Complaints lodged by the inhabitants of Hunut on the island of Ambon, 14 July 1695

Introduced Gerrit J. Knaap

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The document called ‘Translation of a Malay request, written by some inhabitants of Amboina to the Supreme Government of the Netherlands Indies, received in Batavia 14 July 1695’[1] is short and at first sight rather unimpressive. However, after a proper reading of the text and after putting it incontext, it discloses many interesting details about the living conditions of ordinary people in Amboina in the seventeenth century when the island was ruled by the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

The document can be summarized as follows:

Two or three persons, in the name of all inhabitants of a settlement called ‘Houmit’ or ‘Homit’, describing themselves as ‘humble servants and poor subjects’, ‘with tears in their eyes’, take the opportunity ‘in all humility’ to communicate their miserable situation to the ‘foot soles’ of the members of the Honourable Government in Batavia. All their lands, in fact their entire territory, has been expropriated by the people of six other villages, which makes it difficult for them to make a living. The perpetrators have occupied their fields, cutting old clove trees and coconut palms and substituting these by newly planted saplings. Adding insult to injury, they have also harvest their sago and their other fruit trees. During the terms of office of previous VOC governors of Amboina, the men of ‘Houmit’ had brought an action against the perpetrators in a court of law, but they had lost the case because of the ‘foul play’ and ‘false witnesses’ produced by the defendants. The accused people from the six villages claimed that they were the lawful owners basing their claim on some form of inheritance. However, those from ‘Houmit’ state that they are not aware that such people ‘originated’ from ‘Houmit’, because, since the VOC had expelled the Portuguese from Amboina, in 1605, none of their daughters had converted to the Christian religion or had been married to any of the defendants . This tells us that ‘Houmit’ was Muslim, whereas those from the six villages were Christian. During the Portuguese period, ‘Houmit’ apparently did not make much use of its territory because it joined Hitu and other groups in the fight against the Portuguese. After the defeat of the Portuguese, those who sided with Hitu returned to their territories and began to work their land again. During the term of Governor Arnold de Vlaming van Oudtshoorn, who ruled Amboina from 1647 to 1655, intruders from the six villages had begun to occupy and plant the lands of ‘Houmit’. During the term of Governor Dirk de Haas, in charge from 1687 to 1691, ‘Houmit’ had brought the matter to court. However, after De Haas had left, the case was thrown out of court with the aforementioned unfortunate outcome for those from ‘Houmit’. Consequently, for their livelihood they remained dependent on the willingness by other people from Hitu to share their resources. The text ends with a plea to the Supreme Government to give the people of ‘Houmit’ justice.

Consequently, this document, however short it might be, touches on matters of land rights, agricultural land use, the administration of law, religious changes and colonial relations. It is a text rich in information. But let us add some more information to put the matter in an historical perspective and local context.

It appears that we are dealing with Hunut, a place belonging to Hitu the northern coast of the Island of Amboina. In the sixteenth century and the first part of the seventeenth century, Hitu was politically speaking an independent state. It had fought  successive colonial intruders, first the Portuguese and later the Dutch, represented by the VOC. The headquarters of the colonial state in Amboina was in the castle, located in present-day Kota Ambon. This stronghold dominated the southern part of the Island of Amboina, in particular the peninsula of Leitimor and the coasts of the Bay of Amboina. The best introduction to seventeenth-century Hunut is as always the Generale Lantbeschrijving of Amboyna by the prominent VOC employee, botanist and scholar Georgius Everhardus Rumphius (1627-1702).[2] Rumphius records that, historically speaking, the name Hunut had two meanings, namely it was a conglomerate of five negeri, that is villages, and it was the name of the principal village among these five. Three of the five villages had already become extinct, falling victim to such disturbances as inter-village warfare during the sixteenth century. By the second part of the seventeenth century, what was left of the conglomerate was divided between two places. The majority, including Hunut proper, lived in Hitulama on the north coast; the smaller part belonged to Hukunalo, otherwise called Rumahtiga, was located on the northern shore of the Bay of Amboina. The first, Hunut proper, was Muslim; the second, namely those integrated into Hukunalo, had become Christian.

The late Indonesian historical anthropologist Joost Manusama has combined Rumphius’s information with further ethnological evidence.[3] Hunut in the sense of the conglomerate was part of a larger federation of villages, known as an uli, bearing the name of Uli Helawan, the ‘Golden Uli’, which formed the core of the state of Hitu, with its original centre in Hitulama. It is therefore not surprising, that the people mentioned in the document prepared to share their livelihood with the needy from Hunut, were actually from Hitulama. Hunut was then an integral part of Hitulama and later, when Hitulama itself split into Hitulama and Hitumesen, Hunut became part of the latter.

The historical sequence in which this document figures is as follows.[4] During the wars between Hitu on the one hand and the Portuguese and the VOC on the other, in the second part of the sixteenth and the first part of the seventeenth century respectively, the northern shore of the Bay of Amboina was transformed into a war zone, and became a no-man’s land. The settlements of Hunut retreated to Hitulama, while others, including Hatiwi and Tawiri, moved to the surroundings of the colonial castle in Leitimor. When the wars were over, the villages remained in their new locations, because the VOC wanted to keep an eye on them. In as far as the villagers wanted to use their former lands, they were only allowed to go there to do the necessary agricultural work, but not to live there on a more or less permanent basis. The upshot was that the no-man’s land remained fairly empty,  and fell prey to the ‘land hunger’ of others, most notably villagers from Leitimor and urban dwellers from Kota Ambon, where population pressure was quite high. The people of Hunut saw their lands occupied by those from Halong, Soya, Mardika and others, who even built semi-permanent ‘garden houses’ on these plots notwithstanding the fact that such dwellings had been forbidden by the VOC since 1658. However, Hunut’s chance came in 1687 with the coming to office of the aforementioned Governor Dirk de Haas, a man who was considered a ‘liberal gentleman’ by both friend and foe. The year 1687 was also the year in which De Haas resumed the old custom requiring that documents used in a court of law were to be submitted not only in Dutch but also in Malay, which must have made it easier for Hunut to lodge a complaint. All this was set in motion because De Haas’ predecessor had conducted a campaign of destruction on the ‘garden houses’, which among other ‘abuses’ had roused widespread protests among the population of the island of Amboina. De Haas was sent to restore the peace among the inhabitants, which he did by setting in train a thorough investigation, making some concessions and requiring a less strict observance of the regulations.

Unfortunately, as mentioned in their plea, the people of Hunut had not been successful in their attempt to obtain justice. How they had been  faring can be seen in the 1706 Memorie van Overgave, the memorandum of transfer of office, of Balthasar Coyett.[5] As said in this document, soon after De Haas had left in 1691, the law case between Hunut, represented by Timolohalat, and the other villages, of which Halong was in the vanguard, had been decided in favour of the latter. Halong and its allies had even received title deeds of land ownership which had been registered at the secretariat of the VOC. In the years thereafter, the question was still regularly touched upon in the correspondence of the VOC. In December 1705, descendants of the original parties met each other in court once again. Coyett advised that the demands of Hunut be dismissed because Timolohalat and his descendants were deemed to be of a ‘restless and quarrelsome character’. We can presume that Hunut lost again.

Gerrit J. Knaap, “Complaints lodged by the inhabitants of Hunut on the island of Ambon, 14 July 1695”. In: Harta Karun. Hidden Treasures on Indonesian and Asian-European History from the VOC Archives in Jakarta, document 8. Jakarta: Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, 2013.