The FIRST of these two developments was the introduction of a metal tradition apparently associable with the bronze of Dongson with its "ship-of-the-dead" cult. The cult itself is not attested further east than among the Asmat of Irian Jaya. For metals we find reflexes of three important protoforms, which are insofar remarkable, that they are not reflected in either Malay or Javanese and thus indicate that knowledge of metal was not introduced by either of these. The protoforms are: *ntiti "copper", *mamu / *maum "iron", and *buLauan "gold". The two former are practically restricted to East Indonesia. The form for gold apparently originally had the meaning "copper" or "bronze" when it was propagated, perhaps through trade contacts, from Taiwan through the Phillipines into Kalimantan and Sulawesi. In the Philippines and Sulawesi, it came to mean "gold", and it is under this meaning that it was dispersed throughout East Indonesia, and also in West Indonesia where, after having been mostly superceded by reflexes of *emas, it is only still attested on small islands to the west of Sumatra (Simalur, Sikhule), and in the interior of Kalimantan (Busang, Penihing). I reported on this in the publication of 1994.
The SECOND of the two developments alluded to above was Maluku's opening to the world market, initiating the integration of Maluku into a maritime network spanning the whole of Indonesia, based on the spice-trade which brought cloves from Ternate, Tidore, Mutir, Makian and Bacan, and nutmeg from Banda to the region of the Strait of Malacca, from where it was transported further to India and China. Although Malay-speakers (for the greater part apparently negrito Orang Lauts rather than nuclear Malays themselves) can be shown to have played a major role in the trade, it seems to have been Malukuans (more especially Central Malukuans) who originally did the first lap of the transportation and thus actually initiated the trade. The reasons for this assumption are too lengthy to include here, I reported them in my 1994 publication. Originally, the spices seem to have been transported by Malukuans to somewhere in North Sulawesi or the Sangir-Talaud Islands, from where they were further transported by Malay speakers to the Strait of Malacca and from here to India and China. Malays themselves probably didn't start sailing all the way to Maluku until the 6th or 7th centuries.
Two things seem to be important for us here in connection with the latter development: FIRST, it brought first iron and onyx beads (the latter originating from India) to North Halmahera, where they have been uncovered in recent archaeological diggings led by Peter Bellwood in layers dated to the 2nd century BC. This agrees beautifully with my own dating of first introduction of cloves to India and China in the 2nd century BC based on historiographic sources (in my 1994 publication), and thus gives us the date of the second of the two metal-age heralding developments. Trade is always characterized by movement in two, mutually opposed directions: when values move from A to B, then equivalent values must move from B to A. With the appearance of cloves from North Halmahera in India, and onyx beads from India in North Halmahera, the existence of trade between the two points on the globe since the second century BC can thus be said to be established.
SECOND, the contact with Old Malay shipping apparently led to the introduction of the Old Malayan canted rectangular sail (replacing the more original triangular two-boom sail of the Austronesians) in East Indonesia. From here it was furthered into Oceania till as far as the Bismarcks and Nissan Island in North PNG, and to the Luisiade Islands in South PNG., together with the use of double outrigger boats (otherwise outrigger boats of Oceania, just like those of South India, are single outrigger boats). This seems to reflect contacts carried out by Malukuans. Linguistic data exist, suggesting that North Halmaherans sailed through the Torres Straits to the Gulf of Papua. This seems to have been the last instances of contact between Maluku and Melanesia (other than Irian Jaya), having taken place at a time when Maluku was already tied as integral and active part of the Pan-Indonesian maritime trade-routes system.
As for Irian Jaya, Central Malukuans apparently introduced the words for metals to the Cendrawasih Bay area. Sometime later, Tidore (North Maluku) spread its suzerainty over part of Vogelkop, Cendrawasih Bay and Sarmi Coast. Earliest recorded West Indonesian contact with Irian Jaya dates to the 14th century AD, when the Onin region is mentioned in Prapanca's Nagarakrtagama as a vassal territory of the emperor of Majapahit. The name of the territory is given as Wanin (Old Javanese -wa- regularly corresponds to -o- of the modern language).
Before we however proceed to the final post-contact period, there are still two points which I believe are of importance for evaluating the culture relationship between Maluku and Melanesia, dating from the pre-contact period.
FIRST, is the characterization of the form of trade contacts within the respective regions. Maritime contact and trade is a fundamental feature of Austronesian culture. The nature of trade activities and contacts kept up by an Austronesian community is therefore an important moment in the characterization of its tradition and culture. In Melanesia, particularly Papua-New Guinea, a particular ritualized form of trade developed in pre-contact times, in which one or two ethnic communities specialize in carrying out periodic trading expeditions to and between other communities involved in the tradition, in which particular items of either utilitarian or symbolic value are contributed or received by each respective community. In the Gulf of Papua, it is carried out by the Motu and is known as the Hiri. In Kiriwina (a.k.a. Trobriands) it is known as the Kula, being the first to have been described (in Malinowski's "Argonauts of the Western Pacific"). Similar ritualized trading ring organizations are or were operative practically around the entire PNG coast.
