page_title: Fort Rotterdam
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Fort Rotterdam / History
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Litho. Kleurenlitho naar een oorspronkelijke tekening van J. Rappard.. Het fort Rotterdam in Makassar
context_page_description: Fort Rotterdam is a 17th-century fort in Makassar on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. It is a Dutch fort built on top of an existing fort of the Gowa Kingdom. The first fort on the site was constructed by the a local sultan in around 1634, to counter Dutch encroachments. The site was ceded to the Dutch under the Treaty of Bongaya, and they completely rebuilt it between 1673 and 1679. It had six bastions and was surrounded by a seven meter high rampart and a two meter deep moat.
  The fort was the Dutch regional military and governmental headquarters until the 1930s. It was extensively restored
  in the 1970s and is now a cultural and educational centre, a venue for music and dance events, and a tourist destination.
context_section_description: Fort Rotterdam was built on the location of an earlier Makassarese fort, called Ujung Pandang. Although it has been claimed by some authors that this fort dates back to 1545, there is no direct evidence for this. It seems more likely that the fort was built in 1634, as part of a fortification programme that the Makassar rulers undertook in response to a war with the Dutch East India Company (VOC) which broke out in that year. The original fort, Jum Pandan (allegedly named after the pandanus trees growing in the vicinity), gave its name to the city Ujung Pandang, another name for the city of Makassar.
  In 1667 Fort Ujung Pandang was ceded to the Dutch as part of the Treaty of Bongaya, after the defeat of the Sultanate of Gowa in the Makassar War. In subsequent years it was entirely rebuilt on the initiative of Dutch admiral Cornelis Speelman, to become the center of Dutch colonial power in Sulawesi. It was renamed Fort Rotterdam after Speelman's place of birth. In the years 1673–1679 it got its five bastions and the 'turtle' shape it still has to this day. This shape gave the fort the nickname "Benteng Penyu" ("sea-turtle fort").
   The stone for the construction of the fort was taken from the karst mountains in Maros, the limestone from Selayar and the timber from Tanete and Bantaeng. Following the Java War of 1825–1830, Javanese prince, and now national hero, Diponegoro was imprisoned in the fort following his exile to Makassar in 1830 until his death in 1855. It was also used as a Japanese prisoner of war camp in World War II.
  Fort Rotterdam remained the regional Dutch military and governmental headquarters until the 1930s. After 1937, the fort was no longer used as a defense. During the brief Japanese occupation it was used for conducting scientific research in the field of linguistics and agriculture, after which it fell into disrepair. In the 1970s, the fort was extensively restored.
caption: Fort Rotterdam in late 19th-century.
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