The early city and port of Makassar were situated at the mouth of the Tallo River, with a small trading port in that area at the end of the 15th century. Portuguese sources report that the city of Tallo was originally under the Siang Kingdom, located around Pangkajene. In the mid-16th century, Tallo united with another small kingdom called Gowa and began to break away from the Siang Kingdom, even attacking and conquering neighboring kingdoms.
As a result of the intensification of agricultural activities upstream of the Tallo River, the river began to silt up. Consequently, the city's port was relocated to the mouth of the Jeneberang River. It was here that the ruling elites of Gowa-Tallo began constructing the seat of power, including the Somba Opu Fortress, which would become the core of Makassar City a hundred years later. During the reign of King Gowa XVI, the Rotterdam Fortress was established. This period saw increased activity in local, regional, and international trade, as well as in politics and physical development by the kingdom. This era marked the peak of the Gowa Kingdom's power, but later, the Bungaya Agreement led to the beginning of its decline.
The main export commodity of Makassar was rice, which could be exchanged for spices from the Maluku Islands and manufactured goods from the Middle East, India, and China in the western archipelago. From reports of Portuguese traders and local lontara records, it is known that Malay traders played a crucial role in trade, based on the exchange of agricultural products for imported goods. By conquering the small agrarian-based kingdoms in the surrounding areas, Makassar gained control over relatively vast agricultural regions and also sought to persuade traders from neighboring kingdoms to relocate to Makassar. This concentration of trade activities in the new trading port of Makassar continued to grow.
In just a century, Makassar became one of the world's leading trading cities with a population of over 100,000 people (making it the 20th largest city in the world at that time). During that era, the population of Amsterdam, which was considered a cosmopolitan and multicultural city, was only around 60,000 people. The rapid development of Makassar as a trading port was attributed to its connections with changes in the international trade landscape.
The main trading networks in Malacca, which had been conquered by Portugal in 1511, as well as in North Java, diminished following their naval defeat by the Portuguese and fragmentation with the Mataram Kingdom. Even when Malacca was taken over by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1641, many Portuguese traders relocated to Makassar."
By the mid-17th century, Makassar made efforts to extend its influence across much of Eastern Indonesia. This involved conquering Selayar Island and its surrounding regions, the Wolio kingdoms in Buton, Bima in Sumbawa, Banggai and Gorontalo in the eastern and northern parts of Sulawesi, as well as making agreements with kingdoms in Seram and other islands in the Maluku region. On the international stage, as a significant part of the Islamic world, the Sultanate of Makassar established close trade and diplomatic relations with the kingdoms of Banten and Aceh in Western Indonesia, Golconda in India, and the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East.
Makassar's relationship with the Islamic world began with the arrival of Abdul Ma'mur Khatib Tunggal or Dato' Ri Bandang, who hailed from Minangkabau, West Sumatra. He arrived in Tallo (now Makassar) in September 1605. He converted the 14th King of Gowa, I-MANGNGARANGI DAENG MANRABIA, with the title SULTAN ALAUDDIN (reigned 1593-1639), and Mangkubumi I-MALLINGKAANG DAENG MANYONRI KARAENG KATANGKA, who was also the King of Tallo, to Islam. These two kings were among the first to embrace Islam in South Sulawesi.
On November 9, 1607, precisely on a Friday, the first Friday prayer was held at the Tallo Mosque, officially declaring that the people of the Gowa-Tallo Kingdom had embraced Islam. Simultaneously, Friday prayers were also conducted at the Mangallekana Mosque in Somba Opu. This date is now commemorated as Makassar City's Anniversary since the year 2000, replacing the previous celebration date of April 1st each year. The nobles of Makassar and its people actively participated in international trade networks, and their interactions with the cosmopolitan city communities led to a creative renaissance that made Makassar a leading center of knowledge in its time. Collections of books and maps, which were still rare in Europe at the time, were already abundant in Makassar. Makassar was one of the world's largest intellectual libraries, and the sultans didn't hesitate to order the most advanced items from all corners of the globe, including globes and the largest telescopes of their time, specially ordered from Europe.
The ambitions of the leaders of the Gowa-Tallo Kingdom to expand their territorial control and the competition between Makassar and the Dutch East India Company (VOC) culminated in the most intense and fierce war ever conducted by the VOC. Bugis forces, along with the Dutch and their allies from Ternate, Buton, and Maluku, engaged in three years of military operations throughout the Eastern Indonesian region. It wasn't until 1669 that they finally succeeded in completely subduing Makassar city and its largest fortress, Somba Opu.
