The Makassar Malays: Adaptation and Identity, @1660-1790

By Heather Sutherland

Extensive trade networks and Islam shaped Malay identity. The Dutch conquest of Makassar (1666-69) compelled the Malays there to redefine themselves, mastering new trade routes, political arenas and social alliances. During the eighteenth century they both evaded and exploited ethnic classification, as their enforced focus on regional commerce and integration into port society encouraged localisation.

Ethnic classification was central to both the description and the administration of Asian portcities. [1] Local rulers and, later, colonial officials classified their subjects, delegating authority over them to the dominant men within each community.But reality was less categorical. Intercommunal commercial, sexual and social relationships were inevitable and often advantageous, so sorting out goats from sheep was far from easy. Flocks were mixed, hybrids abounded. Theoretically ascribed status was, as everywhere else, undermined by human ingenuity. Relationships were pliable, and they determined social identity. Transethnic family ties could be created by adoption, concubinage or marriage, while switching allegiance between patrons entailed, by definition, changing sets of duties, rights and privileges. Skills were highly sought after, and kings might recruit Turkish gunners, Chinese miners, Portuguese interpreters or Gujerati harbour-masters to strengthen their realms. Slaves from all over Asia were incorporated into households.Preference, opportunism and strategic considerations also encouraged people to exploit whatever flexibility there was in less hierarchical communal ties. For the officials of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which gradually extended its influence over much of maritime Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such protean local politics were far too unpredictable. They struggled to manage the unruly native inhabitants of their settlements by imposing a fixed grid, and people were expected to stay in their assigned ethnic boxes. The history of the Makassar Malays in the long eighteenth century offers an excellent example of how the apparent continuity of an ‘ethnic community‘ could mask fundamental shifts. The Malays of Southeast Asia, heirs to the renowned maritime tradition of Srivijaya and Melaka, enjoyed considerable prestige. [2] Their ancestral territory fringed one of the world‘s main trading arteries, the Straits of Melaka, and their consequent expertise underpinned their extraordinary influence. Islamic since the early fifteenth century,Melaka was not just a magnet for traders from China, India,Europe and Southeast Asia; it also provided the archetype of the ideal Malayo-Muslim polity. Its capture first by the Portuguese in 1511, and then by the Dutch in 1641, caused the torch of Malay pride to pass to sultanates such as Aceh and Johor,while traders fled to independent ports. [3]

The resulting Malay refugee communities, including that at Makassar, could draw upon collective commercial know-how and Islamic credentials. These enhanced their ability to access protection, products and markets in palaces and coasts from the Straits ofMelaka and Cambodia to the Philippines and West Papua. The Malay language was a recognised lingua franca of trade and diplomacy (alongside Portuguese), and was also central to burgeoning Islamic court cultures. Makassar, on the southwest peninsula of Sulawesi (Celebes), was home-port and political centre of the Goa-Tallo‘ polity. Since the early sixteenth century it had developed as a multi-ethnic port, sheltering a cosmopolitan court, floating populations of seafarers and various diaspora communities. Both Makassar‘s rapid rise to success in the sixteenth century and its subsequent subjugation (in the 1660s) by the Dutch East India Company were driven by its crucial role in the spice trade. Commercial revenues strengthened the court, and in return elite patronage and protection sustained commerce.

This virtuous circle was broken with the coming of the VOC.Makassarese kings were replaced by Company officials, and access to spices was denied, disrupting the entire system. New constellations of power and wealth gradually emerged, with Buginese Bone replacing Makassar as the paramount regional kingdom. Economic reorientation was a painful process, and only towards the mid-eighteenth century did a strong new commercial thrust emerge with the export of seaproducts to China. Role redefinition was particularly acute in the case of the Malays, as they made the transition from fierce opponents of Dutch encroachment to trusted allies of the Company. Nonetheless, they managed to maintain a strong economic position, where others fell back in the face of Chinese competition. These realignments were accompanied by the rise to dominance of one particular extended family. The following account of the Makassar Malays locates them in two arenas: trade and the town it self. We will begin by considering the character of Makassar‘s commerce and the early history of the Malay community before turning to the Dutch conquest.We will then trace their further history in sections entitled ‘Society and Settlement‘ and ‘Authority and Identity‘, before concluding with an assessment of Malay adaptation to Company rule, and of the ambiguities inherent in discussing ethnic communities.

Trade and early history

Makassar‘s development into an essential link in Southeast Asia‘s seventeenth-century trading system has been well described. [4] As Anthony Reid has observed:

It had a better environment to offer than other ports for the exchange of Moluccan spices, Indian cloth, Chinese metalwork and silks, Spanish-American silver, and Sumatran or Bornean pepper.What the traders who brought these goods required was security of life and property, on the one hand, and freedom of commercial and personal exchange on the other. [5]

Within limits, this is what the state known as ‘Makassar‘ provided. In Makassar terms, anyone from the west, including Javanese, was known as ‘Malay‘; even the stricter definition of Malay-speaking Muslims included Minangkabau from west Sumatera, and people from Patani, the Straits and coastal Sumatera and Kalimantan (Borneo). [6] Makassar‘s Malay traders were key handlers of Southwest Sulawesi‘s main exports (rice and slaves), and of the spices shipped from Maluku to the Straits of Melaka. They are also credited with inviting to Makassar the ulama (religious scholars) responsible for the decisive phase of Islamisation. Consequently, they were crucial to early seventeenth-century commercial expansion and conversion, and hence to the making of Makassar. The Malays‘ commercial acumen, seafaring skills, and frequent commitment to Islam frustrated and angered the monopolistic, Protestant Dutch based in Batavia.

On 24 September 1638 the VOC chief merchant, Hendrik Kerkering, sent his superiors a detailed account of Makassar. He described how European merchants were protected by the King, and noted that the local community of Malays was held ‘in high esteem, having their houses in the settlements scattered among the houses of the Makassarese‘. He described how the Malay fleet of around 25 to 40 ships, tingans and other large perahu built up into junks, used to leave Makassar for Buton in December, January and February loaded with textiles, rice, porcelain and especially rijksdaalder (rixdollar) coins. There they exchanged cloth for slaves before proceeding to Ambon, where they would stay for about three months, trading for cloves until September.He estimated that they would bring as much as 1,000 bahar (c.182,000 kg) of spices back to Makassar, of which the English might buy 400 and the Danes 150-200. The rest (about 300 bahar in 1638) was traded by the Malays as far away as Aceh and Melaka in the west, or sold to the Portuguese and then taken to Indian Goa, and to Manila. According to Kerkering the amount remaining in Makassar itself was not more than about 11 bahar, while the year before (1637) it had been about 450. [7] The traditional spice trade between West and East Indonesia, in which Makassar played a crucial role, was already feeling the cold wind of Dutch intervention.

Dutch East India Company agents like Kerkering reported regularly on the Malay traders in Makassar, who linked Melaka, Cambodia, Aceh, Johor, Batavia, Banjarmasin, Nusa Tenggara, Maluku,Manila and Sulu. [8] However, the impressive extent of trading networks should not blind us to their limitations. In the 1650s only three Asian merchants were deemed able to outfit ships in Makassar; one of them was Ince Assam, a Malay; the other two were Indian Muslims. [9] A listing of captains involved in the trade to Maluku and Nusa Tenggara in 1658 showed that while Bandanese and Makassarese had more shipping on those routes than did the Malays, their vessels were mere ‘coast-hugging creepers‘. It was only Ince Assam‘s perahu of 15 last (7.5 tonnes) and thirty crew members which could remotely approach the volume of the two 15 tonne galleys belonging to the Portuguese Francisco Viera or the large tingan of the Moor (Indian Muslim) Mapulle –the two most famous merchants of seventeenth-century Makassar. [10]

The first official settlement of the Malays in Makassar had been established in 1561, when the Malay skipper Anakoda Bonang (Datuk Maharaja Bonang) brought gifts of textiles and weapons to the ruler of Goa, Karaeng Tunipalangga. In exchange the Malays were granted land on which to settle and limited self-government. The Karaeng asked only who was to be included among the Malays.Anakoda Bonang replied that the term Malay covered all those who wore a sarong sash, such as men from Pahang, Patani, Champa,Minangkabau and Johor. [11]

Datuk Maharaja Bonang‘s chief line of descent could be traced back to a Sayid (descendant of the Prophet) from Mekka, whose lineage ran down through the Malay centres of Aceh, Johor, Singapore and Patani, to a Wan Umar, who married a princess from Banjarmasin. Their descendants spread to Sumbawa, Bima and throughout South Sulawesi. According to tradition it was also Datuk ri Bonang who invited a Minangkabau ulama to Makassar,who was responsible for the court‘s Islamisation. [12] This must have enormously strengthened the prestige and influence of the Malays.

The Malays‘ position was further consolidated with the arrival in 1632 of a nobleman from Patani, Datuk Maharaja Lela; he was chosen as chief of the Makassar Malays. [13] By the midseventeenth century Malays were prominent in the life of the court. Ince Amin, a ‘Malay of Makassarese descent‘, was secretary to the ruler of Goa, and wrote a rhymed chronicle of the war between Goa and the VOC. This Sya‘ir Perang Mengkasar gives many examples of the diplomatic and military activities of the Makassar Malays, and confirms VOC accounts of their mediating role. The Sya‘ir also reveals Ince Amin‘s familiarity with Islamic mysticism and Malay literature. As his editor Skinner observes, as royal secretary – a kind of resident intellectual - Ince Amin would have been expected to contribute to court culture. [14] In his Sya‘ir Ince Amin celebrates the heroism of Datuk Maharaja Lela, as the Malays‘ political and military leader. The Datuk‘s descendants were to dominate the community for over 200 years, or, to adopt a slightly different perspective, those who later rose to power sought legitimation by establishing their connections to his lineage.

Conquest and trade

It was Datuk Maharaja Lela who led the Malay community through the traumatic period of the mid-seventeenth century. He pledged his support to the Goa ruler in the 1660-69 wars, which culminated in Makassar‘s defeat by a Dutch-Bugis alliance, led by the VOC‘s Admiral Speelman and the exiled Bone prince Arung Palakka. Ince Amin‘s Sya‘ir describes the fierce opposition of the local Malay community (segala Melayu anak peranakan); the well-armed Malay contingent was a significant force in Goa‘s struggle against the accursed Hollanders (Welanda saitan). [15]

Ince Amin‘s account of the important role of the Malays in battle is substantiated by other sources. Speelman himself told Batavia that dislodging the Malays with their firearms was a prerequisite for victory, remarking that they ‘were even more virulent enemies of the Company than the Makassar people themselves‘. [16] Leonard Andaya also notes the commitment and courage of the Malays fighting for Goa. [17] Malay ties with the implacably anti-Dutch chancellor of Goa, Karaeng Karunrung, and other royal clans such as that of Soppeng, also strengthened their opposition. Speelman described the Soppeng king as a ‘bitter Mohammedan very close to the Malays‘, whose Malay wife ‘with all her retinue, at least a hundred strong, and piles of baggage‘ took refuge from the fighting in the mosque within Goa‘s fort. [18] Among those prominent Malays who later refused to return to a Dutch-ruled Makassar after the defeat of Goa were the Johorese Ince Jabar, who was married to a Malay ex-wife of the Soppeng ruler, and Ince Amar, a Makassar-born Malay of Minangkabau descent, who was a close relative of the Malay wife of Kaicili‘ Kalimata, one of the main Makassarese war leaders. [19] No doubt there were many more.

