Series
Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
Book
Open Access
Javanese literature is one of the world’s richest and most unusual literary traditions yet it is little known today outside of Java, Indonesia, and a handful of western universities. With its more than a millennium of documented history, its complex interactions over the centuries with literature written in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Malay and Dutch, its often symbiotic relationship with the performing arts of puppetry and dance, and its own immense creativity and insight, this vastly understudied literature offers a lens to understanding Java’s fascinating world as well as human ingenuity more broadly. The essays in this volume, Storied Island: New Explorations in Javanese Literature, take a fresh look at questions and themes pertaining to Java’s literature, employing new theoretical and methodological lenses.
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In 1724-1726, the Dutch clergyman François Valentyn published a 5,000-page account of the Dutch East India Company’s empire. It was the first and, for a long time, the only survey of the Dutch establishments in Asia and South Africa. Shaping a Dutch East Indies analyses how Valentyn composed this work and how it largely determined the Dutch perspective on the colonies in Asia until the 1850s. It seeks to highlight both the great diversity of knowledge gathered in Valentyn’s book and its geographical spread, from the Cape of Good Hope to Japan, with a focus on the Indonesian archipelago. Huigen’s book is the first in-depth study of Valentyn’s work, which is a foundational text in the history of Dutch colonialism.
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In this book Sita van Bemmelen offers an account of changes in Toba Batak society (Sumatra, Indonesia) due to Christianity and Dutch colonial rule (1861-1942) with a focus on customs and customary law related to the life cycle and gender relations. The first part, a historical ethnography, describes them as they existed at the onset of colonial rule. The second part zooms in on the negotiations between the Toba Batak elite, the missionaries of the German Rhenish Mission and colonial administrators about these customs showing the evolving views on desirable modernity of each contestant. The pillars of the Toba patrilineal kinship system were challenged, but alterations changed the way it was reproduced and gender relations for ever.
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In Storytelling in Bali, Hildred Geertz makes a case for the importance of the role of informal storytelling as an engine of social change in Bali in the 1930s. This is a study of more than 200 texts dictated by the painters of the village of Batuan in 1936 to the anthropologist Gregory Bateson. It is completed by three years field work in Batuan in the 1980s.
The tales reveal a set of strong ambivalences about the magical powers of kings, priests and sorcerers, and about social strains within villages and families. These narratives were related in the daily settings of home and coffee shop and also in the spectacular dance-dramas of the time.
The tales reveal a set of strong ambivalences about the magical powers of kings, priests and sorcerers, and about social strains within villages and families. These narratives were related in the daily settings of home and coffee shop and also in the spectacular dance-dramas of the time.
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In Personal Religion and Magic in Mamasa, West Sulawesi, Kees Buijs describes the traditional culture of the Toraja’s, which is rapidly vanishing. The focus is on personal religion as it has its centre in the kitchen of each house. In the kitchen and also by the use of magical words and stones the gods are sought for their powers of blessing.
This book adds important information to Buijs’ earlier Powers of Blessing from the Wilderness and from Heaven (Brill, 2006).
This book adds important information to Buijs’ earlier Powers of Blessing from the Wilderness and from Heaven (Brill, 2006).
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In Indonesia's Overseas Labour Migration Programme, 1969-2010, Wayne Palmer offers for the first time a detailed, critical analysis of the way in which Indonesia's Overseas Labour Migration Programme is managed and how that fits with other developments within the Indonesian government. Commonly portrayed as a corrupt bunch of officials out to line their own pockets at the expense of migrant workers' welfare, here we are shown that they also make exceptions to rules when the law and political climate are not on their side.
Wayne Palmer used interviews with over 120 officials in six Indonesian provinces and three diplomatic missions in the Asia-Pacific region to understand motivations for corrupt and other illegal behaviour.
Wayne Palmer used interviews with over 120 officials in six Indonesian provinces and three diplomatic missions in the Asia-Pacific region to understand motivations for corrupt and other illegal behaviour.
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In Bali in the Early Nineteenth Century, Helen Creese examines the nature of the earliest sustained cross-cultural encounter between the Balinese and the Dutch through the eyewitness accounts of Pierre Dubois, the first colonial official to live in Bali. From 1828 to 1831, Dubois served as Civil Administrator to the Badung court in southern Bali. He later recorded his Balinese experiences for the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences in a series of personal letters to an anonymous correspondent. This first ethnography of Bali provides rich, perceptive descriptions of early nineteenth-century Balinese politics, society, religion and culture. The book includes a complete edition and translation of Dubois’ Légère Idée de Balie en 1830/Sketch of Bali in 1830.
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Gender Relations in an Indonesian Society offers a comprehensive ethnography of Bugis marriage through an exploration of gender identity and sexuality in this bilateral, highly competitive, hierarchical society.
Nurul Ilmi Idrus considers the fundamental concept of siriq (honour; shame) in relation to gender socialization, courtship, sex within marriage, the regulation of sexuality between genders, the importance of kinship and status in marriage, and the dynamics of marriage, divorce, and reconciliation. This analysis considers the practical combination of Islamic tenets with local adat (custom; customary law) and the effect of contemporary Indonesia’s national ideology on cultural practices specific to Bugis society.
Nurul Ilmi Idrus considers the fundamental concept of siriq (honour; shame) in relation to gender socialization, courtship, sex within marriage, the regulation of sexuality between genders, the importance of kinship and status in marriage, and the dynamics of marriage, divorce, and reconciliation. This analysis considers the practical combination of Islamic tenets with local adat (custom; customary law) and the effect of contemporary Indonesia’s national ideology on cultural practices specific to Bugis society.
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Youth Identities and Social Transformations in Modern Indonesia addresses current struggles and opportunities facing Indonesia’s youth across the archipelago. Contributions to this volume delve into youth aspirations and their everyday lives - education; friendship; work; leisure; sexuality; religion - described through the lens of the young people themselves. They are well educated but employment is hard to find: alternative paths to adulthood can include early marriage or joining street protest movements. In public rhetoric youth is often associated with ‘moral panics’ related to sexual morality, and also to violent religious identities and street protests.
The authors include leading scholars of Indonesia and its youth, reporting on ethnographic research from across the archipelago.
Contributors are: Linda Rae Bennett, Patrick Guinness, Noorhaidi Hasan, C. Ugik Margiyatin, Pam Nilan, Lyn Parker, Kathryn Robinson, Patricia Spyer, Puju Semedi, Ben White, Tracy Wright Webster.
The authors include leading scholars of Indonesia and its youth, reporting on ethnographic research from across the archipelago.
Contributors are: Linda Rae Bennett, Patrick Guinness, Noorhaidi Hasan, C. Ugik Margiyatin, Pam Nilan, Lyn Parker, Kathryn Robinson, Patricia Spyer, Puju Semedi, Ben White, Tracy Wright Webster.
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The Turkic-Turkish Theme in Traditional Malay Literature is the first detailed study of the representation of the Turkic peoples and Ottoman Turks in Malay literature between the 14th–19th centuries. Drawing on a wide range of texts, Vladimir Braginsky uncovers manifold metamorphoses and diverse forms of localisation of this Turkic-Turkish theme. This theme has strongly influenced the religious and political ideals and political mythology of Malay society. By creating fictional rather than realistic portrayals of the Turks and Turkey, imagining the king of Rum as the origin point of Malay dynasties, and dreaming of Ottoman assistance in the jihad against the colonial powers, Malay literati ultimately sought to empower the Malay ‘self’ by bringing it closer to the Turkish ‘other’.
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Catholics in Independent Indonesia: 1945-2010 concludes Steenbrink’s three volume historical account of Catholicism in Indonesia with a detailed report of the survival and growth of this minority religion in Muslim Indonesia since its independence in 1945.
Colonial Catholicism survived in the independent Republic of Indonesia during the nationalist Sukarno regime (1945-1965) and regained a new dynamic during the general religious revival that was part of the New Order of Soeharto after 1965. From a Dutch-inspired institution it became a fully Indonesian steered community with a modern and international character. The second half of the book will deal with the different regional developments in this vast country.
Colonial Catholicism survived in the independent Republic of Indonesia during the nationalist Sukarno regime (1945-1965) and regained a new dynamic during the general religious revival that was part of the New Order of Soeharto after 1965. From a Dutch-inspired institution it became a fully Indonesian steered community with a modern and international character. The second half of the book will deal with the different regional developments in this vast country.
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Open Access
In Environment, Trade and Society in Southeast Asia: A Longue Durée Perspective, eleven historians bring their knowledge and insights to bear on the long Braudelian sweep of Southeast Asian history. In doing so they seek both to debunk simplistic assumptions about fragile traditions and transformational modernities, and to identify real repeating patterns in Southeast Asia's past: clientelistic political structures, periodic tectonic and climatic disasters, ethnic occupational specializations, long cycles of economic globalization and deglobalization. Their contributions range across many centuries: from the Austronesian expansion to the Aceh tsunami, and from the Sanskrit cosmopolis to the Asian financial crisis. The book is inspired by, and dedicated to, Peter Boomgaard, a scholar whose work has embodied the Braudelian spirit in Southeast Asian historiography.
This title is available online in its entirety in Open Access.
This title is available online in its entirety in Open Access.
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Open Access
Cars, Conduits and Kampongs offers a wide panorama of the modernization of the cities in Indonesia between 1920 and 1960. The contributions present a case for asserting that Indonesian cities were not merely the backdrop to processes of modernization and rising nationalism, but formed a causal factor. Modernization, urbanization, and decolonization were intrinsically linked. The various chapters deal with such innovations as the provision of medical treatments, fresh water and sanitation, the implementation of town planning and housing designs, and policies for coping with increased motorized traffic and industrialization. The contributors share a broad critique of the economic and political dimensions of colonialism, but remain alert to the agency of colonial subjects who respond, often critically, to a European modernity.
Contributors include: Freek Colombijn, Joost Coté, Saki Murakami, Michelle Kooy, Karen Bakker, Pauline K.M. van Roosmalen, Hans Versnel, Farabi Fakih, Radjimo Sastro Wijono, Gustaaf Reerink, Arjan Veering, Johny A. Khusyairi, Purnawan Basundoro, Ida Liana Tanjung, and Sarkawi B. Husain.
Contributors include: Freek Colombijn, Joost Coté, Saki Murakami, Michelle Kooy, Karen Bakker, Pauline K.M. van Roosmalen, Hans Versnel, Farabi Fakih, Radjimo Sastro Wijono, Gustaaf Reerink, Arjan Veering, Johny A. Khusyairi, Purnawan Basundoro, Ida Liana Tanjung, and Sarkawi B. Husain.
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This study of traditional literature in Pakpak-Dairi, an endangered North Sumatran language, is based on written and oral versions of stories. Discussing the views of well-known scholars of Sumatran languages, the book includes the texts of seven stories which were collected in North Sumatra by the well-known linguist Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk (1824-1894) and are kept in Leiden University Library.
The book also contains a story performed in the village of Sukarame by Sonang Sitakar, who may well have been one of the last Pakpak-Dairi storytellers. Presenting unique information on an endangered literary genre from North Sumatra.
The book also contains a story performed in the village of Sukarame by Sonang Sitakar, who may well have been one of the last Pakpak-Dairi storytellers. Presenting unique information on an endangered literary genre from North Sumatra.
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In his richly illustrated Religion and Architecture in Premodern Indonesia Gaudenz Domenig investigates the nature of Indonesian ethnic religions by focusing on land opening rituals, sacred groves, and architectural responses to the custom of presenting offerings. Since deities and spirits were supposed to taste offerings on the spot, it was a task of architecture to attract them and to guide them into houses where offerings were presented.
