Rome Below the Winds: A Javanese Timeline

[Timaeus]

So how are the Spaniards doing? I imagine the taking of Malacca must have Manila worried.

 

[Every Grass in Java]

Wait... Balinese practiced sati?

The Balinese did practice widow-sacrifice during funerals, though it was hardly a common phenomenon and was probably reserved for royals or other high nobility. I do mean widow-sacrifice, since it wasn't necessarily all widow-burning (though fire was the most common means of execution). Sometimes women stabbed themselves, stabbed themselves as they were burning on the pyre, or were executed by priests or male relatives.

Will this kind of synthesis last? To my own comparatively standard Arab Muslim religious background I found the kind of Islam practiced even today in parts of Java to have some pretty big syncretic qualities to it. I suppose that Javanese Islam in OTL will go much further down this road, but I do wonder how it might be affected were contacts with the rest of the Muslim world to become more regular.

Conflict and counterbalance between scriptural interpretations and more localized beliefs mark all organized religions, and Islam is no exception. We see this throughout the Islamic world – from the conflict between pious villages and irreligious slave-soldiers in Senegal, to ʿAbd al-Wahhab cutting down the Sacred Tree of ʿUyayna, to the activities of the Naqshbandi Sufis among Chinese Muslim communities. Precolonial Java was one of the few places where this conflict wasn't as meaningful and where a syncretic, mystical, monist interpretation of Islam was widely accepted with little challenge from more standard theological positions. Will this be the case in this timeline? Perhaps.

So how are the Spaniards doing? I imagine the taking of Malacca must have Manila worried.

They're concerned, but not overly so. The Iberian Union was pretty weird in Southeast Asia, with the Portuguese and the Spaniards actually doing little to cooperate despite theoretically sharing a king. So the Spanish response is the same as when the Dutch took Malacca in 1641 OTL; hunker down in the Philippines and hope for the best.

Oh wow. That is... wow.

Aah, mythical tutuk gatuk, a proud and true Javanese tradition!

This timeline keeps getting better and better!

Thanks for the compliments and comments, y'all!

 

[Timaeus]

They're concerned, but not overly so. The Iberian Union was pretty weird in Southeast Asia, with the Portuguese and the Spaniards actually doing little to cooperate despite theoretically sharing a king. So the Spanish response is the same as when the Dutch took Malacca in 1641 OTL; hunker down in the Philippines and hope for the best.

In the 1610s the governor-general Juan de Silva, known for fighting the Dutch, tried to rendezvous with the Portuguese.

 

[Every Grass in Java]

In the 1610s the governor-general Juan de Silva, known for fighting the Dutch, tried to rendezvous with the Portuguese.

Juan de Silva and various other Iberians in Southeast Asia repeatedly attempted a joint Spanish-Portuguese expedition, correctly recognizing that cooperation was the only way to stave off debility and collapse. The main thing to note is that such attempts failed precisely due to the differences in organization and opinion between Portuguese and Spaniard. In the case of Silva's would-be campaign, Portuguese commander Francisco de Miranda (who himself was there only because the Viceroy of Portuguese India refused to heed the explicit orders of Philip II to go in person and sent a subordinate instead) apparently disobeyed orders to rendezvous at Manila and instead spent time fighting Acehnese and Dutch until the Dutch Company annihilated his fleet. There are a number of other examples of Portuguese commanders refusing orders to join with the Spaniards, e.g. João Caiado de Gamboa or Diego de Vasconcelos. See The Portuguese and the Straits of Melaka, 1575-1619: Power, Trade and Diplomacy, p. 120-121.

It is worth noting that Malacca, while still theoretically under Portuguese administrative jurisdiction, became increasingly dependent on Manila for military support beginning in the 1610s. Nevertheless, the Iberian Crown continued to disapprove of Malacca-Manila ties.

 

[Every Grass in Java]

“A most terrible scandal, sire,” the servant said.

Baureksa could not but agree. Rumors were rife in the capital these days. Not that this was anything new; Karta was the city of whispers. The whispering began at the very top – the high ministers and generals quietly interpreting some new royal idiosyncrasy, some change in the harem’s pecking order, some cryptic utterances from His Majesty. Then it trickled down to the lower echelons of government, the clerks and secretaries, who in turn spread the news to the shopkeepers and servants they encountered. It might take hours or it might take months, and one would never speak of these rumors in the open, but in the end, the people of Karta knew everything worth knowing.

So it was with these particular rumors. Everyone knew. Even the half-naked porters carrying jugs for their masters quietly chuckled as they went on their ways, and even the women bargaining over chickens in the marketplace laughed aloud as the story went around. A most terrible scandal indeed. The prestige of the state is in ruins.

