Article

Celebes

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Celebes

Celebes, the large island in the eastern archipelago whose south-western arm was home to the sultanate of Macassar, occupied a distinctive position in the commercial geography of the seventeenth-century East Indies. Unlike the Spice Islands proper, Celebes itself produced no cloves, mace or nutmeg, yet its principal port served as the entrepôt through which the bulk of the region’s spice trade passed when the Dutch monopoly was under pressure [1, pp. 1–2]. The island’s strategic importance lay in its position between the Moluccas to the north, the Lesser Sunda Islands to the south, and Borneo to the west, making it a natural convergence point for the maritime networks of Malay, Javanese, Portuguese, Chinese and European traders [1, pp. 6–7]. The English East India Company maintained a factory at Macassar from 1613 until the Dutch conquest of the sultanate in 1667, and the commercial history of that period reveals a port whose prosperity was inseparable from the broader contest for control of the spice trade [1, p. 1].

The English Factory at Macassar, 1613–1643

The English presence at Macassar began when John Jourdain, returning from an unsuccessful attempt to purchase spices at Amboyna and Ceram, opened a factory in July 1613 [1, p. 2]. His instructions from the Company’s directors, communicated as early as 1611 to the captain John Saris, identified Macassar as a source of rice that could be carried to the Bandas at a three-to-one profit [1, p. 2]. Jourdain’s initial assessment was favourable: during four weeks in the port he was impressed by its prosperity and concluded that the Company would find a promising market for its Coromandel and Gujerat cloths, provided the Portuguese from Malacca did not preempt them [1, p. 2]. He left behind George Cockayne and Benjamin Fary as chief and second factors, and the factory’s early function was essentially that of a refitting and supply station for ships sailing from Bantam to the Spice Islands [1, p. 2].

The first trading season was a disappointment. Cockayne spent six months haggling with local merchants over the price of Indian cloth, only to lose the market entirely when Portuguese private traders arrived from Malacca in December 1613 [1, p. 2]. A similar fate befell a consignment of Chinese silks, satins and velvets from Bantam, when a junk arrived from China — the first, according to Cockayne, that had ever reached the port — and prices collapsed [1, p. 2]. For the next decade the English at Macassar remained preoccupied with the purchase of rice, arrack and timber, while their principal commercial energies were directed towards maintaining a foothold in the Bandas [1, p. 3].

The situation changed dramatically after the Amboyna Massacre of 1623 and the subsequent withdrawal of all English factors from the Moluccas and Bandas to Batavia [1, p. 3]. By 1624 the Macassar factory was one of the most important remaining to the English Company in eastern Asia, alongside Jambi and Japara, the only other posts still occupied apart from Batavia itself [1, p. 3]. On 22 July 1624 the English president at Batavia, Thomas Brockedon, formally advised his subordinates at Macassar to begin the purchase of cloves, although unauthorised purchases had already been made by the chief factor Staverton in 1622 [1, p. 4]. The English were thus drawn into the smuggling trade that the Dutch regarded as the greatest obstacle to their monopoly in the Spice Islands [1, p. 4].

The mid-1630s represented the zenith of English commercial activity at Macassar. In 1630 the English president at Bantam described it as ‘their great year of Cloves’, and over 81,000 lbs of cloves were sent to England in December 1632 [1, p. 5]. When the annual fleet sailed from Bantam for the Thames in January 1636, it carried little short of 300,000 lbs of cloves for the account of the English East India Company [1, p. 6]. Governor-general Hendrik Brouwer’s correspondence confirmed the scale of the trade: approximately 600,000 lbs of cloves had been imported into Macassar in 1635, mainly from Hitu on Amboyna, while only 161,337 lbs had reached Batavia during the same period [1, pp. 7–8]. The Dutch charge that the English were the principal instigators of the smuggling traffic was, as Bassett notes, substantially correct, though the Portuguese and, after 1625, the Danes were working in conjunction with them [1, p. 5].

The Collapse of the Clove Trade and New Commercial Channels, 1643–1667

The Dutch crushing of the Ambonese rebellion in 1643, culminating in the beheading of kimelaha Luhu and his family outside Fort Victoria on 17 June (N.S.), ended the English clove trade at Macassar almost overnight [1, p. 11]. Dutch control of the entire Amboyna quarter was complete, and the quantity of cloves brought from there to Batavia that year reached 869,000 lbs [1, p. 11]. The English president, Cartwright, reported that the Dutch had ‘overthrowne ye Macasser Trade’ so thoroughly that the ship Expedition could sell no more than one bale of goods and brought its return in gold [1, p. 12]. Robert Yeo’s cargo of benzoin, rice and a small quantity of rotten cloves from Macassar was invoiced at 225 reals per bahar — a rise in cost price of over 125 per cent in two years — and he warned that ‘it was likelie those cloves were ye last wee might expect from Macasser’ [1, p. 12].