Domenig quotes numerous sources to show that certain material elements of the house were viewed as spirit attractors, spirit ladders or spirit pathways. Various ‘exotic’ features of Indonesian vernacular architecture thus become understandable as relics from times when architecture was still responding to indigenous religions practised in the archipelago.
Domenig quotes numerous sources to show that certain material elements of the house were viewed as spirit attractors, spirit ladders or spirit pathways. Various ‘exotic’ features of Indonesian vernacular architecture thus become understandable as relics from times when architecture was still responding to indigenous religions practised in the archipelago.
Book
Open Access
Trading enterprise figures prominently in Indonesian history. Commercial activities penetrated deep into the economy, politics and society of the former Netherlands Indies. Dutch Commerce and Chinese Merchants in Java describes this, largely forgotten, world of commerce. During the period 1800-1942 this vanished world was, however, bustling. Merchants of very different background and stature cooperated and competed with each other. Trading relations were forged and dissolved, contracts were honoured and broken, fortunes were made and lost.
Using unpublished archival sources in Indonesia and the Netherlands Alexander Claver recounts the diverse trading mechanisms, complex credit relations and countless participants involved. How Dutch, Chinese, and Arab traders related to each other in such demanding business environment is the fascinating story of this book.
Using unpublished archival sources in Indonesia and the Netherlands Alexander Claver recounts the diverse trading mechanisms, complex credit relations and countless participants involved. How Dutch, Chinese, and Arab traders related to each other in such demanding business environment is the fascinating story of this book.
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How was the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), which at its inception in 1851 had fewer than a hundred members and only one part-time employee, able to flourish to become, around the turn of the twenty-first century, a modern, professional institute with 1,800 members with a staff of more than fifty employees.
The Institute was founded with support from the highest political and official circles to gather scholarly information about the Dutch colonies in the East and West, not least to undergird colonial policy. KITLV played an important role in this, backed by the Ministry of Colonies and the business world. The Japanese occupation and decolonization led to a difficult process of adjustment for KITLV, which was concluded successfully. With its unique collections, publications, research and its office in Indonesia and involvement in the Caribbean, the Institute has an international reputation.
This book is more than a report on 160 years of KITLV history. It is also a history of scholarly practice about the (former) colonies. These activities, and especially the publications of the institute and its prominent members, are measured against key terms such as orientalism and imperialism, universalism and relativism.
The Institute was founded with support from the highest political and official circles to gather scholarly information about the Dutch colonies in the East and West, not least to undergird colonial policy. KITLV played an important role in this, backed by the Ministry of Colonies and the business world. The Japanese occupation and decolonization led to a difficult process of adjustment for KITLV, which was concluded successfully. With its unique collections, publications, research and its office in Indonesia and involvement in the Caribbean, the Institute has an international reputation.
This book is more than a report on 160 years of KITLV history. It is also a history of scholarly practice about the (former) colonies. These activities, and especially the publications of the institute and its prominent members, are measured against key terms such as orientalism and imperialism, universalism and relativism.
Book
Open Access
Following male figures wearing a cap (cap-figures) in temple reliefs of the Javanese Majapahit period (ca. 1300-1500) leads to astonishing results on their meaning and function. The cap-figures, representing commoners, servants, warriors, noblemen, and most significantly Prince Panji, the hero from the East Javanese Panji stories, are unique to depictions of non-Indic narratives. The cap-figure constitutes a prominent example of Majapahit’s creativity in new concepts of art, literature and religion, independent from the Indian influence. More than that, the symbolic meaning of the cap-figures leads to an esoteric level: a pilgrim who followed the depictions of the cap-figures and of Panji in the temples would have been guided to the Tantric doctrine within Hindu-Buddhist religion.
This title is available online in its entirety in Open Access.
This title is available online in its entirety in Open Access.
Book
Open Access
The practice of everyday life in Tana Toraja (South Sulawesi, Indonesia) is structured by a series of public events, of which funerals are the most important. Even after Indonesia was hit by an economic crisis in the late 1990s, thousands of extravagant funeral ceremonies, requiring huge expenditures, were still organized each year. To understand the paradoxes and complexities of Torajan livelihoods, Edwin de Jong develops an approach that goes beyond existing economically biased perspectives on livelihoods by including both the cultural and the economic realm, positioned in the socio-political world with a transnational perspective, placed against a historical background, while not losing sight of diversity and individual creativity. It also advances the ethnography of Tana Toraja and the comparative study between numerous similar societies.
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Sugar yesterday was what oil is today: a commodity of immense global importance whose tentacles reached deep into politics, society and economy. Indonesia’s colonial-era sugar industry is largely forgotten today, except by a small number of regional specialists writing for a specialist audience. During the period 1880-1942 covered by this book, however, the then Netherlands Indies was one of the world’s very greatest producer-exporters of the commodity. How it contrived to do so is the story presented in this book.
Author G. Roger Knight, associate professor of history in the University of Adelaide, has researched the history
of Indonesia’s sugar industry for more than twenty-five years, using unpublished archival sources in both the Netherlands and Indonesia. His search has taken him into government records, family histories and – above all – the
extensive surviving papers of the Dutch sugar companies who operated in Indonesia during the late colonial era. The result is a picture of the industry that offers important new insights into its history and its place in the framework of global commodity production over a period extending over three quarters of a century.
Author G. Roger Knight, associate professor of history in the University of Adelaide, has researched the history
of Indonesia’s sugar industry for more than twenty-five years, using unpublished archival sources in both the Netherlands and Indonesia. His search has taken him into government records, family histories and – above all – the
extensive surviving papers of the Dutch sugar companies who operated in Indonesia during the late colonial era. The result is a picture of the industry that offers important new insights into its history and its place in the framework of global commodity production over a period extending over three quarters of a century.
Book
Open Access
Recently Kartsowiryo and the Darul Islam have become heroic symbols of the Islamist struggle. The author looks beyond the popular dichotomy between rebel and martyr and unveils a politician whose legacy has been shaping the role of Islam in Indonesian politics for over fifty years. She thereby offers an alternative view of Soekarno as the leader of the republic and his antagonism with the Islamic state.
In a blend of archival sources, printed material, and oral accounts, the author follows the career and ideology of Kartosuwiryo.The chapters delineate the gradual radicalization of the Islamic party and of Kartosuwiryo's own ideals from the 1920s to the 1950s.
A testament to the relevance of historical research in understanding contemporary politics, Islam and the Making of the Nation guides the reader through the contingencies of the past that have led to the transformation of a nationalist leader into a 'separatist rebel' and a 'martyr', while at the same time shaping the public perception of political Islam and strengthening the position of the Pancasila in contemporary Indonesia.
In a blend of archival sources, printed material, and oral accounts, the author follows the career and ideology of Kartosuwiryo.The chapters delineate the gradual radicalization of the Islamic party and of Kartosuwiryo's own ideals from the 1920s to the 1950s.
A testament to the relevance of historical research in understanding contemporary politics, Islam and the Making of the Nation guides the reader through the contingencies of the past that have led to the transformation of a nationalist leader into a 'separatist rebel' and a 'martyr', while at the same time shaping the public perception of political Islam and strengthening the position of the Pancasila in contemporary Indonesia.
Book
Open Access
The decolonization of countries in Asia and Africa is one of the momentous events in the twentieth century. But did the shift to independence indeed affect the lives of the people in such a dramatic way as the political events suggest? The authors in this volume look beyond the political interpretations of decolonization and address the issue of social and economic reorientations which were necessitated or caused by the end of colonial rule. The book covers three major issues: public security; the changes in the urban environment, and the reorientation of the economies. Most articles search for comparisons transcending the colonial and national borders and adopt a time frame extending from the late colonial period to the early decades of independence in Asia and Africa (1930s-1970s).
The volume is part of the research programme ‘Indonesia across Orders’ of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation.
Contributors to the volume are: Greg Bankoff, Raymond Betts, Ann Booth, Cathérine Coquéry-Vidrovitch, Freek Colombijn, Frederick Cooper, Bill Freund, Karl Hack, Jim Masselos and Willem Wolters.
The volume is part of the research programme ‘Indonesia across Orders’ of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation.
Contributors to the volume are: Greg Bankoff, Raymond Betts, Ann Booth, Cathérine Coquéry-Vidrovitch, Freek Colombijn, Frederick Cooper, Bill Freund, Karl Hack, Jim Masselos and Willem Wolters.
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Open Access
When the Indonesian New Order regime fell in 1998, regional politics with strong ethnic content emerged across the country. In West Kalimantan the predominant feature was particularly that of the Dayaks. This surge, however, was not unprecedented. After centuries of occupying a subordinate place in the political and social hierarchy under the nominal rule of the Malay sultanates, Dayaks became involved in an enthusiastic political emancipation movement from 1945.
The Dayaks secured the governorship as well as the majority of the regional executive head positions before they were shunned by the New Order regime. This book examines the development of Dayak politics in West Kalimantan from the colonial times until the first decade of the 21th century. It asks how and why Dayak politics has experienced drastic changes since 1945. It will look at the effect of regime change, the role of the individual leaders and organizations, the experience of marginalization, and conflicts on the course of Dayaks politics. It will also examine ethnic relations and recent political development up to 2010 in the province.
The Dayaks secured the governorship as well as the majority of the regional executive head positions before they were shunned by the New Order regime. This book examines the development of Dayak politics in West Kalimantan from the colonial times until the first decade of the 21th century. It asks how and why Dayak politics has experienced drastic changes since 1945. It will look at the effect of regime change, the role of the individual leaders and organizations, the experience of marginalization, and conflicts on the course of Dayaks politics. It will also examine ethnic relations and recent political development up to 2010 in the province.
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Open Access
This volume brings together new scholarship by Indonesian and non-Indonesian scholars on Indonesia’s cultural history from 1950-1965. During the new nation’s first decade and a half, Indonesia’s links with the world and its sense of nationhood were vigorously negotiated on the cultural front.
Indonesia used cultural networks of the time, including those of the Cold War, to announce itself on the world stage. International links, post-colonial aspirations and nationalistic fervour interacted to produce a thriving cultural and intellectual life at home.
Essays discuss the exchange of artists, intellectuals, writing and ideas between Indonesia and various countries; the development of cultural networks; and ways these networks interacted with and influenced cultural expression and discourse in Indonesia.
With contributions by Keith Foulcher, Liesbeth Dolk, Hairus Salim HS, Tony Day, Budiawan, Maya H.T. Liem, Jennifer Lindsay, Els Bogaerts, Melani Budianta, Choirotun Chisaan, I Nyoman Darma Putra, Barbara Hatley, Marije Plomp, Irawati Durban Ardjo, Rhoma Dwi Aria Yuliantri and Michael Bodden.
Indonesia used cultural networks of the time, including those of the Cold War, to announce itself on the world stage. International links, post-colonial aspirations and nationalistic fervour interacted to produce a thriving cultural and intellectual life at home.
Essays discuss the exchange of artists, intellectuals, writing and ideas between Indonesia and various countries; the development of cultural networks; and ways these networks interacted with and influenced cultural expression and discourse in Indonesia.
With contributions by Keith Foulcher, Liesbeth Dolk, Hairus Salim HS, Tony Day, Budiawan, Maya H.T. Liem, Jennifer Lindsay, Els Bogaerts, Melani Budianta, Choirotun Chisaan, I Nyoman Darma Putra, Barbara Hatley, Marije Plomp, Irawati Durban Ardjo, Rhoma Dwi Aria Yuliantri and Michael Bodden.
