THE REVOLT OF PRINCE NUKU  CROSS-CULTURAL ALLIANCE MAKIN IN MALUKU, c.1780-1810

The historical research for this book was triggered by brief references to Prince Nuku or Nuku Muhammad Amiruddin, the nineteenth sultan of Tidore, in Leonard Andaya's World of Maluku (1993: 220-239) and Roy Ellen's On the Edge of the Banda Zone (2003: 98-99), and of course by the work by Elvianus Katoppo who came across this Prince while conducting research on Papua. As Muridan writes in the Introduction, after consulting Dutch Lieutenant-General Anthonie Haga's 1884 magnum opus Nederlandsch Nieuw Guinea en de Papoesche eilanden: Historische Bijdrage± 1500-1883, Katoppo began to conduct archival research and became interested in finding Nuku's grave. When Katoppo, together with the doyen of the study of Eastern Indonesia's maritime history Professor Adrian Lapian, visited the island of Tidore to locate Nuku's grave in the early 1950s, they learned that Sultan Nuku was known on Tidore as Jou Barakati or Tuan Barakati ('the Blessed Lord').

During the period of the Dutch East India Company's rule of the Spice Islands, Prince Nuku of Tidore stands out as the local hero who successfully opposed the VOC's oppressive trade monopoly at the end of the eighteenth century. This study analyzes how he succeeded in regaining independence for the Sultanate of Tidore by creating an alliance with the English and his Malukan and Papuan adherents.