Book review in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 47, no.2 (June 2016) pp.

312--
15.
[pre-publication]

The Open Door: Early modern Wajorese statecraft and diaspora

By KATHRYN ANDERSON WELLEN,
De Kalb, Ill., Northern Illinois University Press, 2014. 217pp, Maps, Figures.

A serious study of South Sulawesi history in English is a rare event. This

fascinating borderland of civilized Eurasia found its own unique way to states,
writing, genealogy and performance, stimulated but never overwhelmed by the
myriad foreign traders, preachers and buccaneers who came that way in search
of Malukan spices. The linguistic promise and challenge of Bugis literature,
written in a unique if Indic-derived script on palm-leaf rolls (lontara, or for
Wellen lontaraq, meticulously rendering the final, often omitted, glottal stop by
q), has long tantalized but frequently disappointed. Not since the Dutch linguists,
Cense and Noorduyn, have we had expert translated editions of the most
important of them, and most today (like myself) make do with less scholarly
Indonesian renditions. It is therefore an event to hail another pioneer, joining a
handful who have mastered Dutch, Indonesian and the bigger challenge of key
lontara, and then melded the data into a coherent historical study in English.
Wellen has chosen to focus on explaining the fascinating Wajo (Wellen’s
Wajoq) polity, which epitomizes the unique and sometimes contradictory
qualities of Bugis statecraft and economic enterprise. It offers more evidence
than any other pre-modern Asian society so far analysed for institutionalised
freedoms, contractual pluralities and oligarchic conciliar governance, but in a
framework of status hierarchy with slaves at the bottom. It contributed more
than any other society to the diaspora Bugis maritime enterprise that became the
most effective Indonesian competition for European and Chinese shipping
throughout the Archipelago in the 19th century. By focussing on Wajo, Wellen
does much to clarify these issues and explain the unique successes of this society
in its 18th/19th century moment.
Past scholars have often speculated on the motives or conditions that
enabled Buginese, and Wajo people in particular, to play such an effective
diasporic role. Several have proposed a link between the stern hierarchies of
Sulawesi, from heaven-descended aristocrats to slaves, as the factor motivating
those on the lower rungs to raise their status through success in diaspora. Dr
Wellen uses one of the first such theorists, B.F. Matthes, as the target for rejecting
this view in favour of the opposite (p.160). It was not Wajo oppression at home
but Wajo encouragement that enabled its sons to play such a creative role. The
strong cultural emphasis on pesse (solidarity), the collegial or oligarchic nature
of statecraft, a habit of contractual arrangements with porous host societies, and
specific steps by Wajo to open its doors and encourage migration were the keys
to this success
Wellen goes further than other studies to integrate the pattern of oligarchic,
partly elective governance in Wajo with similar patterns in the Wajo diaspora of
the late 18th and early 19th centuries. She combs Dutch and English reports as
well as primary and secondary Bugis material to explore the pattern of
autonomous governance and local interaction of Wajo migrants in Dutch-ruled
Makassar (where they were constrained by the power of Bone), Malay-ruled
Kutai and Berau in eastern Borneo, and British-ruled Bengkulu (and nearby
Inderapura) in Sumatra. She has less to say about the best-known case of the
Riau/Johor sultanate, ruled de facto by a Bugis junior king in the name of a Malay
senior one, since the Riau Bugis are already known through their own historian
Raja Ali Haji, but also appear to have originated in Bone or Luwu rather than
Wajo. She nevertheless provides a broader Bugis context to understand that
celebrated case.
The remarkably successful system of Bugis maritime commerce is given a
much fuller analysis in Wellen’s chapter 4 than any other account in English. As
the most successful indigenous entrepreneurs to survive into the 18 th and 19th
centuries from the earier Southeast Asian ‘Age of Commerce’, Bugis
(predominately Wajo) traders badly needed to be examined for the keys to this
success. Wellen makes full use of the Wajo maritime code drawn up by Amanna
Gappa, the Wajo headman (matoa) in Makassar from 1697 to 1723, but also of
contemporary Dutch and English descriptions of their methods in practice. From
her evidence it would appear that the three key assets the Wajonese had in
relation to other Indonesian maritime traders were their solidarity (Bugis pesse),
the contractual, consensual habit which made that solidarity possible and also
