Political dynamics and religious change in the late pre-colonial Banda Islands, Eastern Indonesia

Recently completed archaeological survey and excavation, in conjunction with a re-analysis of historical documents and oral histories, brings to light new evidence about the pre-colonial (tenth to seventeenth centuries) society of the Banda Islands, once the world's sole source of nutmeg. The new data challenge historical assumptions about settlement, Islamization and the nature of trade networks in pre-colonial Banda. They also have implications for the history of conflict between Bandanese and European colonizers, which resulted in genocide, enslavement or forced migration of the Bandanese population in the 1620s, and the beginning of the colonial era in what is today Indonesia. Keywords: Culture contact; colonialism; Islamization; spice trade; Indonesia; Maluku.