A short introduction: I'm /u/PangeranDipanagara, this subreddit's most active Southeast Asia expert. I am not a professional historian, but I have had a deep interest in the history of Indonesian societies for some time. This is my first AMA, hope I don't mess it up and it turns out to be at least somewhat interesting.
Note: Due to living on the other side of the earth as most of you folks, I will probably be asleep from around 11 AM EST to 7 PM EST. Feel free to ask as many questions as you want and I'll get to them in the morning (evening EST).
E: Going to bed now. See you tomorrow!
E: I'm back!
The peninsula of South Sulawesi is an oft-neglected corner of eastern Indonesia. After all, it is significantly smaller than West Virginia, its GDP is around that of Rhode Island, and it harbors no tourist magnets like neighboring Java or Bali. The only modicum of attention the area ever receives on this site is for having a gender system that seems peculiar to Western eyes, and to which Redditors show an astonishing lack of respect.
Yet the peninsula has one of the most diverse histories in Indonesia. South Sulawesi's history is first and foremost a narrative of change. It was a time and place when simple rice-farming chiefdoms became, within just three hundred years, "sophisticated, literate polities with a working knowledge of ballistics and the Galilean telescope." But on the darker side, it was also a time and place when the little peninsula exported as many slaves as the largest West African slave ports.
South Sulawesi's history is also a tale of old customs standing their ground in the face of unremitting change. In this deeply Muslim land, "third gender" shamans blessed pilgrims to Mecca, the nobility regularly elected women as rulers, and the I La Galigo--a pre-Islamic epic that is one of the longest works of literature in the world, far longer than even the Mahabharata--was recited. And despite all that had changed between 1300 and 1800, people in the peninsula held by the values that glued their society together: siriq (self-worth) and pesse (sympathy).
And South Sulawesi's history is finally a story of resistance and perseverance--a story of a great king asking the Dutch if they were "of the opinion that God has reserved these islands, so removed from your nation, for your trade alone," a story of exiles founding kingdoms two thousand miles away and of sailors toiling the long routes to Australia.
This AMA is about that history.
To help with any readers introduced to Sulawesi or Indonesian history for the first time, a very brief (>3000 character) synopsis of this AMA's topic. Gross generalizations will be unavoidable.
Most of the kingdoms that mark South Sulawesi's Early Modern history emerged as agricultural chiefdoms focused on intensive rice-farming around 1300, though newer research is pushing up the dates into the 13th century. Many of these polities were probably loose confederations of villages; others had hereditary chiefs with claims to divine descent but with limited power. There was no writing and no bureaucracy to speak of.
From the 15th century onward and increasingly in the 16th century, agricultural intensification and the growth of foreign commerce propelled the stratification and territorial expansion of chiefdoms. Writing was adopted around this time as well. By the mid-1500s most of the peninsula had been united by the kingdom of Gowa with its fertile rice fields, great foreign trade, and incipient bureaucracy.
Gowa completed its unification of South Sulawesi in the first decade of the 1600s with its formal adoption of Islam and its conquest of its neighbors under the justification of spreading the new faith. Supported by immense volumes of trade--its capital and main port was home to more than 100,000 people--Gowa then embarked on a rapid campaign of overseas expansion and created the largest maritime empire in eastern Indonesian history. Yet Gowa's hegemony was short-lived; in the Makassar War of 1666-1669, the Dutch East India Company allied with South Sulawesi rebels to shatter Gowa's power.
The leader of said rebels, Arung Palakka, indirectly ruled the entire peninsula as a most faithful ally of the Dutchmen until his death in 1696. His successor proved unable to carry on his legacy, and South Sulawesi's 18th-century history is marked by great wars as no kingdom proved able to gain dominance over the peninsula. Not even the Dutch--who maintained a few forts here and there following the Makassar War--could maintain control, and indeed the VOC (Dutch East India Company) steadily lost authority in the 18th century.
But the century was not all doom and gloom. Literacy seems to have expanded, although almost no research has been done on this. South Sulawesi traders and warriors took to the seas in unprecedented numbers, supported by indigenous Indonesia's most sophisticated credit system. Some people went southeast and made regular contact with Australia; others went northwest and founded a long-lasting Sulawesi-derived dynasty in the heart of the Malay world.