It seems very likely to me, that comparable trade rings existed in East Indonesia, and remnants or relicts may perhaps still be traceable in some places in Southeast Maluku and East Nusatenggara or on the Irian Jaya coast. However, since Maluku became involved in the Pan-Indonesian maritime trade network, the prevailing form of trade was that of exchange of wares for metal money (silver) at markets or emporiums (originally, "leaves" of silver were cut to the adequate size to meet the concrete payment to be made. At what date coinage entered the market I cannot tell off hand). In Malay, which was the prevailing language on the trade routes since apparently already the 2nd century BC, the word originally used for money silver was salaka (a word of Indic origin). In the 3rd or 4th century AD, during the period of Funan hegemony on the South China Sea, it was superceded by pirak / perak apparently originating from Khmer prak "silver". The word for silver, which became widespread in Maluku and even in languages of the Cendrawasih Bay, are reflexes of salaka, thus testifying not only to the antiquity of Maluku involvement in the trade, but also to the antiquity of the development of the more sophisticated silver-mediated form of trade in the region. It was introduced here earlier than in the Philippines, where the respective word for money/silver generally reflects pirak (it is possible, however, that gold as money-bullion was circulating in some areas before Malay speakers started sailing through the Philippines in the 3rd-4th century AD).
SECOND, is the characterization of the degree of social stratification and political consolidation of the communities. In Micronesia and Polynesia, social stratification in pre-contact society was quite advanced, and had in several places already attained the sophistication of more or less preliminary stages of development of a despotic state. The Kingdom of Hawaii probably represented the most advanced development in pre-contact Oceania. In Melanesia, however, relatively egalitarian societies with at best rather marginal degrees of stratification prevailed.
In East Indonesia, particularly in Nusatenggara, developments similar to those in Polynesia probably date back quite far. The involvement of Maluku in the Pan-Indonesian maritime trade network, however, occasioned a new type of development here, which was quite different from that in any part of Oceania. This was a development which echoed the specific Old Malayan form of state, which I have found convenient to call the thalassocratic state (using a term introduced, I believe, by Oliver Wolter for the specific form of the state of Sri Vijaya). I shall not clutter up a lot of space with a description of that form of statecraft, but shall only concentrate on one aspect of its manifestation, which was echoed throughout the maritime trade network, and even maintained by the Dutch East India Company, leading even in the later period of liberal economic policy to a condition, described (I believe by Wertheim, but please correct me if wrong) as the dualistic system of social and economic development. It is the juxtapositioning of, on one side, culturally fairly sophisticated, wealthy, even mondane trading city-states of a despotic type, and of, on the other side, socially and economically relatively unsophisticated, more-or-less egalitarian societies being in some contact with or dependency to those first mentioned. This situation of sometimes quite extreme developmental contrast all over Indonesia has persisted well into the period of post-colonial independence, and still remains a source of sometimes quite serious social and economical antagonisms in all parts of the country to this day.
Now, let us enter the CONTACT period. Above, I refered to the development of metal-age culture and inclusion into the Pan-Indonesian maritime trade network as the first essential culturally alienating development in the relationship between Maluku and Melanesia. The beginnings of the contact and colonial period ushered in the SECOND ESENTIAL CULTURALLY ALIENATING DEVELOPMENT.
The central and determining factor here is that the principal colonial power in Melanesia was Britain, and in Maluku, just as in the rest of Indonesia, it was the Netherlands.
Both colonial administrations had a pronounced integrative effect within the respective regions, and already this conditions the alienation of the two regions from each other, because separate inward consolidation leads to more uniformality within, and to a more uniform contrast with whatever is outside. Due to the fact, that Indonesia had already reached a relatively advanced state of integrative development because of the Pan-Indonesian maritime trade network in the pre-colonial period, it also ended up with a more tightly integrated condition after colonial rule, compared with Melanesia. The greatly divergent degrees of integration at the beginning seem also to be the reason for the totally different kind of result: The uniting language or language-dialects of Melanesia are pidginized forms of English (the language of the colonial administrator), i.e. Tok Pisin and Bislama. In Indonesia, where such a language already existed in the pre-colonial period, that langauge, Malay, was retained, only having become even more extensively appliable throughout the country. In this, Maluku played a crucial role in those further steps of development of Malay as unifying language of communication which characterized the colonial period. But this is best inspected in some more detail when discussing the position of Maluku within Indonesia. Although some languages in Melanesia had already attained some regional significance as language of communication (e.g. Motu in Southern PNG), they did not have a chance to suddenly cover the entire area of Melanesia encompassed by adminsitration by the same administrator.
In the economic and cultural development too, the integrative processes operating during the colonial and also post-colonial period have tied the East Indonesian communities more tightly within an overall Indonesian network. Thus for instance Ambonese (who have a relatvely high average degree of education by Indonesian standards), but also other East Indonesians can be found all over the country (that is, also e.g. in West Indonesia) as teachers, university lecturers, publicists, doctors, and in other intellectual occupations with "socially helpful" functions. A comparable exchange across the border to Melanesia, of course, does not exist.
In SUMMARY, therefore, one can in my opinion discern three large periods:
(1) the earliest prehistoric period with its to-and-fros of developments
having either converging or diverging effects;
(2) the metal-age period in the West, leading to a first fundamental
divergence between the two regions; and
(3) the contact and colonial period, which hammered the final nail into
the coffin of Maluku-Melanesian integration.
But apart from all the divergences, there remains of course one basic feature, which unites the people of Melanesia and that of Maluku, and actually also all the people of the world, and that is that they are all parts of mankind, of humanity. They are all human.