Eastern Indonesia’s biggest port wore two names
Makassar, called Ujung Pandang from 1971 to 1999, is capital of South Sulawesi and Eastern Indonesia’s largest city—Indonesia’s fifth urban centre after Jakarta, Surabaya, Medan, and Bandung. About 1.485 million people lived in its 175.77 km² and fifteen districts as of mid-2025.
The city sits on the southwest coast of Sulawesi. Before Dutch East India Company forces conquered it, the city was seat of the Gowa Sultanate and site of a Portuguese naval base, and in the seventeenth century, and it stayed a key port of the Dutch East Indies. National planners count it among Indonesia's four main cities, and Bank Indonesia ranks its commercial property values second only to Greater Jakarta's.
Mamminasata names the official metro sprawl beyond city limits. Male and female counts in mid-2025 tallies (737,239 and 747,838) sketch a slight female majority inside a still-growing Sulawesi magnet.
English long spelled it Macassar and the Portuguese Macáçar; the Dutch used both Makasser and Makassar, and independent Indonesia kept the double s. Locally it is Mangkasara', written in the Lontara script shared with Buginese. On 1 September 1971, while the city was growing from its original 21 square kilometres, it was renamed Ujung Pandang after the old name of Fort Rotterdam, partly to play down ethnic overtones. The change stayed unpopular, and on 13 October 1999 President B. J. Habibie restored Makassar. The fourteenth-century Javanese poem Nagarakretagama lists it among lands under Majapahit.
Tumaparisi Kallonna, ninth king of Gowa from 1512 to 1546, allied with the trading state of Tallo, and the twin kingdom was centred at Sombaopu. After 1600, as Dutch power tightened over the spice trade, Makassar thrived as a free port open to all and a source of rice for Maluku. The English East India Company opened a post in 1613 and the Danes arrived in 1618. Karaeng Matoaya ruled Tallo from 1593, and his son Karaeng Pattingalloang, reputedly fluent in Portuguese, served as chancellor from 1639 until 1654. When Sultan Hasanuddin then broke with Tallo, a Bugis revolt led by Bone gave the Dutch their chance to conquer the city.
Source: Makassar
