Diplomatic Gifts, Tributes and Frontier Violence: Circulation of Contentious Presents in the Moluccas (1575–1606)

Abstract

A crucial asset for cross-cultural communication during the early modern period, diplomatic gifts have been traditionally associated with courtly diplomacy and peaceful encounters. However, recent scholarship on this topic has emphasized how gifts can reveal bitter political rivalries and asymmetries of power. Building on this line of inquiry, this article explores the complex roles of gifts in the dynamics of cross-cultural violence on the frontiers of the Iberian empires in Southeast Asia. Through the examination of a wide array of sources, I aim to show how gift-giving turned into one of the multiple factors fueling the violent conflict between Moluccan sultans and Iberian authorities in the region between 1575 and 1606.

Full text

Diplomatic Gifts, Tributes and Frontier Violence:
Circulation of Contentious Presents in the Moluccas
(1575–1606)
Jose M. Escribano-Páez
Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain
Jose.Escribano@eui.eu
Abstract
A crucial asset for cross-cultural communication during the early modern period,
diplomatic gifts have been traditionally associated with courtly diplomacy and
peaceful encounters. However, recent scholarship on this topic has emphasized how
gifts can reveal bitter political rivalries and asymmetries of power. Building on this
line of inquiry, this article explores the complex roles of gifts in the dynamics of cross-
cultural violence on the frontiers of the Iberian empires in Southeast Asia. Through
the examination of a wide array of sources, I aim to show how gift-giving turned into
one of the multiple factors fueling the violent conict between Moluccan sultans and
Iberian authorities in the region between 1575 and 1606.
Keywords
gift-giving – cross-cultural diplomacy – Maluku – Philippines – Iberian empires –
sixteenth century
Introduction
In 1605 Said Syah, Sultan of Ternate, sent a letter to King James I of England
rejecting the latter’s demand to establish a factory on his island. To justify his
decision, he wrote:
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When Francis Drake came here when the late one [Sultan Babullah] was
still alive, he gave Francis Drake a message, accompanied by a token in
the form of a ring, to be conveyed to our friend the Sovereign of England
[Queen Elizabeth]. God is witness to the late one’s request to Francis
Drake, but for over twenty years no news at all was received... And right
till the present there was never any sign from the English of their desire
for an alliance with the people of Maluku.
Once in Europe, the letter was to live a life of its own. For European audiences, the
diplomatic negotiations between the Sultan of Ternate and the European rulers
was of outstanding interest due to the ongoing global spice wars. Undoubtedly,
the story of a sultan refusing to grant commercial privileges because of past griev-
ances had an exotic touch, but the obvious meaning of the gift at the center of the
story allowed European audiences to easily understand what was going on. From
a European perspective rings were the best way to express a strong relationship,
such as an alliance. Any reader familiar with the history of the Dutch and English
East India companies would consider the letter as a precedent of their violent
rivalry in the Spice Islands. However, the letter also encapsulates the long his-
tory of contentious gifts circulating in the Moluccas during the last quarter of the
sixteenth century. This article does not focus on the seventeenth-century wars to
control the spice trade which lie at the base of the ring’s diplomatic incident and
the global attention it raised, but on the violent escalation which began after the
expulsion of the Portuguese from Ternate (1575), leading to the Spanish conquest
of the island (1606). Theconict between Iberians and Moluccans has been paid
attention by a wide array of scholars, who have largely focused on discussing
the role played by the religious divide. Without dismissing the importance of
1 Gallop, A. “Seventeenth-Century Indonesian Letters in the Public Record Office.” Indonesia
and the Malay World 31 (2003), 417.
2 Farrington, J. “The First Twelve Voyages of the English East India Company, 1601–13: A Guide
to Sources.” Indonesia and the Malay World 29 (2001), 144–45; Biblioteca Nacional de España,
R/14034, 6; Argensola, B. Conquista de las islas Malucas (Madrid: Alonso Martín, 1609), 263–64;
Purchas, S. Purchas his Pilgrimes, or Hakluytus Posthumus (London: William Stansby, 1625),
704–5.
3 Games, A. “Anglo-Dutch Maritime Interactions in the East Indies During the Early Seventeenth
Century.” In Governing the Sea in the Early Modern Era, eds. P. Mancall and C. Shammas (San
Marino: The Huntington Library, 2015), 171–95; Loth, V. “Armed Incidents and Unpaid Bills:
Anglo-Dutch Rivalry in the Banda Islands in the Seventeenth Century.” Modern Asian Studies,
29 (1995), 705–40; Bassett, D. “The ‘Amboyna Massacre’ of 1623.” Journal of Southeast Asian
History, 1 (1960), 1–19.
4 Kartodirdjo, S. “Religious and Economic Aspects of Portuguese-Indonesian Relations.” Stvdia
29 (1970), 175–196; Reid, A. Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era: Trade, Power and Belief
diplomatic gifts, tributes and frontier violence
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religion-driven violence, or the economic motivations of both sides, I aim at
exploring another dimension in this violent escalation: the conicts and hos-
tilities related to diplomatic gift-giving and tributes. It is not my contention to
show that conicts over gifts and tributes were the main factor in this violent
escalation, but to understand what role diplomatic gifts and tributes played in
it. In so doing, I aim at contributing to a recent debate that explores the role of
diplomatic gift-giving in cross-cultural conicts during the early modern period.
Gift-giving has been widely understood as a pacic tool to forge social and
political bonds. However, in recent years increasing attention has been paid
to the relationship between the exchange of diplomatic gifts or tributes and
political rivalries or violent power asymmetries. It is a well-known fact that
the diplomatic gifts presented by Europeans caused ofense to, and hampered
their negotiations with, non-European potentates, due to the Europeans’ fail-
ure to decode gift-giving traditions that were unknown to them. Without
ignoring the relevance of diferences in diplomatic cultures, recent scholar-
ship has emphasized the weaponization of diplomatic gifts and tributes. A
major case in point is the European widespread practice of instrumentaliz-
ing gifts to extend and legitimize the violent annexation of overseas territories
and peoples. However, the weaponization of cross-cultural gift-giving, was no
European monopoly since Asian rulers also established their dominance over
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 165–166; Lobato, M. “Épices, conflit et religion. Les
Moluques et les Portugais dans la seconde moitié du XVIe Siècle.” Nouvelles orientations de
la Recherche sur l’histoire de l’Asie Portugaise (Paris: Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, 1997),
135–53.
5 Mauss, M. “Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques.” l’Année
Sociologique. Nouvelle série 1 (1923–1924), 30–186. The peace ideals behind this work cannot
be detached from interwar Europe’s intellectual environment and its global ramifications.
Liebersohn, H. The Return of the Gift: European History of a Global Idea (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2011). On post-Mauss theories on the gift, see Sykes, K. Arguing
with Anthropology: An Introduction to Critical Theories of the Gift (New York, Routledge, 2005).