The Crown Prince of Mataram had been born in the Javanese year 1541 [1619 AD]. The year was now 1559; His Highness was now eighteen, in the height of his youth. Baureksa was more than fifty now, but he remembered his own youth quite well. When he was sixteen, he had left his father’s home with a band of trusted men. He had wanted to be a bandit chief famed across Java – a voyager who would track across valley and volcano, a hero who would return ill-acquired wealth to peasants in need, a seducer who would sire dozens of children like the gods of old. That adventure had turned out badly; his father had caught him and punished him badly. He still had scars from then. Baureksa understood the Crown Prince. Young men scorn all authority, after all, and most of them let their passions loose.

Yet understanding is not forgiving, while royal children have higher standards. The prince’s youth might provide an explanation for the scandal, but in no way did it provide any justification. If the Crown Prince had so little self-restraint… then what, once he was king?

“Call for General Wiraguna,” said Baureksa, and the servant scuttled away. He returned a few hours later, saying that Wiraguna was too deeply ashamed to meet a colleague. Understandable.

“Then leave. I will write a letter for the General and call for you then.”

Baureksa was now alone in thought. He closed his eyes and tried to recall better days – only to return to Wiraguna, mouth contorted with dishonor. Wiraguna, you poor man, how shall you live from now on? How variable fate had always been! Wiraguna was a high minister here in Karta, so trusted and so favored that he was made personal tutor to the Crown Prince. Baureksa remembered well how the face of his colleague had lighted up that day that Sultan Agung had assigned his own son to his care. What better proof of royal favor could there be?

How ironic, then, that this tutorship should prove his downfall.

The Crown Prince had seduced Wiraguna’s wife. A servant had caught the two together in flagrante delicto, caressing each other as warmly as two lovers ever did, both naked as the day God had made them. Some said that the Crown Prince had been found in Wiraguna’s very own chamber. Others, more salaciously minded, said that the servant had found the two only when the woman cried out in sheer ecstasy, screeching that she had never felt such pleasure before. Which, considering Wiraguna’s age and that of his wife, was perhaps not far from the truth.

Rumor had it that this was no adulterous romance. The Crown Prince had no love for Wiraguna’s wife. He had seduced and taken her – in her husband’s room – out of pure spite. His teacher had scolded him from time to time, and this was the Prince’s revenge.

Wiraguna had been assigned to lead the Crown Prince to moral rectitude. Instead he was cuckolded by his own student. He had failed as a teacher, a husband, and a man.

Wiraguna is a good man. He does not deserve this. And what of the Crown Prince? The old maxims and morals made it clear what the duty of a king must be. The sovereign is the Screen of God, the intermediary through which He speaks to the world. The mandate that the Great God has accorded him is the preservation of order and justice in this world. He holds a dignified, an exalted, even a sacred position; like the Perfect Man in mystic thought, the king holds the balance of the cosmos together. Some even said that the king should leave actual governance to his underlings. The petty affairs of politics would but serve to blemish his honor.

There were rumors in the air about His Highness, and not just about Wiraguna’s wife. Stories told of how he had rebuked Master Mullā Maḥmūd and called him a vile Turkish tadpole. Secular officials whispered in unison that the Crown Prince had promised to “purge the court in Karta of every old minister and their cohorts of traitors.” Religious officials told rumors of their own. The Crown Prince, it was said, had openly declared his contempt for God and His prophets and threatened to confiscate clerical property down to a single coin and behead every cleric who dared resist. The innkeepers of Karta regaled their clients with salacious tales of the Prince’s dalliances, and the guests replied in kind, chuckling as they passed around gossip from the many brothels that His Highness frequented.

Could such a man really be the Screen of God? Could such a man really guard order and tranquility in this world? Even were the Crown Prince enthroned as king, would the Javanese – the people here at Karta, all mocking the Prince and his latest antics – ever follow him?

The servant came again. A letter had come from Wiraguna’s household. Baureksa opened the seal and perused it all. He frowned as the letter went on. He inhaled deeply at the end, scarcely believing the words he was reading. He had to read them out aloud to assure himself that he was not imagining them all:

My dear brother Baureksa, it is thus clear that the Crown Prince could not be more unfit to be king. In the Ramayana, it is said that the King must be akin to eight of the gods. His Majesty must be beneficent like the sky god Indra and equitable like the death god Yama; he must be persuasive like the sun god Surya and loving like the moon god Chandra; he must be wise like the wind god Vayu and generous like Kubera, lord of fortune; he must be intelligent like the sea god Varuna and brave like the fire god Brahma.

Do you think that the Crown Prince is beneficent and equitable, this man who sates his spite by making a cuckold of his teacher? Do you think he is persuasive and loving, scorned as he is by every man in Karta? Do you think he is wise and generous, proclaiming as he does that he will confiscate every glebe land in Java? Do you think he is intelligent and brave, this man who freely utters all these inanities?