For South Sulawesi, the fall of Makassar to this federation marked a significant turning point. Makassar's trading port became a VOC-controlled territory, and several articles in the peace agreements strictly regulated maritime activities between Gowa-Tallo and its allies. The port of Makassar was closed to foreign traders, leading merchant communities to migrate to other ports. In the decades following the destruction of the city and port of Makassar, the remaining population established a new settlement north of the former Ujung Pandang Fortress. This northern defensive fortification, reorganized by the VOC in 1673 as a center for defense and governance, was given a new name: Fort Rotterdam. The growing settlement around it was named 'Vlaardingen'. This new settlement was much smaller than the once-thriving Makassar City that had been destroyed.
In the first few decades after the war, the entire area was inhabited by no more than 2,000 people. By the mid-18th century, this number increased to about 5,000 people, with half of them being slaves. During VOC rule, Makassar became a forgotten city, and even the colonial occupiers of the 19th century couldn't subdue the South Sulawesi peninsula, which until the early 20th century consisted of dozens of small kingdoms independent of foreign rule. These kingdoms often had to defend themselves against military attacks from neighboring kingdoms. Therefore, the 'Company City' only served as a security outpost along the northern spice trade route. It didn't have the form of a 'city' but rather an agglomeration of villages along the coastline surrounding Fort Rotterdam.
In the beginning, the primary trade activities in this World City were centered around the marketing of slaves and the supply of rice to VOC (Dutch East India Company) ships, which would then exchange it for spices in the Maluku Islands. In the 1730s, Makassar's port was opened to Chinese merchant ships. The commodities sought by Chinese traders in Sulawesi were generally marine and forest products such as sea cucumbers, turtle shells, mother-of-pearl, bird nests, and sandalwood. These goods didn't pose a direct competition to the VOC's monopoly on the spice and cloth trade. On the contrary, Chinese goods, especially porcelain and silk, were sold by their merchants in Makassar at lower prices than what foreign traders could obtain in China itself. This new market encouraged maritime activities among the city's population and in the Makassar region.
Especially, the island residents in the Spermonde Archipelago began specializing in sea cucumber hunting, a major commodity desired by Chinese traders. They explored the entire East Nusantara region for this purpose. Since the mid-18th century, Sulawesi fishermen and sailors routinely sailed to the northern coast of Australia, spending three to four months collecting sea cucumbers in numerous processing locations. To this day, marine resources remain a significant livelihood for the inhabitants of the islands within the Makassar City area.
After the colonial government of the Dutch East Indies replaced the bankrupt VOC trading company at the end of the 18th century, Makassar was revitalized as a free port in 1846. In the subsequent years, trade volumes rapidly increased, and Makassar transformed from a backwater port into an international city once again. With the wheels of Makassar's economy turning, its population grew from around 15,000 people in the mid-19th century to approximately 30,000 people in the early 20th century. 19th-century Makassar was dubbed the 'loveliest small town in the entire Dutch East Indies' (by Joseph Conrad, a famous British-Polish writer) and became a major port of call for European, Indian, and Arab merchant sailors in the pursuit of highly sought-after forest products in the global market, as well as for indigenous boats operating between Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and the Maluku Islands.
In the early 20th century, the Dutch finally conquered the independent areas of Sulawesi and established Makassar as the administrative center for Eastern Indonesia. For three and a half decades, during the Dutch colonial rule, it was the longest period of peace ever experienced in South Sulawesi. As a result, its economy thrived. The population of Makassar tripled during this time, and the city expanded in all directions. Declared a Municipality in 1906, by the 1920s, Makassar was the second-largest city outside of Java, boasting nine foreign consulates, a row of shops in the city center selling the latest goods from around the world, and a dynamic and cosmopolitan socio-cultural life.
World War II and the establishment of the Republic of Indonesia once again altered the face of Makassar. The departure of most foreign residents in 1949 and the nationalization of foreign companies in the late 1950s transformed it into a provincial city once more. Even its original character gradually faded with the arrival of newcomers from the inland regions seeking refuge from the turmoil of post-revolutionary conflicts.
Between the 1930s and 1961, the population of Makassar increased from approximately 90,000 people to nearly 400,000 people, with over half of them being newcomers from outside the city. This demographic shift was reflected in the renaming of the city to Ujung Pandang, based on the nickname "Jumpandang" that had marked Makassar for centuries among people from the hinterlands. This renaming took place in 1971. It wasn't until 1999 that the city changed its name back to Makassar on October 13, following Government Regulation No. 86 of 1999, which restored the name from Ujung Pandang to Makassar. According to Law No. 22 of 1999 on Regional Governance, which was later replaced by Law No. 32 of 2004, the area of Makassar City expanded by approximately 4 miles into the sea, equivalent to 10,000 hectares, thus encompassing a total land and sea area of approximately 27,577 hectares.
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