In the year 1800, despite the wars and the slave trade, South Sulawesi remained a vibrant center of indigenous civilization. Indeed, it would remain so for a century after 1800 until 1906, when the Dutch colonial government extinguished the last independent kingdoms on the peninsula. But that is beyond the scope of our AMA.
South Sulawesi traders and warriors took to the seas in unprecedented numbers, supported by indigenous Indonesia's most sophisticated credit system.
Could you expand on this?
Thanks for doing this AMA.
Where are the archives and records for this period found? How extensive are they and what condition are they in?
What was South Sulawesi's relationship with the Spice Islands and with the spice trade?
What would a South Sulawesi army, say one of Gowa, look like? What type of weapons and armor are used, how much cavalry is there, how would the soldiers have become soldiers?
a story of exiles founding kingdoms two thousand miles away and of sailors toiling the long routes to Australia.
What were the Sulawesi sailors doing in Australia?
In your synopsis, you say that literacy seems to have expanded during the upheaval of the 18th century.
What form does literature take in that century? Is it written in Arabic or Malay or another language? Was there a locally developed writing system, or would they be using an arabic ajami, or roman letters?
You mention that women could be elected as rulers. What do we know about gender roles outside the ruling class? Could women participate in activities like trade or were their economic activities limited to domestic production?
How did South Sulawesi's states relate to the other peninsulas of the Island? To the interior of the center? Looking at the geography of the Island I would assume a lot of transportation was by sea.
With the mass adoption of writing, has anyone done research/what do you know about the literature/literary culture? What sort of things were people writing, etc. What sort of oral tradition was there before that?
What was 18th-Century South Sulawesian society like? Was it mostly rural, or were there urban centers? What were those urban centers like? Were populations mostly coastal, or was there significant settlements in the interior? How "deep" would Dutch/Western culture have penetrated?
A few questions about the slave trade: who were they selling, and who were they selling them to? Are there still coherent diaspora communities?
Thanks for doing this!
According to wikipedia, between the 15th to 19th centuries, South Sulawesi served as the gateway to the Maluku Islands. What do we know about relations between South Sulawesi and Maluku? Were they mostly economical/ focused on trade, or was there also cultural exchange taking place?
Do we know of European reactions when encountering female rulers? For example regarding the Bugis ruler who led a revolt against the Dutch at the time of the Napoleonic Wars (which might have been perceived of as unusual in this region).
This has been a super fascinating read, thanks. I know you've listed a lot of sources but are there any great introductory books on either South Sulawesi or South East Asian history in general that you would recommend for further reading?
You mention agricultural intensification in the 15th and 16th centuries. What crops were grown, and in what way did agriculture change in this period?
Do the people of Sulawesi have any record of large volcanic eruptions? How did something like the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, or the 1257 eruption of Samalas affect institutions and life in general on Sulawesi (or other large eruptions if those are outside your scope)?
Do they have cultural traditions about how to respond to volcanoes and tsunamis? Could people farm that year? Did governments survive the crisis? Were their religious implications? Did the disruptions aid or disrupt Dutch or Portuguese imperialism?
I am curious about the internal relations between different groups within Sulawesi. My understanding is that on much of the Indonesian islands a very complex dynamic emerged between the upland groups and coastal groups, like the Dayak and Banjar of Borneo. What sort of internal relations were there in Sulawesi?
The Gowa state was centered in South Sulawesi, right? Were Palakka and his rebels coming from within the Sultanate, or were they sort of peripheral players (if that makes sense)? What instigated the rebellion, and how did Palakka/Dutch rule differ from the Sultanate?
Great post. My question is: what was the relationship between the Indonesian kingdoms in Sulawesi and the Siamese kingdoms of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya or the Khmer kingdoms? Were there trading missions or diplomatic relations and envoys between Indonesia and the mainland Indochina?
Did South Sulawesi send tribute missions to China? What were its official and unofficial relations with China like?
What were South Sulawesi's interactions with the Portuguese and Spanish like?
What was the linguistic situation like during your time period? Did it change much? What languages did the local people speak, and what were the three literary languages you spoke of?
Did the South Sulawesi either engage in or were victims of piracy and coastal raids? To what extent?
Most of the kingdoms that mark South Sulawesi's Early Modern history emerged as agricultural chiefdoms focused on intensive rice-farming around 1300
What was happening in Sulawesi before 1300? What was the area's relationships with Javanese empires prior to 1300?
Beside language, is there any known link between the Sulawesi people and Madagascar people?