The London market reflected the change immediately. When the ships of the 1643 season reached the Thames in 1644, only 58 hogsheads and 1 barrel of cloves were sold, and the price had risen to 4s. 7d. per lb. [1, p. 17]. Thereafter, until the outbreak of the first Anglo-Dutch war, annual sales never exceeded 60 hogsheads, except in 1647 when 118 hogsheads of ungarbled cloves were sold at prices ranging from 6s. 2d. to 7s. 11d. [1, p. 17]. After the defeat of Macassar in 1660, the English Company was reduced to selling only a couple of hogsheads and casks per year, and even this trickle ceased after 1664 [1, p. 17].

In the absence of spices, the English factors turned to tortoise shell, sandalwood, benzoin and precious metals as return cargoes [1, pp. 22–23]. The Spanish silver real of eight, imported into Macassar from Acapulco via the Philippines, and Chinese gold became standard exports to Coromandel [1, p. 22]. The English also adopted the policy of retaining a proportion of the gold mass they received for their cloth and exporting the coin itself, which could be melted down and converted into new pagodas on Coromandel at considerable profit [1, p. 22]. This strategy was complicated by the monetary experiments of sultan Hassan Udin, who in 1655 issued a debased coin, the ‘mass checoe’, that was rapidly rejected by merchants and caused a currency crisis [1, pp. 26–27]. The sultan introduced a new small coin, the coppam (kopang), in late 1657, and the ‘mass checoe’ was finally prohibited as a medium of exchange in January 1658 [1, p. 27].

The Dutch attack on Macassar in May 1660, which caught the port completely by surprise, marked a further turning point [1, p. 29]. The treaty concluded at Batavia in August 1660 forbade Macassarese trade with or interference in Buton, the Moluccas, Amboyna or Banda, and stipulated that all Portuguese were to leave the port [1, p. 35]. The English factors, William Turner and William Mainstone, anticipated the worst: Mainstone wrote that the Portuguese ‘must be gone or surrendered’ and that the Malayans, ‘which are the 2 pillars of this Trade’, would not remain under such conditions [1, p. 30]. The final Dutch conquest under Cornelis Speelman in November 1667 ended the English presence permanently. The Treaty of Bongaya of 18 November 1667 (N.S.) stipulated that all Europeans other than Dutchmen were to be excluded from Macassar [1, p. 35]. The merchandise in the English factory was valued at f. 17,230 and shipped to Batavia aboard the Nieuwendam [1, p. 35].

The Malay Diaspora in Makassar

The commercial history of Macassar cannot be separated from the presence of the Malay community, which formed one of the principal pillars of the port’s trade. Cummings reconstructs the history of this diaspora from the early sixteenth century to the fall of Gowa in 1669, arguing that the relationship between Malays and Makassarese was far more complex than the standard narrative of a mutually profitable trading alliance suggests [2, p. 106].

The permanent Malay settlement was established around 1561, a date derived from an unpublished Malay manuscript (MS 200a); the Gowa Chronicle places it only within the reign of Tunipalangga (1546–65) [2, p. 108]. The founding agreement, negotiated by a Malay named Anakoda Bonang, granted four specific privileges: the karaeng would not enter the settlement, not ascend into Malay homes, not demand payment for children in divorce, and not confiscate goods for crimes committed by Malays [2, p. 108]. An English report of 8 February 1625 stated that most merchants sailing from Makassar to Maluku were Patani and Johor Malays living ‘by the thousands’ in the city, while Makassarese themselves seldom sailed far [2, p. 110]. In 1634 a Dutch blockade trapped forty Malay and Javanese ships in Makassar’s harbour [2, p. 110].

Cummings identifies three complicating factors that the conventional account overlooks. First, the relationship was subject to disruption and individual tension, from the uncomfortable position of the Makassarese-Malay I Mangalai to the machinations of Karaeng Karunrung, who contrived to have the entire Malay community exiled [2, p. 106]. Second, Makassarese rulers never permitted Malays to monopolise trade: of at least nine syahbandar (harbormasters) recorded in the lontara’ bilang court records, only one — Enci’ Hussein in a 1615 entry — was clearly Malay [2, p. 110]. Malays functioned as agents and middlemen rather than exclusive controllers of commerce [2, p. 106]. Third, the Malay presence was not confined to a single quarter in the city but extended across a belt of coastal communities including Sanrabone and Cikoang, forming a network of small settlements linked to both the city and overseas Malay worlds [2, p. 106].

