Online Seminar: “As Long As We Use Our Own Customs”: The Orchestration of Adat in South Sulawesi's Treaty-Making Tradition.

Online zoom-seminar.

Loui Buana (Leiden University/KITLV) will be presenting on the topic “As Long As We Use Our Own Customs”: The Orchestration of Adat in South Sulawesi's Treaty-Making Tradition.

The use of treaties to establish formal alliances between states in South Sulawesi has long been recognized in historiography. Legal historians like V.E. Korn and G.J. Resink have elucidated the important role of treaties in this region and their contribution to the development of Indonesian and international law. Less well-known however is that the treaties often included important references to adat (customary law), which often reveal important differences in the interests of the parties involved. My talk analyses how the orchestration of adat in the treaty-making process functioned as a strategic shield to protect autonomy and as a legal means through which dominant powers attempted to exert influence upon their supposed subordinates. I also make a comparison with treaties constituted by South Sulawesi migrants with the sovereigns of the lands where they settled, especially in the Malay Peninsula and Kalimantan. This way, I unveil how both in- and outside of Sulawesi the treaties were used as important diplomatic tools to accommodate and uphold adat.

Muhammad Buana (Louie) [S.H., B.A., Adv. LL.M.] is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History, Leiden University (2022) and a Guest Researcher at Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV). He studied Colonial and Global History, participating in the Cosmopolis program at Leiden University (2015), and additionally completed an Advance Master in European and International Human Rights Law, also at Leiden University (2016). His research interest covers legal history, environmental law, maritime networks and the interplay between adat (Indonesian customary law), Islam and colonialism in the Southeast Asian archipelago and the wider Indian Ocean world.

His recent publications include:

(with Perdana, Aditya Bayu) "Islands, maps, and Lontara’; Bugis counter-mapping on a nineteenth-century map of Nusantara," Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia: Vol. 24: No. 3 (2023).

 ‘Borrowing adat and bargaining Islam: The creation and Islamisation of customary law in Mandar’, in: M. Kooria, S. Ravensbergen (eds.), Islamic law in the Indian Ocean world: Texts, ideas and practices (Oxon & NY: Routledge, 2021).

He can be contacted via: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  

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