Military Capability and the State in Southeast Asia’s Pacific Rimlands, 1500–1700
or 200 strong. Their main force, however, was the hongi, i.e. the fleet of
outrigger vessels called kora-kora. According to Adrian Horridge, such
vessels had some 60 to 90 men on board, mostly free commoners from
the villages, collectively labeled as bobato who were liable to service un-
der the command of their own leaders, and used for amphibious actions.
So far, there is no systematic information about Moluccan fortifications
on land. The weapons carried by Moluccans were swords and shields,
spears, pikes, bows and arrows, but hardly small firearms. Kora-kora
were equipped with a few swivel guns. For seventeenth-century Ternate
the potential of a hongi was between 30 and 40 kora-kora, for Tidore
probably about 20. Consequently, the number of combatants must have
been almost 3,000 and 1,500, respectively.^9
Amboina IslandsThe Amboina archipelago is the core area of the present-day Indonesian
province of Maluku. Although Seram and Buru were the biggest islands
of the Amboina group, it was, as in the case of the Moluccas proper,
the smaller islands that were what really mattered, in particular Ambon
Island and West Seram’s peninsula, called Hoamoal. Seram and Buru
were largely covered with jungle and inhabited with Alfurese, who
led semi-nomadic lives in small settlements, very much the same as in
Halmahera or Mindanao. In Seram, the societal regime was character-
ized by endemic warfare, which in turn was fueled by headhunting
practices. In the western part of Seram, the peninsula of Hoamoal
excluded, there were nevertheless extra-village networks, centering
around three irregularly convened councils, at the rivers of Sopalewa,
Eti and Tala, in which attempts were made to appease at least some
of the parties involved in perpetual conflict. The leadership of these
meetings was, however, rather powerless. Consequently, on the scale of
- Fr. Valentijn, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën. Volume I (Dordrecht, 1724), “Beschryving
der Moluccos”, 21–22; G. E. Rumphius, “De Ambonsche Historie”, volume 1,
Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 64 (1910): 63, 65; G. A. Horridge, The
Design of Planked Boats in the Moluccas (Greenwich: National Maritime Museum,
1978): 10; Ch.F. van Fraassen, “Ternate, de Molukken en de Indonesische
Archipel; van soa-organisatie en vierdeling: een studie van traditionele samenlev-
ing en cultuur in Indonesië” Volume 1 (Ph.D. thesis Leiden University, 1987):
16–18, 32–33, 83–85, 89, 333–44, 353–61; Andaya, The World of Maluku, 59–65,
69–71, 83–86, 99–103.