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Although often considered stateless, during the seventeenth century, networks of Southeast Asian maritime-oriented people were intimately allied with the ruling families of land-based polities and played a vital role in opposing European efforts to dominate the spice trade. While this alters a familiar story in world history, it also opens a window onto the dynamics of politics, trade, littoral society and military cooperation in the maritime world of the archipelago.
Framed by two wars: the Great Ambon War and the Makassar War, this paper shows how the Straits of Tiworo, a non-urban hub, formed a fulcrum in the seascape of the spice wars. Although trounced with much luck by VOC forces and their Ternatan allies in 1655, over the next dozen years Tiworo rebuilt. Its resurgence was linked to Makassar's campaign of re-expansion in the eastern archipelago. A threat to Dutch interests, Makassar's re-expansion contributed to the VOC's decision to attack it, yet only after defeating Tiworo a second time in 1667.
Makassar's Sultan Hasanuddin, justifying the actions of his fleet during the inter-war period, explained he would not have had to maintain his rights to the lands in question if Ternate had not attacked the Makassar territory of "Pancana" (Pantsiano / Pangesane / Muna). In fact, this was a reference to Tiworo. In addition to explaining the reference, this paper examines why the defeat of—-as Admiral Cornelis Speelman called it-—"that nasty pirates' nest, Tiworo," mattered so much that Sultan Hasanuddin's rationale for re-expansion lay in avenging it.