6 Different overviews on Portuguese diplomacy in Asia offer meaningful examples in this
point. Biedermann, Z. “Portuguese Diplomacy in Asia in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary
Overview.” Itinerario, 29 (2005), 16–18; Halikowski-Smith, S. “‘The Friendship of Kings Was in
the Ambassadors’: Portuguese Diplomatic Embassies in Asia and Africa during the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries.” Portuguese Studies, 22 (2006), 118–20; Melo, J. “Seeking Prestige
and Survival: Gift-Exchange Practices between the Portuguese Estado da Índia and Asian
Rulers.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 55 (2013), 678–82.
7 Harbsmeier, M. “Gifts and Discoveries: Gift Exchange in Early Modern Narratives of
Exploration and Discovery.” In Negotiating the Gift: Pre-Modern Figurations of Exchange, eds.
G. Algazi, V. Groebner, and B. Jussen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 381–410;
Córdoba Ochoa, L. “Gift, Imitation, Violence and Social Change: The Introduction of European
Products in the First Decades of the American Conquest.” In American Globalization, 1452–1850:
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European representatives through gifts and tributes. It was precisely because
both parts relied on their own understandings of gift-giving as a tool for politi-
cal competition that gift-exchange frequently triggered conicts. Building on
this scholarship, recent literature on global gifts has emphasized the important
role played by diplomatic gifts and tributes in the understanding of political
rivalries and shifting power balances across cultural divides.
These works have mainly focused on courtly encounters and the dyadic
interaction that characterized diplomacy at the highest levels. This approach
has proven particularly useful to identify the driving factors behind the top-
tier diplomatic conicts analyzed. However, recent literature on early modern
diplomacy has underlined the plurality of actors that shaped the outcome of
diplomatic interactions across cultural divides. This new approach invites
us to go beyond single-cause explanations in the analysis of contentious gifts.
Violent escalations, like the one here analyzed, seems particularly well suited
for that since it involved a wide range of actors and were the result of multiple
factors. As we shall see, gifts and tributes pulled the Iberian-Moluccan conict
in diferent ways and for diferent reasons. For the sake of clarity, the article
follows a thematic and chronological structure that expresses the increasingly
important role played by diplomatic gifts in fostering violence. It starts by
addressing a local skirmish caused by Iberian concerns over the Sultan of
Ternate’s diplomatic gifts. Afterwards, I address the role played by gifts in pre-
venting diferent attempts to de-escalate the conict through diplomacy. Then,
the focus shifts towards the way in which shared notions about the instrumen-
talization of tributes as an expression of power asymmetries resulted in new
The Introduction, Reception and Rejection of European and Asian Commodities in the New
World, eds. B. Yun-Casalilla, I. Berti, and O. Svriz (New York: Routledge, forthcoming).
8 Klekar, C. “‘Prisoners in Silken Bonds’: Obligation, Trade, and Diplomacy in English Voyages
to Japan and China.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 6 (2006), 84–105; Birkenholz,
F. “Merchant-Kings and Lords of the World: Diplomatic Gift-Exchange between the Dutch
East India Company () and the Safavid and Mughal Empires in the Seventeenth
Century.” In Practices of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World c. 1410–1800, eds. T.A. Sowerby
and J. Hennings (London: Routledge, 2017), 219–36.
9 Burschel, P. “A Clock for the Sultan: Diplomatic Gift-Giving from an Intercultural
Perspective.” The Medieval History Journal 16 (2013), 547–63; Hennings, J. “The Failed
Gift: Ceremony and Gift-Giving in Anglo-Russian Relations (1662–1664).” In Practices of
Diplomacy in the Early Modern World c. 1410–1800, eds. T.A. Sowerby and J. Hennings, 237–53.
10 Biedermann, Z., A. Gerritsen, and G. Riello, eds. Global Gifts: The Material Culture of
Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
11 Tremml-Werner, B., and D. Goetze. “A Multitude of Actors in Early Modern Diplomacy.”
Journal of Early Modern History 23 (2019), 407–22.
12 I am not analyzing gifts but descriptions of them. Only a few Iberian presents survived in
the regalia collections of Moluccan sultans. Wall, V. “Het museum Kedaton van Ternate.
Korte beschrijving met catalogus.” Oudheidkundig Verslag, 4 (1922), 144, 146–47 and 152.
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episodes of indigenous-driven violence. The closing section explains how dip-
lomatic gifts afected the decision-making processes that led to the conquest
of Ternate and large-scale war in the Moluccas.
Threatening Gifts in a Conictual Archipelago
The contentious diplomatic gifts here analyzed were closely associated with
the warring context of the late sixteenth century Moluccas, but, at the same
time, contributed to shape such a conictual setting. The Moluccas were
notorious for being the setting for endless conicts for the control of the
clove trade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The arrival of the
Portuguese in 1513 and the Spanish in 1521 added a new layer of complexity
to the traditional rivalry between the sultanates of Ternate and Tidore, which
competed for hegemony in Moluccan politics. The Portuguese secured a privi-
leged position in the clove trade after their settlement in the island of Ternate
and expelled their Spanish rivals who, from the 1560s onwards, focused on
the Philippines. However, the Portuguese presence in Ternate came to an end
when the murder of Sultan Hairun triggered a violent rebellion lead by Sultan
Babullah, who seized the Portuguese fortress in 1575. In a desperate attempt to
counter Babullah’s rising power and restore regional equilibrium, the Sultan of
Tidore welcomed the defeated Portuguese in his island. The expulsion of the
Portuguese from Ternate signaled a new era in the Iberian-Moluccan relations,
ending with the conquest of Ternate in 1606 and the subsequent spice wars.
Although the Iberian authorities regarded the expulsion of the Portuguese
as a casus belli, the road to a large-scale war against the Ternatan sultans was
not a direct or linear one. The Portuguese initiated intense diplomatic con-
tacts in order to maintain a precarious frontier settlement with the support of
their local allies. Furthermore, the rst move of Sultan Babullah after taking
the fortress was to suggest a truce, which the Portuguese rushed to accept. In
the following years, the Portuguese continued trading cloves with Ternate from
their new settlement in Tidore. This status quo fell to pieces after the Iberian
Union (1580). The Portuguese defended the Moluccas as their exclusive area of
inuence and maintained their presence in the archipelago with the support
of the Sultan of Tidore. The Spanish authorities in Manila, in contrast, tried to
gain inuence in the Moluccas by arguing that the weak Portuguese presence
13 Jacobs, H. Documenta Malucensia (Rome: JHI, 1980), , 31.
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there needed their protection, something which resulted in an increase in
armed violence against Ternate. In the 1580s and early 1590s, four armed expe-
ditions failed to seize the former Portuguese fortress. To complicate matters
further, the English and the Dutch began to reach the Moluccas on a regu-
lar basis in the 1590s. In their attempt to become the only European traders
with access to the Moluccan spices, the Dutch East India Company seized the
Portuguese settlements of Ambon and Tidore in 1605. The following year, the
Spanish conquered the fortress of Ternate and captured Said Syah. This Pyrrhic
victory, however, only ignited a conict against the Ternatans and their Dutch
allies, which ultimately led to the expulsion of the last Spanish garrison in the
archipelago in 1663. As we will see, diplomatic gifts and tributes, played a cru-
cial role in the making of an ideology of antagonism that propelled a material
conict over the spices into a war.
