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Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Alfred Russel Wallace and the Wallacea Wakatobi - Indonesia, 10–13 November 2013 TAPROBANICA, ISSN 1800–427X. May, 2015. Vol. 07, No. 03: pp. I–X. © Research Center for Climate Change, University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia www.taprobanica.org THE TERNATE OF ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE Sangkot Marzuki1 and Syamsir Andili2 1, 2 The Wallacea Foundation, c/o Indonesian Academy of Sciences, Jl. Medan Merdeka Selatan 11 Gedung A, Jakarta, Indonesia 1 An Executive Director of The Wallacea Foundation, and President of the Indonesian Academy of Sciences; E-mail: [email protected] 2 An avid student of Alfred Russel Wallace’s life in Ternate, and served as Mayor of the city of Ternate for 14 years, from 1996 to 2010; E-mail: [email protected] Abstract The island-city of Ternate, the original spice island of the Moluccas archipelago in today’s Indonesia, has a special place in the life story of Alfred Russel Wallace. It was from here he sent out his two legendary scientific publications that established him as co-founder of the theory of evolution with Charles Darwin, and as father of biogeography. What was Ternate like in the second half of the 19th century? Where did Wallace reside during his time there? And what did his house look like? This report documents the results of our enquiry into these questions and proposes that his house be reconstructed and used as a local Alfred Russel Wallace and the Wallacea museum. Key words: Science history, Indonesian archipelago, evolution, Wallace Line, Wallacea Introduction Survival of the fittest as the basis of the early in January 1858 (Wallace, 1905). This evolution of life forms is perhaps the Ternate paper (Wallace, 1858), On the greatest scientific discovery of the 19th Tendency of Varieties to Depart century. Alfred Russel Wallace wrote his Indefinitely from the Original Type, read at essay that described his thoughts on the the Linnean Society in London on 1st of survival of the fittest as the basis of natural July 1858, prompted Darwin to complete selection in the evolution of life forms in his better known book, On the Origin of Ternate, not long after he first arrived there Species, published the following year. I TAPROBANICA VOL. 07: NO. 03 Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Alfred Russel Wallace and the Wallacea Wakatobi - Indonesia, 10–13 November 2013 Alfred Russel Wallace’s description of the (AIPI), together with The Wallacea imaginary line between the islands of Bali Foundation (TWF), the Indonesian Institute and Lombok and Kalimantan and Sulawesi, of Sciences (LIPI) and the City of Ternate, which separates two different faunas and organized the symposium to commemorate floras as different as those of Europe and the 150th anniversary of Wallace’s historic North America and those of South America Ternate paper on evolution and to celebrate and Africa, is similarly monumental in the Indonesia’s biodiversity (Holden, 2009). history of biogeography. Although his The International Symposium was held in thoughts on this were already taking shape Makassar from the 10th to the 13th of earlier while in Lombok (Wallace, 1905), it December 2008, but the pre-conference was in Ternate that he put together the seminar, the preliminary event, was paper, On the Zoological Geography of the organized in Ternate ten days prior to the Malay Archipelago, describing his Symposium. observations (Wallace, 1859). This seminal paper in biogeography was presented at the It was during the preparation of this pre- Linnean Society on the 3rd of November conference seminar that a remarkable story 1859. The region between this Wallace emerged from two Ternate medical doctors, Line and Papua in the east, is known as Dr. Ahmad Nadjib Aziz and Dr. Mochtar Wallacea after his name, and is one of the Zein Pattiha. They believe a house in the world hotspots of biodiversity. Santiong area of Ternate is the site of the former residence of Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace’s house in Ternate, his base for Dr. Ahmad Nadjib Aziz, in particular, who three years, from his first arrival on the 8th grew up in the very neighborhood of the of January 1858 to his last departure on house, recounted a story of how a Japanese New Year’s Day of 1861, is an important engineer who lived in the house during the monument of history. Wallace himself Japanese occupation of Indonesia in the fondly recalled spending many happy days second world war, told people that it was in the house. He wrote that returning to it the residence of a famous British naturalist after three or four months of expeditions almost a century earlier. The old house is exploring other islands of today’s eastern no longer there, replaced by a Indonesia, “I enjoyed the unwonted contemporary