Once defeat was inevitable, the Malays scattered throughout the straits between Kalimantan and Sulawesi, to Mandar and Pasir, to Nusa Tenggara, [20] and also to more local havens such as the forest near Maros and islands such as Masalambo and Sabutung. [21] After the Treaty of Bungaya had been signed, another wave of South Sulawesians and Malays fled, to continue their careers elsewhere. For the Malays, this meant commerce; for the Buginese, it often meant politics and war. [22]

A weak and humiliated Goa ruler remained in South Sulawesi. The victorious Arung Palakka established his court at Bontoalaq, the ancestral home of the Makassarese leaders, to the east of the now VOC-dominated port settlement. [23] The Dutch priority was to restore some normality to the town, and Speelman inventoried the remaining inhabitants, assessing the various communities‘ potential contribution to rebuilding. His list included the Malays in Makassar, some thirty-three men. The largest group, eleven, came from West Sumatra, six being identified generally as Minangkabau and five others specifically as coming from Pariaman. The second most numerous category comprised nine Makassar-born men.For five of these descent was still considered relevant, as three were described as being of Johor lineage, and two as descendants of Minangkabau. Four other Malays came from Johor itself, and three from Kalimantan; the rest were individuals from South Sulawesi, Java and Sumbawa. As a group, the Malays exceeded the Chinese, but were far less numerous than the ‘Moors‘, or Indian Muslims. [24]

We can not assume that this remaining group was in any way typical of the pre-conquest period. Although Speelman characterised some of those who had remained in Makassar as having been relatively neutral during the war, others, despite their role in the fighting, had nonetheless chosen to stay or to return.These included the Malays connected to the Buginese elite of anti-Dutch Soppeng. It is worth looking at these men in more detail, as their affiliations can provide us with valuable insights into the background and relationships of the Malay community.

The ruler of Soppeng had married a Malay woman, a daughter of one Datuk Tuan, a Jeparaborn Malay who was described by Speelman as being primarily of ‘Moorish‘ descent. Speelman notes that despite being a ‘Santery‘(santri or devout Muslim), Datuk Tuan had not been very involved in the war.Other daughters of his married Daeng Malaba, son of the ruler of Soppeng, and Ince Ahmad, the Makassar-born son of a Johorese father, whose brother Abdul was also reckoned as part of the Soppeng group. Datuk Tuan‘s nephew Ince Tengah, son of his full brother Ince Mahmud, married a Malay daughter of the Radja of Soppeng. The father of Datuk Tuan and Ince Mahmud, Ince Sambas from Pariaman, died during the fighting – at the age of 150, according to Speelman.

The geographic reach of Ince Sambas‘s family is typical. He himself came from West Sumatra, but his name could imply connections with Kalimantan. His son Datuk Tuan was born in Jepara of partly Indian descent, and his daughters married Buginese and men with Johor backgrounds. Of this closely related if diverse group two were regarded as not being very committed to the anti-Dutch struggle (Ince Ahmad and Datuk Tuan), while three (Ince Abdul, Ince Tengah and Daeng Malaba) were seen as strongly pro-Makassar.Another pair ofMakassar-born Malay brothers (also of part Indian descent) was similarly divided. Of the two sons of the Moor Pattan, who had been Anakoda or ship‘s captain for the Soppeng king, Datuk Gommo was regarded as acceptable by Speelman, but his brother Ince Said had been a bitter fighter on the Makassarese side; he left Makassar for Jepara. All the others chose to stay on in the town.

Speelman and his successor, Jan van Oppijnen, reported to Batavia that there was little trade in Makassar immediately after the conquest, because of the destruction of the Makassarese and the expulsion of ‘that untrustworthy Malay rabble‘ [25] The majority of Malays were poor, earning their living as sailors, and only about eight were regarded by Speelman as being of any consequence. However, this handful of significant traders constituted an economic factor of real importance. Anti-Dutch or not, the Malays were needed, and so Speelman invited the refugees to return. His overtures were not always successful.He identified a group of ‘hostile creatures, mostly devotees of Karunrung‘, and listed the most prominent. Heading them all was Datuk Maharaja Lela himself, ‘upper chief of the whole nation‘. Earlier, in between the two major campaigns necessary to defeat the Makassarese, Speelman had tried to co-opt Datuk Maharaja Lela. He wrote, ‘I in person have sought out Radja Lella in the English lodge twice, thrice, more often, wanting to talk to him‘, pointing out the needs and benefits of stabilising trade—to no avail.The Malay leader, a ‘hulubalang yang betul‘ [26] or ‘true warrior‘, followed Karaeng Karunrung‘s advice and fled to avoid the repercussions of the fall of Goa.He died at Balanipa in Mandar.Another notable Malay who turned his back on Makassar was Ince Assam. This most prominent trader of the pre-war period had retired to Jepara,where he was said to be old and sick, and indifferent to Speelman‘s invitation. [27]

Other Malays took advantage of the Dutch welcome and returned in 1670, with – the Malay account is careful to stress – the agreement of the ruler of Goa. Some Buginese who had fought alongside the Makassarese also returned, notably the skilled traders from Wajo‘, whose communal history paralleled that of the Malays in many ways. [28] Some Malays also saw real possibilities in the new regime. One prominent figure, Ince Abdul, was regarded as a friend to the Dutch, although he was also suspected of having been in touch with Datuk Maharaja Lela before the last round of fighting. Born in Makassar about 1620, the son of a Minangkabau father and a Buginese mother, Ince Abdul had obviously been a major trader before the war. His outstanding debts after the conquest included 1,270 rds (rijksdaalders) owed to him by Karaeng Karunrung, while the ruler of the Borneo trading state of Pasir was in his debt for 1,200 rds, being payment due for three metal cannon Ince Abdul had brought him from Patani. Ince Abdul later became a translator for the VOC; his wife was maintained by the Dutch, and lived in their settlement. Another prominent and relatively wealthy Malay, Ince Allaudin, was married to a Buginese woman, and linked to Arung Palakka, the ally of the VOC. He was closely involved in Speelman‘s post-conquest attempts toinduce the Malay refugees to return to Makassar. [29]

Gradually the VOC forced Makassar‘s trade into a straitjacket, reserving the most profitable commodities and routes for itself and only allowing free trade where there was no threat toCompany profits.During the 1670s elements of the old patterns persisted,with Malays from Melaka and Aceh frequenting ports traditionally within Makassar‘s sphere of influence, such as Pasir and Buton, Bima and Kaili. Textiles and slaves were important commodities. Ince Patani, a Malay captain operating out of Aceh (a typical fusion of place-based identifications) came every year to the eastern archipelago, and is recorded in Dutch sources from at least 1679. [30] He visited Buton annually, bringing textiles from the Melaka Straits, Chinese goods and weapons to exchange for slaves. In September 1683 the four big, three-masted ships of Ince Patani, his son Ince Abdul Rahman and Ince Ranta took 1,400 slaves from Buton to Aceh. [31] In 1686 Ince Patani was back in Buton (at the same time that another prominent Malay trader, Sri Lela Wangsa, from Johor, was shipwrecked there), and in 1687 he and his son are again recorded exchanging textiles for slaves, but now in Bima. [32] In the same year Sri Lela Wangsa was also noted, this time buying up rattan in Pasir. [33]

But already a new regime was being established. The Dutch deployed both diplomacy and force to control Malay trade. Individual Malay communities such as that in Makassar were subjected to increasing restriction, as wider networks came under pressure and as local VOC authorities imposed regional limitations. Some requests to the Company in Makassar were granted on strict conditions, as when Makassarese Malays sought permission to trade in Banjarmasin, while others were refused, as in the case of the Mandar-based Minangkabau ‘pirate‘ Datuk Jelany. [34] Definitions of piracy and smuggling were of course very subjective: a Malay trader going about his traditional business might find himself labelled ‘the well-known smuggler Ince Kasim‘ and have his ship and cargo seized. [35]

By about 1706 trade between Makassar and Johor was greatly reduced, and by 1709 commercial links had been broken because of the turmoil in the Johor sultanate, where ‘Bugis‘ adventurers exacerbated internal crises. [36] The Makassar Malays‘ trade suffered, and they petitioned the VOC to allow them to sail to Jambi, Palembang and even Melaka. But this was forbidden. [37] Cut off from their traditional wide-ranging networks, denied access to commodities and markets west of Batavia, and with Manila out of bounds, the Malays became increasingly dependent on the Batavia,Maluku and Nusa Tenggara traffic.By the early decades of the eighteenth century, accounts ofMalay activity in the VOC archives ofMakassar are already shifting in tone. In the early and midseventeenth century the emphasis had been upon how the Malays,with the Portuguese and English, were ‘ruining the market‘ for the Dutch. Then, from the conquest up to about 1720, reports focus on efforts to force Malays, including those in Makassar, to accept Company restrictions and monopolies. By the 1730s or 1740s the Malays seem to have become more domesticated. They remain important, particularly in the slave trade, but seem to have been operating more in Dutchapproved circuits. [38]

There are several possible explanations for this apparent shift. The Malay trading networks of Southeast Asia had weakened, part of a wider process the Andayas have characterised as the eighteenth-century ‘demise of the Malay entrepot state‘. This was a result of strains in the preeminent Malay state of Johor; the expansion of Bugis, and to a lesser extent Minangkabau, influence in the Straits; and growing Dutch and English involvement. [39] Another, simple, reason for the decline in Malay commerce as reflected in the Dutch sources could be decreasing registration or changes in descriptive categorisation. Old commercial networks may have continued, or new routes developed, beyond Company supervision, and often in competition with VOC-approved channels. This seems to have been the case with those Bugis traders par excellence, the Wajorese. After Wajo‘s wars with the Company in the 1730s their role in Makassar‘s trade becomes invisible in the sources, although they continued to live in the town. [40]

No doubt some Malays, for political, religious and/or commercial reasons, preferred to sail outside Company-controlled circuits. Those who chose to return to Makassar gradually, albeit reluctantly, accepted the new limitations on their trade, though they probably evaded them when possible. The extent of this is difficult to ascertain, as continuing links with wider, perhaps anti-Dutch networks are by their nature unrecorded in the VOC archives. Questions concerning the ways in which Asian communities, under Dutch control and living in Company-controlled settlements, accommodated to the new regime are equally intriguing; the answers almost as elusive. There are, however, indications that the Malays of Makassar adapted successfully and, by the 1730s, had consolidated their position within the VOC-dominated port town.

