Pakubuwana II’s descendants have ruled in Surakarta for over two centuries, but not as undisputed overlords of the Mataram realm. Two members of the royal family—the king’s brother, Mangkubumi, and his nephew, Raden Mas Said—refused to accept Pakubuwana II’s capitulation to Dutch demands. Convinced of their own right to rule, they refused to join him in Surakarta.

Subsequent battles between Mangkubumi and the combined forces of Pakubuwana and the Dutch resulted in a stalemate. In the end, Mangkubumi was given half the kingdom and built a new palace in Yogyakarta. Raden Mas Said remained in rebellion for some time, but was finally appeased by a grant of 4,000 households carved from Pakubuwana’s domain. In 1757, he ended his rebellion and founded a “junior” line of Solonese nobility, taking the name of Mangkunegara I (r. 1757). He built his own palace in the north of Solo; the city’s main thoroughfare, Jl. Slamet Riyadi, today marks the boundary of his former desmene.

The Pax neerlandica which followed lasted (apart from the Java War of 1825-30) up to the Japanese invasion, leaving Javanese aristocrats without battles in which to demonstrate their martial virtues of courage and loyalty. As the knightly ethic became less relevant, connoisseurship in the arts gradually replaced it as the distinguishing mark of nobility. The ideal aristocrat became one who appreciated the arts, sponsored them, and even practiced them if possible.

Pakubuwana IV (r. 1788-1820), for example, authored a classic Javanese homiletic poem, was an amateur dalang, and had several splendid gamelan sets cast for him. His successor, Pakubuwana V (r. 1820-1823) supervised the compilation of the Serat Gemini, a verse romance incorporating encyclopaedic descriptions of all things Javanese, from medicine to music. (The king is said to have personally contributed many sexually explicit passages to the final draft.) Mangkunegara IV (r. 1853-1881) was a particularly prolific author, and is credited with producing the best-known of all Javanese poems, the Wedatama. In it, he warns his readers against those who deem themselves to be strict Muslims, and praises the traditional mystical strain in Javanese Islam.

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