14 Lobato, M. Política e comércio dos portugueses na Insulíndia. Malaca e as Molucas de 1575 a 1605
(Macau: Instituto Português do Oriente, 1999), 135–57; Andaya, L. The World of Maluku: Eastern
Indonesia in the Early Modern Period, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993), 114–50.
15 On these processes, see Schröder, I., and B. Schmidt. “Violent Imaginaires and Violent
Practices.” In Anthropology of Violence and Conflict, eds. I. Schröder and B. Schmidt
(London: Routledge, 2001), 1–24.
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Diplomatic gifts lie at the foundations of the violent clashes between Moluccans
and Iberians from the mid-1570s. The Iberian authorities used to perceive gifts
sent to Ternate as a direct threat. The most obvious example was that of the guns
presented to Ternatan sultans. Artillery was a highly appreciated gift in Malay dip-
lomatic culture, and both foreign traders and rulers delivered cannon as a tribute
to the Sultan of Ternate in exchange for the right to export cloves. However, the
Iberians’ saw this practice as the clearest evidence of a diplomatic plot against
them. In 1574, Sancho de Vasconcelos (the Portuguese captain in Ambon) received
news about a junk near the Banda Islands, sent to Ternate by Ali Jalla, the ruler
of Johor. This was a serious matter since by then this ruler was turning Johor (a
sultanate in the south of the Malay Peninsula) into a competitor of Malacca in
the struggle for the spice trade. The Portuguese captain interpreted that this ship
must be carrying an embassy. Even worse, the alleged ambassadors were carrying
what Vasconcelos regarded as a dangerous diplomatic present: a large amount of
artillery and gunpowder. In a desperate attempt to abort the enemy’s embassy,
the Portuguese tried to assault the junk. They failed and were forced to withdraw
after losing ve men, but before leaving they stormed the nearby town of Pulo
Haya in retribution for the help it had lent the ambassadors. This event shows
the Portuguese turning what seems to have been nothing but ordinary tribute into
a high-ranking embassy transporting extraordinary diplomatic gifts. Even more
important, this distortion was used to justify their violent reaction.
The violent reaction caused by the alleged diplomatic gift was closely con-
nected with the Iberian authorities’ fears. Their own concerns transformed
ordinary tributes into high-ranking diplomatic gifts which embodied their
worst nightmares. For the Portuguese, the emergence of an entente between
Ternate and Johor was a direct threat to Malacca’s spice trade. From the Spanish
viewpoint, the main threat was coming from elsewhere. In 1584, ocials in the
Philippines sent a report to the Council of the Indies listing the multiple rea-
sons to be concerned by Babullah’s rising power. One of them had to do with
what they deemed to be a very special diplomatic gift:
He has received some long guns from the Turk, which were sent to him as
a present. He is very pleased with them because, despite being an Indian,
he is a very learned and inquisitive man.
16 Sá, A. Documentaçao para a história das missões do padroado portugês do Oriente. Insulíndia
(Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1954), , 260; Pinto, P. “Captains, Sultans and Liaisons
Dangereuses: Melaka and Johor in the Late Sixteenth Century.” In Iberians in the Singapore-
Melaka Area (16th to 18th), ed. P. Borschberg (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2004), 142.
17 “Ha tenido del turco unas escopetas largas que le enbio presentadas de que no está poco
ufano porque rrealmente para yndio es hombre entendido y curioso.” , Filipinas, 29, 47.
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Babullah’s happiness was grounded in cultural factors. Southeast Asian rulers
used to ascribe supernatural properties to their weapons, especially to spectac-
ular foreign-made pieces like these. These rearms were particularly valua-
ble because of their Turkish origin and the increasing prestige of the Ottoman
emperors among local rulers. However, it is highly improbable that these
weapons were a diplomatic gift from Murad , since there is no evidence for
direct diplomatic ties between the Sublime Porte and Ternate. The guns prob-
ably came from Aceh’s sultan, whose role in the spice trade and diplomatic
relationships with the Sublime Porte are well known. Another possibility is
that the guns were a tribute from the Rumî diaspora (Muslims of Anatolian
descent) trading in Ternate. What is really interesting here is that the circu-
lation and redistribution of gifts helped to create connections between parties
that were not directly related. From Babullah’s viewpoint, this indirect connec-
tion with the Ottoman sultans was something to celebrate. However, from his
rivals’ perspective, these Turkish guns had an alarming meaning: the arrival
of Ottoman inuence to the Moluccas. The reference to alleged Turkish gifts
is revealing about the agency of diplomatic presents in inspiring the Iberian
authorities’ fears. This evidence was framed by Spanish ocials as a call to arms
against an enemy which was becoming more and more dangerous because of
his global diplomatic contacts. The making of global connections through the
circulation and redistribution of diplomatic gifts, combined with Iberian fears,
ended up fueling their aggressive policy in the Moluccas. However, the increas-
ing hostility and incidents such Vasconcelos’ attack did not automatically ini-
tiate a large-scale violent escalation. The enemy gifts alone were not enough to
trigger violent countermeasures. In fact, the increasing hostility resulting from
enemy gifts and the clashes that they caused did not prevent further attempts
to deescalate the conict by diplomatic means.
18 Reid, A. “Europe and Southeast Asia: The Military Balance.” Centre for Southeast Asian
Studies Occasional Paper 16 (1982), 3.
19 Lombard, D. Le carrefour javanais: Essai d’histoire globale. II les réseaux asiatiques (Paris:
EHESS, 1990), , 48–51.
20 Reid, A. “Sixteenth Century Turkish Influence in Western Indonesia.” Journal of Southeast
Asian History 10 (1969), 395–414; Casale, G. The Ottoman Age of Exploration (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010), 124–34; Römer C., and N. Vatin. “Aceh et la Porte dans les
années 1560.” Turcica 46 (2015), 63–111; Göksoy, H., and A. Peacock, eds. Ottoman-Southeast
Asian Relations: Sources from the Ottoman Archives (Leiden: Brill, 2019), I, 33–74. On the
diplomatic activity of the Rumî diaspora, see Couto, D. “Entre confrontations et alliances:
Aceh, Malacca et les Ottomans (1520–1568).” Turcica 46 (2015), 13–61.
