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The Susuhunans of Surakarta

1168–1368/1755–1949

Central Java

In the course of the Third Javanese War of Succession (1162–70/1749–57), a partition of the Mataram territories was made in 1168/1755. Pakubuwana III continued as ruler of the eastern half of the kingdom, with Surakarta as his capital and with himself and his descendants bearing the title of Susuhunan, one higher than that of Sultan. A portion of Mataram, Mangku-Negara, went to a third claimant, Mas Said, now styled Mangkunegara, the nephew of Pakubuwana II and his brother, Mangkubumi, this last now sultan in Jogjakarta. These were in effect vassal states of the VOC and then of the Dutch government, but the two rival states of Surakarta and Jogjakarta had to work out a system of living in harmony and administering the divided lands within a Javanese political tradition which had known only a sole ruler. Once this understanding was achieved, both states survived the nineteenth century, with its bursts of violence such as the Javanese War of 1825–30, into the twentieth century, through the Japanese occupation of 1942–5 and into the constituting of the Indonesian Republic after the Second World War. The long-reigning Susuhunan Pakubuwana XII still retains his social position at Surakarta within contemporary Indonesia.

EI² ‘Surakarta’ (O. Schumann).

Jan M. Pluvier, A Handbook and Chart of South-East Asian History, 29, 31.

D. G. E. Hall, A History of South-East Asia, 4th edn, 359–60, 502ff., with a genealogical table at pp. 972–3.

M. C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia since c. 1300, 2nd edn, 94–103, 110–11.