The conversion of the rulers of Gowa and Tallo’ to Islam, precisely dated in the Gowa Chronicle to 22 September 1606 CE, was a pivotal moment for the community [2, p. 110]. More than two dozen seventeenth-century Islamic manuscripts in Arabic, Malay and Makassarese are preserved at the ANRI Wilayah Sulawesi Selatan, testifying to the intermediary role Malays played in transmitting Islamic doctrine to Makassarese converts [2, p. 111]. The Sanrabone manuscript records that the first mosque in that community was built between 1012 and 1015 AH under the direction of Datu’ Mokotta, a Malay from Pagarruyung [2, p. 113]. Yet neither community assimilated into the other: Makassarese converted to Islam and some learned Malay, but they never ‘masuk Melayu’; Malays, for their part, never abandoned their attachment to a homeland in the western archipelago [2, p. 106].

A Forgotten Naval Engagement

The strategic importance of the Macassar Strait extended well beyond the seventeenth century. Tregonning recovered the account of a naval engagement fought on 26 July 1806, in which H.M.S. Greyhound (Captain Elphinstone) and H.M.S. Harrier (Captain Troubridge), part of Admiral Sir Thomas Troubridge’s fleet based at Penang, encountered a Dutch squadron of four vessels [3, p. 202]. Employing a raking tactic that Tregonning notes as a ‘Nelsonian touch’, the two British ships subjected the leading Dutch frigate to fire from both sides, resulting in the capture of the frigate Pallas (36 guns), the armed ship Victoria (18 guns), and the Batavia (10 guns), while the corvette William escaped [3, p. 203]. British losses were minimal: one seaman killed and six wounded [3, p. 203]. The captured Pallas was commissioned as H.M.S. Macassar under Captain Troubridge, the admiral’s son [3, p. 203]. The despatches left Penang on the Blenheim, which foundered off Madagascar, likely consigning the prize-money and official reports to obscurity [3, p. 204].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on Celebes, as it relates to the Macassar trade, has been shaped by the availability of primary sources and the national perspectives from which they were written. Bassett’s 1958 article was explicitly designed to counterbalance the Dutch historiography of Tiele, Heeres and Stapel, which had dominated the field since the late nineteenth century [1, p. 1]. By drawing on the Original Correspondence Series and Factory Records (Java) in the India Office Library, London — collections that had not previously been systematically exploited for the Macassar period — Bassett provided the first comprehensive study of English operations at Macassar [1, p. 1]. His work established that the English were the principal instigators of the clove-smuggling trade, while simultaneously demonstrating that their commercial influence was always secondary to that of the Portuguese and was ultimately destroyed by the Dutch conquest of 1667 [1, p. 1].

Cummings’s 1998 article addressed a different historiographical gap: the actual history of the Malay community in Makassar, which had been largely unknown despite the long recognition of its existence through figures such as the scribe Ence’ Amin and the Sj’air Perang Mengkasar [2, p. 106]. By incorporating evidence from peripheral communities such as Sanrabone and Cikoang, and drawing on unpublished manuscripts in the ANRI collections, Cummings moved beyond the Gowa-centric framing that had dominated the field [2, p. 106]. His work complemented Bassett’s commercial narrative by providing the social and cultural context within which the trade operated.

Tregonning’s brief 1806 naval note, while geographically peripheral to the main commercial history, illustrates the continued strategic significance of the Macassar Strait in the early nineteenth century and the fragility of the documentary record: the loss of the Blenheim off Madagascar effectively erased the official account of the engagement from standard naval histories [3, p. 204]. Together, these three contributions span more than two centuries of engagement with Celebes and demonstrate the Society’s sustained interest in the commercial and political history of the eastern archipelago.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. D.K. Bassett (1958). English trade in Celebes, 1613–1667 JMBRAS 31(1): 1–39. Read on JSTOR
  2. W. Cummings (1998). The Melaka Malay Diaspora in Makassar, c 1500–1669 JMBRAS 71(1): 106–121.
  3. K.G. Tregonning (1959). A forgotten naval battle JMBRAS 32(1): 202–204.