Determining the Birth Date of Ternate

Ternate : Town,Island,Kingdom, City ?
      Before attempting to determine the birth date of Ternate, we must firs try to understand the meaning of the trem "ternate". The term is used to name a (1) town; (2) island; (3) kingdom, and now also (4) city. Form the meaning, now in which sense do we decide the birth date of Ternate ?

1. Town
     As the name of a town,  "Ternate" was only used since the years 1609 when VOC built the fort in the Melayu region bearing the name "Fort Oranje " and when Sultan Mudafar (1606-1627) built his royal palace not far from the fort. Since then,the town which flourished around the fort and the palace was know by the name of Ternate until now
 2. Island

     However,simultaneously,since the era of the Dutch ruling (beginning og the 17 th century) until now, the term ternate is also used as geographical term that refers to an island in The North Moluccas archipelago. The Portuguese documents sice the 16 th century had also reffering the term of ternate for the name Island.
3.  Kingdom
     However, in several literatur or "historical tales",and also in folklores, the term Ternate was used as the name for a kingdom. The term in the sense was also used used by historians in the 18 th century named Fr.Valentijn, or A. Bastian in the 19 th century. The portuguese and the Dutch also used the term Ternate within the context of a kingdom, as well as an island.
4.  City
     On April 27 1999, an act for the city status of Ternate was issud. The region of the consist of the entire Ternate Island and several other small island beyond.
5.  Conclusion

     To decide on the birthday of Ternate,of course we could not base it on the construction of the Fort Oranje in 1609,even though the date is important within the reference of the Ternate city nowadays. We also could not rely on the date of the construction of the Portuguese Fort San jao Bautista which was completed on February 15 1523. Both dates were in fact very closely related wth the development of two towns 9ternate and Gamalama), yet both dates are part of the colonial history, or the activities undertaken consciously by the colonizers in the past.

      We must search for a certain date that refers to the history of Indonesia that is the actions undertaken by the Indonesians in the past,in this case the actions or activities rendered by the ternatens themselves. Speaking in the context, the issue date of the act on Ternate as a City has an interisting point, since it goes wll wtih the definition of history as stated above. However, if we limit the scope back to 1999 only, we have in fact neglected the long history of Ternate. Since birth date usually happened in the past, there fore to define the birth date of Ternate we have to deal with history and sources of history. To be Contuined............Part II

Sumber : R.Z. Leirissa