Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
149. Indonesia – Struggle for Independence - 2
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
Islam arrived in the archipelago in the 8 th century with traders from Yemen and Persia. However, the initial influence of the new faith was confined to a few trading posts on the sea lanes connecting India and China.
The penetration of Islam into interior of the islands dates from the 12 th century. This was a period of explosive growth for the Islamic faith in Asia and Africa. Sufi Shaikhs traversed the islands spreading a spiritual Islam that gradually displaced Buddhism and Hinduism.
It is significant to note that the growth of Islam in the archipelago was not the result of a conversion of kings and noblemen, nor of military invasions, but of a change in the beliefs of the people of the soil. The kings and noblemen accepted Islam only after a large proportion of their subjects had embraced the new faith.
The Islamic influence melted into the older cultural milieu of the islands. Much as it was in the earlier penetration of Hinduism and Buddhism, the people of the islands retained their language and their culture and adopted the new faith within their older cultures.
Geography placed the archipelago in the cross currents of political and military ambitions from powerful dynasties in India and China. In the 12 th century, the Chola kings of southeastern India launched a series of raids on Sumatra and controlled the coastlines of both Sumatra and Malaya. In the 13 th century, the Yuan emperor Kublai Khan (d 1294), sent an expedition to intervene in the internal political struggles in Java. In the 15 th century, the Chinese admiral Zeng Yi (d 1433), also known as admiral Ho, made seven voyages to the Indian Ocean and brought his armada of great ships to the shore of Java and Sumatra. Some historians date the Chinese Muslim presence in the Malacca Straits from the visits of admiral Ho’s fleet (1404-1432). The Chinese naval influence waned and disappeared in the second half of the 15 th century as the Yuan emperors shifted their resources from sea voyages to their long and hostile land frontiers with Mongolia.
Indonesia was a part of the trade network linking the Indian Ocean with the Western Pacific. With the advent of Islam in the archipelago in the 12 th century, and the penetration of Sufi Islam in the Indian subcontinent, the faith of Islam provided the spiritual umbrella for the trading nations in this vast network. Arabic became the lingua franca for trade. Even the Chinese emperors, who were not Muslim, found it expedient to appoint Muslim admirals to lead their navy. This vast network was a peaceful one. Even though Islam dominated this network and Arabic was the lingua franca, Buddhists from China and Sri Lanka as well as Hindus from India and Bali participated in this trade as equals and without discrimination.
Early in the 15 th century the peace of the Indian Ocean was shattered by the guns of the Portuguese. The year 1492 was a hinge around which the history of the world revolves. It was the year that Columbus discovered America. It was also the year when the Spanish Crusaders captured Granada, the last Muslim bastion on the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish Inquisition followed and the Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain. In 1494, under a Papal decree, Spain and Portugal divided up the world for conquest and conversion to Roman Catholic Christianity. In 1496 the sailor Vasco de Gama circumnavigated the coast of South Africa and with the help of Muslim navigators in East Africa arrived on the western shores of India. His first visit was a scouting mission. He returned in 1506 at the head of a flotilla of gun boats blasting his way across East Africa to the southern tip of India. Within a short span of three years, the Portuguese occupied Mombasa, Zanzibar and Kedda in East Africa, Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf and Goa, Diu and Daman in India. Malacca fell after heavy resistance in 1511 and Macao and Canton in China was settled soon thereafter. The Indian Ocean which had hitherto been an ocean of trade, commerce and peaceful interaction between people was transformed into an ocean of cut throat competition and war. The Portuguese took the spices out of Asia but in return had nothing worthwhile to teach the ancient peoples of an ancient continent.
The Portuguese had twin goals. The first was to destroy Muslim influence and force their brand of Christianity into Asia. The second was to control the Indian Ocean trade and extract tribute from the traders and the pilgrims on their way to Mecca. So weak were the navies of the littoral states that not one of them could challenge the Portuguese at sea. Even the mighty Moguls of India saw it fit to have the passports of Indian pilgrims stamped by the Portuguese than to confront them in the Arabian Sea. Only the Ottomans offered some resistance. Under the able admiral Piri Rais, the Portuguese were cleared from Aden and the entrance to the Red Sea. The Portuguese were expelled from East Africa north of Mozambique. However, following their defeat at the battle of Lepanto in 1572 and their standoff with the Portuguese navy off the shores of Mozambique in 1578, Ottoman naval power receded from the Indian Ocean.
The Indian Ocean was too large and the Portuguese resources were too meager for them to control this vast region. Ships belonging to the Ottomans and the Sultan of Oman continued to ply the Arabian Sea. A power equilibrium was established at sea so that after the year 1550 as much trade flowed through Alexandria in Egypt as it did through Lisbon in Portugal. The wheels of fortune turned against the Portuguese in the last quarter of the 16 th century. The King of Portugal, Sebastian, invaded the North African kingdom of Morocco in 1578. At the Battle of al Qasr al Kabir, the Moroccan monarch Ahmed al Mansur inflicted a crushing defeat on the invaders. Sebastian lay dead on the battlefield. 20,000 of the invaders were either slain or captured and were used as slaves in the campaigns against the Songhai Empire in sub-Saharan Africa. So complete was the Moroccan victory that two years later, in 1580, the Spanish monarch took Portugal under his protection making it a virtual colony until 1640.
History was no more kind to the Spanish who had grown rich from pillaging the Mayans in Central America. In response to acts of British piracy, Spain assembled its mighty armada and set sail into the English Channel in 1588 with the stated goal of conquering England. A combination of bad weather and superior British tactics destroyed the armada. Ten years later, in 1598, Spain made a second attempt and sailed towards England with another armada to avenge the defeat of 1588. The fleet was caught in a storm off the coast of France and the bulk of it was swallowed up by the high seas.
These events unfolding as they did one after the other shattered the naval power of the once mighty Spaniards and the Portuguese. The Iberians had ruled the high seas in the Atlantic and in the Indian Ocean since the discovery of America in 1492. The papal award of 1494 had given the Americas to the Spaniards and Asia to the Portuguese. Using their mastery of the seas, and their knowledge of ship-mounted cannon, the Spaniards had enslaved the Americas and Portugal had destroyed the Muslim trading colonies around the rim of the Indian Ocean. These were devastating blows from which Spanish rulers did not recover. Spain was so weakened by its naval losses in 1588 and 1598 that it lost its position as the dominant global naval power. Portugal did not recover from its defeat at al Qasr al Kabir in 1588. The decline of the Iberian powers created an opportunity for the North European powers of England and the Netherlands.
The modern history of Indonesia begins in the year1602 in the Dutch city of Amsterdam. It was the year when a group of enterprising investors met and founded the Vereennigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) or the Dutch East India Company. This was a strategic business decision at a most opportune historic moment. After a protracted struggle, Holland had won its independence from Spain (1570). Amsterdam was a naval shipyard for Spain during their occupation. After the departure of the Spanish, the technology and trained manpower in Amsterdam provided the infrastructure for Dutch ship building. Holland rose and for half a century was the undisputed master of the seas.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
