An Indonesian History: Personalised Politics in Makassar and South Sulawesi, c.1600-2018

Forthcoming June 2025

Heather Sutherland

Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous state, is still experimenting with democracy. Post-war presidents rejected “50% plus one” government, preferring the people to be a “floating mass” under Jakarta’s thumb.

Since regime change in 1998 South Sulawesi (Southwest Celebes) politics have been recognized as particularly clientelist, reflecting entrenched predispositions. From 1669, under the loose and indirect suzerainty of Dutch Batavia (Jakarta), the inland kingdoms and the harbour town of Makassar embodied very different priorities. The aggressively competitive dynasties of the interior sought local hegemony, while the port’s commercial elites--Malays, Indians, and Chinese, alongside Bugis and Makassarese--were oriented to trans-regional exchange. Cut loose from royal control, Makassarese borderlands became an arena where different powers tested their strength. By the late nineteenth century intensifying Islamic awareness foreshadowed a potential rejection of absolute noble authority. After 1905 indirect Dutch rule and neo-colonial strategies entrenched elite power but failed to dominate. Jakarta was to share these frustrations after 1950. City and province were politically integrated after 1965; within the institutions imposed, politics remained personalized and transactional. Sutherland’s long-term perspective avoids such dichotomies as continuity or change, autonomy or dependence, recognizing that trade-offs have always been fundamental to political practice.

Heather Sutherland is a retired professor, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Publication Year: 2025
628 pp, 254 x 178mm
13 maps, 62 b/w images
Paperback
ISBN: 978-981-325-205-9