Moluques of North

The province of the Moluques of North ( Maluku Utara in Indonésien) is formed of the islands of the septentrional half of the Archipel indonésien of the Moluques. It is located between the New Guinea at the east, Sulawesi in the west and the Pacific Ocean in the North-East.

With the census of 2000, the province counted 724.900 inhabitants.

Formerly simple kabupaten (department) of the province of Moluques, Moluques of North gained the statute of province in 1999. Ternate, seat of an old sultanate, was during several years the provisional capital of the province but, because of the historical competition of the old sultanate of close Tidore, a new capital was created in the village of Sofifi, on the island of Halmahera, largest of Moluques.

At XVIe and XVIIe centuries Moluques of North were the first “islands of the spices”, the area being at the time the single world source of supply in cloves. The Dutch, the Portuguese, the Spanish and the local sultanates of Ternate and Tidore disputed the control of the very lucrative trade of spices.

With the conversion of its sovereign about 1460, under the influence of the Moslem principality of Gresik in Java, Ternate was the first region of Moluques to be Islamized. This explains why contrary to the southernmost part of the archipelago, where the Christianisation was important, Moluques of North are in great majority Moslem.

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