[1] The strongly Catholic and Muslim identities of the combatants gave the struggle elements of a war of religion, although this aspect was frequently blurred by cross-faith alliances.

The Portuguese were eventually defeated in 1605 by an alliance between the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and Ternate, ending their active involvement in Moluccas affairs.

The Sultanate of Ternate was the most powerful realm in the Moluccas by the early 16th century and handled much of the lucrative spice trade.

[2] A first crisis erupted in 1530 when the Portuguese Captain arrested and executed the Ternatan regent Darwis on unproven accusations of treason.

The mother of the young Sultan Dayal reacted by withdrawing to a fortified place on the island, and forbade the people to deliver foodstuff to São João Baptista.

The new captain Vicente de Fonseca began to plot with the Ternatan grandee Pati Sarangi to get rid of the young monarch.

[3] The fugitive Dayal was active in fomenting a new alliance with the rulers Mir of Tidore, Alauddin I of Bacan and Katarabumi of Jailolo, in order to regain his throne.

Since the Sultan was active in the waterways, he could harass the vital deliveries of foodstuff from Moro in Halmahera to the Portuguese settlement and garrison in Ternate.

This act immediately triggered a violent uprising under his son Baab or Babullah who was proclaimed Sultan on Hiri Island, north of Ternate, and waged a holy war against the Portuguese.

The Portuguese troops under the command of captain Sancho de Vasconcellos could keep their Ambonese fortress with great difficulty, and lost much of their grip over the trade in cloves.

Although he forced Dom João to give up his Portuguese leanings in about 1575 and poisoned the ruler two years later, Babullah always had to count on the clandestine hostility of the Bacanese.

[18] On the whole, Babullah was nevertheless an extremely successful ruler who expanded his realm in all directions in eastern Indonesia and was known as the Lord of Seventy-two Islands.

[19] When Francis Drake visited Ternate during his circumnavigation in 1579, Babullah made efforts to ally with the English and suggested a joint attack against the Portuguese fort in Tidore.

This was rejected by Drake, though the Sultan gave him a ring as a token of friendship and held expectations of a future Anglo-Ternatan alliance.

[20] Babullah also made diplomatic forays towards the Muslim states of Aceh, Johore, Brunei and West Java, though no concrete enterprise came out of this.

Although the Spanish and Portuguese domains were administratively separated, Portugal asked for free economic and militar support, and a series of seaborne expeditions from Manila were launched in 1582, 1584, 1585, 1593 and 1603.

Being inveterate enemies of the Catholic Iberian monarchy, the Protestant seafarers seemed to be natural allies with Ternate which, in spite of past victories, still perceived the Philippine colony as an acute threat.

[25] The swift Ternatan and Dutch triumph was short-lived, since a large Spanish expedition under Pedro Bravo de Acuña was dispatched from Manila in 1606 and quickly overran Ternate.

This was followed by several decades of warfare and European colonial rivalry, until the Spanish finally decided to leave the Moluccas altogether in 1663.

The years around 1570 witnessed a coordinated onslaught on the Portuguese possessions in South and Southeast Asia by the Muslim states of the Deccan and Aceh with Ottoman backing.

In that way the process of colonial subordination of the region was significantly delayed, although the Dutch East India Company would strangle Malukan independence in the course of the 17th century.