Banggai

The Banggai are an Austronesian people of the Banggai Islands and the eastern coast of Central Sulawesi, heirs to the maritime Kingdom of Banggai. They fall into coastal Banggai and the Sea-sea people of the mountainous interior. A Chinese document of 1304 already names the island as a Majapahit tributary.

In the sixteenth century Ternate conquered the four small states, its general Adi Cokro extending Banggai's rule onto the Sulawesi mainland in the 1580s; in 1564 the king had sent his son to Ternate to weigh Christianity and Islam.

After the Treaty of Bongaya in 1667 Ternate appointed Banggai's rulers and took annual tribute, while Bugis traders grew influential; the trepang-trade kingdom shifted its capital to Mendono in 1690 and Balantak in 1708 amid raids and conflict. Islam took root among the coastal Banggai, inland communities keeping their older beliefs.