assisted their relations with host societies, and a supportive home government in
Wajo. The social contract at the basis of the consensual Wajo polity emphasized
the right of Wajo people to come and go as they pleased. Further, the Wajo
paramount ruler (matoa) La Saléwangeng, whose administration began in 1723,
even ordered his people to go out and trade, and established a state fund from
which they might borrow capital to finance such trade.
Wellen’s elucidation of the Amanna Gappa code provides crucial evidence of
the continuity and change between the high point of Indonesian trade in the 16 th
century, which other historians have analysed through the Maritime Code of
Melaka (compiled around 1500), and modern studies of smaller-scale indigenous
traders of the twentieth century. The kiwi (passenger-merchants) of the Melaka
code appear to have survived as the sawi of the smaller Bugis vessels governed
by the Amanna Gappa code in the 18th century. The nakhoda, the dominant
figures of the Melaka code, “like kings on their vessels”, are however much
diminished in that of Amanna Gappa, a system designed for smaller and more
mobile vessels deploying much less capital than their European and Chinese
rivals.
Although chapters 2 and 7 provide a narrative of general Wajo history and of
the exiled hero La Madukelleng’s triumphant return to Wajo in the 1730s, the
book is basically organized thematically. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 have important
things to say about commercial organization, kinship relations and ethnic
identity respectively. This makes the material difficult for the reader to hold in
mind, since incidents are returned to in different chapters in ways that risk
either repetition or confusion for the reader who has not retained the previous
details. There are strengths, however, for those who seek to use the book
primarily for one of these themes rather than for an understanding of how Bugis
society evolved. Chapter 6, in particular, shows the importance of oral and later
written myths and recitations such as the La Galigo cycle in establishing group
pride and identity.
Because Bugis materials are so unusual and inaccessible to most of us, it will
be disappointing to specialists at least that Dr Wellen is not more forthcoming
about the exact nature of the Bugis sources she has used. One presumes the
bibliographic apparatus of the Hawaii thesis was radically abbreviated for this
more readable publication, obscuring the nature of many sources . Although
some footnotes refer directly to Bugis texts such as the Lontaraq Sukkuna Wajoq,
these texts are not listed in the Bibliography, even when they appear to have
been published, like the Lontarak Akkarungan (Wajoq) I (Makassar, 1985) – see
p.178n.78. A typescript is twice mentioned (pp.138, and 197n11) as ‘Short
history of the Arrival of the Bugis in Samarinda Sebarang’, but only if we happen
to find it again in an earlier footnote (182n52) will we know it was written in
Indonesian. A discussion on it is there promised in chapter 6, but apparently
deleted in revision. Since substantial use has now been made of Bugis texts by
indigenous scholars like Abdurrazak Daeng Pattenru, Mattulada and Zainal
Abidin, and foreign scholars like Matthes, Cense, Noorduyn, Leonard Andaya,
Christian Pelras, Roger Tol, Ian Caldwell and Campbell Macknight, and of
Makassar ones by William Cummings, readers would have benefitted from being
told where the enterprise of making the lontara accessible stood before Dr
Wellen’s impressive labours, and what extra she has added to that important
task.
Her style, similarly, is to weave a coherent narrative without drawing
attention to whether the sources for each part of it are original Bugis lontara,
already-translated and published versions of such texts, or European
descriptions of Bugis arrangements. The footnotes at the back clarify some, but
not all, these issues. They appear to reveal for example, that one of Wellen’s
fascinating finds is a Bugis diary written about events in Berau in the early 19 th
century, and read by Wellen in a collection of lontara microfilmed by a
Hasanuddin University team and viewed at the National Archive branch in
Makassar (see p.182, note 48 and the first sentence of the Bibliography). We do
not get any of the flavour of this remarkable document through direct quotation,
however, but are given instead a seamless narrative apparently based upon it, as
well as on some European sources. While this technique involves some loss for
the specialist, it is a notable attempt to make the Bugis case relevant and
accessible to studies of diaspora, entrepreneurship and comparative politics
more generally.

Anthony Reid
ANU, Canberra