21 Drake, F. The World Encompassed (London: Hakluyt Society, 1854), 142.
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Failed Gifts and Unsuccessful Attempts to De-escalate the Conict
As anthropologists of violence have pointed out, the steps leading up to war
are not irreversible and de-escalation may occur for several reasons. Hence, it
is important to understand the role of presents in the diferent decisions that
narrowed down the number of options for conict resolution to violence.
As we will see, the failure to match diplomatic gift-giving with the inner work-
ings of local diplomacy and politics was also a factor in the violent escalation.
The most obvious example were the failed attempts to deescalate the con-
ict around the Portuguese fortress. Both parts, the Sultan of Ternate and the
Portuguese authorities, explored diplomatic means to cool down the conict
and gift-giving had a crucial role to play in this.
The rst move in this direction was made by Sultan Babullah. Salvador
Muñoz, an eyewitness, reported that when the ruler was informed of the
Iberian Union, he decided to send an embassy of eight kora-koras with a pres-
ent of two bahars (around 1,000 pounds) of cloves for the Spanish authori-
ties. According to Muñoz, Babullah aimed to start negotiations to deliver the
Portuguese fortress and establish a commercial relationship with Manila.
Sending such a huge amount of cloves was a good way to begin trade negoti-
ations, given the keen interest that the Spanish authorities in the Philippines
had shown to gain access to the spice trade. However, Babullah proved unable
to grasp the complex relationship between the authorities of the Estado da
Índia and the Philippines. Since 1580 both were subjects of Philip , but they
followed diferent agendas which were dicult to accommodate. The Spanish
never abandoned their projects to conquer the Moluccas and considered the
Portuguese as unreliable partners. The Portuguese defended the Moluccas as
their exclusive area of inuence but relied on the military support of Manila.
As Muñoz reported, when Babullah made public his decision to send the gift,
the Portuguese captain of Tidore, Diogo de Azambuja, convinced Babullah
not to do it. By preventing any diplomatic agreement between Ternate and
Manila Azambuja was just following what continued to be one of the key pil-
lars of Portuguese politics in the region even during the Iberian Union: pre-
venting the Spanish from entering the Moluccas. Furthermore, local captains
like him used to monopolize diplomatic gift-giving in order to defend their
22 See note 15.
23 Lobato, M. “As Filipinas e o Estado da Índia no tempo dos Austrias. Tensão, convergência
e acomodaçao entre os imperios ibéricos na Ásia do sueste.” In Portugal na Monarquia
Hispânica: Dinâmicas de integraçao e de conflito, eds. P. Cardim, L. Costa, and M. Cunha
(Lisbon: CHAM, 2013), 277–308.
24 , Filipinas, 34, 73, fols. 7–8 and 29.
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private interests. In a nutshell, Babullah chose the right presents, but he felt
trapped in Iberian internal divisions.
Babullah was not the only one failing to deescalate the conict through
gift-giving. In 1584, Duarte de Meneses, the Portuguese viceroy of the Estado da
Índia, turned to diplomacy to have the Portuguese fortress in Ternate restored.
He sent an embassy with three pieces of textiles, a pipe of wine and a hat to
be delivered after the fortress had been returned. The embassy, however, was
a complete failure. Diogo de Azambuja advised the ambassador Artur de Brito
to deliver the gifts to Babullah at the start of negotiations, but Brito decided to
follow the viceroy’s instructions. In addition, he did not follow Ternate’s diplo-
matic etiquette and delivered the viceroy’s letters to Babullah without giving
him the presents that they mentioned. Babullah rejected the letter saying that
it was not addressed to him, since he was not being given what the letter said
he would. Finally, when Babullah heard that the presents were to be delivered
after the restitution of the fortress, he laughed and said that he was not deliv-
ering his fortress “in exchange for four pieces.” The authorities in Goa and
the Peninsula blamed the ambassador for the failure to recover the fortress.
However the whole embassy was poorly planned from the start. Not only the
authorities in Goa gave him specic orders which did not t with the protocol
of Moluccan diplomacy, but the value of the presents did not match what was
expected in exchange. The viceroy ambassador’s ignorance of Moluccan diplo-
macy, Babullah’s unawareness of the rifts that separated the Iberian empires,
and Azambuja’s manipulation led to the failure of all attempts to de-escalate
the conict.
The failures adapting diplomatic gifts to the goals of both sides’ attempts to
de-escalate the conict may lead us to assume that the it was the huge cultural
divide between Molucans and Iberians what contributed to make gift-giving a
driving force of the conict escalation. However, as we will see in the following
section, in order to fully understand the complex roles of gifts and tributes
in this violent escalation it is necessary to explore how shared ideas on trib-
utes may have contributed to spark violent clashes and increasing tensions
between them.
25 Pinto, P. Portugueses e Malaios. Malaca e os Sultanatos de Johor e Achém 1575–1619 (Lisbon:
Sociedade histórica da Independência de Portugal, 1997), 145–46.
26 “E dizia zombando, que a sua Fortaleza a não entregava por quatro pessas.” Couto, D.
Decadas da Asia. Decada décima, parte segunda (Lisbon: Regia Officina Typografica, 1788),
37 and 274–84.
27 Arquivo Historico Ultramarino (hereafter ), Conselho Ultramarino, Codice 281, fol. 125.
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Contentious Tributes and Violence between Allies
In addition to the increasing antagonism between Ternate and the Iberians,
the relationship between the latter and their Moluccan ally, the Sultan of
Tidore, also deteriorated. The Portuguese presence in Tidore was grounded
on their agreement with its ruler and, as usual, the payment of tributes was a
key part of it. As we have seen, some Portuguese authorities failed to adapt to
Moluccan diplomatic etiquette. This was not the case regarding the arrange-
ment of a tributary agreement with the Sultan of Tidore. Such arrangement
proted from a shared understanding of the political meaning of tribute.
However, the changing nature of the power balance between the Iberians and
their Moluccan allies turned shared notions on the political meaning of trib-
utes and power asymmetries into a new source of violent conicts.
The far-reaching changes in the volume and nature of these tributes tells
us a good deal about the shifting nature of power asymmetries and how they
were perceived by each side. For the Sultan of Tidore, the tributes from his
Portuguese guests were of utmost importance. Foreign goods played a key
role in the internal politics of the archipelago. A small proportion of the dip-
lomatic presents were set aside to make up the pusaka (regalia) of the sultans,
but the lion’s share went out of the rulers’ hands. Once foreign goods entered
the socio-political arena of the Moluccas, they became a strategic commodity
exchanged for support and loyalty. From the fteenth century, these islands
witnessed a process of political transformation which went hand in hand with
the boom of the spice trade. The European demand for cloves only contributed
to fuel the ongoing centralization of spice production in the hands of the sul-
tans of Tidore and Ternate. Cloves were presented to them by their subjects in
exchange for foreign goods, which their subjects stored and used for ceremo-
nial purposes. This symbolic exchange played a crucial role in forging and rein-
forcing the political bonds that held the community together. The increasing
ow of foreign goods from the spice trade and their later commodication in
the arena of domestic politics fueled competition among local rulers, because
the amount of foreign goods they could obtain and redistribute among kolani
(lords) and sengaji (governors) determined their capacity to keep and extend
28 I rely here on Appadurai, A. “Commodities and the Politics of Value.” In The Social Life
of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. A. Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1986), 3–63.