Society and settlement

The focus of power in post-conquest Makassar was Fort Rotterdam, built upon the remnants of Goa‘s northern fort of Ujung Pandang. Just north of the castle was the new, palisaded settlement of Vlaardingen, where the growing community of ‘Europeans‘ (mestizos and burghers, non-Company personnel) lived, as did many Chinese and other Asians. Still further north, along the beach and, later, south of the fort, new mixed and ‘native‘ settlements proliferated. At first the Malays lived dispersed among the rest of the population: in Vlaardingen, along the coast to the north and east of Fort Rotterdam, and up as far as Ujungtana, close to Tallo‘. This was a time of disorder, as the victorious Bugis asserted themselves through violence and plundering. The Malay leaders complained that their rights, as established in 1561, were being ignored. They were then given permission by the Company (and, contemporary tradition makes clear, by the Raja Goa) to clear secondary forest from the land just north of Vlaardingen. [41] This new settlement of Kampung Melayu was to be the focus of Makassar‘s Malay life for some 300 years, while its physical location between mestizo European, Chinese and Bugis quarters epitomised the role of the community inboth trade and politics.

In the oldest surviving census for the Dutch enclave of Vlaardingen, from 1676,Malays are not distinguished as a category, which suggests that they lived outside the stockade. [42] Chinese, Mardijkers (Christian ex-slaves) and Moors (Indian Muslims) were allowed inside, but the recently defeated Makassarese, like the Malays, were in principle excluded. The Buginese had their own settlements: Arung Palakka‘s court at Bontoalaq, east of the Fort, and a growing Kampung Bugis about half an hour‘s walk north of the Dutch castle, past the Kampung Melayu.However, as subjects of native rulers, the Bugis were not counted. The Malays first appear in the 1680 Vlaardingen census, as a small group of eighteen comprising four men, nine women and five children, all living between the beach and the Chinese street. Other groups were much more numerous. There were ninety-seven Mardijkers and eightyseven Chinese, and even the twenty Moors and Javanese outnumbered the Malays. The total population of the enclosed settlement was 1,135. [43] As usual, the census did not cover VOC employees, and women, children and slaves were all subsumed into the same category as the heads of households. The inhabitants of unregulated settlements beyond the walls were not counted in 1680.

The census for 1685 was more complete. For the first time communities outside Vlaardingen are listed, the kampung quarters or informal semi-rural clusters of compounds, often named after ethnic groups. [44] The free Malay community of 279 showed a balanced demographic picture: 103 men, 110 women and 66 children. They owned 209 slaves, and controlled 23 debtors, so their number was reckoned at 511. [45] The Malays tended to own, per head, more slaves than the indigenous East Indonesian groups, but fewer than the Chinese or the Mardijkers, and nothing near the concentrations held by the Moors or Europeans.Nonetheless, the members ofMalay households in 1685 outnumbered those of all other groups, except the Chinese. The total population of Makassar (excluding Company personnel) had grown to 2,751. Twelve years later, in 1697, the non-VOC population had grown to 3,238. If in 1685 Malays (counting slaves) had formed about 19 per cent of the population, by 1697 the 764 Malays comprised roughly 24 per cent of the whole. ‘Mardijker‘ no longer existed as a category, but ‘Moors and Kodjas‘ had increased to 531. [46] No breakdown is available by age, sex or place of residence. Malays had become the most numerous group in the city. However, by 1722 they were again surpassed by the Chinese (917), and by the non-VOC inhabitants of European status, the burghers (899), although with their 881 they far outstripped the 371 Indians. [47] In subsequent population counts all non-Europeans were subsumed in one category. By 1770 the ‘native‘ population numbered over 3,750: a generally modest increase compared with the rapid growth between 1685 and 1697. While this early census material provides us with rudimentary information, we need more if we are to have some image ofMalay neighbourhoods. Such information is only sporadically available.

Fires were one of the most devastating events in Makassar‘s urban life, and descriptions give us some insight into settlement patterns. In 1679 a great fire, fanned by a strong sea wind, destroyed eighty houses in Vlaardingen, including the living quarters of two Moor-Malays, Ince Buang and Ince Tengah, sons of the famous merchant, Mapulle. Their compound consisted of four large houses, and assorted small dwellings where their people lived. [48] The many slaves and debtbondsmen were expected to earn their own living; some occupations – cooking coconut oil, baking sweets for sale in the market – were high fire-risk activities. After the Vlaardingen compound was burnt out, this ‘great rabble‘moved into the Moorish quarter between the beach and the Kampung Bugis. Here, in August 1680, their enterprises triggered a new fire which destroyed 150 houses, including their whole compound, much of the Wajorese area and part of the kampung for Moors and Bugis. [49]

Over a hundred years later, on 6 August 1791, another fire swept through the Kampung Melayu, destroying it completely.The Dutch authorities saw this as an opportunity to improve town security, and contemplated resettling all Malays in Kampung Baru, south of the castle. This would involve the removal of 38 ‘kampung‘ (used here in the sense of compounds belonging to individual extended families), of which just more than half were actually Malay-owned. [50] It was reckoned that these thirty-eight compounds comprised at least 300 houses, and accommodated 2,300 or 2,400 people. [51]

Since the total non-European population of Makassar in that year (1791) was 4,934, [52] about half the town would have had to be re-housed. The densely settled Chinese street was not involved in this plan, nor were the more peripheral kampung. It is, therefore, likely that a very high proportion of the ‘Malay‘ population lived in the twenty Malay-owned compounds considered for removal. Since they probably varied in size from poor clusters of a few huts to large complexes, it is not possible to be precise, but many compounds could have consisted of more than ten houses, with dozens of inhabitants. If this was so, then it illustrates probable patterns of dependency, with dominant patrons sheltering many clients.However, the ethnic mix of compound ownership (not to mention their undoubtedly even more heterogeneous inhabitants) warns us against any assumed congruence between formal classification and social reality. The relocation plan was submitted to the VOC High Government in Batavia, which rejected it as impossible, given the scale of resettlement required. [53]

The Dutch regarded the integration of the Malays and Chinese into town life as important, for both economic and security reasons. In 1728, for example, Governor Gobius noted that the Malays could muster 265 armed men, capable of turning out in ‘good order, under the command of their Captain and lesser officers‘. This Malay contingent was an effective armed force, outnumbering the combined manpower of the 70 burghers, the 60 Chinese (including peranakan) and 60 Mardijkers. [54] Half a century earlier Ince Amin and Speelman had both noted the important role of Goa‘s wellarmed and cohesive Malay company. [55] The Malay kampung itself was also seen as a reliable barrier between the volatile Bugis settlement and the castle.

Authority and identity

The VOC always worked together with local leaders, giving them military titles, symbols of power and privileges in exchange for their cooperation in governing the various communities. [56] Loyalty to the Company was rewarded by Dutch support, a major political asset. It is usually said that the first Malay Kapitan,or Dutch-appointed headman, was Ince Cukka,Abdul Razak, who took office in May 1705. The sources are somewhat contradictory on this point. A Wajorese manuscript records an agreement between the leader of Makassar‘s Wajorese, the matoa, and the two Kapitans (Chinese and Malay) in February 1698, in which Ince Cukka is described as the Kapitan Melayu. [57] But Makassar‘s VOC archives for 29 May 1705 note that prominent Malays reported the death of their Kapitan Abdul Nazul, and requested that a new Kapitan be appointed from their midst, suggesting Ince Cukka. Their petition was passed to Batavia for approval. Pending confirmation, Ince Cukka was given the symbols of office: a silver ornamented cane (which Ince Abdul Nazul‘s widow had returned to the governor) and a new ceremonial umbrella. [58] Malay sources record that Ince Cukka was given the right to build a mosque, and construction began on 22 Radjab 1117 A.H. (1706). [59] The Company allowed him an income from the fish market he built, and from fees derived from registering his subjects‘ property. These Kapitan‘s perquisites were again confirmed by Governor Mossel in 1752. [60] Ince Maulud, the second Kapitan Melayu (or third, if we include Abdul Nazul), was appointed in January 1724.He was born in Banjarmasin, but had been brought up in Makassar, and was about thirty-eight years old when he became Kapitan. He soon came into conflict with the VOC authorities, and his case has interesting implications. The immediate cause of Dutch dissatisfaction seemed simple: in 1726 some Buginese attacked two Europeans in the market, and a riot ensued.

Ince Maulud was informed that two Dutchmen were being murdered,but he simply closed his door. When the Company legal official tried to call upon the Kapitan to mobilise Malay resistance to the Buginese, some twenty Malays blocked his entry to the house, and no help was forthcoming. The Malays simply stayed inside until the Buginese had left, avoiding any confrontation. The VOC authorities felt that Ince Maulud had failed in his duty to maintain order and support the Dutch.At the same time, they were also investigating his finances, as he was heavily in debt, and one of his creditors – ‘a Batavian native woman‘ – wanted to seize his assets, but these were proving difficult to locate. The Company authorities suggested he had defrauded his creditors, by giving at least eleven slaves away to the King of Bone. But Ince Maulud responded with simple answers to such accusations of bad faith.He claimed there had been no people in his house who could have helped the beleaguered Dutchmen, and that the slaves had not been given away, but had fled. [61]

Subsequent questioning, however, indicated that Ince Maulud found himself in a delicate political situation. Although he had been told that the ruler of Bone was planning an incident in the market to humiliate the Dutch, he had neglected to warn the authorities. When asked why, he replied that his information came from a mixed Malay–Moor, a follower of a Buginese nobleman, who was also in the service of the translator Gerrit Brugman. Consequently, Ince Maulud had presumed the Dutch were aware of the plot. ‘Translators‘ such as Brugman were, after all, the main links between the VOC and local states or communities. [62] Ince Maulud was also asked why, when Brugman had given him the use of Company rice fields (no doubt as a perquisite of office), did he then give the produce to the King of Bone? He explained that the Buginese had come and taken the harvest. Finally, the Dutch inquired why he failed to pay his respects to the VOC authorities on the customary feast days.Because he was ashamed, he replied, as he had lost all his possessions. [63]

It is of course possible that Ince Maulud‘s excuses were genuine. But the pattern suggests another interpretation: that either willingly or unwillingly, Ince Maulud was acknowledging the authority of the Bugis ruler of Bone. Since the conquest the King of Bone had maintained a house close to Makassar, at Bontoalaq, and spent months there every year; this gave him every opportunity to expand his influence in the port-town‘s kampung. For example, Bone‘s rulers were able to demand services from the Wajorese in Makassar, undermining the authority of the head of that community, the matoa. The fact that, coincidentally, the Bone kings also bore by right a high title from the Bugis state of Wajo reinforced their claims, heightening tensions between matoa and court. [64] The temptation must have been great for them to seek similar influence over that other prominent Muslim commercial group, the Malays. It is clear from the line of questioning that this was the suspicion of Makassar‘s Dutch authorities. Ince Maulud did not survive long as Kapitan,being replaced in 1728. [65]