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Open Access
European traders and soldiers established a foothold on Timor in the course of the seventeenth century, motivated by the quest for the commercially vital sandalwood and the intense competition between the Dutch and the Portuguese. Lords of the Land, Lords of the Sea focuses on two centuries of contacts between the indigenous polities on Timor and the early colonials, and covers the period 1600-1800. In contrast with most previous studies, the book treats Timor as a historical region in its own right, using a wide array of Dutch, Portuguese and other original sources, which are compared with the comprehensive corpus of oral tradition recorded on the island. From this rich material, a lively picture emerges of life and death in early Timorese society, the forms of trade, slavery, warfare, alliances, social life, and so forth. The investigation demonstrates that the European groups, although having a role as ordering political forces, were only part of the political landscape of Timor. They relied on alliances where the distinction between ally and vassal was moot, and led to frequent conflicts and uprisings. During a slow and complicated process, the often turbulent political conditions involving Europeans, Eurasians, and Timorese polities, paved the way for the later division of Timor into two spheres of roughly equal size.
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Open Access
How religious practices are reproduced has become a major theoretical issue. This work examines data on Nuaulu ritual performances collected over a 30 year period, comparing different categories of event in terms of frequency and periodicity. It seeks to identify the influencing factors and the consequences for continuity.
Such an approach enables a focus on related issues: variation in performance, how rituals change in relation to material and social conditions, the connections between different ritual types, the way these interact as cycles, and the extent to which fidelity of transmission is underpinned by a common model or repertoire of elements.
This monograph brings to completion a long-term study of the religious behaviour of the Nuaulu, a people of the island of Seram in the Indonesian province of Maluku. Ethnographically, it is important for several reasons: the Nuaulu are one of the few animist societies remaining on Seram; the data emphasize patterns of practices in a part of Indonesia where studies have hitherto been more concerned with meaning and symbolic classification; and because Nuaulu live in an area where recent political tension has been between Christians and Muslims. Nuaulu are, paradoxically, both caught between these two groups, and apart from them.
Such an approach enables a focus on related issues: variation in performance, how rituals change in relation to material and social conditions, the connections between different ritual types, the way these interact as cycles, and the extent to which fidelity of transmission is underpinned by a common model or repertoire of elements.
This monograph brings to completion a long-term study of the religious behaviour of the Nuaulu, a people of the island of Seram in the Indonesian province of Maluku. Ethnographically, it is important for several reasons: the Nuaulu are one of the few animist societies remaining on Seram; the data emphasize patterns of practices in a part of Indonesia where studies have hitherto been more concerned with meaning and symbolic classification; and because Nuaulu live in an area where recent political tension has been between Christians and Muslims. Nuaulu are, paradoxically, both caught between these two groups, and apart from them.
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Open Access
This highly informative book explores the world of Post-Soeharto Indonesian audio-visual media in the exiting era of Reform. From a multidisciplinary approach it considers a wide variety of issues such as mainstream and alternative film practices, ceremonial and independent film festivals, film piracy, history and horror, documentary, television soaps, and Islamic films, as well as censorship from the state and street. Through the perspective of discourses on, and practices of film production, distribution, and exhibition, this book gives a detailed insight into current issues of Indonesia’s social and political situation, where Islam, secular realities, and ghosts on and off screen, mingle or clash.
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Open Access
A Literary mirror is the first English-language work to comprehensively analyse Indonesian-language literature from Bali from a literary and cultural viewpoint. It covers the period from 1920 to 2000. This is an extremely rich field for research into the ways Balinese view their culture and how they respond to external cultural forces. This work complements the large number of existing studies of Bali and its history, anthropology, traditional literature, and the performing arts.
A Literary Mirror is an invaluable resource for those researching twentieth-century Balinese authors who wrote in Indonesian. Until now, such writers have received very little attention in the existing literature. An appendix gives short biographical details of many significant writers and lists their work.
A Literary Mirror is an invaluable resource for those researching twentieth-century Balinese authors who wrote in Indonesian. Until now, such writers have received very little attention in the existing literature. An appendix gives short biographical details of many significant writers and lists their work.
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Aceh has become best known in our times for its twin disasters—the worst earthquake and tsunami of modern times in December 2004, and a long-running separatist conflict that rent Indonesia for most of its independent history. Although this book emerged from the process of recovery from those traumas, it turns the spotlight on a more positive and neglected claim Aceh has on our attention, as the Southeast Asian maritime state that most successfully and creatively maintained its independent place in the world until 1874. Like Burma, Siam and Vietnam, all better protected by geography, Aceh has its own story to tell of a unique culture struggling for survival through the European colonial era.
Unfortunately the sources for this story are scattered, since Aceh’s own records have not well survived the ravages of climate, civil war and eventual foreign conquest. To recover its cosmopolitan history an unparalleled range of sources and skills had to be brought together. Aceh’s central role in the creation of Malay literature out of Arabic, Persian, Indian and Indonesian elements had to be explored with reference to texts surviving in a dozen world libraries (Teuku Iskandar, Amirul Hadi). The rich archeological record, neglected through the long years of conflict, had again to be brought into play (Daniel Perret), and the extensive relations of the Aceh sultanate with the Ottoman Empire (Ismail Göksoy and Ismail Kadı, Andrew Peacock & Annabel Gallop), Portugal (Jorge Alves), England (Annabel Gallop), and the Netherlands (Sher Banu and Jean Taylor) had to be explored, chiefly in European archives by experts in these respective fields. The result of this combined work in this volume is the most comprehensive picture so far of sources for the history of Aceh.
Unfortunately the sources for this story are scattered, since Aceh’s own records have not well survived the ravages of climate, civil war and eventual foreign conquest. To recover its cosmopolitan history an unparalleled range of sources and skills had to be brought together. Aceh’s central role in the creation of Malay literature out of Arabic, Persian, Indian and Indonesian elements had to be explored with reference to texts surviving in a dozen world libraries (Teuku Iskandar, Amirul Hadi). The rich archeological record, neglected through the long years of conflict, had again to be brought into play (Daniel Perret), and the extensive relations of the Aceh sultanate with the Ottoman Empire (Ismail Göksoy and Ismail Kadı, Andrew Peacock & Annabel Gallop), Portugal (Jorge Alves), England (Annabel Gallop), and the Netherlands (Sher Banu and Jean Taylor) had to be explored, chiefly in European archives by experts in these respective fields. The result of this combined work in this volume is the most comprehensive picture so far of sources for the history of Aceh.
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Open Access
Healers on the Colonial Market is one of the few studies on the Dutch East Indies from a postcolonial perspective. It provides an enthralling addition to research on both the history of the Dutch East Indies and the history of colonial medicine. This book will be of interest to historians, historians of science and medicine, and anthropologists.
How successful were the two medical training programmes established in Jakarta by the colonial government in 1851? One was a medical school for Javanese boys, and the other a school for midwives for Javanese girls, and the graduates were supposed to replace native healers, the dukun. However, the indigenous population was not prepared to use the services of these doctors and midwives. Native doctors did in fact prove useful as vaccinators and assistant doctors, but the school for midwives was closed in 1875. Even though there were many horror stories of mistakes made during dukun-assisted deliveries, the school was not reopened, and instead a handful of girls received practical training from European physicians. Under the Ethical Policy there was more attention for the welfare of the indigenous population and the need for doctors increased. More native boys received medical training and went to work as general practitioners. Nevertheless, not everybody accepted these native doctors as the colleagues of European physicians.
How successful were the two medical training programmes established in Jakarta by the colonial government in 1851? One was a medical school for Javanese boys, and the other a school for midwives for Javanese girls, and the graduates were supposed to replace native healers, the dukun. However, the indigenous population was not prepared to use the services of these doctors and midwives. Native doctors did in fact prove useful as vaccinators and assistant doctors, but the school for midwives was closed in 1875. Even though there were many horror stories of mistakes made during dukun-assisted deliveries, the school was not reopened, and instead a handful of girls received practical training from European physicians. Under the Ethical Policy there was more attention for the welfare of the indigenous population and the need for doctors increased. More native boys received medical training and went to work as general practitioners. Nevertheless, not everybody accepted these native doctors as the colleagues of European physicians.
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Images of the Tropics critically examines Dutch colonial culture in the Netherlands Indies through the prism of landscape art. Susie Protschky contends that visual representations of nature and landscape were core elements of how Europeans understood the tropics, justified their territorial claims in the region, and understood their place both in imperial Europe and in colonized Asia during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her book thus makes a significant contribution to studies of empire, art and environment, as well as to histories of Indonesia and Europe.
Surveying a rich visual culture developed over a period of some 350 years of Dutch colonial engagement with Indonesia Susie Protschky demonstrates how views of the archipelago’s environment were far from simple topographical souvenirs. Rather, this book reveals how images of the tropics visually articulated colonial attempts to legitimize and historicize what were in fact continually changing and contested claims to Dutch territorial sovereignty in the Indies. Further, colonial images of nature were routinely inflected with diverse cultural preoccupations, among them the constitution of gender, class and racial boundaries in Indies society; the tenor of sexual mores in the tropics; and the political role of religion in the archipelago. Landscape art thus indexed colonial views on a range of pressing social and political concerns.
Surveying a rich visual culture developed over a period of some 350 years of Dutch colonial engagement with Indonesia Susie Protschky demonstrates how views of the archipelago’s environment were far from simple topographical souvenirs. Rather, this book reveals how images of the tropics visually articulated colonial attempts to legitimize and historicize what were in fact continually changing and contested claims to Dutch territorial sovereignty in the Indies. Further, colonial images of nature were routinely inflected with diverse cultural preoccupations, among them the constitution of gender, class and racial boundaries in Indies society; the tenor of sexual mores in the tropics; and the political role of religion in the archipelago. Landscape art thus indexed colonial views on a range of pressing social and political concerns.
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Open Access
Recent years have shown an increase in interest in the study of cleanliness from a historical and sociological perspective. Many of such studies on bathing and washing, on keeping the body and the streets clean, and on filth and the combat of dirt, focus on Europe.
In Cleanliness and Culture attention shifts to the tropics, to Indonesia, in colonial times as well as in the present. Subjects range from the use of soap and the washing of clothes as a pretext to claim superiority of race and class to how references to being clean played a role in a campaign against European homosexuals in the Netherlands Indies at the end of the 1930s. Other topics are eerie skin diseases and the sanitary measures to eliminate them, and how misconceptions about lack of hygiene as the cause of illness hampered the finding of a cure. Attention is also drawn to differences in attitude towards performing personal body functions outdoors and retreating to the privacy of the bathroom, to traditional bathing ritual and to the modern tropical Spa culture as a manifestation of a New Asian lifestyle.
With contributions by Bart Barendregt, Marieke Bloembergen, Kees van Dijk, Mary Somers Heidhues, David Henley, George Quinn, and Jean Gelman Taylor.
In Cleanliness and Culture attention shifts to the tropics, to Indonesia, in colonial times as well as in the present. Subjects range from the use of soap and the washing of clothes as a pretext to claim superiority of race and class to how references to being clean played a role in a campaign against European homosexuals in the Netherlands Indies at the end of the 1930s. Other topics are eerie skin diseases and the sanitary measures to eliminate them, and how misconceptions about lack of hygiene as the cause of illness hampered the finding of a cure. Attention is also drawn to differences in attitude towards performing personal body functions outdoors and retreating to the privacy of the bathroom, to traditional bathing ritual and to the modern tropical Spa culture as a manifestation of a New Asian lifestyle.