When Sultan Agung departs to meet his Creator, let us all keep an eye on the new king. When he carries out what he has threatened to carry out – when he senselessly executes a high-ranking minister, for example, or when he illicitly steals the clergy’s rightful property – let us remove him by the sword and install a better ruler in his place.

The sovereign of Java holds a most exalted position. It is wrong that a sacred line of kings should be tainted by meddling in earthly politics. Once Sultan Agung ascends to Paradise and the Crown Prince is removed from power, the new king shall be in his proper position. The king shall reign, but he shall not rule. Let matters of state be left to us. We, nobility and officialdom, shall hold the reins of power in the name of the king.​

The Crown Prince of Mataram has an affair with the wife of General Wiraguna, his tutor. Wiraguna conspires to remove the Crown Prince when he ever becomes the king and change the government of Mataram to a sort of constitutional monarchy where the king only reigns but does not rule, while actual power is in the hands of the nobility-dominated officialdom.

* * *

Back to narrative, again hoping it wasn’t so bad as to be unreadable.

IOTL, in 1637, the Crown Prince of Mataram (later Amangkurat I) did have an affair with the wife of his tutor, General Wiraguna. This was a major scandal in Karta at the time, not only because Wiraguna was a respected minister in high positions but because the Crown Prince’s actions flagrantly violated the sanctity of the teacher-student relationship. We don’t know as much as we would like about this scandal, but it seems to have cemented the Prince’s hatred of his tutor. When Sultan Agung died in 1646, Amangkurat was at first forced to appoint Wiraguna as Prime Minister. But the king soon sent him to eastern Java in a war against the Balinese, where royal agents quietly disposed of the minister. Wiraguna’s entire family was later purged.

Amangkurat I was the quintessential tyrant, very possibly the worst king in Javanese history. In his first decade as ruler, he purged his court of virtually the entire leading figures that had marked his father’s reign. The Dutch remarked, perplexed, about “[this] strange manner of government… whereby the old are murdered in order to make place for the young.” Not only that, to curtail the power of merchant magnates on the north coast, he turned the administrative divisions of the coastline into a huge gerrymandered mess (with the main ports governed by officials who didn’t reside anywhere near their jurisdictions) and repeatedly banned all sailing, even fishing boats. Amangkurat thus spelled doom for a millennia-long tradition of Javanese long-distance trade.

Amangkurat clearly wanted to centralize the island under his absolute dominion, but he tried to do so by massacring the elite and alienating the aristocracy. He never tried to peacefully incorporate regional and autonomous elites into a centralized order, like Louis XIV in France or the Tokugawa shoguns in Japan. Instead, he chose to sacrifice both aristocratic support and administrative efficiency to sate his need for absolute power. Amangkurat’s policies fundamentally disrupted the elite consensus and support that were the bedrock of the Javanese state, leading to civil war and ultimately beginning Dutch colonialism on the island.

The elimination of Amangkurat I is thus a necessity for a Javanese TL. I did so by having Wiraguna conspire with Baureksa to overthrow him in a coup if the prince turned out to be trouble, which of course could not happen IOTL since Baureksa died in 1629. This will remove Amangkurat and allow for a more efficient government in mid-seventeenth century Java.

Wiraguna here proposes a novel form of government for Java. The king would reign but not rule; actual power would lie in the hands of the aristocracy-dominated officialdom. This never happened in Java IOTL, where the ideal government always remained an absolute monarchy ruled by a just and enlightened sovereign. This does have some parallels in actual Javanese thought, however. To quote Soemersaid Moertono, State and Statecraft in Old Java: A Study of the Later Mataram Period,

Thus the king is placed at the pinnacle of the social order, far beyond the reach of the common people. This point of view at one time gave rise to the idea of the king as a politically inactive power, the ratu pinandita (the sage king), from whom emanated beneficent influences, permeating his whole realm. Active participation in the affairs of the state was left to his dignitaries, especially the patih (the grand vizier) whose usually non-royal descent conformed with his special technical task.​

I hope this justifies the sort-of-constitutional oligarchic monarchy that may or may not appear in the 1650s.

For Amangkurat, the best English-language source unfortunately remains an old synopsis of Dutch sources, Islamic States in Java, 1500-1700: A Summary, Bibliography, and Index by Pigeaud and De Graaf.

 

[The 48th Ronin]

So Java adopts a Japan-style monarchy? Interesting.

 

[Sceonn]

Javanese Islam seems very assimilative of other faiths, this might help them immensely in their conquest of the Isles.

 

[MbokDarmi]

An Indonesian TL!
No, an Indonesian TL similar to Male Rising!
Bless you author, bless you

Now, I have questions. What was the fate of Muslim Lombok and (western) Sumbawa? Did they fall under UberMataram too?

 

[Ridwan Asher]

So Java adopts a Japan-style monarchy? Interesting.

There are so many parallels between Japan and Java it's not funny.

