Indonesia - Peoples and Histories (original) (raw)

Imagining Indonesia: An Historical Perspective, 1785-1942

Indonesia Sebagai Ruang Imajinasi, 2018

This was a presentation I gave at the one-day Conference on 'Indonesia sebagai Ruang Imajinasi [Imagining Indonesia]' at Universitas Brawijaya, Malang, on 7 November 2018. The paper was subsequently published in the conference proceedings - Indonesia sebagai Ruang Imajinasi. Ed.Ary Budhiyanto dkk. (Malang: Program Studi Antropologi, Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya, Universitas Brawijaya, 2018), pp.1-7. There is also a PowerPoint presentation which will help to bring this paper alive visually. The main theme I was asked to address by the conference organisers related to concepts of political space in 19th century Java (in particular during the era of Diponegoro [1785-1855] and the Java War [1825-30]) and the subsequent emergence of the concept of Indonesia through the publications of George Windsor Earl (1813-1865) and his younger contemporary, James Richardson Logan (1819-1869), founder of the Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia (Singapore, 1847-63). I also looked at the period of the early 20th century Indonesian nationalist movement or pergerakan nasional (1908-1942).

The Identity of “Sumatra” in History

An Indonesian Frontier, 2004

Any endeavours such as the 1981 Conference on 'North Sumatra', and the present book, raise questions about the most fruitful and appropriate boundaries for scholarly enquiry. Although two of my own books (1969; 1979) are premised on a quite different definition of 'North Sumatra'-including Aceh but excluding Tapanuli-I would be the first to concede that the Hamburg Conference did show the value of looking at the present (since 1956) province of North Sumatra as a distinct unit. Behind this question of definition, however, there lies an older and deeper question, whether Sumatra as a whole should be distinguished as a field of enquiry. Since William Marsden (1783; 1811) and his less distinguished contemporaries Eschels-Kroon (1781) and Radermacher (1781) published their books within three years, there has been a succession of impressive scholarly monuments to the proposition that Sumatra is a unit-notably Lekkerkerker (1916), Collet (1925), and Loeb (1935). More recently (1971) the Sumatra Research Bulletin aimed to establish a permanent forum for the coherent study of 'one of the most important culture areas of island Southeast Asia'. It was the birth of that admirable journal which set my own thoughts moving on the present topic, although its death four years later led me to wonder whether the question had already been decided in the negative. The degree of objective unity in the language, culture, mythology or economy of Sumatra has not yet been adequately researched, and is too ambitious a subject for this paper. Since scholarship often follows political reality, however (though the reverse process also occurs, as we shall see below), it may be of interest to-25-IDENTITY trace the self-identification of Sumatrans themselves during their recent history. Geography has always made it difficult for Sumatra to manifest a single identity, at least as long as the most effective communication was by sea. The Straits of Malacca united the broad rivers of the east coast with the Malay Peninsula and beyond, as the Sunda Straits united the south with Java. The great historical achievements of the people of Sumatra, therefore, never remained exclusively Sumatran. Perversely, even some of the names by which Sumatra first appeared on the historical stage-Melayu ('in the Nagarakertagama) and Java (in many Arab sources, including Ibn Battutah)-have been appropriated by Sumatra's neighbours. There are two major historical achievements, in particular, which might have been expected to form the basis for a Sumatran cultural nationalism in modern times. Firstly> the Sri Vijaya empire, centred in Palembang and Jambi, was supreme over all the coastal ports of Sumatra as well as the Malay Peninsula for most of the period from the 7th to the 13th centuries-by far the longest-lived of Indonesia's great powers. Secondly the Malay language and its literature, now the official language of four countries, was nurtured primarily if not exclusively in a succession of Sumatran centres-•sri Vijaya, Samudra-Pasai, Aceh, Palembang, Riau-Lingga-and was spoken and read throughout the island. It was the very success of this language in becoming first the lingua franca of the Archipelago and then the language of nationalism which prevented it being seen as 'the language of Sumatra' (cf. Roolvink, 1975). If we compare the career of Sri Vijaya with that of Majapahit in nationalist historiography (Reid & Marr, 1979, pp. 171-85, 287-9), it becomes clear that the former has been at a disadvantage. Both empires of the past had been largely forgotten by the 19th century, though retaining an indistinct aura of a vanished greatness. Because Dutch scholarship was

The Making of Middle Indonesia

2014

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC 3.0) License. chapter one 2 Sarekat Islam, the first mass political movement in the Netherlands Indies, started in Surakarta, Java, in 1909. It won adherents throughout the colony, with some significant concentrations in southern Sumatra and eastern Borneo, but most were in Java (Cribb 2000:146). Later it split into a militant 'Red' communist movement and a moderate 'White' Islamic one. When in the late 1920s the government began arresting communists for planning insurrection, most of the resulting convictions for political crimes occurred in Java (Cribb 2000:147). The self-proclaimed Republic of Indonesia in the late 1940s was confined to parts of Java and Sumatra, while its leadership was based in Java's Yogyakarta (Cribb 2000:160). Communist party (PKI) votes in the 1955 national election were strongest in Java, whereas conservative religious parties ruled the roost in the outer islands (Cribb 2000:163-5). Nearly half a century later, the opposition party PDI-P got most of its votes in 1999 in Java, whereas the regime party Golkar, a typical patronage party, continued to do well outside Java even after Suharto's departure (Cribb 2000:189-90).

Writing Indonesian history in the Netherlands; Rethinking the past

Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, 1994

There are two obvious ways of writing about the 'state of Indonesian history'. The first could be called Rankean: objective, scientific, and buttressed with a scholarly apparatus of typologies, tables, inventories and notes. The second is more post-modern: aware of artifice, admitting the influence of context, accepting subjectivity, and sensitive to the need for disclosure. This essay is closer to the latter than the former. In a compromise that is perhaps typical of much contemporary history writing, it concedes a fundamental subjectivity, but hopes to achieve some measure of respectability by considering a few external sources and paying attention to circumstances. It is usual in such essays to have an initial footnote acknowledging the writer's gratitude to various colleagues, students and friends, while at the same time absolving them of all responsibility for the argument presented. Both points must be made here with such emphasis that I have elevated them to the body of the text: many co-workers might recognize individual ideas or comments, but reject the interpretation. I alone can be held accountable for the following opinions. The main argument of the following pages, however, is uncontroversial enough. Briefly summarized, I suggest that the development of Indonesian history in the Netherlands, like all history writing, is shaped by two major, interacting forces. The first is socio-political, and refers to the constellation of relevant interests and attitudes within the producing society, including changing international relationships, in this case between the Netherlands and Indonesia. The second influence is cultural, comprising the institutions and ideas which shape the academic infrastructure and the formulation of research agendas. Here, we focus on debates within and about history and the social sciences in general, and on Indonesian history in particular. This much is fairly obvious. But I also-quite subjectively-suggest that the writing of Indonesian history at the moment seems to be in rather poor shape. We have an image problem, and it is our own fault. The interesting intellectual terrain seems to have been captured by other disciplines, reducing history to being the drab provider of raw material for cultural studies or social science. Or, as the more beleaguered historians might claim, modest and meticulous scholarship is being pushed aside by ill-informed but superficially impressive generalization.