Ince Maulud‘s successor, Ince Samba, hardly did any better. He was appointed in 1728 but dismissed by Governor Arrewijne in December 1733 on the grounds that he was addicted to opium. His replacement was the ‘free Malay‘ Ince Bendak, [66] a descendant of Datuk Maharaja Lela, and hence of the highest birth. His daughter‘s marriage to the wealthy trader Ince Ali Asdullah was to have dramatic consequences (see below); it also secured his descendants‘ grip on the Malay community for over a century and a half. The position of Kapitan Melayu had its privileges and obligations, as did those of the other community headmen. [67] Ince Cukka had received the right to collect fees for registering property, and one of his successors as Kapitan,Abdul Kadir (see below) complained in 1768 that a proposal to remove this right to levy fees on house sales would further reduce his ‘sober income‘.The percentage on the sale of the simple bamboo dwellings in Kampung Melayu did not amount to much, and money was needed, he said, to repair the mosque. The Company agreed to leave him this privilege. [68]

Abdul Kadir was probably being disingenuous. The right to levy such fees was a minor aspect of his ability to profit from his position, as his responsibility for law and order and his access to men of influence made him a force in community life and commerce. There is no doubt that the officers enjoyed many perquisites (such as Ince Maulud‘s rice fields), and probably many semi-illicit fruitsof power. The Wajorese matoa, in a similar role, benefited from considerable advantages in trade. [69]

If responsibility sometimes weighed heavily on the Kapitan, apparently being subject to his authority could also be onerous. In 1769 Ince Mursidin, requesting permission to retire after twenty years‘ service as lieutenant of the Malays, petitioned the VOC to free him and his family from the authority of the Kapitan Melayu, and to take him under direct Company rule. The authorities granted his request, seeing this as a due reward, so like the people of ‘other free kampung,‘ he then fell under VOC jurisdiction, as exercised by the translator Brugman. But this did not mean that Ince Mursidin could ignore his communal obligations.He had still to contribute to the maintenance of the mosque, and the guard, and he was sternly admonished to continue to show respect to the Kapitan and his officers, just as the Kapitan would now respect his new status, and renounce all claims on him. [70] Ince Mursidin was one of the few Malay officers who did not come from Abdul Kadir‘s own family,which might have been a reason for his request.

One of the problems facing the Kapitans and other community headmen was the need to maintain the integrity of their group. Each leader strove to maximise his following. In the mideighteenth entury, for example, the Wajorese matoa was continually struggling to prevent his ollowers from drifting out of Makassar‘s Kampung Wajo‘ into other kampung, such as Bandang, Buton, and Melayu. [71] The Malays‘ main competitor in communal boundary disputes seems to have been the Muslim Chinese community. No doubt there were other on-going processes of blending and crystallisation (witness, for example, the gradual disappearance of Mardijkers and Moors, or the tug-of-war over the Wajorese), but perhaps because both Chinese and Malay communities were living under direct Company protection, their tensions are the best documented. The theoretical rigidity of ethnic classifications, especially those imposed by the bureaucratic VOC, was at odds with the pragmatic opportunism and cultural flexibility typical of the settlement‘s social life. [72]

Many Chinese in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Makassar were very much part of the town; a majority may well have been Muslim. Even many of the so-called ‘junk‘Chinese, who came from Amoy (Xiamen) to trade and stayed for six months in most years after 1740, had their own local families, and some of these merchants were Muslim. As Makassar‘s dominant trading communities (excluding the VOC), the Chinese and Malays were often locked in competition, but their activities were also in many ways complementary, so long-term partnerships developed. There were close ties – personal and commercial – between the two communities. This can be seen in genealogies.

The forefather of many prominent Malay families was Datuk Maharaja Lela, whose central role in seventeenth-century Makassar has been outlined above. He had two children: a son,Megat Kasim, forefather of inhabitants of Kampung Butung, and a daughter Puteri Johor Manikam,whose descendants lived in Kampung Melayu. Puteri Johor Manikam married Ince Subuh, who was of Chinese–Makassarese descent.His family story relates how two Chinese trader brothers left Melaka and went to Cirebon in West Java. One source specifies that these men were Muslim. [73] The younger, Layti (Lai I Tjio), settled there after marrying a daughter of one Tumenggung Batang, while the elder brother, Failantia (Pao Lau Tia) took his share of the trade goods and went to Sanrabone, south of Makassar, where he was given permission to settle. In accordance with the ruler‘s request, he married a well-born local woman. Their son, Ince Abdul, also married well, and his son Ince Subuh, alias Ince DaEng, became the son-in-law of Paduka Raja Maharaja Lela. Their children married further into Chinese Muslim families. One grandson, Ince Bungsu, the seventh Makassar Kapitan Melayu (1750-52), was married to a peranakan Chinese, and their grandson, Ince Taman, was an imam of the Kampung Butung mosque, as were several cousins. [74] This ‘mesjid peranakan‘, now officially the Mesjid Mubarrak, lies directly opposite the modern Butung market. The imams there seem to have been peranakan Chinese until 1973 or 1975. [75]

Although intermarriage between Malays and Chinese Muslims was common, it is often invisible in genealogies because of the use ofMuslim names.However, it is clear that some branches ofMalay families were closer to the Chinese community than others.For example, Ince Muhammed Saleh , a son of the famous Datuk Pabean (or Ince Ali Asdullah, see below) married I Na‘na, whose father Ince Abdul Gaffar Datuk Gaddong, was the son of the Chinese Muslim Ong King Cong and his wife Ong Nio, who probably lived in Makassar in the early eighteenth century. Their descendants mainly have Muslim names, though some bear the prefix ‘Baba‘or ‘Nyai‘, and a few had Chinese names. Some spouses are identified as peranakan Chinese. Like many groups in Indonesia, the Malay association today runs several rotating credit associations, or arisan, and in 2000 one was still specifically for wives of Chinese Muslim descent. [76]

The closeness between the two communities, with the concomitant blurring of boundaries, ould also be problematic. The Makassar Chinese had their own version of their relationship with the Malays immediately after Speelman‘s victory. They claimed that at that time the Kapitan of the Chinese community, Ong Watko, had been given authority over all the peranakan Chinese and Malays. But the Malays had a powerful ally. The wife of Arung Palakka – the Company‘s Buginese partner and ruler of the dominant kingdom of Bone (1672-96) – interceded with the Dutch on their behalf. She argued that the Malays should have their own headman, and so Ince Cukka was appointed. [77] But it was specified that Chinese Muslims were to remain under the Kapitan China. This was later to be a source of conflict.

In 1750 the Kapitan China complained that, in violation of established rights and custom, the contentious Kapitan Melayu ‘Ince Banjar‘ was claiming authority over ‘Chinese‘, and emotions ran so high that a ‘bloody fight‘ was narrowly avoided. The Malay Kapitan, Abdul Kadir (perhaps his nickname was Ince Banjar?), counter-attacked with the statement that the Chinese were asserting rights over peranakan Malays married to Chinese. This was regarded as very unfair, as the Malays felt they had much heavier obligations to the Company than did the Chinese. The Malay community had to provide men and ships whenever required, which they did willingly. Ince Abdul Kadir appended a list of Malay men and women married to peranakan Chinese to illustrate the scope of the problem: thirteen Malay peranakan women married to peranakan Chinese men, and six Malay men with peranakan Chinese wives. The Dutch authorities finally decided for the principle of territoriality over genealogy, and so all who lived in Kampung Melayu or areas under the Kapitan Melayu had to accept his jurisdiction or move out. [78]

The Kapitan‘s control over people was necessary to generate income and preserve status, and the importance attached to these nineteen households reminds us again of how small these communities were. The Wajorese drifted out of their Kampung Wajo‘ to live in other areas of the town, and resisted attempts to force them to return.As inhabitants of Kampung Melayu, they were exempt from services and enjoyed more freedom than they would have if they returned to their own kampung and the authority of their matoa. [79] There is a hint in the documents that there was a comparable financial element involved in Chinese resistance to Malay authority. The Chinese Kapitan, when referring to the rights of the peranakan Chinese, only specifically mentioned one: that when a peranakan died intestate and without relatives, his estate, according to Batavia practice, was to be taken over and administered by the Dutch orphan chamber (weeskamer). [80] The chamber would then be responsible for investing the capital, and the orphans would receive their inheritance, including any profits, on reaching their majority. This was probably more advantageous than alternatives which might be applied should the peranakan Chinese fall under the Kapitan Melayu, and recalls the Malays‘ emphasis on their own exemption from Makassarese customary law in their agreement of 1561. Residence, allegiance and ethnic classification determined legal status, and that could have significant economic as well as social consequences.

As always, there were some who seized the opportunities offered by a new regime, and one particular family arose to dominate the Malay community from the mid-eighteenth to the midnineteenth century. The decisive figure was Ince Ali Asdullah, whose title of Datuk Pabean reflects the source of the family‘s sustained wealth: his ability to purchase from the Dutch the monopoly right to levy import and export duties.His control of the lucrative customs farm during the 1770s and 1780s laid the foundations for his family‘s success. Ince Ali Asdullah‘s descendants provided the Kapitan Melayu from the 1730s till the 1880s. His own Arab–Malay origin, reinforced by eighteenth-century marriages into families of Sayids (descendants of the Prophet), helped reinforce his family‘s hold on the prestigious position of Imam of the Malay mosque built and endowed by Ince Ali Asdullah and his brother (see below).

Ince Ali Asdullah‘s forebears were characteristically peripatetic.His grandfather, Datuk Abdul Mannan Amir, went from Bima to Sinjai on south Sulawesi, where he married a daughter of the Arung Bulo-Bulo.He took his wife to live in the Kampung Melayu in Makassar. There he had a son, called Ince Abdul Rachman, who was adopted by a Sayid, Achmad Bochari. When Datuk Abdul Mannan Amir returned to Bima (where he died), Sayid Achmad Bochari gave Ince Abdul Rachman into the hands of the Raja of Tallo‘, Sultan Syafiuddin, who married him to his granddaughter. The sultan also gave him the lordship over all of the small islands from the Spermonde Archipelago opposite Makassar which belonged to Tallo‘ and began with Sa- (Sabutung, Satando, Sanga-sanga, Salemo, Sagara, Sabangka, Sarappo etc.). Ince Abdul Rachman became known as Datuk Sabutung. This island of Sabutung had been a Malay place of refuge in the final phase of the war against the Dutch–Bugis alliance.

Ince Abdul Rachman had five sons, including Abdul Kadir and the younger Ali Asdullah,who were brought up in simple circumstances, but studied the Koran and learnt to read, write and calculate. Their livelihood came from their islands – they were traders, or sailors, or perahubuilders, or they took sea products such as tortoiseshell, agar-agar (seaweed) or trepang (seacucumbers) to the town of Makassar, where they sold them to Chinese traders. It is probable that they also maintained commercial relationships with the Bajo, as the Spermonde Archipelago was also frequented by these ‘sea-nomads‘, who were experts in the exploitation of marine resources. This period, the 1730s, was a profitable time for Makassar, when the trade in sea products with China was transforming the economy. [81] This growing source of wealth must have strengthened those groups who were able to capitalise on the new opportunities. The resulting social mobility is reflected in the eventual admission of Datuk Sabutung‘s descendants into Makassar‘s Malay elite.

