Talk:Sultan Agung of Mataram

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Not an "anti-colonialist" fighter

It is not appropriate to describe Sultan Agung as "a fighter of Dutch colonialists". His ambition was to conquer the whole island of Java, pursuing his grandfather's design. But it is an anachronism to believe he viewed the VOC as "colonialists". What he saw in the Dutch city of Batavia was a place he wanted to conquer. The Dutch ambitions at that time were just to have a location on Java Island as a relay for their spice trade. The search for the control of the Pasisir came later. Djoehana (talk) 10:53, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm- big problem is the sources that we have available in english on that - I dont know if you know of the story of coens remains being smuglled out of batavia and put into the stairs at imogiri so that all pilgrims to visits agungs grave must pass over coens remains - that is an attitude if there ever was one - :( Satu Suro 13:59, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One issue is the re-writing of historical perspective on Sultan Agung to fit nationalistic views of the Java-centric Indonesian government. It ignores the fact that upon failing to conquer Batavia, he sought help from the Portuguese to ally against the Dutch (see the Bahasa Indonesia version of the article). So, not quite an anti-colonialist as some think of him to be. Shall we at least remove the unsupported claim that his prestige didn't suffer from his failure to conquer Batavia? Julius.kusuma (talk) 18:30, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]