Aru

The Aru are indigenous islanders of the Aru archipelago in southeast Maluku, some ninety-five low-lying islands in the Arafura Sea south of New Guinea, of mixed Austronesian and Papuan descent. Their egalitarian society grouped lineage clans into two ritual alliances, Ursia and Urlima, and they were long tied to Banda trade networks.

Islam took root in the west in the mid-seventeenth century. Portuguese and Spanish navigators sighted Aru from the 1520s, and in 1623 the Dutch East India Company contracted west-coast villages into trade in pearls, birds of paradise and slaves; a Dutch fort rose on Wokam in 1659.

Resentment of VOC monopolies fed the Maluku rebellion of Tidore prince Nuku: in 1787 Ujir's Muslims killed the Dutch garrison and made Nuku's brother Jou Mangofa their king, until Banda troops crushed the rising in 1791. Dutch influence returned only in 1824.