With contributions by Bart Barendregt, Marieke Bloembergen, Kees van Dijk, Mary Somers Heidhues, David Henley, George Quinn, and Jean Gelman Taylor.
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In the 1980s, sensational stories about an 'emerging new middle class' popped up simultaneously in the streets of Jakarta and at conferences of hopeful Indonesia watchers. Businesspeople and professionals had profited from President Suharto's rapid economic success, and were allegedly eager to not only to show off their new wealth, but to boost democratization processes as well. They and their families were the vanguard of a category of Jakartans who regarded themselves boldly as the ‘normal, modern, educated middle class’ of Indonesia—against the background of a profound and state-induced depoliticization. Apart from fostering a new consumer culture, the new middle class was at the root of the expansion of the conurbation Jabotabek, housing hundreds of thousands of newly arrived middle-class members. Meanwhile, a new and huge gap between rich and poor became conspicuously visible in Jakarta. During the 1990s, the increasing political instability of the New Order government and the Asian monetary crisis led to the dramatic resignation of President Suharto in May 1998.
In this study, based on extensive anthropological fieldwork throughout the 1990s, this new middle class is examined as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Despite a global orientation and a taste for democracy, its members seemed to have internalized the New Order along with some lingering late-colonial notions as their guidelines for life. How ‘new’ was the new middle class anyway? Lifestyle and material culture practices in the suburb of Bintaro Raya—in public space as well as in the intimacy of living rooms—illustrate the everyday ambiguity of people who appear to be trapped in their imagined middle-classness: they were ‘lost in mall’.
In this study, based on extensive anthropological fieldwork throughout the 1990s, this new middle class is examined as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Despite a global orientation and a taste for democracy, its members seemed to have internalized the New Order along with some lingering late-colonial notions as their guidelines for life. How ‘new’ was the new middle class anyway? Lifestyle and material culture practices in the suburb of Bintaro Raya—in public space as well as in the intimacy of living rooms—illustrate the everyday ambiguity of people who appear to be trapped in their imagined middle-classness: they were ‘lost in mall’.
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Freek Colombijn examines the social changes in Indonesian cities during the process of decolonization. That process had major repercussions for urban society. These social changes are studied from the angle of urban space in general, and the provision of housing in particular. This provides fresh insight into how people experienced decolonization.
The author challenges the idea that a shift from ethnic to class differences was the overriding social change during decolonization. He argues instead that class differences had already formed the predominant dividing lines in colonial urban society. Colombijn also focuses on the shifting balance of power between the main agents in the urban arena.
Through the use of hitherto unused historical sources, the book presents a wealth of new data about the Indonesian city and the decolonization process.
Published in cooperation with the Netherlands Institute of War Documentation (NIOD).
Originally published with imprint KITLV (ISBN 9789067182911).
The author challenges the idea that a shift from ethnic to class differences was the overriding social change during decolonization. He argues instead that class differences had already formed the predominant dividing lines in colonial urban society. Colombijn also focuses on the shifting balance of power between the main agents in the urban arena.
Through the use of hitherto unused historical sources, the book presents a wealth of new data about the Indonesian city and the decolonization process.
Published in cooperation with the Netherlands Institute of War Documentation (NIOD).
Originally published with imprint KITLV (ISBN 9789067182911).
Book
Open Access
The Kakawin Ramayana, arguably the oldest Old Javanese epic text in Indic metres (circa 9th century AD), holds a unique position in the literary heritage of Indonesia. The poem has retained a remarkable vitality through the centuries in the Archipelago, inspiring many forms of artistic expression not only in the domain of literature but also in the visual and performing arts, from the reliefs of the majestic Central Javanese temples to modern puppet-show performances.
Displaying a virtuoso array of metrical patterns, the Kakawin Ramayana is among the very few Old Javanese texts for which a specific Sanskrit prototype has been identified, namely the difficult poem Bhattikavya (circa 7th century AD), itself a version of the great Ramayana epic ascribed to Valmiki (circa 6th–1st century BC). The Old Javanese poem is an original and skillful work of re-elaboration that documents a fascinating interaction between cultural elements of the Sanskritic tradition with those indigenous to the Javanese setting.
The studies included in this volume, written by experts in a wide range of disciplines, focus on disparate aspects of the Kakawin Ramayana and the constellation of cultural phenomena revolving around it, providing the reader with a key to the understanding of the rich Old Javanese textual heritage and the transcultural intellectual dynamics that contributed to shaping the cultural heritage of Indonesia up to the present.
With contributions from Andrea Acri, Helen Creese, Arlo Griffiths, Thomas Hunter, Roy Jordaan, Lydia Kieven, Cecelia Levin, Wesley Michel, Stuart Robson and Adrian Vickers, this book is the result of a workshop held at the KITLV branch in Jakarta on May 26th–28th 2009 and supported by the Australia-Netherlands Research Collaboration, the École Française d’Extrême-Orient, and the Stichting J. Gonda Fonds.
Displaying a virtuoso array of metrical patterns, the Kakawin Ramayana is among the very few Old Javanese texts for which a specific Sanskrit prototype has been identified, namely the difficult poem Bhattikavya (circa 7th century AD), itself a version of the great Ramayana epic ascribed to Valmiki (circa 6th–1st century BC). The Old Javanese poem is an original and skillful work of re-elaboration that documents a fascinating interaction between cultural elements of the Sanskritic tradition with those indigenous to the Javanese setting.
The studies included in this volume, written by experts in a wide range of disciplines, focus on disparate aspects of the Kakawin Ramayana and the constellation of cultural phenomena revolving around it, providing the reader with a key to the understanding of the rich Old Javanese textual heritage and the transcultural intellectual dynamics that contributed to shaping the cultural heritage of Indonesia up to the present.
With contributions from Andrea Acri, Helen Creese, Arlo Griffiths, Thomas Hunter, Roy Jordaan, Lydia Kieven, Cecelia Levin, Wesley Michel, Stuart Robson and Adrian Vickers, this book is the result of a workshop held at the KITLV branch in Jakarta on May 26th–28th 2009 and supported by the Australia-Netherlands Research Collaboration, the École Française d’Extrême-Orient, and the Stichting J. Gonda Fonds.
Book
Open Access
Deze nieuwe beschrijving van het wordingsproces van de Indonesische staat gaat ervan uit, dat die staat zijn ontstaan niet alleen dankt aan de nationale vrijheidsbeweging maar ook aan de Nederlandse heerschappij waar die beweging zich tegen keerde. Daarom gaat het boek uitdrukkelijk in op voornaamste ontwikkelingen van het door Nederland in de kolonie Nederlands-Indië gevoerde beleid. Hier sluiten hoofdstukken op aan over de Indonesische nationale beweging en over de Japanse bezetting van de kolonie in 1942-1945.
Die bezetting maakte de weg vrij voor de proclamatie van de Indonesische onafhankelijkheid en de stichting van de Republiek Indonesië in augustus 1945. Het daarop ontbrande conflict tussen deze Republiek en Nederland kwam in 1949 tot een onvolledige oplossing, waarna het geschil over West-Irian nog tot een dertien jaar durende nasleep leidde. Meer dan de helft van het boek is gewijd aan een kroniek van dit conflict en zijn nasleep. Daarbij gaat ook ruime aandacht uit naar denkbeelden en sentimenten die het beleid hebben beïnvloed.
Die bezetting maakte de weg vrij voor de proclamatie van de Indonesische onafhankelijkheid en de stichting van de Republiek Indonesië in augustus 1945. Het daarop ontbrande conflict tussen deze Republiek en Nederland kwam in 1949 tot een onvolledige oplossing, waarna het geschil over West-Irian nog tot een dertien jaar durende nasleep leidde. Meer dan de helft van het boek is gewijd aan een kroniek van dit conflict en zijn nasleep. Daarbij gaat ook ruime aandacht uit naar denkbeelden en sentimenten die het beleid hebben beïnvloed.
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Note: This title was out of print. Re-issued in its original form in 2010.
The first comprehensive history of Balinese politics from the middle of the 17th century till the end of Dutch colonial rule in 1942. Based on extensive research in colonial archives in the Netherlands and Indonesia, a variety of Balinese historical narratives, interviews with former colonial officials as well as many Balinese, and fieldwork data concerning temples, rituals, and oral histories.
Schulte Nordholt traces Balinese history by means of a collective biography of the Mengwi dynasty, describing the rise to power, the formation and expansion of a negara, the subsequent crises, and its fall in 1891. Between 1906 and 1942 Bali became part of the Dutch colonial state and experienced bureaucratic rule and processes that resulted in a ‘traditionalization’ of Balinese kingship and culture. The story of the Mengwi dynasty under colonial rule ended in a conflict between two factions. This conflict had an unexpected but devastating outcome.
The first comprehensive history of Balinese politics from the middle of the 17th century till the end of Dutch colonial rule in 1942. Based on extensive research in colonial archives in the Netherlands and Indonesia, a variety of Balinese historical narratives, interviews with former colonial officials as well as many Balinese, and fieldwork data concerning temples, rituals, and oral histories.
Schulte Nordholt traces Balinese history by means of a collective biography of the Mengwi dynasty, describing the rise to power, the formation and expansion of a negara, the subsequent crises, and its fall in 1891. Between 1906 and 1942 Bali became part of the Dutch colonial state and experienced bureaucratic rule and processes that resulted in a ‘traditionalization’ of Balinese kingship and culture. The story of the Mengwi dynasty under colonial rule ended in a conflict between two factions. This conflict had an unexpected but devastating outcome.
Book
The Stranger-Kings of Sikka is the first monographic study of an origin myth and history of an indigenous eastern Indonesian state and the first contemporary ethnography of the Ata Sikka of Flores. The book will be of interest to anthropologists, ethnologists of Austronesia, historians and political scientists whose interests include Southeast Asia.
During the 1920s, in the regency of Sikka on the island of Flores, D.D. Pareira Kondi and A. Boer Pareira, two notable men among the first literate Sikkanese, began writing about the history and culture of their people. Among their many surviving manuscripts are two long works on the origin of the rajas who ruled Sikka until the end of the rajadom in the 1950s. The author of this book uncovered the manuscripts in 1994 and found among them versions of the myth of origin of the Sikkanese rajas, an epic tale of immigrant-kings that was lost to living memory and as oral tradition by the 1970s. Drawing on Boer’s and Kondi's texts and his own field research in the regency of Sikka, Lewis presents an abridged English translation of the origin myth and constructs a history of the Sikkanese rajas and the organization of the society they ruled.
During the 1920s, in the regency of Sikka on the island of Flores, D.D. Pareira Kondi and A. Boer Pareira, two notable men among the first literate Sikkanese, began writing about the history and culture of their people. Among their many surviving manuscripts are two long works on the origin of the rajas who ruled Sikka until the end of the rajadom in the 1950s. The author of this book uncovered the manuscripts in 1994 and found among them versions of the myth of origin of the Sikkanese rajas, an epic tale of immigrant-kings that was lost to living memory and as oral tradition by the 1970s. Drawing on Boer’s and Kondi's texts and his own field research in the regency of Sikka, Lewis presents an abridged English translation of the origin myth and constructs a history of the Sikkanese rajas and the organization of the society they ruled.