The Kapitan Melayu of the time, Ince Bendak, as we have seen, was descended from Datuk Maharaja Lela, and a man of high status and wealth. He was acquainted with a Chinese Muslim merchant called Musalaf, who was also Datuk Sabutung‘s friend. All three were no doubt engaged in commerce. While visiting Datuk Sabutung, Musalaf ‘s eye fell on Ali Asdullah, who was by then trading regularly with Kalimantan (Pegatan/Pasir and Kutei) and Java (Batavia).Musalaf asked why the young man was unmarried, and suggested that a suitable candidate would be the Kapitan‘s daughter. Datuk Sabutung replied that the difference in rank between his family and that of Ince Bendak was like that between the earth and the sky, and Musalaf said no more, but prayed that God would unite the pair. Two months later, one of the authorities from Makassar, a Dutch Tuan Besar (probably the governor) stayed on Sabutung for a couple of days, at the same time that Musalaf was also visiting.When the Tuan asked why Ali Asdullah was unmarried,Musalaf said that only Puteri Ratna Kasian, the daughter of the Kapitan,would be a suitable match. The Tuan Besar asked Datuk Sabutung if this was so. Once again, Datuk Sabutung emphasised the difference in rank and wealth, stating that he himself was poor and of low birth. The Tuan Besar stood up, thumped the table with his hand, and said he personally would arrange the marriage; Datuk Sabutung need only wait, and before the next east monsoon he would be called to Makassar.

The Tuan Besar was as good as his word. Datuk Sabutung was summoned to Makassar,met by the Kapitan Ince Bendak, and taken to the palace of the Tuan Besar, where the leaders of the Malay community and other nations waited. The Tuan Besar told Ince Bendak that he wished to see a marriage between the Kapitan‘s daughter and Ince Ali Asdullah to which the Kapitan replied, ‘Whatever my lord wants, I will accept willingly‘. The Tuan Besar produced paper and pen, and the elders of Kampung Melayu all witnessed the engagement. In fact, Kapitan Ince Bendak was far from happy, but on attempting to withdraw from the arrangement he was reminded by the Malay leaders of his commitment, so he had to let the wedding proceed.However, he was tormented by regrets. On the day that Ince Ali Asdullah arrived to claim his bride, with full customary pomp, her father was nowhere to be seen.A search revealed his body hanging from the rafters. This must have been in 1739, as a new Kapitan was appointed in August of that year. [82] The wedding feast became a funeral, and the family of the groom,instead of sitting facing their new relatives, was set apart, and a fight followed.When Ince Ali Asdullah realised that Puteri Ratna Kasian‘s entire family opposed the match, he withdrew to Sabutung, and then left again on his trading voyages to Kalimantan, Java and beyond. After two years wandering he returned with rich profits and jewels, but thinking only of his unclaimed wife at Makassar. Some time later his bride‘s family realised that they should not keep the two apart, and sent someone to tell Ince Ali Asdullah to collect Puteri Ratna Kasian and take her to Sabutung. This he did, and she came, bringing with her only the clothes she was wearing.

Ince Ali Asdullah became a man of great wealth, and gradually his family-in-law became reconciled; one by one they came to Sabutung, and he was accepted. His reputation grew further, until the Malay community asked him to follow in the footsteps of his father-in-law as Kapitan, replacing Ince Jamaluddin, who had succeeded Ince Bendak. But Ince Ali Asdullah refused, as he preferred to sail and trade throughout the archipelago. Also, he had his eye on a more lucrative proposition: the monopoly on in- and outgoing duties of the port of Makassar. He succeeded in holding this office for years, and so was known as Datuk Pabean, or Datuk Syahbandar. [83]

Just as the Kapitans were the political link between the VOC and the Asian communities, of which the Dutch had very limited knowledge, so were the pachters or tax-farmers the instrument for tapping profits from those sectors of the local economy claimed by the Company. [84] The Dutch wished to take advantage of any possibility of making money, but it was often more practical for them to sell exploitation rights, rather than attempt to penetrate and manage local networks. The oldest recorded farm in Makassar, dating from 1699,was the monopoly on the sale of alcohol (which included gambling, opium and the keeping of taverns); this was usually held by a retired Company soldier. [85] But Batavia was dissatisfied with the low level of income generated; after a scandal the system of farms was extended, and from 1745 the right to collect duties on incoming and outgoing vessels and their cargoes was auctioned. Previously, this had probably been controlled by the harbourmaster, a VOC official. [86] A few years later a tax-farm was also introduced for markets.

Initially, farms were usually controlled by the Kapitan China, and it is highly probable that they were a formalisation of existing rights and a compensation for investment, as well as an attempt to increase town revenue. Later, in the mid-1750s, more farms were added. The farmers‘ identities reflect relative access to economic resources. The alcohol monopoly was in European hands until the 1770s, when they were replaced by Chinese; the gambling, slaughter and Chinese head-tax collecting rights were all Chinese-controlled (except for one year when a mestizo was collecting the tax). The monopoly on running the town‘s markets was much more open, falling to Chinese,Malays and mestizos. But far and away the most valuable farm was that of the customs duties. For a quarter of a century this was a bone of contention in the fierce struggle waged by Ince Ali Asdullah and his elder brother,Abdul Kadir, the Kapitan Melayu, against Makassar‘s Chinese elite.

During this period, the annual amount paid for the farm rose from around 12,000 to over 20,000 - rds considerable sums when one considers that a bamboo house and block of land sold for about 50 rds and a good slave for 30. The real value of the farms – their profitability – is hard to ascertain, given the tendency of aspiring farmers to form cartels, fix the bidding and undervalue, on the one hand, as opposed to the desire to win and gain social prestige on the other. Trade is always a risky business, and wars or policy changes – in the region, Batavia or China – could reduce commerce to such a degree that the farmer lost heavily. [87] But Ince Ali Asdullah‘s grip on the customs monopoly was impressive.His first sally, in 1766, gained him the farm for one year only, at a cost of 8,244 rds, considerably less than the previous Chinese had paid (12,000). But the trade between Makassar and China was both crucial and complex, and in his calculations as to the profitability of the farm he had banked on collecting duty on imports from China. But that year no junk came directly to Makassar from Amoy, so commodities from China arrived via Batavia.

Ince Ali Asdullah had not realised – he said – that Chinese tobacco imported from Batavia was exempt from duty, and tried to collect his percentage. He appealed to the harbourmaster but was told he could levy no claims on the cargo. Makassar‘s peranakan Chinese were also up in arms, claiming that the marginal existence of their small community would be further undermined if double taxation was allowed,with duties paid first in Batavia and then again in Makassar. The VOC refused Ince Ali Asdullah‘s request for restitution of part of his payment. [88] It could be that he was able to take the farm for such a relatively low amount because his Chinese competitors had inside information on the junk‘s non-arrival in Makassar. But their lack of interest in 1766 may have backfired, as Ince Ali Asdullah was now committed to gaining control of the farm.

He lost the customs monopoly the following year, to a Chinese prepared to pay 13,000, but then his older brother, Kapitan Melayu Abdul Kadir took over, for 14,376. The farm then passed to Ince Ali Asdullah for three years, before a Chinese recaptured it for over 17,000 rds. Ince Ali Asdullah retook the monopoly and subsequently held it for fourteen years, from 1776 to 1789, on a fixed annual tariff of 18,000 rds. In 1781 Ince Ali Asdullah had further problems with Chinese complaints; he was accused of overcharging, and he himself had noted that differences of opinion on the prices of opium, Chinese tobacco and cotton led to conflict.However, inspection of his books (to the accuracy of which he swore every year on the Koran), and the support of the previous Chinese farmer, showed that he was keeping to the farm conditions, and he retained his position. [89]

This continuity was ensured by a contract with the Company, removing the custom‘s farm allocation from competitive bidding. Batavia was not happy with this, fearing lost income, but the Makassar authorities defended it on the grounds that stability and peace was ensured because of Ince Ali Asdullah‘s close connections to the native courts. This reversed the opinion expressed earlier, in 1766, that Chinese were preferable to Malays as pachters. [90] Then the issue had been the need to maintain a smooth relationship with the Chinese traders handling imports from China, but by 1784 the emphasis had switched to avoiding problems with the Sulawesian rulers, particularly expansionist Bone.

This shift probably reflected an awareness on the Dutch side of their vulnerability, as the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-84) had caused a visible collapse in VOC shipping and prestige. [91] The governor of Makassar explained that in principle he would prefer to auction the farm, but ‘the present farmer (HS Ince Ali Asdullah) is now accustomed to dealing with all the native kings and other important men, particularly with the king of Bone, and if a Chinese or someone else should come in, then daily squabbles could be expected‘. [92] A successful customs farmer had to have considerable commercial and political acumen, excellent connections and enough capital to ride the inevitable fluctuations of trade. The fact that Ince Ali Asdullah was able to hold this position for so long is a tribute to his skills and influence.

While he was by the far the most important, Ince Ali Asdullah was not the only tax-farmer from the Malay community, although it is striking that most of the other farmers were also from his family. In 1766, the same year that Ince Ali Asdullah obtained the customs farm, his older brother Ince Abdul Kadir purchased the market farm for 197 rds, but it reverted to Chinese control the following year.However, in 1769 Ince Ali Asdullah‘s son, the Letnan Melayu Ince Suleiman, paid 475 rds to obtain the farm, and held it for that year and also for 1776, 1782, 1784, 1785, 1788-90.While his main competitors were Chinese, a couple of other Malays did run the markets for a year at a time. A tendency towards family continuity in holding high community office could also be observed among Makassar‘s Wajorese matoa. [93]

This financial pre-eminence of Ince Ali Asdullah‘s family brought with it attendant obligations. Around 1756 (A.H. 1117) he and his brother Abdul Kadir built a new mosque for the community, close to the old one which had been built by ‘Datuk Punggawa‘ in the late sixteenth century, soon after the agreement between the Malays and the ruler Karaeng Tunapilangga. [94] As we have seen, the earlier Kapitan Ince Cukka had also built a mosque, in 1705 (1117 A.H.). [95] The late eighteenth-century mosque, later known as the Mesjid Makmur, was supported by a number of charitable endowments (wakaf). Ince Ali Asdullah entrusted this mosque to his posterity, the future Kapitans, Letnans and Imams of the Makassar Malays. Only they could wield legitimate authority over it.Access to leadership of the community was further restricted to those descendants who were anak kosomah, having Malays as both mother and father. Anak gundik, men with a non-Malay parent, were disqualified. [96] This last stipulation seems to have proved impracticable. [97] Such arrangements translated the wealth gained through the Dutch monopolies into legitimate social pre-eminence, and ensured the family‘s status.