29 Villiers, J. “The Cash-Crop Economy and State Formation in the Spice Islands in the Fifteenth
and Sixteenth Centuries.” In The Southeast Asian Port and Polity, ed. J. Kathirithamby-Wells
(Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1990), 83–105; Andaya, L. The World of Maluku, 56–
57 and 77.
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their domains. Welcoming the Portuguese in his islands, the Sultan of Tidore
not only gained a military ally against his rival, but also more tributes from the
clove trade.
The Portuguese authorities showed the ability to adapt to local tributary
practices and, even more important, to the changing power relations they mir-
rored. According to the ocial records, the Sultan of Tidore was compelled
to pay 100 bahaars of cloves each year as pareas, a term for tribute paid in
exchange for military protection. This reects the predominant position held
by the Portuguese when they were the only European power in the archipel-
ago. However, the arrival of other foreign powers and their own weakness
made them lose leverage in their relationship with the Sultan of Tidore. As
a result, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century the Portuguese had to
pay for these cloves. Arrangements like this were far from being unusual in
Southeast Asia and the Portuguese proved able to adapt to it. Clear proof of it
were the set of norms they developed in order to determine who had to pay for
the tributes that the local kings demanded in exchange for trading rights. The
Portuguese continued referring to the goods delivered to rulers like the Sultan
of Tidore as dádivas, a term that can be translated as present, since it refers to
freely delivered goods. However, the Portuguese authorities assimilated these
“gifts” to actual tributes, since according to their norms only those who con-
tributed to fund the dádivas could prot from the trading agreements derived
from them. Unfortunately, the Iberian Union altered the tributary agreement
between the Sultan of Tidore and his Portuguese allies.
From the very beginning, the authorities in Manila proved unable to
understand or accept the tributary agreement with the Sultan of Tidore.
After the news about the Union of the Iberian Crowns arrived, the alliance of
Gapibaguna, the Sultan of Tidore with the new king of Portugal, Philip , had
to be formalized. In order to do that, a letter was sent to Gonzalo Ronquillo
(the governor of the Philippines) ofering Gapibaguna’s vassalage. The letter
ended addressing a crucial issue in Moluccan diplomacy: gifts. Gapibaguna
sent two bahars of cloves. This present showcased the potential of the future
relationship that Gapibaguna was trying to establish with Manila. By sending
cloves, he acknowledged the Spanish wish to enter the spice trade. He also
tried to reinforce his position vis-à-vis Ternate by including the Spanish in his
previous dealings with the Portuguese and thus increasing the political prof-
its that he yielded from the clove trade. In exchange for this gift, Gapibaguna
30 , Conselho Ultramarino, Codice 217, fol. 131; Lobato, M. Política e comércio, 121–122, 137
and 231.
31 Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo, Ms Livraria, 805, fols. 169–170.
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would accept “a light coat of mail… a Spanish crossbow… another crossbow
from China, a knife and two good golden scissors”. The letter closed with an
apology for his requests “please, Your Lordship, do not get angry with these
demands since a foreigner eager for good stuf has these discomtures.”
Instead of getting a polite answer from the governor of the Philippines, he had
his demands rejected:
I would love to have in this land all the things Your Lordship asks me for, but
contrary to what people says, they are not available in these islands, because
here we are all soldiers, and we only care about having good weapons and
enough ammunition. However, the captain Juan Ronquillo will give you on
my behalf some tries from the things that are available here.
The governor’s rejection of the sultan’s requests was a clear example of how he
conceived gift-exchange as a tool to threat his new Moluccan ally. Furthermore,
it shows his own view on the power asymmetries between the Iberian author-
ities and the Moluccan sultans and mirrors the bitter side of aggressive rule in
the Philippines. By sending “some tries” to Gapibaguna he was expressing the
low status that he conferred this new subject of Philip . The nature, quality and
timing of the presents that the Spanish governors sent him in the following years
express the status they granted him and what they expected from him in return.
An examination of the nancial records allows us to understand the place he
held in the diplomatic agenda of Manila’s governors. In 1583 “three big pieces
of Chinese silks decorated with birds” were bought to be sent to Gapibaguna,
together with a great amount of “green velvet from Castile.” Similarly, four years
later, “four pieces and two pounds of silk, together with six ounces of civet
32 “Huma saya de macha boa… e huma ballesta ao uzo d’espanha… e outra ballesta ao uzo
da china e hum canyveto e huãs tisoras douradas bem feytas. Não se enfade v s con este
pititorios porque hum estraneiro e famyto de cousas boas tenhe estos descontos.”,
Filipinas, 34, 43.
33 “Las cossas que Vuestra Señoría me pide, quisiera yo que en esta tierra las hubiere tan
abundantemente como lo signiffican. Pero como aquí todos somos soldados no se tiene
cuidado sino de lo que toca a tener buenas armas y muniçiones, mas de lo que aquí ay dara
a Vuestra Señoría de mi parte el cappitan don Juan Ronquillo algunas menudençias.” ,
Patronato, 24, R.58.
34 Spanish rule over the Philippines was considered more benign than over the Americas.
Phelan, J. The Hispanization of the Philippines: Spanish Aims and Filipino Responses, 1565–
1700 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 1959). However, this conquest also resulted
in significant depopulation. Interestingly, tribute exaction and the hate against Muslims,
played a key role in it. Newson, L. Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), 24–36.
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musk” were sent to him on behalf of the governor of the Philippines. At any rate,
these presents were better than the robes, glass beads and broken harquebuses
received by a chief of the Sambal (an ethnic group from central Luzon) after the
pacication of Pampanga. However, they were nothing compared to the 800
pesos that the governor invested every year in gifts for Japan. The timing of the
gifts is also quite meaningful. The governor of the Philippines and his captains
used to send presents for the Sultan of Tidore as part of the preparations for his
armed expeditions against Ternate. The timing, amount and nature of the gifts
of the Spanish authorities show that they considered Gapibaguna a lower rank
partner in their struggle against Ternate. Hence, the establishment of a tributary
relation like the one that existed between Gapibaguna and the Portuguese was
completely out of the question from their point of view.