Book
Open Access
This study, based on a lifelong involvement with New Guinea, compares the culture of the Kamoro (18,000 people) with that of their eastern neighbours, the Asmat (40,000), both living on the south coast of West Papua, Indonesia. The comparison, showing substantial differences as well as striking similarities, contributes to a deeper understanding of both cultures.
Part I looks at Kamoro society and culture through the window of its ritual cycle, framed by gender. Part II widens the view, offering in a comparative fashion a more detailed analysis of the socio-political and cosmo-mythological setting of the Kamoro and the Asmat rituals. These are closely linked with their social formations: matrilineally oriented for the Kamoro, patrilineally for the Asmat. Next is a systematic comparison of the rituals. Kamoro culture revolves around cosmological connections, ritual and play, whereas the Asmat central focus is on warfare and headhunting. Because of this difference in cultural orientation, similar, even identical, ritual acts and myths differ in meaning. The comparison includes a cross-cultural, structural analysis of relevant myths.
This publication is of interest to scholars and students in Oceanic studies and those drawn to the comparative study of cultures.
Part I looks at Kamoro society and culture through the window of its ritual cycle, framed by gender. Part II widens the view, offering in a comparative fashion a more detailed analysis of the socio-political and cosmo-mythological setting of the Kamoro and the Asmat rituals. These are closely linked with their social formations: matrilineally oriented for the Kamoro, patrilineally for the Asmat. Next is a systematic comparison of the rituals. Kamoro culture revolves around cosmological connections, ritual and play, whereas the Asmat central focus is on warfare and headhunting. Because of this difference in cultural orientation, similar, even identical, ritual acts and myths differ in meaning. The comparison includes a cross-cultural, structural analysis of relevant myths.
This publication is of interest to scholars and students in Oceanic studies and those drawn to the comparative study of cultures.
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This book focuses on the aftermath of World War II in Asia as described in a sobering and insightful history of two types of redress: compensation for material war damage and restitution of looted property. Japanese Army units and citizens stole goods while shelling and bombardment by all sides destroyed factories, offices and residential neighbourhoods. How were these cases of material damage and loss to be rectified, and who was to rectify them? What financial means and legal precedents were there to fall back on at a time of decolonization, independence struggle, and shifting alliances on the brink of the Cold War?
The politics of redress makes an important contribution to the study of law and society in Southeast Asia. It lays bare the complex web of interconnections between politics, law and economy from a comparative historical perspective.
The translation of this book was funded by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research).
The politics of redress makes an important contribution to the study of law and society in Southeast Asia. It lays bare the complex web of interconnections between politics, law and economy from a comparative historical perspective.
The translation of this book was funded by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research).
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This collection of essays provides insights into the complex process of economic decolonization in Indonesia from a variety of perspectives. The emancipation from Dutch colonialism in the economic sphere is linked to the unique features of the new nation-state emerging in newly independent Indonesia. This included a key role in business for the military. A key part was also played by indigenous Indonesian business firms that were shaped by the Japanese occupation and the Indonesian Revolution.
The analysis embraces two types of comparisons. Different experiences of economic decolonization across regions are illustrated by events unfolding in the agricultural estate areas of Deli in North Sumatra and Jember in East Java. Here the focus is on confrontations between private Dutch capital and Indonesian labour unions. In addition, the overall experience of Indonesia is offset against similar processes at work in other former European colonies in Asia, in particular neighbouring Malaysia. The international comparison shows how dramatic and difficult economic decolonization was and also how profound its consequences were.
With contributions from Tri Chandra Apriyanto, Anne Booth, Jasper van de Kerkhof, J. Thomas Lindblad (editor), Daan Marks, Peter Post (editor), Bambang Purwanto and Thee Kian Wie.
The analysis embraces two types of comparisons. Different experiences of economic decolonization across regions are illustrated by events unfolding in the agricultural estate areas of Deli in North Sumatra and Jember in East Java. Here the focus is on confrontations between private Dutch capital and Indonesian labour unions. In addition, the overall experience of Indonesia is offset against similar processes at work in other former European colonies in Asia, in particular neighbouring Malaysia. The international comparison shows how dramatic and difficult economic decolonization was and also how profound its consequences were.
With contributions from Tri Chandra Apriyanto, Anne Booth, Jasper van de Kerkhof, J. Thomas Lindblad (editor), Daan Marks, Peter Post (editor), Bambang Purwanto and Thee Kian Wie.
Book
Open Access
Het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, opgericht in 1778, is de voorloper van het Nationaal Museum en de Nationale Bibliotheek van de Republik Indonesia en geldt als de belangrijkste cultureel-wetenschappelijke organisatie van Nederlands-Indië in de VOC-tijd en de koloniale periode. In deze studie naar de vroege geschiedenis van deze eerbiedwaardige instelling komen aan de orde: de oprichting, het programma en het werkterrein van het genootschap, het ledenbestand en de leiding, groei, verval en wederopstanding, maar vooral de relatie tot de overheid van deze formeel private onderneming, die soms eerder een overheidsinstelling leek te worden.
Het archief van het Genootschap, dat bewaard wordt in het Nationaal Archief van de Republik Indonesia, is hiertoe de belangrijkste bron geweest. Het is sinds 1878 nauwelijks beschikbaar geweest voor onderzoekers buiten de kring van het genootschap. Voor historici, linguïsten, antropologen, archeologen en anderen is het genootschapsarchief en de geschiedenis van het genootschap van groot belang.
Het archief van het Genootschap, dat bewaard wordt in het Nationaal Archief van de Republik Indonesia, is hiertoe de belangrijkste bron geweest. Het is sinds 1878 nauwelijks beschikbaar geweest voor onderzoekers buiten de kring van het genootschap. Voor historici, linguïsten, antropologen, archeologen en anderen is het genootschapsarchief en de geschiedenis van het genootschap van groot belang.
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Open Access
From Monologue to Dialogue: Radio and Reform in Indonesia analyses how radio journalism since the late 1990s has been shaped by and contributed to Reformasi, or the ambition of democratizing Indonesian politics, economy and society. The book examines ideas and practices such as independent journalism, peace journalism, meta-journalism, virtual interactivity, talk-back radio and community radio, which have all been designed to renew audience interest in media and societal affairs. It pays special attention to radio programmes that enable hosts, experts, listeners and other participants to discuss and negotiate the very rules and boundaries of Indonesia’s newly acquired media freedom. The author argues that these contemporary programmes provide dialogic alternatives to the official New Order discourse dominated by monologism.
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Sanctity is a concept recognized by Muslims throughout the Islamic world, and often motivates observances with highly localized characteristics. Julian Millie spent a year attending a supplication ritual in which Muslims of West Java directed their prayers to Allah through ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jaelani (d. 1166). This man, whose tomb even today is a popular pilgrimage site in Baghdad, is widely considered the most powerful intercessor of all the saints of Islam.
The supplication takes the form of reading or singing the narrative proofs of ‘Abd al-Qadir’s saintliness in a ritual context. The ritual has deep roots in the Sundanese culture of West Java. The book captures the variety of understandings that participants bring to the ritual when it is held in various contexts, including Java’s largest Sufi order, religious schools and private homes.
This first, book-length study of intercession through ritual reading in Indonesia will be of interest to scholars of Indonesian religions, Sufism and the anthropology of Islam. It expands our knowledge of Sufism and sanctity, and seriously considers the liturgical forms of village Islam, paying special attention to the use of Arabic supplications in localized ritual practice.
The supplication takes the form of reading or singing the narrative proofs of ‘Abd al-Qadir’s saintliness in a ritual context. The ritual has deep roots in the Sundanese culture of West Java. The book captures the variety of understandings that participants bring to the ritual when it is held in various contexts, including Java’s largest Sufi order, religious schools and private homes.
This first, book-length study of intercession through ritual reading in Indonesia will be of interest to scholars of Indonesian religions, Sufism and the anthropology of Islam. It expands our knowledge of Sufism and sanctity, and seriously considers the liturgical forms of village Islam, paying special attention to the use of Arabic supplications in localized ritual practice.
Book
Open Access
In the last two decades, Indonesia has seen a dramatic proliferation of environmental disputes in a variety of sectors, triggered by intensified deforestation and large scale mining operations in the resource rich outer islands, together with rapid industrialisation in the densely populated inner island of Java. Whilst the emergence of environmental disputes has sometimes attracted political repression, attempts have also been made in recent times to explore more functional approaches to their resolution. The Environmental Management Act of 1997 created a legal framework for the resolution of environmental disputes through both litigation and mediation.
This book is the first attempt to analyse the implementation of this framework in detail and to assess the effectiveness of litigation and mediation in resolving environmental disputes in Indonesia. It includes a detailed overview of the environmental legal framework and its interpretation by Indonesian courts in landmark court cases. The book features a number of detailed case studies of both environmental litigation and mediation and considers the legal and non-legal factors that have influenced the success of these approaches to resolving environmental disputes.
This book is the first attempt to analyse the implementation of this framework in detail and to assess the effectiveness of litigation and mediation in resolving environmental disputes in Indonesia. It includes a detailed overview of the environmental legal framework and its interpretation by Indonesian courts in landmark court cases. The book features a number of detailed case studies of both environmental litigation and mediation and considers the legal and non-legal factors that have influenced the success of these approaches to resolving environmental disputes.
Book
Open Access
The period 1200-1600 CE saw a radical transformation from simple chiefdoms to kingdoms (in archaeological terminology, complex chiefdoms) across lowland South Sulawesi, a region that lay outside the ‘classical’ Indicized parts of Southeast Asia. The rise of these kingdoms was stimulated and economically supported by trade in prestige goods with other parts of island Southeast Asia, yet the development of these kingdoms was determined by indigenous, rather than imported, political and cultural precepts. Starting in the thirteenth century, the region experienced a transition from swidden cultivation to wet-rice agriculture; rice was the major product that the lowland kingdoms of South Sulawesi exchanged with archipelagic traders.
Stephen Druce demonstrates this progression to political complexity by combining a range of sources and methods, including oral, textual, archaeological, linguistic and geographical information and analysis as he explores the rise and development of five South Sulawesi kingdoms, known collectively as Ajattappareng (the Lands West of the Lakes).
The author also presents an inquiry into oral traditions of a historical nature in South Sulawesi. He examines their functions, their processes of transmission and transformation, their uses in writing history and their relationship to written texts. He shows that any distinction between oral and written traditions of a historical nature is largely irrelevant, and that the South Sulawesi chronicles, which can be found only for a small number of kingdoms, are not characteristic (as historians have argued) but exceptional in the corpus of indigenous South Sulawesi historical sources.
The book will be of primary interest to scholars of pre-European-contact Southeast Asia, including historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists and geographers, and scholars with a broader interest in oral tradition and the relationship between the oral and written registers.
Stephen Druce demonstrates this progression to political complexity by combining a range of sources and methods, including oral, textual, archaeological, linguistic and geographical information and analysis as he explores the rise and development of five South Sulawesi kingdoms, known collectively as Ajattappareng (the Lands West of the Lakes).
The author also presents an inquiry into oral traditions of a historical nature in South Sulawesi. He examines their functions, their processes of transmission and transformation, their uses in writing history and their relationship to written texts. He shows that any distinction between oral and written traditions of a historical nature is largely irrelevant, and that the South Sulawesi chronicles, which can be found only for a small number of kingdoms, are not characteristic (as historians have argued) but exceptional in the corpus of indigenous South Sulawesi historical sources.
