History-making, making history: Writing the past in early modern Makassar

This dissertation examines a transformation in history-making in early modern Makassar, on the island of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. During the sixteenth century Makassarese began to write, and what they chose to write were accounts of the past. The histories they made in this way differed significantly from existing oral histories of the past. Writing in essence made the past available to those in the present in novel ways. The past was of tremendous importance in Makassar as the medium in which social and political claims were made and on which relationships were based. More than other Makassarese, the rulers of Gowa and their close allies proved adept at making histories that transformed the region.;There are three main areas in which the presence of written histories had significant and long-reaching effects during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Literacy, of course, was not the only force at work, and to it alone all historical change cannot be traced. But new ways of conceiving the past played often pivotal roles in shaping or giving form to the changes afoot in Makassar. Chapter 4 examines the effects of the new ways of imagining the past that literacy sparked in creating a more hierarchical, ranked social order. Chapter 5 explores how written histories were implicated in re-imagining the Makassarese political landscape as centering on or revolving around Gowa, its foremost polity. Chapter 6 considers the role of Makassarese historical texts in the establishment of what are now considered the "core" values of Makassarese culture. Though described sequentially, these processes were simultaneous. Each depended on and was sustained by the others.;This dissertation ends with an examination of the field of early modern Southeast Asian history, a field that focuses on the effects of rising commerce as the key agent structuring and transforming the region. In contrast, this work examines surviving Makassarese historical manuscripts within their social and cultural context and argues that these manuscripts were of tremendous significance as a historical force in their own right.