In the 1840s, Sir James Brooke arrived in South Sulawesi (now Indonesia). More specifically, he arrived in the Muslim kingdom of Wajoq, a tiny country the size of Luxembourg which remained independent until 1906. With some wonder he reported (emphasis original):
Amid all the nations of the East — amid all the people professing the Mahometan religion, from Turkey to China, — the Bugis [the ethnicity that inhabits Wajoq and nearby areas] alone have arrived at the threshold of recognised rights, and have alone emancipated themselves from the fetters of despotism.
Brooke was a man of his times, so his account still falls into the Eurocentric misconceptions - neither the Ottoman empire nor Qing China would be described as 'Oriental despotism' by modern scholars, while elsewhere Brooke claims that Wajoq in the 1840s is roughly equivalent to the Low Countries in the High Middle Ages. But his overall assessment remains unchallenged; the 'constitutional monarchy' of Wajoq was indeed a striking example of 'emancipation from despotism.'
For context, let's discuss how the Wajoqnese government actually functioned.
Wajoq was essentially a confederation of smaller polities that recognized the authority of the Arung Matoa (lit. 'Senior Lord'), who is generally called the King of Wajoq.^1 The Arung Matoa was advised by three ministers (men or women), each representing one of three territorial divisions of Wajoq, and by three military commanders (Bate lompo, lit. 'Great Banner,' named after the war-banners under their command; the three were respectively titled the Scarlet, the Multi-colored, and the Yellow Banner). These six were collectively called the 'Six Lords.' Each of the Six Lords were at least as powerful as the Arung Matoa himself, and together they formed the highest body of Wajoqnese government, the ruling council (Petta Wajoq).
Besides this group of seven, there were twelve judges (arung mabbicara), eighteen deliberators/advisers (arung padokki-rokki), and three 'messengers' (suro) whose role was to transmit official decrees within Wajoq and to deal with embassies to foreign kingdoms.
These people - the seven members of the Petta Wajoq, the twelve judges, the eighteen advisers, and the three messengers - made up the Council of Forty. The Forty rarely met, most day-to-day matters being dealt with by the Petta Wajoq (especially since every member of the Forty had to agree on a decision, making the process cumbersome), but their word was final on all subjects. Perhaps most importantly, the Forty elected the Arung Matoa unanimously.
There were also three officials called the punggawa, who served as intermediaries between the people and the state. It was the punggawa who had the right to decide whether a matter could be dealt with by the Petta Wajoq alone, or whether it needed the attention of the Forty. When the Forty could not reach unanimity, the punggawa could convene the respected elders of the general population so that they could offer their advice.
The government was extremely flexible. The Forty were regularly missing a few people here and there, and when Brooke arrived there hadn't even been an Arung Matoa for six (!) years. The Arung Matoa could also be replaced "if the people no longer want the Arung Matoa"; so we know of Arung Matoa that were kicked out because they went blind, because they were blamed for epidemics, for personal misconduct, etc.
Okay, so that covers the bases. Now let's discuss how the Wajoqnese viewed their relationship with the state.
Yes, Wajoq is free. Or at least, that's what they say in a Wajoqnese chronicle:
The people of Wajoq are free; free from birth. Only their land is subject [to the state], the owners of the land are all free. Their only master is the customary law which is agreed consensually.
So here we have the idea that the legitimacy of customary law derives from consensus. So what if the Arung Matoa, or even the Forty, decides to go against popular consensus? Our sources have the answer:
One may contest the decision of the Arung [Matoa], but not that of the council. One may contest the decision of the council, but not that of the elders. One may contest the decision of the elders, but not that of mutual accord [of the people].^2
That is, popular consensus trumps everything - the individual voice of the Arung Matoa, the collective voice of the Council, the venerated voice of the elders. And a ritual performed during the coronation of the Arung Matoa makes it clear that the Arung Matoa's legitimacy ultimately derives from his people. During this ritual, the Arung Matoa would say:
I am not worthy to be appointed ruler of Wajoq, for I am stupid, fearful, poor, and weak.