The book will be of primary interest to scholars of pre-European-contact Southeast Asia, including historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists and geographers, and scholars with a broader interest in oral tradition and the relationship between the oral and written registers.
Book
Open Access
Fieldwork extending over a thirty-year period provided materials for this book. Paths and Rivers offers an unusually deep and broad picture of the Sa’dan Toraja as a society in dynamic transition over the course of the past century. The Toraja inhabit the mountainous highlands of South Sulawesi, Indonesia, and are well known for their dramatic architecture, their unusual cliff burials, and their flamboyant ceremonial life, which places extraordinary economic demands on individuals and families. The analysis is informed, firstly, by a comparative perspective which sets Toraja social structure in the context of the Austronesian world. Secondly, the author delves deeply into Toraja social memory to show how people think about the past. She examines the usefulness of history and myth in the present as a source of identity, a template for action, or a resource by means of which to claim precedence.
The book gives a clear picture of the structure and ethos of the indigenous Toraja religion, the Aluk To Dolo or "Way of the Ancestors", with its complex cycle of rituals. The book concludes with an analysis of the ceremonial economy, which draws upon both domestic subsistence production and the global market economy.
Paths and Rivers draws together a fascinating picture of one society’s journey into modernity.
The book gives a clear picture of the structure and ethos of the indigenous Toraja religion, the Aluk To Dolo or "Way of the Ancestors", with its complex cycle of rituals. The book concludes with an analysis of the ceremonial economy, which draws upon both domestic subsistence production and the global market economy.
Paths and Rivers draws together a fascinating picture of one society’s journey into modernity.
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Open Access
National hero, Javanese mystic, pious Muslim and leader of the "holy war" against the Dutch between 1825 and 1830, the Yogyakarta prince, Dipanagara (1785-1855, otherwise known as Diponegoro), is pre-eminent in the pantheon of modern Indonesian historical figures. Yet despite instant name recognition in Indonesia, there has never been a full biography of the prince’s life and times based on Dutch and Javanese sources. The Power of Prophecy is a major study which sets Dipanagara’s life history against the context of the turbulent events of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century when the full force of European imperialism hit Indonesia like an Asian tsunami destroying forever Java’s "old order" and propelling the twin forces of Islam and Javanese national identity into a fatal confrontation with the Dutch. This confrontation known as the Java War, in which Dipanagara was defeated and exiled, marked the beginning of the modern colonial period in Indonesia which lasted until the Japanese occupation of 1942-1945.
The book presents a detailed analysis of Dipanagara’s pre-war visions and aspirations as a Javanese Ratu Adil ("Just King") based on extensive reading of his autobiography, the Babad Dipanagara as well as a number of other Javanese sources. Dutch and British records, in particularly the Residency Archives of Yogyakarta and Surakarta currently kept in the Indonesian National Archives, provide the backbone of this scholarly work. The book will be read with profit by all those interested in the rise of Western colonial rule in Indonesia, the fate of indigenous cultures in an age of imperialism and the role of Javanese Islam in modern Indonesian history.
The book presents a detailed analysis of Dipanagara’s pre-war visions and aspirations as a Javanese Ratu Adil ("Just King") based on extensive reading of his autobiography, the Babad Dipanagara as well as a number of other Javanese sources. Dutch and British records, in particularly the Residency Archives of Yogyakarta and Surakarta currently kept in the Indonesian National Archives, provide the backbone of this scholarly work. The book will be read with profit by all those interested in the rise of Western colonial rule in Indonesia, the fate of indigenous cultures in an age of imperialism and the role of Javanese Islam in modern Indonesian history.
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Who made Mama Raja ill? This question, buzzing around the village, starts off this anthropological study on healing performances in the context of religious change. The fascinating case is presented of a seriously ill woman of high standing in northwest Ayfat, located in the interior of the Bird’s Head in West Papua. By unravelling the various explanations of the cause of the illness, and the path Mama Raja followed in search of healing, the author documents how, why, and when Papuan people make their choices in their search for healing.
The study offers an ethnographically rich journey through the variety of healing methods in current Ayfat society: indigenous (obtained during female and male initiation rites), biomedical (the missionary hospital), and Christian (created by ritual healers since the coming of the missionaries). Likewise, the causes ascribed to illness range from sorcery, witchcraft, violation of ancestral or biblical rules, to biomedical conditions, a multiplicity of ways of understanding illness and healing that emerged in the context of religious change. Making choices among the variety of healing performances, and the creation of new performances, are shown to be dynamic processes.
At the core are the innovative contributions of local healers, particularly women, who chose to create new performances in the face of religious change. Restoring the Balance looks at indigenous and Christian religious practices, and how people in northwest Ayfat have found a way to integrate the two and bring both sides into balance.
This book will be hightly useful to anthropologists and others interested in Melanesian and eastern Indonesian cultures, healing, spiritual healing, or religious change. It would make an attractive case study for university courses at any level.
The study offers an ethnographically rich journey through the variety of healing methods in current Ayfat society: indigenous (obtained during female and male initiation rites), biomedical (the missionary hospital), and Christian (created by ritual healers since the coming of the missionaries). Likewise, the causes ascribed to illness range from sorcery, witchcraft, violation of ancestral or biblical rules, to biomedical conditions, a multiplicity of ways of understanding illness and healing that emerged in the context of religious change. Making choices among the variety of healing performances, and the creation of new performances, are shown to be dynamic processes.
At the core are the innovative contributions of local healers, particularly women, who chose to create new performances in the face of religious change. Restoring the Balance looks at indigenous and Christian religious practices, and how people in northwest Ayfat have found a way to integrate the two and bring both sides into balance.
This book will be hightly useful to anthropologists and others interested in Melanesian and eastern Indonesian cultures, healing, spiritual healing, or religious change. It would make an attractive case study for university courses at any level.
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This monograph offers the first comprehensive history of the decolonization of the Indonesian economy, a process with a different momentum and timing from the achievement of political independence. It traces the origins of economic decolonization to the late-colonial period, covers developments during the Japanese occupation and the Indonesian Revolution as well as continued operations by Dutch enterprises in Indonesia during the 1950s. The account culminates with the takeover and nationalization of Dutch private enterprises in the late 1950s.
The book is based on research in a wide variety of primary sources. Themes discussed include economic policies, the changing position of Indonesian personnel inside Dutch-owned firms as well as the emergence of new Indonesian entrepreneurship.
Published in cooperation with the Netherlands Institute of War Documentation (NIOD), as part of the NIOD research program "Indonesia across Orders".
The book is based on research in a wide variety of primary sources. Themes discussed include economic policies, the changing position of Indonesian personnel inside Dutch-owned firms as well as the emergence of new Indonesian entrepreneurship.
Published in cooperation with the Netherlands Institute of War Documentation (NIOD), as part of the NIOD research program "Indonesia across Orders".
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On 25 April 1950 the Republic of the South Moluccas was proclaimed in Ambon Town. Not until December, after a breakdown in negotiations and a protracted battle, did the Indonesian army take control of Ambon Island. In remote parts of inhospitable Ceram, RMS remnants held out until 1962.
This book examines the revolt of the Republic of the South Moluccas in the context of the social and economic changes experienced in Ambonese society during the last century of colonial rule. The author focuses on the emergence of a new group of Christian émigrés—officials, teachers and soldiers—who left their homeland in the service of the Netherlands Indies government, and the dilemma posed for this group by Indonesian nationalism. The upheavals of the Japanese occupation and the Indonesian struggle for independence left Ambon with embryonic democratic institutions, dominated by Ambonese supporters of the Indonesian Republic. The Republic of the South Moluccas was an attempt by some returned émigrés—soldiers and civilians—together with members of the traditional village élite, to (re)establish their authority and preserve their society's independence from the Jakarta government. Chauvel concludes that the proclamation of an independent state, devoid of any forethought or planning, proved a tragedy for the society it was meant to protect.
Nationalists, soldiers and separatists is the first work to give such a detailed review of the political developments of Ambon and the Ambonese. It is based on extensive research in government archives in Indonesia, the Netherlands and Australia and on interviews in these three countries with participants from all sides involved.
This book examines the revolt of the Republic of the South Moluccas in the context of the social and economic changes experienced in Ambonese society during the last century of colonial rule. The author focuses on the emergence of a new group of Christian émigrés—officials, teachers and soldiers—who left their homeland in the service of the Netherlands Indies government, and the dilemma posed for this group by Indonesian nationalism. The upheavals of the Japanese occupation and the Indonesian struggle for independence left Ambon with embryonic democratic institutions, dominated by Ambonese supporters of the Indonesian Republic. The Republic of the South Moluccas was an attempt by some returned émigrés—soldiers and civilians—together with members of the traditional village élite, to (re)establish their authority and preserve their society's independence from the Jakarta government. Chauvel concludes that the proclamation of an independent state, devoid of any forethought or planning, proved a tragedy for the society it was meant to protect.
Nationalists, soldiers and separatists is the first work to give such a detailed review of the political developments of Ambon and the Ambonese. It is based on extensive research in government archives in Indonesia, the Netherlands and Australia and on interviews in these three countries with participants from all sides involved.
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J.C. Baud was de langst dienende minister onder koning Willem II (1840-1849). Hij stond aan het hoofd van het Departement van Koloniën, dat van cruciale betekenis was voor het herstel van de overheidsfinanciën. Het was de tijd waarin de Nederlandse staat nagenoeg bankroet was en slechts op de been werd gehouden door de koloniale baten die op Java met het Cultuurstelsel werden verkregen.
Kort na de troonsbestijging van Willem II begon Baud aantekening te houden van de wekelijkse gesprekken die hij met de koning voerde over het koloniale beleid en ook over de binnenlandse politiek, in het bijzonder de herziening van de grondwet. Baud heeft deze aantekeningen tot het einde van zijn ministerschap volgehouden. Zo ontstond een uniek document dat nagenoeg het hele koningschap van Willem II beslaat, namelijk de periode van januari 1841 tot maart 1848. De vijf kleine boekjes waarin Baud zijn aantekeningen maakte, zijn altijd in familiebezit gebleven en hebben daar decennia lang een onzichtbaar bestaan geleid. Door het vaak onleesbare handschrift was het niet eenvoudig om de aantekeningen op juiste waarde te schatten. Systematische studie met aanvullende toelichting heeft van een reeks fragmentarische notities een spannend politiek verhaal gemaakt.
Dit boek werpt niet alleen een nieuw licht op het omstreden koningschap van Willem II, maar gunt de lezer ook een blik in het politieke besluitvormingproces gedurende een periode waarin nog geen sprake was van volledige ministeriële verantwoordelijkheid. De aantekeningen illustreren de vooraanstaande rol die Baud als staatsman heeft gespeeld.
Kort na de troonsbestijging van Willem II begon Baud aantekening te houden van de wekelijkse gesprekken die hij met de koning voerde over het koloniale beleid en ook over de binnenlandse politiek, in het bijzonder de herziening van de grondwet. Baud heeft deze aantekeningen tot het einde van zijn ministerschap volgehouden. Zo ontstond een uniek document dat nagenoeg het hele koningschap van Willem II beslaat, namelijk de periode van januari 1841 tot maart 1848. De vijf kleine boekjes waarin Baud zijn aantekeningen maakte, zijn altijd in familiebezit gebleven en hebben daar decennia lang een onzichtbaar bestaan geleid. Door het vaak onleesbare handschrift was het niet eenvoudig om de aantekeningen op juiste waarde te schatten. Systematische studie met aanvullende toelichting heeft van een reeks fragmentarische notities een spannend politiek verhaal gemaakt.