 

[Dominic]

All very interesting, but is there any particular reason why this never occurred (as far as I know) OTL? And if so, was it simply due to chance or are there serious structural challenges in Javanese culture?

 

[Ridwan Asher]

A bit of both, I guess. Java is basically impossible to centralize, hence why they have the concept of Mandala. There's also this tendency of paramount Javanese kingdoms throughout history to split into two courts or more, like Eastern Medang which was divided into Jenggala and Kediri, Majapahit which even in its zenith had two courts, and Mataram which became Yogyakarta and Surakarta, both of which also begotten one splinter principality each.

But as the TL author has said, the concept of active rule by royal institution in absence of an active monarch is pretty much as old as the concept of Javanese nation itself. Never official yet often almost a thing whenever it do occur. Majapahit actually had an advisory diet consisted of court ministers and provincial governors, most of which derived from the ruling clan. And they were strong whenever the monarch was weak.

It's also to be noted that Javanese kingship is always basically divine and especially in Hindu period(when title Devaraja was used), political consolidation and infrastructural development always revolved around this. That's basically why they built Candis: it was to both conflate the elements of the monarch's person, any of the Trimurti and sometimes Buddha as well as local spirituality, which obliges the king to regularly make ritual pilgrimage to these Candis, and in turn absorb local resources for the temple and facilitate royal ritual. A kind of reverse Sankin Kotai, basically.

Sometimes, one looks at Javanese history and wonders why the so many potentials to institutionalize Javanese nation only to always get neutralized whenever it almost happened.

 

[Dominic]

A bit of both, I guess. Java is basically impossible to centralize, hence why they have the concept of Mandala. There's also this tendency of paramount Javanese kingdoms throughout history to split into two courts or more, like Eastern Medang which was divided into Jenggala and Kediri, Majapahit which even in its zenith had two courts, and Mataram which became Yogyakarta and Surakarta, both of which also begotten one splinter principality each.

But as the TL author has said, the concept of active rule by royal institution in absence of an active monarch is pretty much as old as the concept of Javanese nation itself. Never official yet often almost a thing whenever it do occur. Majapahit actually had an advisory diet consisted of court ministers and provincial governors, most of which derived from the ruling clan. And they were strong whenever the monarch was weak.

It's also to be noted that Javanese kingship is always basically divine and especially in Hindu period(when title Devaraja was used), political consolidation and infrastructural development always revolved around this. That's basically why they built Candis: it was to both conflate the elements of the monarch's person, any of the Trimurti and sometimes Buddha as well as local spirituality, which obliges the king to regularly make ritual pilgrimage to these Candis, and in turn absorb local resources for the temple and facilitate royal ritual. A kind of reverse Sankin Kotai, basically.

Sometimes, one looks at Javanese history and wonders why the so many potentials to institutionalize Javanese nation only to always get neutralized whenever it almost happened.

Didn't see your post till just now, but very interesting.

 

[Every Grass in Java]

Throughout the 1630s, Aceh remained the greatest power in all the Malay world. But the Dutch had already dealt it smarting humiliation. In 1637, the city of Malacca – that history-laden town whose conquest had been the dream of every Acehnese sultan – fell instead to the Dutch East India Company. Two years later, the simple threat of war from the Company had been enough to force an Acehnese withdrawal from its archenemy Johor.

Sultan Iskandar Muda had ruled Aceh at the height of her glory, from 1607 to 1636, and the king’s very name had resonated with power. “Iskandar” was the Muslim pronunciation of “Alexander,” that ancient Macedonian world-conqueror. “Muda” was the Malay word for “young.” Iskandar Muda was the young Alexander, the world-conqueror reincarnate. Now Iskandar Muda was gone; in his place was the new sultan, Iskandar Thani. Iskandar Thani was no Iskandar Muda, but he was still an Alexander – an Iskandar – nevertheless. Would he simply sit and watch as his power ebbed away?

Not so.

Iskandar knew that alone, he was helpless. But what allies could there be? In 1640 the sultan courted the friendship of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. Yet both men were much too obstinate. Iskandar Thani was a boastful man, assured of his position as independent sovereign. “His Majesty the Holy Sultan,” the king proclaimed in his royal decrees, “is the Great Ruler and Illustrious Khagan, the Sovereign Champion of the World, Shadow of God on the Earth and Caliph of God.” Mughal pretensions were no less grand. The very name of Shah Jahan meant “world king” in Persian and his titles were yet more presumptuous: “Conqueror of Kingdoms and Master of the World, whose commands are like the decree of Fate and whose grandeur is like the firmament.”

Shah Jahan naturally expected Iskandar to become his vassal; Iskandar naturally expected the Grand Mogul to treat him as an equal. Neither were willing to concede. And so the dream of Mughal-Acehnese alliance never materialized.

