Foundation
The name Mataram had belonged to the region of central Java around present-day Yogyakarta since the eighth century, when the Hindu and Buddhist kings who built Prambanan and Borobudur ruled there. After the fall of Majapahit, power in Java passed to the Muslim ports of the north coast, Demak first among them, and then to Pajang in the interior. In the later sixteenth century Senapati, son of a commander of Pajang, built up a new kingdom at Kotagede, overthrew Pajang, and expanded across central Java. He died in 1601.
Sultan Agung
Senapati's grandson Agung (r. 1613–1645) made Mataram the dominant power in Java. He conquered the great trading city of Surabaya in 1625 after years of war and subdued most of the island, and Madura. He besieged Batavia, the Dutch Company's headquarters, in 1628 and again in 1629, and failed both times, losing large numbers to disease and hunger. He took the title of sultan in 1641 with the approval of Mecca.
Agung is remembered as a ruler who blended Islam with Javanese court culture. In 1633 he introduced a new Javanese calendar, combining the lunar Islamic year with the older Shaka era count. He built the royal cemetery at Imogiri, where the rulers of Mataram and its successors are buried.
Amangkurat I and the Company
His son Amangkurat I (r. 1646–1677) centralised power ruthlessly, killing rivals, religious scholars and nobles. The rebellion of Trunajaya, a prince of Madura, broke out in 1674 and took the capital at Plered in 1677. Amangkurat died in flight, and his son turned to the Dutch East India Company, which crushed the rebellion in exchange for territory and trading monopolies. From then on the Company was a major party in Javanese politics.
The kingdom was weakened by three wars of succession in the early eighteenth century, in each of which the Company backed one claimant in return for further concessions. A rising of Chinese in 1740–43, following the massacre at Batavia, spread into Mataram and led to the court's move from Kartasura to Surakarta in 1745.
Division
In 1755, by the treaty of Giyanti, the Company divided Mataram between two rulers: the Susuhunan at Surakarta and a new sultan, Hamengkubuwana I, at Yogyakarta. A further division in 1757 created the Mangkunegaran. These courts survived under Dutch rule as centres of Javanese culture, with their gamelan, dance and wayang. The sultan of Yogyakarta supported the Indonesian revolution after 1945, and Yogyakarta remains a special region of Indonesia with its sultan as governor.
Further reading
- Coedes, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press, 1968
- Kulke, Hermann. A History of India. Routledge, 2004
- Wink, Andre. Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Brill, 1990
See also
- Hindu civilization in Indonesia — The Hindu–Buddhist civilization that shaped the Indonesian archipelago from roughly the 4th to the 16th century CE, leaving its clearest legacy in Bali's living Hindu tradition and in monuments such as Borobudur and Prambanan.
- Dutch India — Dutch India was the network of Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie factories on the Indian coasts, held from 1605 until they were traded to Britain in 1824.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.