of descent from one of
the traditional units of sociopolitical organization that are called soas, each soa
having its own name. The meaning of soa is literally "ward," "quarter" or
"hamlet," but the soas were by no means pure territorial units. One did not
belong to a certain soa on account of residence but, rather, on account of descent.
Membership in a soa was transmitted in the patrilineal line. However, the soa
was not a clan or lineage because the members of the soa did not claim a common
descent from one ancestor and because the kinship organization is not unilinear
but cognatic. The soa was headed by a chief who was appointed by the sultan.
With the abolition of the sultanates, the soas as units of sociopolitical organization
have become obsolete because they are no longer accepted by the government
as units of administration and they do not have a function in the field of kinship
organization. The soas as units of administration have been replaced by democratically
chosen village chiefs.
In upper-class families, marriages are frequently arranged by parents in order