The importance of tax-farming in the history of the Southeast Asian Chinese has received considerable and well-deserved attention. The most famous and lucrative, the opium farms, not only provided an important means of investing and accumulating capital, but were also closely linked to the consolidation of political and economic networks.Wealthy tax-farmers had access to colonial officials; close ties and influence with indigenous elites and networks of subordinate traders and agents were also essential. [98] While a customs farm did not require the same elaborate distribution network, it did need authority, knowledge and sound judgement. In the case of Ince Ali Asdullah, it seems to have offered comparable opportunities for commercial consolidation and social mobility. The customs farm was undoubtedly only one source of Ince Ali Asdulah‘s wealth. The foundations of his fortune lay in his trading; it was the money earned on his journeys to Kalimantan and Java which enabled him to pay for the farm – and to win the support of powerful Dutch and Chinese allies for his ambitious wedding.

Although Dutch descriptions of Malay trade are few and far between in the later eighteenth century, some general trends can be identified through analysis of the harbourmaster‘s registers. [99] The mid-century, including the 1770s, showed little development, although Malay skippers probably remained strong in their traditional commodities of rice and slaves. Their main imports into Makassar were sea products, coconut oil and rice, while marine produce and cloth dominated exports. They were probably also bringing slaves into South Sulawesi. By the 1780s they had consolidated their decades-long domination of coconut oil imports, most of which came in from Ende on Flores,which was a centre of Sulawesian settlement and one of the archipelago‘s main slave markets. The Malays were shipping in almost 400 slaves a year, mainly from Ende. They were still importing rice, raw cotton and Indian textiles. Their main exports were coins (rijksdaalders),

Chinese earthenware, Chinese linen and Indian cloth. As was to be expected, given their commodities, Nusa Tenggara (the Lesser Sundas) was the favoured trading partner of Makassar‘s Malays. It is estimated that while the share of trade held by other Indonesian groups and locally born Europeans was declining in the face of the growing Chinese role in commerce, the Malays not only managed to hold their own, but showed a slight strengthening. [100] Their share in the volume of shipping grew from 2 per cent in the 1720s through 11 per cent in the 1760s, to 15 per cent in the 1780s. [101]

The VOC archives also provide intermittent information on ship-owners.As is to be expected, the Kapitans and the farmers seem to be among the wealthiest. In 1715 the Malays owned the most vessels in Makassar, a total of thirty: twenty-eight local gonting and two smaller pancallang. There were thirteen ships (mainly the larger chialoup) possessed by Europeans or mestizos, twenty-eight in Chinese or peranakan Chinese hands (two chialoup, twenty-five gonting, and one much smaller pancallang). Forty-four other ships, almost all gonting, were held by Moor Mardijkers (eleven) and Buginese (nine) while the mercantile Wajorese owned twenty-four.Among the Malays, the Kapitan Ince Cukka owned a gonting and a pancallang, one Ince Jemal, Bumi Parisi, possessed three gonting, while Ince Kamar and Ince Japara had two each. [102]

By the 1730s and 1740s the number of registered ships had shrunk dramatically, probably for tax reasons. Only four to six Malays were listed, all gonting owners, and the numbers of Chinese- and European-owned vessels had also sharply declined, if not to the same degree – it seems registration had little to do with actual shipping. [103] Few owners are recorded for 1775: five Europeans, three Chinese, and a lone Malay. This was Ince Ali Asdullah, who is listed as owning a chialoup of 30 last (15 tonnes); the ship was 29 years old, so had been built in 1745/46. [104] In 1784 he was still sailing the same vessel, and this was probably taken over later by his son, Ince Suleiman (Kapitan Melayu since 1789), who is listed in 1790 as owning a 43-year-old chialoup.However, his father appeared as owner again in 1795. [105]

Another Company source, the lists of merchants who bought textiles from the VOC shop, offers information through negation. While mestizo traders predominated, and Chinese were strongly represented among the purchasers – and there was even the occasional Makassarese – the absence ofMalays shows that they obtained their trade textiles through other sources. [106] The Malays were similarly peripheral in other VOC institutions. In contrast to the Chinese and even – though to a lesser extent – the Buginese and the Makassarese, they very seldom, if ever, borrowed money from the orphan chamber or deaconate, Dutch charitable institutions which were an important source of credit. They were, however, prominent borrowers from a private mestizo money-lender who offered smaller loans, so it could be that Malays were just not involved in the more substantial European credit market. [107]

Malays are also absent from another source of social information; the urban tax rolls.While VOC officials, mestizos, burghers,Chinese and ‘free natives‘ had to pay their 5 per cent on house and ship sales,no Malays were subject to these taxes.Even when incidental information, such as the 1742 extra levy on Vlaardingen residents to pay for lamp-oil, shows five ‘Ince‘ residents, [108] we can not be sure that these were Malay: they could well be peranakan Chinese. This apparent marginalisation of the Malays is,however, a product of community-based taxation practice.They paid their dues to the Kapitan Melayu, who obviously had greater fiscal power over his subjects than the Kapitan China did over his. There was one arena, however,where the Malays were subject to the Company, and that was the law. If arbitration and judgement within their community proved impossible or unacceptable, plaintiffs could apply to Makassar‘s Council of Justice.Many Malays were involved in disputes over trade or loans; Ince Ali Asdullah himself applied to the court in 1787 to recover a debt of 90 rds from the Chinese Andiko. [109] In significant criminal cases, such as murder, the Council would also act. [110]

Conclusion

Our account of the Makassar Malays requires us to consider two linked historiographical issues. The first is primarily a question of assessing their changing role in town and trade, given the dramatic transformation of the region after the Dutch conquest. The second, more recalcitrant, need is to consider the implications of ethnic categorisation, both for the social and political processes of the society itself and for our perceptions and analyses.

When writing of Speelman‘s invitation to the Malays to return to Makassar after the conquest, a contemporary Malay source, rather uncharacteristically, offers a commentary: ‘Dalam hal ini ada kemungkinan besar orang2 Melayu dianggap dapat menjadi perantara yang netral antara VOC dan Raja Goa dan dapat menstabilkan keadaan‘ (In this case it is very probable that the Malays were considered as neutral mediators between the VOC and the King of Goa, and that they could stabilise the situation). [111]

The very language is revealing, and not just because of the Anglicisms. ‘Neutrality‘ and ‘stability‘ would probably have fallen far short of the aims of victorious Bone, bent upon further expansion of its influence, and offered very cold comfort to the shattered Makassarese trying to recover from the devastation visited upon them. But these terms do reflect the priorities of the Dutch in 1670, who wanted an end to war, and clear political and commercial hegemony.Pragmatic traders of all communities no doubt also looked forward to peace, although few would have welcomed the crushing economic restrictions which accompanied it.

In retrospect, the role of neutral mediator seems to have served the Makassar Malays well, and the comment quoted above reflects that perception. This is rooted not only in the trends of the 1700s, but also in those of the subsequent nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the Makassar Malays were prominent in (post-) colonial administration, education and law. But this perception also resonates with images from earlier times, when the Malays were brokers between the wider Islamic world and the kingdoms of South Sulawesi. A similar cosmopolitan breadth of vision might be detected in their openness to all members of the ummat, the brotherhood of Islam. Arab sayid and Chinese imams appear in their genealogies, as do Buginese and Makassarese.

Writing of the founders of Melaka, Oliver Wolters praised their greatness. They were ‘masters of political intelligence, quick to exploit changes in their environment‘, shrewd in their choice of alliances, and effective in their mobilisation of ‘folk identity, shaped by memories of the past‘. [112] The same could be said of the Makassarese Malays, mutatis mutandis. Being Malay was to possess a cultural and social passport, providing potential access to the commerce of the diaspora networks and the political advantages of a respected lineage. The combination ofMalayness with more locally grounded identities offered the opportunity to capitalise upon these wider linkages, without abandoning more narrowly focused solidarities.

Although the VOC‘s repressive policies dismantled the extended trading system in which the Malays had played so central a role, within a few decades they had re-oriented themselves. Traders successfully re-deployed to new routes, and the economic and social institutions of the VOC town – the farms and the Kapitan system – were effectively manipulated. The Malay community became a mainstay of Dutch rule, and a central element in Makassar‘s (re)emerging urban society. In that sense, they were indeed ‘neutral mediators‘who helped ‘stabilise‘ the situation.But this stability was maintained by constant negotiation. Ethnic boundaries and relative status in the colonial hierarchy were contested, and involvement with the Dutch did not necessarily mean rejection of local rulers. Malay resilience can not be read as simple continuity. Tunipalangga, Speelman and the Malay Kapitans Ince Maulud and Abdul Kadir all confronted the political dilemmas raised by the ambiguity of ‘the Malay‘. Malays might be Minangkabau or Moor, from Johor, Patani or Banjarmasin. These specific origins could be subsumed into Malayness, the very essence of which was its supra-local character.

Ethnic labels reify.This tendency is reinforced when we couple them to the word ‘community‘, with connotations of solidarity and harmony. It is then all too easy to presuppose the existence of an enduring group, characterised by a common culture and a cohesive social structure. In Makassar, the various kampung – Ternate, Banda, Butung, China,Melayu, Belanda – and the ‘nations‘ under their headmen – Mayor Melayu, Kapitan China,Matoa Wajo – seem to form a stable system. But, as we have seen, category boundaries are problematic. The Wajorese tended to dissolve into their neighbours, peranakan flexibility blurred boundaries, few Butonese lived in Kampung Buton, and even the thriving Malay ‘community‘ could be deconstructed into clusters of heterogeneous compounds. Assumptions of uniformity deny the protean character of constituent elements – factions, families or even specific men or women. The presumed whole overrides the agency of the part. The reverse can also happen, when personal or specific actions are seen as exemplifying a communal reality.

Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutchmen write of ‘Malays‘ or ‘the Buginese‘ as being competitive traders. But failure to differentiate within the ethnic category can mean that the activities of the few are seen as typical of the whole.No-one can fail to be impressed by the number of slaves Ince Patani took from Buton in 1683. But we do not know if this voyage, recorded by chance, was a random example of a wider Malay slave trade, transferring thousands of victims from the eastern to the western archipelago. Or was this transaction recorded precisely because it was noteworthy? These three or four ships might have taken the bulk of the year‘s exports, the slaves having been gradually accumulated at a central market, awaiting the exceptional Ince Patani.

It is very difficult to pin down the social reality behind the labels. Anyone from the west was ‘Javanese‘ in sixteenth-century Makassar, just as later refugees from South Sulawesi tended to become ‘Buginese‘, whatever their origins. In 1561 King Tunapilangga was uncertain who was Malay. ‘Moors‘ and ‘Mardijkers‘, once so numerous, disappeared from the Makassar census in the early eighteenth century, [113] while Speelman‘s notes underline the persisting diversity, and importance, of local origins and family blood-lines within the Malay category. Ince Amin, himself a ‘Malay of Makassarese descent‘, generally uses the term peranakan to identify the Malays fighting alongside Goa, and his translator, Skinner, glosses peranakan as ‘the Malay community‘, but the category is ambiguous. [114] The inhabitants of eighteenth-century Makassar also had problems in reconciling the unruly realities of their social life,with an increasingly rigid classification. [115]

If we are to do justice to both the ‘essential‘ and ‘constructed‘ dimensions of ethnicity,we need to acknowledge the interaction between the social capital (trust, norms, networks) that is transmitted and adapted from generation to generation, and the institutions and rules which channel access to resources. Being ‘Malay‘ was an important element in both self-definition and ascribed status, associated with a supra-local or transcendent identity rooted in the cultural and commercial traditions of Melaka and Islam. This was true in Goan Makassar, and also under the Dutch. In the pre-conquest polity, where commerce was central and Islam flush with noble patronage and military success,Melaka refugees and Malay merchants were welcomed, and wealthy newcomers married into leading local families. The VOC,however, was hostile to the Malay heritage of open seas and Muslim knowledge, and so it closed doors. Trade routes were blocked, Islam relegated to the darker fringes of native society, and a more inflexible administrative grid imposed.

