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106 Kemper

Chapter 5 The Umbilical Cord of Threats: the Securitization of Infidel Attacks on the Early Modern Sultanate,

Simon C. Kemper

Between 1677 and 1682, the two major sultanates on crumbled under the pressure of a chartered trade company founded only eighty years earlier, the Dutch (VOC). Within a span of decades, the VOC had moved from an international venture of commerce, backed by monopolies and stock exchange, to a colonial force of sorts, which undermined neighbour- ing states for the sake of stabilizing trade and increasing profits. In the second half of the , nearly all polities surrounding the VOC’s centre in Bata- via – now – suffered the consequences. On the island of Java, the Central Javanese fell apart in 1677 due to an insurgency in- stigated by Madurese and Makasar lords opposing the VOC monopoly – which had brought to its knees in 1669 – through plunder and conquest.1 The Mataram sovereign passed away after fleeing from the rubble of his court, and his crown prince was left with no other option but European support to secure his succession as Amangkurat II. The second major sultanate on Java, Banten on , glared at these developments suspiciously. Tirta- yasa of Banten was displeased with the security threat emerging after the poli- ties and lords in the centre and east side of the island signed agreements with the VOC. This left Banten with a single frontier against nearby Batavia – only one day travelling by land – and created a prelude to further VOC interference in the realm. The had faced similar threats before. Foreign merchants – both Asian and European – had challenged royal Bantenese power since the early 17th century.2 But Sultan Tirtayasa considered the VOC more dangerous than the Javanese, Chinese, Danish, British, or Portuguese powers already in-

1 Notice this chapter follows the new consensus of writing Makasar with one ‘s’ for adjectives, and Makassar with a double ‘s’ for the place name. 2 Claude Guillot, Banten: Sejarah dan Peradaban Abad X-XVII [Banten, History and Civilization between the Xth and XVIIth Century] (Jakarta, 2008), pp. 107-130.

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The Umbilical Cord Of Threats 107

volved with court politics for decades.3 By 1680, this became evident when Sul- tan Tirtayasa requested, “like a child to his father,” that King Charles II of England send cannons and flintlocks to use against the VOC, “for the Dutch are currently eager to dominate the lands of the East – i.e. Mataram – and after that want to dominate all people [on the island of Java].”4 To convey this war- ning in Banten and Mataram, he resorted to much more religious rhetoric cen- tred on God’s grace and the shared Islamic genealogies of both sultanates. For instance, he urged his “young brother” from Mataram – the sovereign Amang- kurat II – to remember the earlier hostilities between the VOC and Mataram, “because your life and religion and your realm contradict each other” were he to ally with the Europeans. Sultan Tirtayasa swore that a true sultan would never cooperate with infidels – despite his own requests for support from Charles II of England and Christian V of .5 While temporally convincing Amangkurat II of Mataram to at least “end his life in ,” Sultan Tirtayasa did not prevent his biggest fear from becoming reality. In 1682, five years after the fall of Mataram, the VOC gathered enough allies to topple the Banten hierarchy as well. Massive desertion occurred among Sultan Tirtayasa’s followers after the sultan’s own son broke ties with his father. After taking the pilgrimage (or haji) to Mecca, Sultan Tirtayasa’s son had spent years building a reputation of piety strong enough to become known as Sultan Haji while still a crown prince. After nearly a decade of opposing the Europeans on religious grounds, Sultan Haji suddenly reversed the VOC threat into a military potential of the sultanate and a tool to oust his father.6 This chapter addresses not only this empirical case, but also deals with questions on the long-term effects of threat communication. While Sultan Tirtayasa’s se- curitization efforts clearly failed, they also brought about a lasting sense of Is- lamic authority. To unravel this irony, the causes and consequences of Sultan Tirtayasa’s policy are first viewed from diplomatic archives and then reconsi- dered through religious sources. It turns out that his diverse audience was not only spatially segregated, but also temporally so. His message soared and boun- ced across the Malay Archipelago but only really took root among a generation still to come. This delay in dissemination is here called ‘the umbilical cord of threats’ in reference to a crucial work of Shaykh Yūsuf al-Maqassārī (1626- 1699), the main religious scholar shaping Sultan Tirtayasa’s agenda.

3 Titik Pudjiastuti, ed., Perang, Dagang, Persahabatan. Surat-Surat Sultan Banten (War, Trade, and Friendship: Letters from the of Banten) (Jakarta, 2007), pp. 33-35. 4 Ibid., pp. 49-52. 5 Ibid., pp. 69-73. 6 Sultan Tirtayasa to Amangkurat II, 22 April 1678, The Hague, National Archives of the (NA), lat. 1.04.02, bundle 1340 Java NO-kust, fols. 1658-1660.