The Mughals were not the only Muslim great power, but the other two were equally unpalatable. Safavid Iran was filled to the brim with Shī’ite heretics, the very sort of people that good Muslims ought to always avoid. The Ottomans were too far away. In any case, the sickly sultan of Constantinople, the aptly-nicknamed Ibrahim the Mad, had little interest in Southeast Asia.

Iskandar Thani had no recourse but to look to his neighbors in Southeast Asia. He asked Sultan Agung for a formal alliance, to be sealed by a royal marriage. “All Muslims below the winds,” said the sultan of Aceh, “must unite against the infidel Franks. This is an obligation upon them according to the sharīʿah. Already your name is renowned, even in the Sacred Places; people marvel at how you routed the Dutch. Tales of your fluttering banners are told even in the cities of Rome. I tell you, my brother, Sultan of Mataram: the duty of jihad is incumbent upon the Muslim community. Then why should you not join me in war against the infidel in Malacca, a true war in the path of the Lord?”

There was no reply. Perhaps Sultan Agung never received the letter; perhaps he did not think it was worth a response. In any case, an alliance with Aceh would have been suboptimal for him. Mataram had many Malay vassal states who felt menaced by Aceh’s expansionist ambitions.

Iskandar grieved the perfidious Mataram, but his chances were better in the east. Eastern Indonesia was dominated by the sultanate of Makassar, the vast maritime empire that was the archenemy of the Dutch Company. Its fortunes had only been bolstered by the ambitions of Sultan Agung; Agung had devastated the north coast of Java and thereby diverted its trade to Makassar, and his conquest of Bali allowed Makassar to conquer Balinese tributaries in Lombok and Sumbawa. While the rulers of Makassar had signed a peace treaty with the Company in 1637, the prosperity of the sultanate remained inversely correlated with the success of the Company. The Dutch wanted to monopolize the spice trade and close it to all but themselves, knowing they could never compete with Asian shipping in a fair market. Makassar wanted – needed – to keep the spice routes open, for they were the source of its wealth. War was inevitable. 1637 was but a brief adjourn.

The court of Makassar welcomed Iskandar Thani’s envoys with great fanfare in 1640. The Dutchmen at the factory observed the Acehnese entry with trepidation. The factory’s secretary noted:

When the Acehnese arrived at the covered pavilion [of Makassar’s sultan], they saw before them the entire field covered with troops in battle array, which at a guess consisted of some 10,000 men, arranged in such good order and rows that they could well have been thought a European army formed in battle order. Under a multitude of banners, pennants, and standards attached to poles the length of pikes, it provided a pleasant sight…​

A golden parasol, decked with a stitched cover hung with gold chains, was brought to the army by the cavalry. These horsemen consisted of two standards, each with 126 men, all provided with yellow saddles and new chainmail armor and armed with decorated lances. Then they went and fetched the Somba [the sultan of Makassar] from his palaces and placed him under the parasol. His Majesty the Somba sat on a splendid palanquin accompanied by Chancellor Pattingalloang (his uncle and chief mandarin of the realm) and a large contingent of queens, princesses, and court maidens, all elegantly adorned with gold chains and armlets, and also splendid trousers with gold cloth, with fine white and thin-trailing transparent cloth over it.​

Extraordinarily splendid was the entire spectacle... The large majority wore golden helmets, as well as kris, swords, lances and spears. The Somba's crown had about six to eight pounds of gold set with diamonds and rubies. He wore around his neck outside his splendid chainmail armor bordered with beaten gold.​

Such a brazen display of power and opulence must surely have dazzled the Acehnese – and that, after all, was what it had all been about. Makassar valued Aceh as an ally, but it could hardly stomach the possibility that the Acehnese would see them as weak and impoverished supplicants. For the sake of its pride and legitimacy, it had no choice but to stage this expensive pageant.

This was the nature of politics in seventeenth-century Asia: a game of prestige. The projection of power required any raja or sultan or padishah to acquire guns and elephants, the visible accruements of military force. But just as much, it required his neighbors to respect him as a worthy sovereign of a mighty empire.

The prestige of the Mughals demanded that Aceh pay it homage; the prestige of Aceh demanded that it remain independent; the prestige of Makassar demanded that it stage a costly show for the Acehnese. Prestige alone explains why Makassar became an Acehnese ally while the Mughals did not. The prestige of both Aceh and Makassar was heightened by this alliance of equals. But the Mughals’ reputation could not allow for a bilateral alliance with such a weaker country, while the great prestige of Aceh precluded Iskandar Thani from becoming a vassal.

The demands of realpolitik might have differed from those of prestige. But then, politics have seldom been always pragmatic.