building. Following a quick luxuries of milk and fresh bread, and assessment of its location and surrounding regular supplies of fish and eggs, meat and area, the City of Ternate announced the vegetables, which were often sorely needed house in Santiong was the likely site of to restore my health and energy.” Further, Wallace’s house during his three years of “I had ample space and convenience for residence in Ternate (Holden, 2009). We unpacking, sorting, and arranging my were most aware; however, that more solid treasures, and I had delightful walks in the evidence, assembled and documented in a suburbs of the town …” (Wallace, 1868). completely independent way, was needed to support this position1, and immediately The work described in this communication started the work reported in this was conceived during a preliminary event communication. to an International Symposium on Alfred Russel Wallace and The Wallacea in 2008. The Indonesian Academy of Sciences ___________________________________________________________________________ 1 This is important, as a house in the domain of the Sultan of Ternate, and belonging to the royal family, has for many years been celebrated as the former residence of Alfred Russel Wallace. The controversies are discussed in a later section of this communication. III TAPROBANICA VOL. 07: NO. 03 Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Alfred Russel Wallace and the Wallacea Wakatobi - Indonesia, 10–13 November 2013 We have since presented and discussed the Ternate in recent years, from a sleepy progress of our work and findings in Dutch colonial regional administration various lectures, seminars and symposia on town of the late 19th century to the major Alfred Russel Wallace and the Wallacea. trading and contemporary capital city of the Here we present our story of Wallace’s Indonesian Province of North Maluku, Ternate in a more formal way, as our nearly all the roads and streets of the contribution to the commemoration of the 1890’s are clearly recognizable in the centenary of his death. current map of Ternate (Fig. 1b). Ternate today and then This discovery was critical to our strategy, We decided on a strategy that markedly as a close survey of the very much differs from previous attempts to discover expanded city, as outlined at the bottom of Wallace’s Ternate house, which had relied Figure 2, confirmed our notion that most of mostly on finding an existing house that fits the old buildings have been demolished and the description in his book, The Malay replaced, particularly in the former Dutch Archipelago, in the vicinity of an Old section of the city, at the edge of which Portuguese (or Dutch) fort (Severin, 1997 Wallace’s house was located (Wallace, and Wilson, 2000 for examples). Instead, 1868). A typical example is the very center we started our investigation with the of the Dutch administration along the beach assumption that, considering the rapid road in 1890 (Fig. 1a), shown in Figure 2a development of Ternate in the last four as it looked in 1880. While the pier across decades, the original house might not exist from the Residency office has been rebuilt anymore. We reasoned that Wallace following its collapse in 1963, none of the provided sufficient clues in The Malay old buildings, including the Resident’s Archipelago (Wallace, 1868) about the house, remain in existence (Fig. 2b, c). location of his Ternate house, that it should Instead, they have been replaced by be possible to determine its location amongst others the two story office of the provided a period street-map of the old District Attorney and the large town of Ternate was available. contemporary office of the Governor of North Maluku. In comparison, the Kedaton While our search for such a map had not (Palace) of the Sultan of Ternate and the been successful, an excellent street map of Makassarese quarter nearby, as well as Fort Ternate (Fig. 1a) could be found in a book Oranje and the Chinese district, have been by F.S.A. de Clercq published in 1890 (de relatively well-conserved. Clercq, 1890). Although this book was published 30 years after Wallace left In Search of the Ternate House of Alfred Ternate at the very end of 1860, we Russel Wallace propose it is unlikely that the town had The Ternate of 1890 (de Clercq, 1890), as it changed much during the interval. This was thirty years earlier (Wallace, 1868), notion is supported by de Clercq’s own was divided into distinct quarters. The introductory statement that while “many center of the colonial administration generations of people have lived and died consisted of three parallel roads (Fig. 1a), in Ternate, each leaving its mark to a the longest of which ran along the beach greater or lesser extent on the small land, where the office and residence of the Dutch yet the region has been so little altered by Resident were to be found.

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