Receive Special Savings on Select Easy Knife Sets

 
Receive Special Savings on Select Easy Knife Sets

















The 9th King of Gowa Tumaparisi Kallonna (1512-1546) is described in the royal chronicle as the first Gowa ruler to ally with the nearby trade-oriented polity of Tallo, a partnership which endured throughout Makassar's apogee as an independent kingdom. The centre of the dual kingdom was at Sombaopu, near the then mouth of the Jeneberang River about 10 km south of the present city centre, where, where an international port and a fortress were gradually developed. First Malay traders (expelled from their Melaka metropolis by the Portuguese in 1511), then Portuguese from at least the 1540s, began to make this port their base for trading to the Spice Islands' (Maluku), further east. The growth of Dutch maritime power over the spice trade after 1600 made Makassar more vital as an alternative port open to all traders, as well as a source of rice to trade with rice-deficient Maluku. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) sought a monopoly of Malukan nutmeg and cloves, and came close to succeeding at the expense of English, Portuguese and Muslims from the 1620s. The Makassar kings maintained a policy of fre trade, insisting on the right of any visitor to do business in the city, and rejecting the attempts of the Dutch to establish a monopoly. Makassar depended particularly on the Muslim Malay and Catholic Portuguese Portuguese sailors communities as its two crucial economic assets. However the English East India Company also established a post there in 1613, the Danish Company arrived in 1618, and Chinese, Spanish and Indian traders were all important. When the Dutch conquered Portuguese Melaka in 1641, Makassar became the largest Portuguese base in Southeast Asia. The Portuguese population had been in the hundreds, but rose to several thousand, served by churches of the Franciscans, Dominicans and Jesuits as well as the regular clergy. By the 16th century, Makassar had become Sulawesi's major port and centre of the powerful Gowa and Tallo sultanates which between them had a series of 11 fortresses and strongholds and a fortified sea wall that extended along the coast. Portuguese rulers called the city