Kayeli

Kayeli on Buru became a centre of Dutch control through the enforced concentration of coastal communities. On 2 October 1658 the VOC concluded an agreement with captured local leaders: they were to accept exclusive alliance with the company, destroy prohibited clove trees and move their villages to a fort at Kayeli. The Dutch also promised that the Muslim inhabitants would not be harassed over their religion.

A temporary fort was built that month, with twenty-four soldiers and four cannon. Thirteen separate village communities were established around it, retaining their own leaders while losing direct access to former trading partners and clove revenues. Kayeli remained the main Dutch administrative centre on the island. In 1824 a new colonial system divided Buru into regencies named after the ancestral villages displaced in 1658. Leaders resident at Kayeli became regents over those territories. Its political importance therefore grew from coercive resettlement and the conversion of displaced village leadership into colonial office.