Sultanate of Banjar

Its history matters because it is the clearest case in Borneo of a trading sultanate being converted into a colonial district — and because the war that did it, the Banjar War, is one of the best-documented resistance wars in Indonesian history.

At a glance

What was Banjar?

A sultanate on the south coast of Borneo, at the mouth of the Barito, which controlled the pepper-growing interior and the diamond fields of the Meratus mountains. Its rivers were its roads: the Barito and Martapura carried pepper, rattan, gold and diamonds down to Banjarmasin, where Chinese, Javanese, Malay and later Dutch and English merchants bought them.

It was a Malay-style port kingdom — a sultan, a court, a nobility of pangeran, and a population of Malays, Dayaks, Chinese and Bugis — whose wealth depended on the forest products of the interior and on its ability to keep the river trade open.

Who founded it?

Sultan Suriansyah, according to the Banjar chronicles, a prince who converted to Islam and made Banjarmasin the seat of a Muslim sultanate in 1526. The date is traditional rather than documentary, but the sixteenth-century origin of the state is not in doubt: by the early seventeenth century Banjar was a recognised sultanate trading with the wider archipelago.

What was the economy?

Pepper first, diamonds second. Banjar's pepper was grown by Dayak and Malay farmers in the interior and shipped through Banjarmasin; the diamonds came from the Meratus range, and the sultan's monopoly on them was one of his principal revenues. Rattan, gold, birds' nests and forest resins completed the export list, and rice and cloth came in.

The Dutch and English competed for the trade in the early seventeenth century, and the sultanate played them against each other. As the Company consolidated its position in the archipelago, Banjar's independence of action narrowed, and by the nineteenth century the Dutch were demanding treaties that made the sultan a vassal.

What was the Banjar War?

The war that ended the sultanate, 1859–63 and beyond. On 18 April 1859 Prince Antasari and Prince Djalil issued proclamations of resistance; on 28 April the rebels attacked the Dutch coal mine at Pengaron and killed several Europeans; and the war spread across the Barito and Martapura districts. The Dutch, who had abolished the sultanate by proclamation on 11 June 1860, spent years fighting a guerrilla resistance that outlasted the state.

Antasari was captured in 1862 and died on 11 October 1862; the resistance continued under other leaders, and the last of them, Seman, was killed on 1 January 1905 — forty-five years after the sultanate had ceased to exist. That gap is the measure of how little the colonial proclamation settled.

How do we know about Banjar?

From a chronicle and a colonial archive. The Hikayat Banjar is the court's own history, written in Malay and covering the dynasty from its origins to the seventeenth century; it is one of the finest Malay chronicles, and it gives the founding, the conversion, the genealogy and the court's view of its neighbours. The Dutch and English records — contracts, residency reports, the papers of the Banjar War — give the other side.

The two do not always agree, and where they differ the entry follows the documents. The war's dates, for instance, are fixed by the Dutch reports: the proclamations of 18 April 1859, the Pengaron attack of 28 April, the abolition of 11 June 1860, and the last killing in 1905.

What was Banjar's relationship with the Dutch?

Transactional, then unequal. The Company's first contract with Banjar dates from the seventeenth century, and for two centuries the sultanate granted trading rights, monopolies and toll exemptions in exchange for protection against its own rivals. The pepper trade made Banjarmasin valuable, and the Dutch, the English and the Chinese all competed for it.

In the nineteenth century the balance shifted. The Dutch, having consolidated Java, began to demand sovereignty rather than trade: the right to appoint the sultan, control of the mines, and the abolition of the sultanate's independent foreign relations. The crisis of 1859 was the result — a court that would not surrender its remaining authority, and a colonial government that had decided to take it.

What was Banjar society like?

A riverine society of Malays, Dayaks, Chinese and Bugis.

The sultan and the pangeran — princes of the blood — governed through a hierarchy of officials, with the Dayak communities of the interior supplying forest products and labour, the Chinese running the pepper trade and the mines, and Bugis and Malay sailors carrying the cargoes. Slavery and debt bondage were part of the economy.

The Hikayat Banjar describes this world in detail: the founding of the dynasty, the conversion to Islam, the court's ceremonies, and the wars of the seventeenth century. It is one of the great Malay chronicles, and it is the main reason Banjar's history is better known than that of most Bornean states.

What is the legacy?

A province, a war memory and a manuscript tradition. Banjar is now a province of Indonesia with a rich literary tradition — the Hikayat Banjar, chronicles of the sultanate — and the Banjar War is remembered as a national resistance. The sultanate's descendants live in the region, and the court's mosque and tombs survive at Banjarmasin and Martapura.

Common myths about Banjar

Timeline of Banjar

What the map shows next

At 1693 on the map Banjar is an independent pepper port, and Mataram dominates Java.

At 1859 on the map the Banjar War has begun, and the Dutch East Indies is closing on Borneo.