Dit boek werpt niet alleen een nieuw licht op het omstreden koningschap van Willem II, maar gunt de lezer ook een blik in het politieke besluitvormingproces gedurende een periode waarin nog geen sprake was van volledige ministeriële verantwoordelijkheid. De aantekeningen illustreren de vooraanstaande rol die Baud als staatsman heeft gespeeld.
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Open Access
Democracy cannot be implemented overnight. Democratization is an often unpredictable process. This book concentrates on that political transformation in one of Indonesia’s most ‘traditional’ islands, Sumba. Why does democratization create such great opportunities for local politicians with their private agenda’s? Why does regional autonomy, as part of the national democratization program, promote socio-economic inequality in West Sumba?
This book is written out of an intimate knowledge of Sumba’s social groupings. Jacqueline Vel lived in Sumba as a development worker for six years in the 1980s and has made frequent return visits for further research since then. She studied every stage of ‘transition to democracy’ in the local context, thus creating this ethnography of democratization. The book analyses themes apparent in a series of chronological events that occurred over a period of twenty years (1986-2006). Uma Politics is the sequel of Vel’s dissertation The Uma Economy, and the title refers to the uniquely Sumbanese type of network politics. The author brings together tradition with the modern economy, government and politics into an evolving, dynamic concept of political culture.
This book is written out of an intimate knowledge of Sumba’s social groupings. Jacqueline Vel lived in Sumba as a development worker for six years in the 1980s and has made frequent return visits for further research since then. She studied every stage of ‘transition to democracy’ in the local context, thus creating this ethnography of democratization. The book analyses themes apparent in a series of chronological events that occurred over a period of twenty years (1986-2006). Uma Politics is the sequel of Vel’s dissertation The Uma Economy, and the title refers to the uniquely Sumbanese type of network politics. The author brings together tradition with the modern economy, government and politics into an evolving, dynamic concept of political culture.
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This collection aims to attract attention to the admirable achievements of indigenous builders in Indonesia and to contribute to a broader sense of commitment to the endangered architectural heritage in the region. It presents the second part of the results of a research project on vernacular architecture in western Indonesia, sponsored by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences.
The volume is intended to provide an introduction to all relevant vernacular architectural traditions and developments in western Indonesia. The 21 contributions, all written by researchers with long first-hand experience in the area they are dealing with, are arranged according to the location of the ethnic groups from west to east—from Aceh to Western Java. Each contributor was asked to enrich the architectural description with a self-chosen particular topic illustrating social, ideological and environmental peculiarities of the field situation. The book takes account of the rich diversity of the various contexts and artistic elaborations that developed in the region.
The first collection of essays, Indonesian houses, Volume 1: Tradition and transformation in vernacular architecture, was published as nr. 207 of the Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Leiden, 2003). It focussed on case studies demonstrating how a common architectural heritage has been affected by historical changes, giving shape to a multiplicity of local developments and adaptations both in their material aspects and in their functions as objects of social value and meaning.
The volume is intended to provide an introduction to all relevant vernacular architectural traditions and developments in western Indonesia. The 21 contributions, all written by researchers with long first-hand experience in the area they are dealing with, are arranged according to the location of the ethnic groups from west to east—from Aceh to Western Java. Each contributor was asked to enrich the architectural description with a self-chosen particular topic illustrating social, ideological and environmental peculiarities of the field situation. The book takes account of the rich diversity of the various contexts and artistic elaborations that developed in the region.
The first collection of essays, Indonesian houses, Volume 1: Tradition and transformation in vernacular architecture, was published as nr. 207 of the Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Leiden, 2003). It focussed on case studies demonstrating how a common architectural heritage has been affected by historical changes, giving shape to a multiplicity of local developments and adaptations both in their material aspects and in their functions as objects of social value and meaning.
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In the literature on Indonesian legal history, the role of language has been paid scant attention. Even the replacement of Dutch by Indonesian as the official language of the law, surely a major event for the work of Indonesian jurists, has not been closely examined. Yet, since the early 1970s, legal usage and terminology have been the topic of a steady stream of highly critical publications by linguists and, remarkably, by jurists as well. Their criticism is focused on the heterogeneity of law language and terminology, and the deviation of legal usage from the official standard language. Government measures (language courses, law dictionaries) have not allayed this criticism.
This study exposes two fundamental defects in the government measures and in the criticism itself. Firstly, they are grounded in an instrumental approach to language, an approach that sees language as a mere tool of the jurist, and as secondary in importance to the conceptual world that is considered law’s core business. Secondly, they greatly underestimate the impact of the declining knowledge of Dutch upon the development of Indonesian law language. Massier argues that the law must be viewed as inextricably bound up with the language in which it is formulated. Consequently, legal training and practice are examined in this study in terms of language behaviour and conventions, of learning, writing and speaking the languages of the law. The voice of the law in transition provides a language history of Indonesian law and its practitioners.
This study exposes two fundamental defects in the government measures and in the criticism itself. Firstly, they are grounded in an instrumental approach to language, an approach that sees language as a mere tool of the jurist, and as secondary in importance to the conceptual world that is considered law’s core business. Secondly, they greatly underestimate the impact of the declining knowledge of Dutch upon the development of Indonesian law language. Massier argues that the law must be viewed as inextricably bound up with the language in which it is formulated. Consequently, legal training and practice are examined in this study in terms of language behaviour and conventions, of learning, writing and speaking the languages of the law. The voice of the law in transition provides a language history of Indonesian law and its practitioners.
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Trade flows, cities and kinship relations can all be seen as elements of complex networks. In this collection of essays, all of which deal with Asia, we argue that there are good reasons to envisage them as various dimensions of the same networks. Nevertheless, it is fairly rare to find trade, cities and kinship relations as intimately linked as we have portrayed them in this volume, because they are usually classified within different sub-disciplines of history, whose practitioners are all too often not inclined to talk to people outside their own field. The Australian born historian Heather Sutherland, who recently retired from the VU university in Amsterdam, is an exception in this respect because most of her work gravitates towards an approach which aims to integrate this trinity of topics.
This collection of essays, written by a number of her students and close colleagues, has taken its cue from her approach. It is not the case that all the contributions deal with all three topics but they as a collective demonstrate how flows of trade, cities—both as urban centres and nodes in wider networks—and kinship relations hang together, and how the study of one topic opens new vistas on the other two, revealing causal links that otherwise would have remained hidden. Thus, the essays in this collective volume support the idea that trade, towns and kin—although often dealt with quite separately—can be viewed as various aspects of the same networks, connecting people, places and commodities.
This collection of essays, written by a number of her students and close colleagues, has taken its cue from her approach. It is not the case that all the contributions deal with all three topics but they as a collective demonstrate how flows of trade, cities—both as urban centres and nodes in wider networks—and kinship relations hang together, and how the study of one topic opens new vistas on the other two, revealing causal links that otherwise would have remained hidden. Thus, the essays in this collective volume support the idea that trade, towns and kin—although often dealt with quite separately—can be viewed as various aspects of the same networks, connecting people, places and commodities.
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Open Access
World War I had just broken out, but colonial authorities in the Netherlands Indies heaved a sigh of relief: The colonial export sector had not collapsed and war offered new economic prospects; representatives from the Islamic nationalist movement had prayed for God to bless the Netherlands but had not seized upon the occasion to incite unrest. Furthermore, the colonial government, impressed by such shows of loyalty, embarked upon a campaign to create a ‘native militia’, an army of Javanese to assist in repulsing a possible Japanese invasion.
Yet there were other problems: pilgrims stranded in Mecca, the pro-German disposition of most Indonesian Muslims because of the involvement of Turkey in the war, and above all the status of the Netherlands Indies as a smuggling station used by Indian revolutionaries and German agents to subvert British rule in Asia.
By 1917 the optimism of the first war years had disappeared. Trade restrictions, the war at sea, and a worldwide lack of tonnage caused export opportunities to dwindle. Communist propaganda had radicalized the nationalist movement. In 1918 it seemed that the colony might cave in. Exports had ceased. Famine was a very real danger. There was increasing unrest within the colonial population and the army and navy. Colonial authorities turned to the nationalist movement for help, offering them drastic political concessions, forgotten as soon as the war ended. The political and economic independence gained by the Netherlands Indies, a result of problems in communications with the mother country, was also lost with the end of the war.
Kees van Dijk examines how in 1917 the atmosphere of optimism in the Netherlands Indies changed to one of unrest and dissatisfaction, and how after World War I the situation stabilized to resemble pre-war political and economic circumstances.
Yet there were other problems: pilgrims stranded in Mecca, the pro-German disposition of most Indonesian Muslims because of the involvement of Turkey in the war, and above all the status of the Netherlands Indies as a smuggling station used by Indian revolutionaries and German agents to subvert British rule in Asia.
By 1917 the optimism of the first war years had disappeared. Trade restrictions, the war at sea, and a worldwide lack of tonnage caused export opportunities to dwindle. Communist propaganda had radicalized the nationalist movement. In 1918 it seemed that the colony might cave in. Exports had ceased. Famine was a very real danger. There was increasing unrest within the colonial population and the army and navy. Colonial authorities turned to the nationalist movement for help, offering them drastic political concessions, forgotten as soon as the war ended. The political and economic independence gained by the Netherlands Indies, a result of problems in communications with the mother country, was also lost with the end of the war.
Kees van Dijk examines how in 1917 the atmosphere of optimism in the Netherlands Indies changed to one of unrest and dissatisfaction, and how after World War I the situation stabilized to resemble pre-war political and economic circumstances.
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Open Access
For decades almost the only social scientists who visited Indonesia’s provinces were anthropologists. Anybody interested in politics or economics spent most of their time in Jakarta, where the action was. Our view of the world’s fourth largest country threatened to become simplistic, lacking that essential graininess. Then, in 1998, Indonesia was plunged into a crisis that could not be understood with simplistic tools. After 32 years of enforced stability, the New Order was at an end. Things began to happen in the provinces that no one was prepared for. Democratization was one, decentralization another. Ethnic and religious identities emerged that had lain buried under the blanket of the New Order’s modernizing ideology. Unfamiliar, sometimes violent forms of political competition and of rentseeking came to light.
Decentralization was often connected with the neo-liberal desire to reduce state powers and make room for free trade and democracy. To what extent were the goals of good governance and a stronger civil society achieved? How much of the process was ‘captured’ by regional elites to increase their own powers? Amidst the new identity politics, what has happened to citizenship? These are among the central questions addressed in this book.
This volume is the result of a two-year research project at KITLV. It brings together an international group of 24 scholars – mainly from Indonesia and the Netherlands but also from the United States, Australia, Germany, Canada and Portugal.
Decentralization was often connected with the neo-liberal desire to reduce state powers and make room for free trade and democracy. To what extent were the goals of good governance and a stronger civil society achieved? How much of the process was ‘captured’ by regional elites to increase their own powers? Amidst the new identity politics, what has happened to citizenship? These are among the central questions addressed in this book.
This volume is the result of a two-year research project at KITLV. It brings together an international group of 24 scholars – mainly from Indonesia and the Netherlands but also from the United States, Australia, Germany, Canada and Portugal.
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Indigenous Indonesian Catholics increased in number from 27,000 to nearly 550,000 between 1902 and 1942. At first scattered only through Minahasa, the Kai islands and Flores, after four decades Catholic centres were established in most of the archipelago, and there was even a small but well-educated and vocal minority in Central Java. It is this formative period in the growth of Catholicism in Indonesia that Steenbrink describes in detail.