The gift-giving relation between the governor of Manila and the Sultan of
Tidore had a direct impact on the tributary relations between the latter and his
Portuguese guests. Sending presents sporadically when a service was required
was enough from the Spanish viewpoint, but from Gapibaguna’s perspective
this was clearly not sucient. As noted, foreign gifts and tributes were a crucial
commodity exchanged for loyalty in the arena of Moluccan politics. This led
the two main regional powers, the sultans of Ternate and Tidore, to try to get
their hands in as many foreign goods as they could. By the 1580s, the sultans
of Ternate had established an ecient system to collect tributes from foreign
traders. A Spanish witness reported that: “The king of Ternate had expressly
ordered his captains in the island of Ambon to not allow the passage [towards
Ternate] of any foreign ship that does not bring artillery, harquebuses and
ammunitions.” The same account also shows that the sultan redistributed
most of these weapons among the rulers of the diferent islands to cement his
authority over them. The Moluccan sultans were quite attentive to the pre-
sents or tributes their rivals received and reacted to them. At a time when
his traditional rival was increasing his power with the aid of foreign tributes,
35 , Contaduría, 1200, fols. 979–80, 1247 and 1052. Maybe these presents were chosen to
adapt to the recipient’s taste. Golombek, L. “The Draped Universe of Islam.” In Content
and Context of Visual Arts in the Islamic World, ed. P. Soucek (University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1988), 25–38.
36 , Filipinas, 29, 94 and Tremml-Werner, B. Spain, China, and Japan in Manila, 1571–1644:
Local Comparisons and Global Connections (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press,
2015), 193–208.
37 , Contaduría, 1200, fols. 979–80 and 1247; and Patronato 52, R.15, fol. 10.
38 , Patronato, 46, R.18, fol. 4.
39 Thomaz, L. “As cartas malaias de Abu Hayat, Sultão a El-Rei de Portugal e os primórdios da
presença portuguesa em Maluco.” Anais de História de Além-Mar 4 (2003), 442.
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Gapibaguna could not accept the sporadic delivery of diplomatic gifts. He
needed instead to ensure a regular stream of tributes similar to his rival’s. Since
it was impossible for him to impose a tributary relationship on the powerful
and distant governor of Manila, the sultan decided to turn the screw on his
Portuguese guests.
In an attempt not to fall behind his rival, Gapibaguna tried to renegoti-
ate the tributary status of his Portuguese guests. In the past the Portuguese
had shown certain exibility to adapt to a tributary system that mirrored the
changing nature of power asymmetries. However, this time negotiations were
all but easy. The increasing demands of Gapibaguna led to bitter reactions. The
letter addressed to Philip  in 1597 by the captain Julião de Noronha is quite
clear in this regard. According to him, the Sultan of Tidore
does many grievances to these people… like cutting of shing and the
food supply plenty of times, just to make clear that we will be here for as
long as he wants, and forcing the captains to give him more presents (dá-
divas), which are paid from His Majesty treasure, but he wants so much
that it is as though he was not a vassal of His Majesty.
As the letter clearly indicates, Gapibaguna did not hesitate to use violence
against his Portuguese guests and allies in order to increase their generosity.
Gapibaguna’s attitude can be understood as an attempt to force his guests to
pay the tributes they were due or to increase the amount. What is clear is that
Noronha, despite using the term dádiva, was denouncing that this really was
nothing but exacting tributes. This is why he underlined that, by asking for too
many dádivas, the Sultan of Tidore was not behaving as a vassal of His Majesty.
Furthermore, given that these gifts were being funded from His Majesty treas-
ure, the obvious conclusion was that Philip  was paying páreas to a greedy
sultan.
Gapibaguna’s attitude proved successful and, in fact, the Portuguese author-
ities deployed in Tidore did their best to satisfy his demands, but this did not
prevent further violent tensions. According to Noronha, the former captain of
the Portuguese fortress of Tidore, Diogo de Azambuja, presented a horse to
Gapibaguna. Horses were an ecient diplomatic tool commonly used by the
40 “Ele faz muitos agravos a este povo… he tolher muitas vezes no ano que não pesquen nem
nos vendão manetinimentos, tudo a fim de dar a entender que estaremos aqui en coanto
ele quizer e para os capitães lhe darem muytas dádivas as coaes lhe dão da fazenda de Vosa
Magestade, mas quer tantas que lhe não lembra que he vaçalo de Vossa Magestade”,
Filipinas, 35, 11.
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authorities of the Portuguese Estado da Índia since they were highly coveted
by Asian rulers. We can assume that the horse became one of the most valu-
able assets for Gapibaguna’s regalia. Unfortunately, even highly appreciated
gifts caused violent clashes. The horse was accidentally wounded by a merdica
(local Christian) or a Portuguese casado, and the sultan had him hanged in ret-
ribution. Such disproportionate punishment shows to what extent Gapibaguna
appreciated the horse, but also his violent disdain towards his Portuguese
allies. When the Portuguese captain complained about this excessive punish-
ment, Gapibaguna rudely ordered him to cure the horse before it was too late.
As Noronha bitterly lamented, the Portuguese captain and his men rushed to
do so “because we always adhere to his will owing to the little power we have
here.” As Noronha tried to denounce, what lay behind the horse incident was
a power asymmetry between the sultan and his guests. The sultan’s rude threat
and the Portuguese docile response showed to what extent Gapibaguna was
able to impose his will over his Iberian guests. Like the Spanish governor of the
Philippines before him, he was using gifts to send a violent threat to his allies.
The picture emerging from these stormy interactions is that of a negotiation
in which the diferent parts relied on the exchange of gifts and tributes to assert
their own position. All agreed on something crucial, that gifts and tributes were
a suitable tool to establish their own status and that of others. However, they all
disagreed on who had the upper hand in their power asymmetries. The frictions
between Gapibaguna, the Portuguese and the Spanish did not result from a cul-
tural misunderstanding on the diferent meaning of diplomatic gifts and trib-
utes, but on their attempt to impose their own views. Their alliance survived
these tensions, but the distrust towards the Sultan of Tidore continued being
a matter of concern for the Iberian authorities. Quite meaningfully, in future
plans to conquer the Moluccas these tensions and distrusts were seriously con-
sidered. In a nutshell, a shared understanding of the political meaning of trib-
utes contributed to the escalation of violence in the archipelago.
41 Boomgaard, P. “Horse Breeding, Long-Distance Horse Trading and Royal Courts in
Indonesian History, 1500–1900.” In Breeds of Empire: The ‘invention’ of the Horse in Southeast
Asia and Southern Africa, 1500–1950, eds. G. Bankoff and S. Swart (Copenhagen: NIAS Press,
2007), 33–34. Sending animals was a well-established Islamic diplomatic tradition. Rogers,
M. “The Gorgeous East: Trade and Tribute in Islamic Empires.” In Circa 1492: Art in the Age
of Exploration, ed. J. Levenson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 72.
42 “Pelo pouco poder que aqui temos se lhe fez a vontade.”, Filipinas, 35, 11.
43 On the complex and changing interpretations of gifts and tributes in cross-cultural
communication, see Windler, C. “Tribut und Gabe. Mediterrane Diplomatie als
interkulturelle Kommunikation.” Saeculum 51 (2000), 24–56.