Be that as it may, a formal treaty of alliance was signed in late 1640. The Makassar version of the preamble began:

Aceh and Makassar are brothers, equally great, with none above and none below. We are slaves only to God. We will not force one to submit to the other. We will walk together with arms swinging freely, equal in walking, equal in sitting.​

The equality of the parties having been established, Aceh and Makassar promised to forever defend each other whenever they were attacked. “Though Aceh and Makassar are divided by leagues and leagues of wind and water, whenever Makassar is imperiled on land or on sea, Aceh shall support his brother by the gun and the sword. And though Aceh lies on the very edge of the lands Below the Winds, whenever Aceh is attacked by horse or by ship, Makassar shall send fine cavalry and galleys in his brother’s cause.”

The Company’s two greatest native enemies were now in alliance. Yet more alarming was further news flowing in from Aceh. The Dutch learned that Iskandar Thani had met the ambassadors of the Portuguese State of India and representatives from the English East India Company, perhaps intimating the possibility of an Acehnese-Makassar-Portuguese-English alliance to crush the Dutch for once and for all. It was said that English ships were busy transporting cannon and gunpowder to Acehnese ports and that Iskandar Thani was training his elephants for war.

Imagine the relief of the Dutch when Sultan Iskandar fell ill and died in March 1641. He was only thirty-one.

Iskandar Thani left no children behind. There was a brief period of chaos as each noble wondered whom to support, or whether he should press his claim to the throne. Finally, the nobility decided to give the crown to the Queen Dowager, the primary wife of Iskandar Thani. She accepted their demand and was enthroned as Sultanah Taj al-Alam.

The Company saw Taj al-Alam as the key to Aceh’s downfall. “Women are not much respected in the East,” said one governor from The Hague, “so it is inevitable that Aceh shall decline. In any case, how should a half-naked woman have any success in war?” At first, it seemed they were right. In the summer of 1641, the vassal king of Pahang refused to accept a woman as his overlord and swore fealty to the Dutch ally of Johor instead. The Dutch similarly expected that they could manipulate factions within the Acehnese court - who would have been strengthened by the instability of female rule - to force the sultanah into concessions.

With this in mind, the Dutch tried to coerce Aceh into surrendering the tin trade to the Company. The sultanah stalled and stalled, apologizing to the Dutch embassy for “Her Majesty’s womanly nature, which drives her to always vacillate from one view to another.” As the queen stalled for time, unbeknownst to the Dutch, she convened the leaders of the major factions and slowly forged a consensus among them. When the reply came to the tired Dutch embassy - no, such a concession was unacceptable - the queen had used her wits and her royal prestige to persuade all leading factions to accept this refusal. Taj al-Alam had outwitted the Company, playing on the very stereotypes of her gender. There would be no factional splits for the Dutch to manipulate.

Most negotiations between Aceh and the Company went this way.

By 1650, the Company was confident enough of both its own superiority and Taj al-Alam’s supposed feminine weaknesses, and tired enough of the endless negotiations with the sultanah, that it decided to blockade the city of Aceh itself. An ultimatum was presented, demanding a full Acehnese withdrawal from the Malay Peninsula; the demands were duly rejected. A Dutch fleet immediately set sail to block all ships from entering the port. Eventually, the Dutch must have hoped, the city itself would be captured and razed and Acehnese power in the East would be annihilated.

Makassar, of course, took this as a declaration of war and marshaled its fleet to attack Dutch positions in the East. This had been expected by the Company. Governor-General Carel Reyniersz felt reasonably sure he could at least stalemate Makassar.

Then India threw a wrench in his plans.

Mughal miniature: "Akbar enters the City of Surat"

The Indian metropolis of Surat was the chief port of the Mughal Empire, the richest state in the world, and its population of hundreds of thousands exceeded those of all but three European cities (Istanbul, Paris, and London). No wonder, then, that Europeans called it “a city as large as a kingdom.” Surat was also an important center of Dutch trade from where the Company could access all the opulence of Mughal India.

The events of December 1650 thus came as a shock to the Company. The Dutch blockade of Aceh had destroyed many ships belonging to Virji Vora, a Jain merchant who dominated Indian trade and was rumored to be the richest man in the world. Virji Vora pressed the Company to compensate his lost ships. The Company paid Vora in silver and spices, but the Company was too hard-pressed by Aceh and Makassar to spare much money to compensate Vora. The value of the “compensation” ended up to be barely a third – or even less, since the spices turned out to be spoiled – of what the Jain had lost to Dutch piracy. Vora had already been irritated by Dutch attempts to monopolize the spice trade, and this was enough cause for war. (This was perhaps a little ironic, considering that Vora’s Jain religion abhors violence.)

Vora was already recognized as the honorary Chief Merchant of Surat and was the formal leader of the city’s Hindu-Jain merchant guilds. Religious differences notwithstanding, he was also a commercial ally and personal friend of Mirza Arab, the Mughal governor of Surat. Vora easily convinced Mirza Arab to issue an ultimatum to the Company. The Dutch had two choices. They could either immediately make peace with Aceh, as well as fully compensate every merchant in Surat who had lost money due to the Dutch blockade. Or they could refuse, in which case Mirza Arab would destroy the Dutch properties in his jurisdiction and petition Emperor Shah Jahan to declare war on the Company.