The reply would be:
Simply accept the decision of [the people of] Wajoq, for Wajoq is clever, Wajoq is brave, Wajoq is rich, and Wajoq is strong.
What, then, must the Arung Matoa do in order to follow the will of his people and protect their freedom? As the ritual proceeds, this question is answered too. The Arung Matoa utters the following words:
I will not oppose your [the people's] will, I will not contradict your words, I will not forbid you from leaving or entering Wajoq; the door of Wajoq shall be open when you leave, the door of Wajoq shall be open when you return; it is your [own] legs which carry you abroad and it is your [own] legs which carry you back.
Later, another promise is made:
The people of Wajoq shall not be [punished] with their family, they shall not be [punished] without cause, nor shall they accept a decision against their will.
The Lontaraq Sukkuqna Wajoq, the main chronicle of Wajoq, provides another answer on how the people should be dealt with:
To secure freedom, only three things are decisive; firstly, not to interfere with people's wishes; secondly, not to forbid the expression of opinions; thirdly, not to prevent [people going] to the north, the west, the east, upstream or downstream. These are the freedoms of the people of Wajoq.
Here we have an affirmation of what we may, with some liberty, call 'civil rights', in a tiny country in a neglected and supposedly backward part of the world.
The values of many societies exclude a large segment of the population. This is the case in Wajoq as well. South Sulawesi society generally was divided into three castes (I'm calling them castes for convenience, but they have nothing to do with Indian castes; they're more similar to other Austronesian caste systems like Hawai'i's): nobility, freemen, and slaves.
The nobility were believed to be descended from divine celestial beings, and consequently have some "white blood" running in their veins. But since the nobility had sex with free commoners (and even slaves) so often, an elaborate classification system was invented to tell how much white blood a person had. This ironically led to a blurring in the distinctions between noble and non-noble freemen, since eventually virtually everyone would have at least a single drop of white blood. "The possibility of status mobility [was] thereby entrenched more firmly in the entire system."
Nowhere in South Sulawesi was social mobility greater than in Wajoq. To quote a 19th-century Dutch observer,
A fortune earned through diligent industry is worth more in [Wajoqnese] eyes than prestige and birth. For example, in Boné and other Bugis lands, marrying with a man of lower descent would cause a princess great shame; but in Wajoq, a man, even though not of royal birth, can marry a queen without compunction.
Nevertheless, the importance of white blood continued to remain crucial in the eyes of the Wajoqnese. So a largely red-blooded person would find it difficult (but not impossible) to gain a large following and become a person of political significance, while the Arung Matoa was chosen among the white-blooded nobility. The people of Wajoq may have been subject only to their customary law, but their customary law included caste and inequality.
The greater irony is that South Sulawesi, including Wajoq, was to a significant extent a slave society. By the early 19th century, an annual average of 3,000 slaves were exported from the peninsula. These numbers compare favorably to the number of slaves sold in the large slave ports in West Africa during the height of the Atlantic slave trade. In fact, our friend Brooke reported that "every freeman possesses, according to his means, a certain number of men or women who perform all the labour of tillage and domestic drudgery." Sure, "the people of Wajoq are free; free from birth" - except those ones who aren't.
So the irony of liberty in Wajoq is the enormous population who did not have the liberty to possess themselves. But in the end, this irony may have been responsible for Wajoq's otherwise remarkably liberal society; the distinction between tau maradeka (freemen) and ata (dependents; slaves) was so important as to make the distinctions within nobility, and between nobility and non-noble freemen, less relevant. One notices that the most hierarchic society in Indonesia, the Javanese, also had the least slaves. Coincidence? Perhaps, but perhaps not.
^1 Noorduyn, among the great historians of South Sulawesi, has gone so far as to call the Arung Matoa the "president" of Wajoq in his article "The Wajorese merchants community in Makassar" (2000).
^2 Some variants add "religion" (Islam) to the list.
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