The result, for the Malays, was a process of localisation. Their role was more restricted, and their attention increasingly focused on Makassar itself. They had lost those previous essential advantages in trade and religion which had both sustained, and been supported by, their transcendent identity. The Dutch East India Company based social control and access to resources on ethnic categories, and the Malays mobilised effectively, using the new institutions to defend and expand their turf. This sharpened boundaries between groups, raising the profile of ethnicity for VOC administrators. The modern researcher, using Company sources, can share their perceptions. But at the same time, like the other inhabitants of Makassar, the Malays ignored Dutch-imposed barriers which impeded the search for profits, advantageous alliances, or attractive marriage partners. Ethnicity was a very real force in Makassar, but it was adjustable. The meaning of being Malay in Makassar also fluctuated.Malayness resonated with the power of a glorious past, shared by cultural kin throughout the region. But it was also contingent, driven by personal strategies and constraining contexts. The resulting tensions created a complex social environment,the negotiation of which demanded considerable navigational skills from the Malays themselves, their fellow townsfolk and Dutch officials.

Appendix

List of Makassar Kapitan and Letnan Melayu

?- 1706 Ince Abdul Nazul (not included in established lists, including that in KKIKM)

(1) 28/5/ 1706 Ince Cukka, alias Abdul Razak

(2) 27/1/1724 Ince Maulud

(3) 27/5/1728 Ince Samba

(4) 24/12/1733 Ince Bendak

(5) 27/8/1739 Ince Jamaluddin

(6) 29/10/1747 Ince Abdul Kadir

(7) 4/5/1750 Ince Bungsu

17/6/1751 Ince Mursidin, Letnan.

(8) 17/4/1752 Ince Abdul Kadir

5/6/1781 Ince Sulaiman, Letnan

(9) 9/3/1789 Ince Sulaiman

9/3/1789 Ince Muhammad Hasan, Letnan

9/3/1789 Ince Abdul Kadir,Mayoor

(10) 14/8/1813 Ince Muhd.Hasan

Ince Abdul Gani, cousin of above, appointed by British

(11) 18/4/1827 Ince Abdul Gani

30/5/1825 Ince Abdullah Husain, Letnan

(12) 27/7/1839 Ince Abdullah Husain

16/5/1840 Ince Tajuddun, Letnan

31/7/1862 Ince Ince Abdul Rachman, Letnan, replaces father

Kampung Melayu divided into two:Kampung Melayu and Kampung Endeh

24/10/1873 Nuraddin Daeng Nombong,Kapitan Endeh

(13) 28/6/1880 Ince Abdul Rachman

(14) 31/5/1888 Ince Lele Ali Asdullah

(15) 26/5/1906 Ince Abdul Wahab Daeng Massikki

(16) 1910 Mas Nuralim (non-Malay)

Muh.Amin Daeng Masarro,Kapitan Endeh

(17) 1912 Haji Wan Abdullah Bau‘ Sandi

[1] This paper would not have been possible without the help of the staff of the Arsip Nasional, Jakarta, and the Algemeen Rijksarchief (ARA), The Hague, or the assistance of Ankie de Jonge and Deborah Fernandez-Voortman.I owe a special debt of gratitude to the members of the Kerukunan Keluarga Indonesia Keturunan Melayu (KKIKM), the association for people of Malay descent in Makassar, particularly H. Ince Nurcahaya Dg. Ngai, Ince Abdullah, H. Ince Munir Razak, Drs. Ince Mansyur Yacub and Drs. Ince Amir Jahja.

[2] O.W.Wolters, The Fall of Srivijaya in Malay History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).

[3] Barbara W.Andaya and Leonard Y.Andaya, A History ofMalaysia (London: Macmillan, 1982); L. F. F. R. Thomaz, ‘The Malay Sultanate of Melaka‘, in Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era: Trade, Power and Belief, ed. Anthony Reid (Ithaca,NY:Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 69-90.

[4] J. Noorduyn, ‘De Handelsrelaties van het Makassaarse Rijk Volgens de “Notitie” van Cornelis Speelman uit 1670‘, Nederlandse Historische Bronnen, 3 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983), pp. 96-123. Anthony Reid, ‘The Rise of Makassar‘, Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs [henceforth RIMA], 17 (1983): 117-60; Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450-1680: Volume Two: Expansion and Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); John Villiers, ‘Makassar: The Rise and Fall of an East Indonesian Maritime Trading State, 1512-1669‘, in The Southeast Asian Port and Polity: Rise and Demise, ed. J. Kathirithamby-Wells and J.Villiers (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1990), pp. 143-59; J. Noorduyn, ‘De Islamisering van Makassar‘, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (henceforth BKI), 112 (1956): 247-66.

[5] Anthony Reid, ‘Pluralism and Progress in Seventeenth-Century Makassar‘, in Authority and Enterprise among the Peoples of South Sulawesi, ed. R.Tol, K. v. Dijk and G.Acciaioli (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2000), p. 61.

[6] W.Cummings,‘The Melaka Malay Diaspora in Makassar, c.1500-1669‘, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (henceforth JMBRAS), 71, 1 (1998): 107-21; Reid,Age of Commerce, vol. II, ch. 3.

[7] VOC 1127 ff. 576-577. References in this format designate documents from the VOC archive in the ARA, and give inventory number and folio (page).

[8] Noorduyn,‘De Handelsrelaties‘.

[9] VOC 1217 f. 247.

[10] VOC 1224 f. 433. This contemporary account seems to make use of a handwritten Romanised chronicle, Sedjarah Melajoe di Makassar (History of the Malays in Makassar), once kept at the Yayasan Sulawesi (no. 139); see Denys Lombard and Claudine Salmon,‘Islam and Chineseness‘, Indonesia, 57 (1993): 115-31.

[11] Abdurrahim, ‘Kedatangan Orang Melaju di Makassar‘, in Kenallah Sulawesi Selatan. ed. H. D.Mangemba (Jakarta:Timun Mas, 1956),pp. 143-6; G.J.Wolhoff and Abdurrahim, Sedjarah Goa(Makassar: Jajasan Kebudajaan Sulawesi Selatan & Tenggara, 1960); Cummings, ‘Melaka Malay Diaspora‘; Reid, ‘Pluralism and Progress‘, p. 66; ‘De Kapitein Melajoe te Makassar‘, Adatrechtbundels XXXI: Selebes (The Hague: 1929), pp. 110-12; Kerukunan Keluarga Indonesia Keturunan Melayu (KKIKM), Sejarah Keturunan Indonesia Melayu, (Makassar?: unpublished photocopy, c. 1987), p. 3.

[12] Noorduyn, ‘Islamisering van Makassar‘; KKIKM,Sejarah, p. 3; Cummings,‘Melaka Malay Diaspora‘, p. 111.

[13] ‘De Kapitein Melajoe‘; KKIKM, Sejarah; Cummings, ‘Melaka Malay Diaspora‘; while Datuk Maharaja Lela is described as coming from Patani, it is worth noting that the Dutch Admiral Speelman,who knew him personally,described Ince Muda, a Minangkabau, as ‘coming from the same village as Radja Lella‘ (Speelman ‘Notitie‘, Aanwinsten eerste Afdeling,ARA, 1928, nrs.10 and 11, f. 744). This is a manuscript copy of the encyclopaedic memorandum submitted to the VOC by Admiral Cornelis Speelman after the conquest of Goa; see Noorduyn,‘Handelsrelaties‘ for more details.

[14] C. Skinner, Sja‘ir Perang Mengkasar (The Rhymed Chronicle of the Macassar War) by Entji‘ Amin (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963); on Ince Amin, see p. 91. The prefix variously spelled ‘Ince‘, ‘Intje‘, ‘Encik‘, ‘Enchik‘, ‘Entji‘, etc. was used to designate Malays (and sometimes peranakan Chinese).

[15] Skinner, Sja‘ir, pp. 147, 168, 144 (Skinner‘s translations).

[16] Speelman ‘Notitie‘, f. 744.

[17] L.Y. Andaya, The Heritage of Arung Palakka: A history of South Sulawesi (Celebes) in the seventeenth century (The Hague:Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), pp. 125, 126, 128. Skinner, Sja‘ir; Ince Amin describes how the Malays, together with the Makassarese, had the task of protecting the sultan and how, when the battle turned against them, they refused to obey the command to withdraw until forced by Datuk Maharaja Lela (pp. 209, 217).

[18] Speelman ‘Notitie‘, f. 744.

[19] Ibid. on Kaicili‘Kalimata see Skinner, Sja‘ir, pp.159, 274, and Andaya,Heritage of Arung Palakka, p. 50.

[20] Ibid., p.130.

[21] KKIKM,Sejarah, p. 4.

[22] Leonard Andaya,‘The Bugis-Makassar Diasporas‘, JMBRAS, 68, 1 (1995): 119-38.

[23] Andaya,Heritage of Arung Palakka, ch. VIII.

[24] Speelman ‘Notitie‘, f. 744.

[25] VOC 1276 f. 926.

[26] Skinner, Sja‘ir, p. 125; see also pp. 89, 160.

[27] Speelman ‘Notitie‘, f. 707.

[28] KKIKM,Sejarah, p. 4; J.Noorduyn,“The Wajorese Merchants‘ Community in Makassar”, in Tol et al., ed.,Authority and Enterprise.

[29] Speelman ‘Notitie‘, f. 707.

[30] VOC 1347 f. 386.

[31] VOC 1400 f. 6.

[32] VOC 1438 f. 235.

[33] VOC 1426 f. 348, 1438 f. 243.

[34] VOC 1438 f. 305, 290.

[35] VOC 1438 f. 333.

[36] VOC 1775 ff. 53-60;Andaya,‘The Bugis-Makassar Diasporas‘.

[37] VOC1775 f. 53.

[38] See Gerrit Knaap and Heather Sutherland, Monsoon Traders: captains, commodities and shipping in eighteenth century Makassar (Leiden:KITLV Press, forthcoming).

[39] Andaya and Andaya,History ofMalaysia, ch. 3; see also Wolters, The Fall of Srivijaya.

[40] Noorduyn,‘The Wajorese Merchants‘Community‘;Knaap and Sutherland, Monsoon Traders.