Would the Company surrender before Mughal pressure?

Their shared antagonism towards the Dutch leads to an alliance between Aceh and Makassar, the most powerful Islamic empires in Southeast Asia besides Mataram. Undaunted, the Dutch East India Company blockades Aceh in 1650. Makassar immediately declares war to protect its ally. More ominously, the Mughal governor of the port city of Surat threatens to petition the Mughal emperor to declare war on the Dutch...

* * *

These major divergences all ultimately derive from different timing. Sultan Agung’s victory forced the Dutch to move to Malacca four years earlier than they did IOTL. This means the Acehnese ruler they face is not Taj al-Alam but the more bellicose Iskandar Thani (who IOTL died just thirty-two days after the Dutch took Malacca, not giving him enough time to prepare a response). Iskandar Thani IOTL is sufficiently provoked to seek an alliance with Makassar.

Meanwhile, the weakness of the Company after losing Batavia means that it blockades Aceh in 1650, three years later than IOTL. This means that the governor of Surat is the Persian noble Mirza Arab, who Shah Jahan appointed in 1649. IOTL, the governor of Surat during the Dutch blockade of Aceh was Mir Musa. Mir Musa responded to Dutch attacks on Mughal shipping by attacking and destroying the Dutch factory at Surat in 1647, but this was apparently not approved by the Mughal government. In any case, Shah Jahan did not hold him in high regard and replaced him soon later. His replacement Mirza Arab is more well-regarded by the emperor and his petition could therefore hold much more weight in the Mughal court.

The fact that it's Mirza Arab who is responding to the Dutch blockade of Aceh and not Mir Musa is also significant because the Jain merchant-prince Virji Vora was scared of Mir Musa (to the point that he avoided all markets where Mir Musa had commercial interests) but had good relations with Mirza Arab. This means that Virji Vora is more willing to raise his annoyance at the Dutch with the Mughal authorities (he did not IOTL, though I think it is probable that he lost money due to the 1647 blockade).

It’s just been twenty years, and already the butterflies flutter…

All royal titles were used IOTL by Iskandar Thani and Shah Jahan. The description of Makassar’s military display before the Acehnese envoys are also from OTL (though in reality, they describe a parade held by a different ruler in 1695 before a Dutch embassy; The Heritage of Arung Palakka, p. 290-291), and the preamble to the Aceh-Makassar treaty is a formulaic invocation from the region.

For an overview of Aceh in the seventeenth century, Denys Lombard’s French classic Le Sultanat d'Atjeh au temps d'Iskandar Muda, 1607-1636 is still the canonical work. For the reign of queen Taj al-Alam, who did IOTL stall for time and evoke her femininity to tire the Dutch into compromising, see Barbara Andaya’s “’A Very-Good Natured but Awe-Inspiring Government': The Reign of a Successful Queen in Seventeenth-Century Aceh.” For the Jain merchant Virji Vora and seventeenth-century Surat in general, I used Gokhale’s Surat in the Seventeenth Century: A Study of Urban History of Pre-modern India, quite old now but a still very useful text.

 

[Timaeus]

Yes... Death to the VOC. Crush the Protestants.

 

[Aghstadian]

Aww.. i really want to see Aceh-Makassar-Portugese-England Alliance. Well such is life.

In any case the company must choose between two hard choice. Well the more sensible one after losing batavia is just pay the reparation rather lose another port and become irrelevant. But with european mindset at the time i'm afraid they will stick to their pride. Can't wait to see what will happen next.

Yes... Death to the VOC. Crush the Protestants.

You mean we will see catholic-muslim wank in SEA I can get behind that

 

[Every Grass in Java]

So Java adopts a Japan-style monarchy? Interesting.

Japan is a serviceable analogue in that the emperor remained the nominal ruler but was largely relegated to a ceremonial rule while a second dynasty of shoguns held actual power. There are actually analogues to Japan in many parts of Early Modern Asia – notably Vietnam, where the Lê dynasty of emperors became largely irrelevant while the Trịnh Lords ruled in the name of the sovereign. You could even look at nineteenth-century Nepal, where the Rana dynasty of Prime Ministers governed in the name of the Shah monarchs, nineteenth-century Korea during the Age of In-Law Rule, or the well-documented case of the Chhatrapati or emperor being eclipsed by his chief minister, the Peshwa, in the eighteenth-century Maratha empire.

There is even some precedent in Java itself. The Yudanegaran line of the House of Danurejan monopolized the position of Prime Minister in the Sultanate of Yogyakarta from 1755 until the position was abolished in 1943; there was only one Prime Minister during those two centuries who wasn't a Yudanegaran. Of course, in Java, the Danurejan never did manage to eclipse the Mataram dynasty.

