The Dynamics of Resistance and Emulation in Makassarese History

William Cummings (*) This article situates historical struggles for supremacy in early modern Makassar within a framework of intrafamily rivalry in which cooperation and competition coexisted. Through a reading of two texts, it examines the connections between resistance and emulation in a society that viewed social and political relationships within the structuring context of kinship. These contradictory impulses produced tensions fostering cycles of alliance and rivalry characteristic of centre-periphery dynamics in South Sulawesi. In a wide-ranging and provocative article, Tony Day has raised the question of whether Southeast Asian historiography would be better off analysing the region in terms of family, kinship and gender relations of power rather than in terms of highly structured institutions such as states and bureaucracies as well as categories such as centralisation and administrative cycles. (1) While this shift of focus offers attractive possibilities, it is no simple matter. The analysis of power relations, too, can rely inadvertently on assumptions about the nature of rivalry and opposition. In the case of local political dynamics, for example, it is commonly assumed that rivals are engaged in acts of clear resistance to the threat posed by others. In political landscapes characterised by a multiplicity of competing centres in particular, it is often assumed that there is a structural principle at work in which peripheral polities work to assert their autonomy and to reject the advances of centralising domains. This article takes up Day's challenge by examining the complex historical and historiographical relationship between Gowa and its subordinate neighbours in South Sulawesi. It examines how family relationships shaped political relationships, and does so via a critique of the assumption that competing polities were locked into oppositional relationships or zero-sum rivalries. In a region where political and social relations were conceptualised (not merely expressed) in terms of familial, kinship relations, it is misleading to represent political rivalries as being between two opposing sides. More than anything, it is this tendency to assume that conflict positions social groups as opposites that leads to misplaced readings of resistance and oversimplifications of political dynamics. Resistance, it will become clear, need not imply rejection, and often entails acts of emulation. This is particularly so in an area like South Sulawesi, known for its inhabitants' preoccupations with rank and status-rivalry. (2) We examine here a pair of texts containing descriptions of Makassarese politics from outside the perspective of Gowa, Makassar's dominant power and the architect of the 'official' chronicles that dominate studies of the region's history. (3) The first text records an oral history of the kind that circulated beyond the confines of Gowa's court. It narrates an account of Gowa's origins at odds with the history promulgated in the Gowa Chronicle. The second text records a history once performed orally by a professional storyteller to entertain and instruct audiences. While the first appears to offer a resistant or subaltern history, the second provides insight into the dynamics of familial politics and gives us purchase to better understand the ambiguities of the first text and the tensions governing Makassarese social life. Together this analysis provides a revised picture of the nature of 'resistance' in a Southeast Asian society where social and political relationships are viewed within the structuring context of kinship. Makassarese history according to the Gowa Chronicle The history of Makassar, South Sulawesi in the early modern period is easily confused with the history of Gowa, its dominant power. The turbulent histories of its many neighbours and rivals are frequently forgotten or relegated to a footnote since Gowa-even if briefly-did establish its suzerainty over the region. …