Bone Sultanate

Bone, also called Boni or Bone Saoraja, was an adat-based Bugis kingdom on the south-west peninsula of Sulawesi. Its own chronicle traces its rulers from La Umasa in the early fifteenth century, when it was still a cluster of settlements around Watampone. Under La Umasa and his nephew La Saliu the realm expanded to about a third of the later regency, and in the early sixteenth century it pushed north against Luwu for control of the Cenrana river mouth. In 1582 Bone joined Wajo and Soppeng in the Tellumpocco'e, a defensive alliance against the rising power of Gowa-Tallo. Gowa invaded in 1611 and forced Bone to accept Islam. The kingdom's greatest age came under Arung Palakka, La Tenritatta, who sided with the Dutch admiral Speelman and helped destroy Gowa in 1669; for the next century and a half Bone was the leading power of South Sulawesi. The Dutch reduced it to vassalage after wars in 1824 and 1859, and a final defeat in 1905 ended its independence. A restored raja survived until the sultanate joined the new Indonesian state.