ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how the crisis developed and how Van Diemen succeeded in his object of appeasing the Christians and, for the time being, the territories in between, thus isolating his Ternatan enemy, kimelaha Leliato. It explores the factors that made the anti-Dutch front a failure. This reconstruction of the events and the developments will make ample use of a recently rediscovered manuscript giving a day-to-day account of Van Diemen’s expedition. During the government of kimelaha Hidayat, 1619–1623, local Ternatan authority in the Ambon Islands chose a clear anti-Dutch policy. All the cases of linkage between kimelaha Leliato and the anti-Dutch groups of Ambon and Lease concerned alliance and not subjugation. Relatively “warm” alliances were those between the rebels of Haruku and Nusalaut and those of the western corner of the island of Ambon.
