A history of regionalism in Indonesia.
Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, is a vast archipelago with a relatively short history of unified rule. The devolution of power to the provinces after 1998 has meant that regional social traditions and historical legacies are powerful forces in contemporary politics. South Sulawesi (Southwest Celebes), a crucial and understudied region of Indonesia, is no exception.
Starting in 1669, tensions between the Dutch East India Company’s cosmopolitan port town of Makassar and the aggressive, competitive dynasties of the interior began to shape peninsula politics. A strong ethnic Chinese community embodied the town’s wide horizons, while in the countryside, the nobility’s engagement with Islam ranged from symbiotic co-optation to hostility. Religion, rather than politics, framed the main challenges to authority. Finally integrated in 1965, the city and province remain among the most clientelist in the country, their politics personalized and transactional. Nevertheless, the large city of Makassar is booming. Dutch indirect rule and neocolonial strategies entrenched the power of local elites, who resisted changes imposed by Batavia or, after 1950, by Jakarta.
In this history, Heather Sutherland’s long-term perspective avoids dichotomies like continuity and change or autonomy and dependence, recognizing that trade-offs have always been fundamental to interaction within and between town and country and between the province and distant capitals.
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Gowa Talloq to 1669
Chapter Three: Precarious Co-existence 1669-1780
Chapter Four: Reorientations 1780-1847
Chapter Five: Divergence 1847-1906
Chapter Six: Reinventions 1906-1942
Chapter Seven: The Japanese Occupation 1942-1945
Chapter Eight: Making States 1945-1950
Chapter Nine: Dealing with Democracy 1950-1965
Chapter Ten: The New Order 1965-1998
Chapter Eleven: Again a Capital 1998-2018
Chapter Twelve: Retrospect
Conclusion
Glossary
Biographical Appendix
Bibliography