My point is, Java wouldn't be alone if it moves towards a more shogunate-like monarchy.

Now, I have questions. What was the fate of Muslim Lombok and (western) Sumbawa? Did they fall under UberMataram too?

As seen in the new map, Makassar gobbled them up.

All very interesting, but is there any particular reason why this never occurred (as far as I know) OTL? And if so, was it simply due to chance or are there serious structural challenges in Javanese culture?

The lack of the House of Mataram being eclipsed by a lower ministerial family, I think, is ultimately due to chance more than anything else. As stated above, the eclipse of royal authority by his ministers is not uncommon in the Indic world. There are even some analogues in Islamic Southeast Asia, such as in eighteenth-century Johor where power was monopolized by the Bugis, all in the name of the Malay sultan.

Java is basically impossible to centralize, hence why they have the concept of Mandala.

You are absolutely correct about the difficulties that Java poses to any centralizing project. To elaborate, Java is an extremely fertile volcanic island. It has large pockets of very good land separated by volcanoes and harsh terrain, much of which was still inhabited mainly by tigers even in the nineteenth century. This means that the population tended to be dispersed across the island and thus more difficult to control directly. There are river systems, but there isn't one river system that ties all the major population centers of the island together.

By contrast, in Burma or Thailand, the population is concentrated in the basin of one easily navigable river (the Irrawaddy and the Chao Phraya, respectively). This makes centralization remarkably easier.

The closest analogue to Java's geography in Southeast Asia is actually Vietnam with its extended coastline. But Vietnam differs from Java in one critical way: the presence of Chinese civilization. Vietnam is culturally East Asian, and Chinese models of centralized, bureaucratic rule proved irresistibly attractive to its rulers. Java had only the Indian system of nested sovereignty where all levels of administration are sovereign, like in a feudal contract. Islamic traditions of centralized rule was not well-known because the Javanese converted on their own terms, unlike in India where the Muslim conquerors forcibly enforced their administrative system.

Ultimately, I don't think Java is impossible to centralize with Early Modern technology. What is perhaps most needed is a conceptual change, the creation of a new idea that can incorporate and legitimate the centralized state, just as Confucian statecraft did in Vietnam. This could come from somewhere else, or be an indigenous evolution from the scholarly currents I discussed in earlier chapters.

There's also this tendency of paramount Javanese kingdoms throughout history to split into two courts or more, like Eastern Medang which was divided into Jenggala and Kediri, Majapahit which even in its zenith had two courts, and Mataram which became Yogyakarta and Surakarta, both of which also begotten one splinter principality each.

Well, Mataram didn't want to split into Surakarta and Yogyakarta. Both courts thought of the situation as an aberration that was continued only because the Dutch wanted it so. If the Dutch didn't exist, one of them (probably Yogya, since its founder Mangkubumi was by and far the greatest king in eighteenth-century Java) would have probably absorbed the other within the eighteenth century.

 

[MagicalPhantom345]

The Company’s two greatest native enemies were now in alliance. Yet more alarming was further news flowing in from Aceh. The Dutch learned that Iskandar Thani had met the ambassadors of the Portuguese State of India and representatives from the English East India Company, perhaps intimating the possibility of an Acehnese-Makassar-Portuguese-English alliance to crush the Dutch for once and for all. It was said that English ships were busy transporting cannon and gunpowder to Acehnese ports and that Iskandar Thani was training his elephants for war.

Vora was already recognized as the honorary Chief Merchant of Surat and was the formal leader of the city’s Hindu-Jain merchant guilds. Religious differences notwithstanding, he was also a commercial ally and personal friend of Mirza Arab, the Mughal governor of Surat. Vora easily convinced Mirza Arab to issue an ultimatum to the Company. The Dutch had two choices. They could either immediately make peace with Aceh, as well as fully compensate every merchant in Surat who had lost money due to the Dutch blockade. Or they could refuse, in which case Mirza Arab would destroy the Dutch properties in his jurisdiction and petition Emperor Shah Jahan to declare war on the Company.

Would the Company surrender before Mughal pressure?

IF these apposing forces actually succeed in eliminating the Dutch East India Company, wouldn't that put the British and Portuguese East India companies in a even better position than OTL?

 

[EmperorBuaya]

Well, looks like the VOC is surrounded and have not many allies to back them up. This will be interesting to see~. Surely, Mataram will take advantage of it.

Tho' I'm sort of looking forward to Mataram becoming a bigger empire.

 

[le man]

Sorry, but what does VOC mean

 

[MagicalPhantom345]

Well, looks like the VOC is surrounded and have not many allies to back them up. This will be interesting to see~. Surely, Mataram will take advantage of it.

Tho' I'm sort of looking forward to Mataram becoming a bigger empire.

You think they would try settling OTL northern Australia?