Our series on Secessions takes us to the South Moluccas, a region of Indonesia that declared secession in 1950 and was in part independently administered until 1963.
The Dutch Netherlands were a vast archipelago made up of many different ethnic groups and religious denominations. As the Netherlands lost grip over that vast land, the survival of that entity as a single nation was put to the test. Among the dissenting regions was the South Moluccas, in the Eastern part of the archipelago. Dutch presence in that region of the World was ancient, and a large part of the population had been converted to the Dutch Calvinist religion. These people were fearful of the predominantly Javanese and Muslim government of the newly formed Republic of Indonesia, and refused allegiance to the new entity. They formed a new government called the Republic of the South Moluccas based on the island of Ambon in April 1950. By November of that year, the Indonesian army had gained control of the island, but the secessionist government relocated to the neighbouring island of Seram, and guerilla warfare continued all the way to the early 1960s. Also, a significant part of the population moved to the Netherlands, and a government in exile based in that country is still in existence as of 2022.
The South Moluccas Secession