[41] One source states that it was Datuk Maharaja Lela who made this request to Speelman (‘De Kapitein Melajoe te Makassar‘, Adatrechtbundels XXXI: Selebes [The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1929], pp. 110-112), but–as noted above–Speelman writes in his ‘Notitie‘ that the Malay leader died in Mandar. KKIKM, Sejarah attributes the petition to ‘Datuk Tumenggung‘,which could refer to Dutuk Maharaja Lela or another Malay leader.

[42] VOC 1320 f. 274-5.

[43] VOC 1365 f. 394.

[44] Kampung ethnic names do not necessarily mean that all or even most inhabitants came from a given group.While this was often the case initially, populations soon shifted and blended; in other cases a kampung housed few people from the eponymous area.Kampung Butung, for example, was very much a mixed settlement; the name may have been derived from its proximity to a landing place for boats from that island, rather than any settlement by Butonese.

[45] VOC 1426 f. 504.

[46] VOC 1595 f. 320.

[47] VOC 1979 f. 96-7.

[48] VOC 1358 f. 295, 1403 f. 254.

[49] VOC 1365 f. 449.

[50] Five compounds were along the beach to the west of Vlaardingen‘s wall; four of these belonged to Malays and one to a Chinese. Of the sixteen compounds stretching from the sea along Vlaardingen‘s northern wall seven were owned by Malays, two by Chinese, two by Makassarese aristocrats, one by a prominent mestizo family, and four by other Sulawesians.Two of the seventeen remaining ‘kampung‘ belonged to the Kapitan Melayu, nine were held by other Malays, and the rest by other Sulawesians.

[51] ARNAS Mak. 289/2. References in this format refer to documents from the Makassar collection, in the Arsip Nasional, Jakarta.

[52] VOC 3939 f. 80.

[53] ARNAS Mak. 289/2.

[54] VOC 1992 f. 49, VOC 3700 f. 46.

[55] See Speelman ‘Notitie‘, f. 744, and Skinner, Sja‘ir, pp. 159, 274.

[56] Remco Raben, ‘Batavia and Colombo: The Ethical and Spatial Order of Two Colonial Cities, 1600-1800‘ (Ph. D. diss., University of Leiden, 1996) describes the early Malay Kapitans in Batavia, where Malays of Patani birth or descent held the position from at least 1644 to 1732 (pp. 208-10).

[57] Noorduyn,‘The Wajorese Merchants‘Community‘, p.103.

[58] VOC 1711 f. 201.

[59] KKIKM,Sejarah, p. 5.

[60] A diary of the Kapitan Melayu between 1781 and 1818 exists; unfortunately I was unable to consult it while preparing this article. See Helen Cerpokovic, ‘The Diary of the Kapitan Melayu‘, in Living Through Histories: Culture, History and Social Life in South Sulawesi, ed. K. Robinson and M. Paeni (Canberra: Department of Anthropology,ANU, 1998), pp. 55-66.

[61] ARNAS Mak.313/1.

[62] For another example of the translator‘s position, see Noorduyn, ‘The Wajorese Merchants‘ Community‘; on their legal role,VOC 3150 ff. 163-8.

[63] ARNAS Mak.313/1.

[64] Noorduyn,‘The Wajorese Merchants‘Community‘; this expansionist trend by Bone continued through to the later nineteenth century (Heather Sutherland, ‘Power and Politics in South Sulawesi: 1860-1880‘, RIMA, 17 [Winter/Summer 1983]: 161-207).

[65] ARNAS Mak.313/1.

[66] ARNAS Mak.163 f. 121.

[67] Noorduyn,‘The Wajorese Merchants‘Community‘.

[68] VOC 3273 ff. 1-2.

[69] Noorduyn,‘The Wajorese Merchants‘Community‘.

[70] VOC 3273 ff. 53-4.

[71] Noorduyn,‘The Wajorese Merchants‘Community‘, p. 107.

[72] Heather Sutherland,‘Mestizos as Middlemen? Ethnicity and Access in Colonial Macassar‘, in Papers from the Dutch-Indonesian Historical Conference, Lage Vuursche, June 1980 (Leiden: Bureau of Indonesian Studies, 1980), pp. 250-77; Gerrit Knaap, ‘A City of Migrants: Kota Ambon at the End of the Seventeenth Century‘, Indonesia, 51 (1991): 105-28; H.E.Niemeyer, ‘Calvinisme en koloniale stadscultuur. Batavia 1619-1725‘ (Ph.D. diss., Free University of Amsterdam, 1996); Raben,‘Batavia and Colombo‘. On shifting boundaries, see Lombard and Salmon,‘Islam and Chineseness‘.

[73] One page of almost illegible carbon typescript in the possession of H. Ince Munir Razak,Makassar.

[74] KKIKM,Sejarah ; Lombard and Salmon,‘Islam and Chineseness‘, pp. 188-9.

[75] Interviews, Makassar, Dec. 1999, May 2000, Apr.–May 2001, including with the present imam of the Mesjid Mubarrak, H.Muhammed Saleh Tahir; typescript material dated Jan. 1973 in the possession of H. Ince Munir Razak. The present Mesjid Mubarrak was probably built, and given an endowment (wakaf), by the first recorded Imam Ince Abdul Razak Datuk Kadhi (1830-34) and his brother, Ince Taha, both Chinese Muslims. Ince Abdul Razak had previously been imam of the Mesjid Melayu. The Department of Religion took over the mosque in the 1970s and replaced the hereditary Imam family.

[76] Interviews,Makassar,with members of the KKIKM, Dec. 1999.

[77] VOC 2780 f. 85.

[78] VOC 2780 ff. 85-93.

[79] Noorduyn,‘The Wajorese Merchants‘Community‘, pp.109-10.

[80] VOC 2780 ff. 85-86.

[81] Heather Sutherland,‘Trepang and Wangkang: The China Trade of Eighteenth Century Makassar‘, in R.Tol et al. ed., Authority and Enterprise, pp. 73-94; see also Knaap and Sutherland,Monsoon Traders. Ince Ali Asdullah‘s grave, the most potent place for pilgrimage among Makassar Malays today, is located on the Spermonde island of Barrang Lompo, about 22 km off the Makassar shore.Why he chose to be buried there is unknown, but it could be that this reflects the strength of his connection to the off-shore islands. Barrang Lompo today is the home to an assimilated Bajo community, and still a centre for trepang fishery (interviews,Makassar and Barrang Lompo,May 2001).

[82] KKIKM,Sejarah.

[83] The above account is based on ibid.

[84] John Butcher and Howard Dick, The Rise and Fall of Revenue Farming (London: St.Martins Press, 1993).

[85] VOC 1910 ff. 105-09.

[86] Knaap and Sutherland,Monsoon Traders.

[87] Ibid.

[88] VOC 3181 ff. 30-1,Resoluties (Decisions) ff. 12,13, 97-99.

[89] VOC 3598 ff. 141-2, 153-6;Knaap and. Sutherland,Modern Traders.

[90] VOC 3181, ff. 89-90.

[91] Els M. Jacobs, Koopman in Azie. De handel van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie tijdens de 18de eeuw (Zutphen:Walburg Press, 2000).

[92] VOC 3465 f. 17, 3552 ff .38-39, 3700 ff. 29-35.

[93] Noorduyn,‘The Wajorese Merchants‘Community‘, p. 114.

[94] KKIKM,Rangkuman Riwayat Singkat Kedatangan Orang-Orang Melayu di Indonesia Khususnya di Sulawesi selatan Hingga Terbentuknya Organisasi Kerukunan Keluarga Indonesia Keturunan Melayu (KKIKM) (Makassar: unpublished document, 1996), p. 5.

[95] KKIKM, Sejarah, p. 5; the list of Imam of the Malay mosque (pp. 18-19) begins with Ince Budiman in 1740 (see appendix).

[96] Ibid., p. 20. This implies a correlation between descent and marriage practice, i.e. that only Malay women could be primary wives,non-Malay women being restricted to gundik or secondary status. The wakaf grounds were registered with the Dutch administration in 1845.

[97] Interview with two half-brothers, descendants of Ince Ali Asdullah, the head of the yayasan (foundation) Dato‘ ri Bandang (which administers the Mesjid Makmur Melayu) Ince Anas b. Hassan, and the Imam of the Mesjid Makmur Melayu,H.Ince Unais b.Hassan (Makassar,Apr. 2001). Their acknowledgement of Sino-Malay ancestry may reflect either a deviation from the rule or the impossibility of establishing inter-group boundaries

[98] J. Rush, Opium to Java: Revenue Farming and Chinese Enterprise in Colonial Indonesia, 1860-1910 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990); Carl Trocki, Opium and Empire: Chinese Society in Colonial Singapore, 1800-1910 (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 1991).

[99] Knaap and Sutherland,Monsoon Traders.

[100] Ibid, Ch.V.

[101] G.J. Knaap, ‘Manning the Fleet‘, paper presented at the Conference on Indonesian Social History, Universitas Indonesia, Dec. 1999,Table 2.

[102] VOC 1882 f. 2.

[103] For example,VOC 2192 f. 1017, 2628 f. 140g.

[104] VOC 3441 f.168.

[105] VOC 3905 f. 56,Comite Oost Indische Handel 94, f. 102.

[106] For example,VOC 2192 ff. 697-8, 2933 ff. 43-51; see Knaap and Sutherland,Monsoon Traders, for information on trade routes and commodities.

[107] Heather Sutherland, ‘Money in Makassar: credit and debt in an eighteenth century VOC settlement‘, paperpresented at the Conference on ‘The Indonesian Town Revisited‘, Leiden,Dec. 2000.

[108] VOC 2569 ff. 327-30.

[109] ARNAS Mak. 342/1.

[110] In 1765 jurisdiction over criminal cases, particularly those involving possible corporal or capital punishment, was removed from the Malay Kapitans, after a particularly violent incident. They retained the right to hear civil cases involving Malays or other Asians in a meeting with other community heads and the VOC‘s chief translator;VOC 3150 ff. 163-8. A publication on the courts ofMakassar is in preparation.

[111] KKIKM,Sejarah, p.4.

[112] Wolters, The Fall of Srivijaya, pp. 173-4.

[113] However, they retained a composite identity as ‘Moor Mardijker‘ ship-owners into the 1720s (VOC 1995 ff. 96-7).

[114] As Mona Lohanda reminds us, until the nineteenth century ‘peranakan Chinese‘ meant Muslim Chinese (Mona Lohanda, The Kapitan China of Batavia 1837-1942 [Jakarta: Djambatan, 1996], p. 6). The later notion that peranakan means locally born of mixed descent can not be applied automatically. Specific information Ince Amin gives on at least one of his protagonists suggests the need for further nuance: Datuk Sri Amar di Raja was a Cham from Cambodia (Skinner, Sja‘ir, p. 147).

[115] James C. Scott, State Simplifications: some applications to Southeast Asia (Amsterdam: Centre for Asian Studies Amsterdam, 1995) describes how modern states need to manage, subordinate and tax; this was also characteristic of earlier polities, although their managerial skills were more limited.

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Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 32 (3), pp 397-421 October 2001. Printed in the United Kingdom.© 2001 The National University of Singapore

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