44 , Filipinas, 1, 48, fols. 13–15.
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Global Gifts and the Making of a Global Enemy
The last stage in the run up towards open war was characterized by the armed
expeditions that the Iberian authorities organized to recover the fortress in
Ternate and by the Spanish conquests so, in order to understand the violent
escalation that followed, special attention needs to be paid to their motivations.
After the arrival of the English and the Dutch the military intervention in the
Moluccas became a matter of self-protection, not only for Manila. Remarkably,
diplomatic gifts played a key role in promoting and spreading this new threat
and critically bringing matters to a violent head. As we will see, from the point
of view of the Iberian authorities in the region, the gifts the English and the
Dutch sent to, and received from, the Sultan of Ternate contributed to turn him
into a global enemy.
Diplomatic gifts contributed to the making of this new global enemy in a
progressive manner. In November 1579, Francis Drake reached Ternate. During
his visit, the Englishmen had the chance to admire Babullah’s regalia and gave
him some presents as “a farther conrmation of that good liking and friend-
ship already begunne.” The Iberians reported on Drake’s visit paying special
attention to the gifts he had exchanged with Babullah. In his annual letter of
1580, Gomes Vaz, a Jesuit from Malacca, gave an account of Drake’s recent visit
to the Moluccas and made reference to a gift that we have already encoun-
tered. According to Vaz, Drake received from Babullah: “a signet from the king
of Ternate, as a safe-conduct.” According to rumors he had heard, in exchange
for this gift Drake promised to come back with a eet. The ocers in Manila
reported this exchange of gifts in a more dramatic way. In the summer of 1582,
the captain Juan Pacheco Maldonado wrote to the viceroy of New Spain to
update him on the situation in the Moluccas and referred to Drake’s expedition
in the following terms:
The Englishman went to the port of Ternate… and he was so clever, that
he made an alliance with the sultan by giving him some things that he
had stolen there [in the Americas]. They remained as true friends and
agreed that he would come back soon to expel the Portuguese and the
Spanish from his lands. And they agreed that, on the Englishman’s return,
the king of Ternate would deliver the fortress to them.
45 Drake, F. The World Encompassed, 140–43.
46 “Levando hum sinete d’el-rey de Ternate de seguro.” Jacobs, Documenta Malucensia, , 93.
47 “Fuese el inglés al puerto del rey de Ternate… y allí tuvo tal maña que se confederó
con el dándola algunas cosas de las que por allá avia hurtado. Quedaron muy amigos y
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The ocer continued setting out the dangers posed by the arrival of this
enemy, namely the end of Spanish expansion or the collapse of the Estado
da Índia, and asked for military reinforcements to conquer Ternate before an
imminent English attack. Unsurprisingly, the presence of European competi-
tors was understood as a dangerous threat to Iberians interests in Southeast
Asia. What is more interesting for us here is that their presents were being used
by Manila’s authorities in order to call for more military resources for their
struggle against Ternate. However, contrary to what happened in the 1600s,
when this ring became matter of debate at a global scale (as we have seen in
the introduction) the references to this gift had no signicant impact.
As noted in the rst section, the authorities in Manila had been referring
to the Sultan of Ternate’s global gifts in their attempt to portray him as a
mighty enemy since the 1580s, but their reports had had no signicant efect.
However, in the turn of the seventeenth century, references to similar global
gifts gained momentum and began reverberating in the political communica-
tions of the Iberian empires. In order to understand why, it is crucial to bear in
mind that in the last decades of the sixteenth century and the opening years of
the seventeenth century the English, and especially the Dutch, had arrived in
force in Southeast Asia, inicting serious damage to the Portuguese interests
in the region. As a result, the Portuguese authorities (from Tidore, Malacca
and Goa) prioritized the ght against theDutch threat. Something simi-
lar happened in the Philippines, wherethe Dutchbecame the most danger-
ous threat from the point of view of the Spanish authorities. Nevertheless,
what really made a diference was that now the news about Ternate’s global
gifts began reecting fears that were already lodged in the decision-making
of the Iberian empires. The Spanish and the Portuguese authorities (not
only in Malacca or Manila) perceived the forging of an alliance between the
Dutch and the Sultan of Ternate as the worst of their nightmares. As a result,
and in sharp contrast with previous expeditions organized by the governors
concertados de que el volvería con mucha brevedad allí y le henchiría la mar de navíos
y echaría los portugueses de la tierra y aún los españoles. Y quedaron que si volviese le
estregaria el rey de Ternate aquella fortaleza.”, Filipinas, 34, 47.
48 Loureiro, R. “Early Portuguese Perceptions of the ‘Dutch’ Threat in Asia.” In Rivalry and
Conflict. European Traders and Asian Trading Networks in the 16th and 17th Centuries, eds. E.
van Veen and L. Blussé (Leiden: CNWS, 2005), 166–87.
49 Sanchez, J-N. “A Prismatic Glance at One Century of Threats on the Philippine Colony.” In
The Representation of External Threats: From the Middle Ages to the Modern World, eds. E.
Crailsheim and M. Elizalde (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 357–59.
50 On the circulation of these nightmares, and their connection with violent strategies, see
Pérez Tostado, I. “La globalisation de la peur: massacre et altérité, entre empires espagnol et
britannique dans la premiere moitié du XVIIe siècle.” Itinera 38 (2015), 131–55.
diplomatic gifts, tributes and frontier violence
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of Manila like that of 1593, the expeditions before the conquest were large
scale operations that brought together military resources at a global scale.
As the study of other Iberian conquests in Asia has shown, such large-scale
military operations were the result of interactions and negotiations between
diferent decisional cores of the empire. In other words, in the fragmented
and decentralized Iberian empires a conquest like that of Ternate required
a great deal of negotiation between Madrid, Lisbon, Malacca, Manila, Goa
and Mexico. For instance, in 1601 the Spanish viceroy of New Spain, who
provided many of the troops sent against Ternate, justied his support to
this enterprise by referring to its alliance with the European enemies of the
empire and the serious threat it represented. It is in this framework that
Ternate’s global gifts played a key role in the nal phase of violent escalation.
The clearest illustration of how the news of diplomatic gifts sent from
Ternate fuelled the violent strategy that led to the conquest is a royal letter
dated to early 1603. In this letter, King Philip  ordered Aires de Saldanha,
viceroy of the Estado da Índia, to take urgent measures to stop Dutch pene-
tration in the Moluccas, because Sultan Said Syah had sent “a basket of earth
to the Queen of England or Count Mauritius.” This intriguing gift conveyed a
message: the ruler accepting the basket would be compelled to send a eet
to expel the Portuguese from the Moluccas. In exchange, according to the let-
ter, Said Syah was promising to send the ships back full of cloves. The king’s
account of such a dangerous diplomatic present was followed by an order to
organize a eet and send it to the Moluccas to prevent the Dutch from tak-
ing control of the archipelago. This royal command shows that the Iberian
authorities perceived the diplomatic agreements between the Sultan of
Ternate and their European rivals as a direct threat to their interests, justify-
ing military intervention. In a nutshell, it shows that the reference to specic
diplomatic gifts led the Iberian authorities to adopt an increasingly violent
strategy in the region.
The letter shows that the Iberian authorities, not only on the ground but
also in the metropolis, tried to get a rm grasp on Moluccan gift-giving prac-
tices and incorporated it to their decision-making processes. As noted, previ-
ous calls to arms related to news about gifts were grounded on the projection
51 Crossley, J. The Dasmariñases, Early Governors of the Spanish Philippines (London: Routledge,
2016), 166–77. Jacobs, Documenta Malucensia, , 561–71; , Filipinas, 1, 36, fol. 3.
52 Biedermann, Z. (Dis)Connected Empires: Imperial Portugal, Sri Lankan Diplomacy, and the
Making of a Habsburg Conquest in Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 144–91.
53 , Filipinas, 1, 48, fol. 7.
54 “Hum zesto de terra ofereçido a rainha da Ingallaterra ou á o comde Mauriçio” ,
Conselho Ultramarino, Codice 282, fol. 141.
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of European meanings to Molucca gifts, Drake’s ring being the most obvious
example. Other times, their assessment of the items exchanged by their ene-
mies were completely wrong. This was the case, for instance, with all those
tributes that became important diplomatic gifts in the eyes of the Iberian
authorities. Any gift exchanged between enemies was a threat, but, unlike with
Drake’s ring, the specic meaning of such a strange gift as the basket of earth
was dicult to understand from a European perspective. However, the inter-
pretation included in the royal letter is astonishingly similar to that made of
similar gifts. In an account of the surrender of the inhabitants of Ambon to
Portuguese forces written in 1602, a similar present of earth and clove branches
was understood as “a sign that they delivered the land and its main produce to
them.” It is easy to take for granted that misunderstandings or wrong assump-
tions about alien diplomatic cultures drove the conict to a violent end. In this
case, a supposedly more accurate understanding of the enemy’s diplomatic
practices only helped to escalate the conict. Paradoxically, the same present
that brought the conict in Ambon to and end contributed to promote the
Iberian ofensive. In fact, the royal letter and the news about this diplomatic
gift cannot be detached from the Iberians’ decision to conquer Ternate. By the
time the letter departed from Lisbon, the Council of the Indies, had already
discussed and decided the organization of the eet that would ultimately take
Ternate. The factor that encouraged the Council to adopt a violent strategy
was not the degree of (in)commensurability of the enemy’s diplomatic culture,
but the potential danger attached to his diplomatic contacts.
Conclusion
The road that led from conict to conquest was neither straightforward nor direct.
Several factors played a hand in the violent escalation that led to open war. The
problematic relations between Iberians and Moluccans (either foes or allies),
internal political divisions in the Iberian empires, Moluccan traditional rivalries,
and European competition all contributed to spark violence. Diplomatic gifts and
tributes played a key role in increasing the level of violence in relation to all of
these factors. The diplomatic gifts sent or received by the sultans of Ternate always
55 “Em sinal que lhe entregavão a terra e o principal fruito della.” Jacobs, H. Documenta
Malucensia, , 563.
56 , Filipinas, 1, 48, fols. 13–15. The meaning of such exchanges in Ambonese peacemaking
ceremonies was different and had more to do with their animistic believes. Knaap, G.
“Headhunting, Carnage and Armed Peace in Amboina, 1500–1700.” Journal of the Economic
and Social History of the Orient 46 (2) (2003), 173.
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ringed the alarm for the Iberian authorities. However, there is a striking diference
in terms of consequences. Whereas in the late 1570s and early 1580s they merely led
to simple skirmishes or unnoticed reports, in the 1600s they were taken as a global
bugle call to arms. This striking diference shows how the perception of enemy gifts
changed over time, but even more important, it shows the contingent agency of
these gifts in bringing the fears of the Iberian authorities to life. The gifts alone were
not enough cause to fear the alliance between Ternate and the Dutch, but they
certainly contributed to create a consensus among the diferent decisional bodies
about the need to violently tackle such threat. In so doing they helped to mobilize
the resources needed to transform a regional conict into a global one. The role of
global gifts in turning the Sultan of Ternate into a global enemy only crystallized at
the very end of the conict. Before that, the situation had dramatically deteriorated
in diferent directions and diplomatic gift-giving and tributes had played a key role
in this. Sultan Babullah, as well as the Portuguese viceroy, tried to de-escalate the
conict around the fortress by diplomatic means. Both relied on a shared gift cul-
ture as an asset which could facilitate these negotiations, but both failed to meet
their targets. The inability to decode diplomatic and political cultures derailed the
attempts to deescalate the conict. However, not all the Moluccan-Iberian interac-
tions that led to violent escalation can be understood in terms of this incommen-
surability. The troublesome relationship between the Iberian authorities and the
Sultan of Tidore after the Iberian Union were the result of a shared understanding
of how the language of gifts and tributes revealed asymmetries of power.
Gifts and tributes played diferent roles in the violent escalation that engulfed
the Moluccas in the late sixteenth century. The analysis of the multiple ways in
which diplomatic gifts and tributes contributed to this violent escalation shows
the need to go beyond previous interpretations focused either on the incom-
mensurability of diferent diplomatic cultures or in shared understandings
across cultural divides. The violent escalation here analyzed was the result of a
wide array of cross-cultural interactions driven by common understandings and
dangerous misunderstandings. Both phenomena contributed to turn conversa-
tions through gifts and tributes into a fuel for violence. This was the result of the
wide array of actors that compounded the complex multilateral conicts staged
on the Spice Islands. The very presence of a multitude of actors means not only
the association of diferent aims and interests to the gifts, but also diferent ways
of understanding (or misunderstanding) the gifts themselves. As our examples
have illustrated, in multipolar diplomatic settings like this, instead of trying to
reduce all the conicts on gifts and tributes to a single-cause explanation, it is
far more productive to analyze how gift-related frictions ended up triggering an
escalation of violence in diferent ways and for diferent reasons.
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Acknowledgements
This article has been funded by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action Individual
Fellowship from the European Commission, grant agreement H2020 MSCA
IF-2016 GA 748592 (On the Frontiers of Peace: Cross-Cultural Peacebuilding
on the Frontiers of the Iberian Empires 1500–80). I am grateful for the feed-
back on previous versions from Brice Cossart, Jorge Díaz Ceballos, Jorge
Flores, Alejandro García Montón, Pablo Hernández Sau, Bruno Martinho and
Bartolomé Yun Casalilla. Likewise, this article has greatly beneted from this
special issue editors’ comments, and the suggestions from the two anonymous
reviewers.
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