Catholics never constituted more than three per cent of the Indonesian population, one-third of all Christians. Steenbrink examines the rivalry of this minority with Protestants and their missionary activities, as well as the race with Islam in many parts of the outer islands, which had come under Dutch rule in the early twentieth century. This comprehensive work includes extensive details on the different European missionary orders and missionaries active at this time. Forty archival documents illustrate the proselytizing efforts in the archipelago.
The first volume of Catholics in Indonesia, 1808-1942: A documented history appeared in 2003 (Volume I: A modest recovery, 1808-1903, KITLV Press).
Catholics never constituted more than three per cent of the Indonesian population, one-third of all Christians. Steenbrink examines the rivalry of this minority with Protestants and their missionary activities, as well as the race with Islam in many parts of the outer islands, which had come under Dutch rule in the early twentieth century. This comprehensive work includes extensive details on the different European missionary orders and missionaries active at this time. Forty archival documents illustrate the proselytizing efforts in the archipelago.
The first volume of Catholics in Indonesia, 1808-1942: A documented history appeared in 2003 (Volume I: A modest recovery, 1808-1903, KITLV Press).
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Open Access
Water, in its many guises, has always played a powerful role in shaping Southeast Asian histories, cultures, societies and economies. This volume, the rewritten results of an international workshop, with participants from eight countries, contains thirteen essays, representing a broad range of approaches to the study of Southeast Asia with water as the central theme. As it was exposed to the sea, the region was more accessible to outside political, economic and cultural influences than many landlocked areas. Easy access through sea routes also stimulated trade from an early age. However, the same easy access made Southeast Asia vulnerable to political control by strong outsiders. The sea is, moreover, a source of food, but also of many hazards. At the same time, Southeast Asian societies and cultures are confronted with and permeated by 'water from heaven' in the form of rain, flash floods, irrigation water, water in rivers, brooks and swaps, water-driven power plants, and pumped or piped water, in addition to water as a carrier of sewage and pollution. Finally, the volume deals with the role of water in classification systems, beliefs, myths, illness and healing.
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De legendarische en mysterieuze Tan Malaka verscheen, na twintig jaar verbanning en ondergrondse actie, kort na de Proclamatie van de Indonesische onafhankelijkheid op 17 augustus 1945 weer in de openbaarheid. Hij bood een radicaal alternatief voor de gematigde koers van Soekarno en Hatta, het leidersduo van de Republik Indonesia, maar hij dolf het onderspit en werd in maart 1946 gevangengezet. Pas in september 1948 kwam hij vrij. Hij richtte toen de Partai Murba op, die de plaats wilde innemen van de in de Madioen-opstand neergeslagen communistische partij. Na de Nederlandse militaire actie van december 1948 volgde hij het guerrillaverzet; in februari 1949 werd hij doodgeschoten bij een interne afrekening.
Tan Malaka's levensloop is vaak in mysterie gehuld. In dit boek wordt dit grotendeels ontrafeld, zoals ook waar en door wie hij om het leven werd gebracht. Zijn prominente rol tijdens de Indonesische Revolutie—actief en als symbool—maken het noodzakelijk uitgebreid de politieke verwikkelingen in de Republik en in de verdeelde linkse beweging te beschrijven. In vele opzichten worden over doorslaggevende gebeurtenissen in de Revolutie nieuwe gegevens en visies verschaft.
In een uitgebreide epiloog worden de lotgevallen gevolgd van Tan Malaka's geesteskind Partai Murba en van Tan Malaka's naleven, dat zich pas sinds kort aan de kenschets 'verguisd en vergeten' begint te onttrekken.
Tan Malaka's levensloop is vaak in mysterie gehuld. In dit boek wordt dit grotendeels ontrafeld, zoals ook waar en door wie hij om het leven werd gebracht. Zijn prominente rol tijdens de Indonesische Revolutie—actief en als symbool—maken het noodzakelijk uitgebreid de politieke verwikkelingen in de Republik en in de verdeelde linkse beweging te beschrijven. In vele opzichten worden over doorslaggevende gebeurtenissen in de Revolutie nieuwe gegevens en visies verschaft.
In een uitgebreide epiloog worden de lotgevallen gevolgd van Tan Malaka's geesteskind Partai Murba en van Tan Malaka's naleven, dat zich pas sinds kort aan de kenschets 'verguisd en vergeten' begint te onttrekken.
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The author offers a reconstruction of regional variations in the growth of the indigenous population of Indonesia from 1880 till the Japanese invasion in 1942. The demographic components of population growth (migration, fertility and mortality) are not only presented as demographic statistics but also interpreted as the aggregate effects of major events in the lives of indigenous people. Hence, migration is described in relation to employment opportunities, the social structure, and tradition; fertility is examined in the light of aspects of family formation, including marriage customs and birth control practices; and mortality is linked to epidemics and Western health care.
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Selayar, an island off the coast of Southwest Sulawesi and belonging to the Makassarese-Buginese realm, is dry and rocky, with a fragile subsistence economy. Yet in the late colonial period its economy prospered, as it became an important supplier of copra, or dried coconut, extensively used in the Western oil and fats industry as a raw material for soap and margarine. In the 1920s, the heyday of copra trade, many Selayarese converted their profits from the copra trade into gold teeth and hard cash. Copra thus earned the reputation of 'green gold'.
In this book the author analyses the socio-economic history of Selayar between 1600 and 1950 from an Asiacentric perspective. This is linked to wider socio-economic and political developments, including peripheralization, integration into the world market, and colonial incorporation. The themes discussed are of interest to anyone studying the development of maritime societies: commercialization necessitated by a fragile agricultural system, export specialization, trading networks, migration and the unifying role of Islam.
In this book the author analyses the socio-economic history of Selayar between 1600 and 1950 from an Asiacentric perspective. This is linked to wider socio-economic and political developments, including peripheralization, integration into the world market, and colonial incorporation. The themes discussed are of interest to anyone studying the development of maritime societies: commercialization necessitated by a fragile agricultural system, export specialization, trading networks, migration and the unifying role of Islam.
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Beneath the Volcano is the first major account of the Nage, who inhabit the central part of Flores in eastern Indonesia.
The book focuses on Nage ideas concerning a variety of spiritual beings and how these influence both ritual practices and ideas about human beings. In exploring these subjects, the author sets out to uncover a classification of spirits. While quite different from taxonomies of natural beings, Nage ways of linking named categories of spirits nevertheless reveal a regular conceptual order. In describing this order, use is made of a version of Dumont's notion of 'encompassment'. Common ideas informing relations between Nage humans and several categories of spirits are further interpreted as instances of a pervasive principle of 'symmetric inversion', according to which human beings are spirits for the spirits.
The book focuses on Nage ideas concerning a variety of spiritual beings and how these influence both ritual practices and ideas about human beings. In exploring these subjects, the author sets out to uncover a classification of spirits. While quite different from taxonomies of natural beings, Nage ways of linking named categories of spirits nevertheless reveal a regular conceptual order. In describing this order, use is made of a version of Dumont's notion of 'encompassment'. Common ideas informing relations between Nage humans and several categories of spirits are further interpreted as instances of a pervasive principle of 'symmetric inversion', according to which human beings are spirits for the spirits.
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Warfare and wealth were the major means for acquiring status in precolonial Minahasa (North Sulawesi). The author argues that the quest for power and prestige is an ongoing concern among Minahasans.
Based on extensive anthropological and historical research, this book focuses on patterns and processes of social mobility. The character of leadership in tribal society, then under the colonial bureaucracy, and later in modern Indonesia are discussed. Besides political changes, changes in economic conditions and in religion have had a considerable influence on mobility. These processes are illustrated by a case study of a local community.
Based on extensive anthropological and historical research, this book focuses on patterns and processes of social mobility. The character of leadership in tribal society, then under the colonial bureaucracy, and later in modern Indonesia are discussed. Besides political changes, changes in economic conditions and in religion have had a considerable influence on mobility. These processes are illustrated by a case study of a local community.
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This study explores the relationship between outmigration and gender roles in two villages in North Tapanuli, on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. In a symbolic sense, land and women have always represented security to Toba Batak men as they travelled in search of a livelihood.
The main purpose of this study is to throw light on the options open to the women staying behind and the adjustments they make, as well as their reasons for making them. The approach followed is an anthropological one. It combines an analysis of actor-oriented perceptions and strategies with an insight into the structural forces that formed the context of migration as it developed from the late nineteenth century through the colonial period until today.
The main purpose of this study is to throw light on the options open to the women staying behind and the adjustments they make, as well as their reasons for making them. The approach followed is an anthropological one. It combines an analysis of actor-oriented perceptions and strategies with an insight into the structural forces that formed the context of migration as it developed from the late nineteenth century through the colonial period until today.
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This book describes and analyses Minahasan regional nationalism in the period up to 1942. Attention is given to precolonial antecedents, to the transformations brought about by compulsory coffee cultivation, Christian mission activity and Western education, to the role of local representative councils, to the privileged position which Minahasans came to occupy relative to other Indonesians within the colonial state, and to the ambiguous relationship between Minahasa and the Indonesian nationalist movement.
Ideas and models drawn from the theoretical literature on nationalism are used throughout the study to illuminate the processes described. The concluding chapter also includes brief comparisons with other Indonesian regions and with the Philippines, together with an epilogue summarizing the developments of the Japanese occupation and the revolutionary period.
Ideas and models drawn from the theoretical literature on nationalism are used throughout the study to illuminate the processes described. The concluding chapter also includes brief comparisons with other Indonesian regions and with the Philippines, together with an epilogue summarizing the developments of the Japanese occupation and the revolutionary period.
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It is just over a century since the first manuscript of Désawarnana (also known as the Nagarakrtagama) was rescued from the sack of the palace at Cakranagara in Lombok. Once its importance for Javanese history was recognized, its place was assured: our picture of the greatness of the Javanese kingdom of Majapahit in the second half of the 14th century is based largely on the evidence of this one text, and it is true to say that this picture has formed an inspiration for modern Indonesians as well. The text is not a literary masterpiece, and it is not typical of its genre; in fact it is unique. One of the reasons for this is the fact that here and there its author, Mpu Prapanca, tells us something about himself, in particular when he accompanies his king as Superintendent of Buddhist Affairs on a long journey through the countryside of East Java in 1359.
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In the field of Nusantaran literary studies, systematic interpretations of individual literary works are still a relatively rare phenomenon. This book shows how such interpretations can be fruitfully produced for traditional Malay literature.
Taking his cue from ideas in modern literary theory, anthropology and the study of western medieval literature, the author describes the major conventions of traditional Malay narrative and develops a comprehensive model of traditional Malay poetics, comprising both oral and written traditions. By applying this model to a series of readings of individual works, including heroic epics and Panji romances, the texts come to life.
Taking his cue from ideas in modern literary theory, anthropology and the study of western medieval literature, the author describes the major conventions of traditional Malay narrative and develops a comprehensive model of traditional Malay poetics, comprising both oral and written traditions. By applying this model to a series of readings of individual works, including heroic epics and Panji romances, the texts come to life.
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Was het Nerderlandse optreden in de Indonesische archipel een onderdeel van wereldwijde ‘modern imperialisme’? Of was de uitbreiding van het Nederlands gezag onder de eigentijdse noemer van ‘pacificatie’ een ander fenomeen? Het wetenschappelijk debat hierover is nog volop gaande. Dit boek over de relatie tussen het sultanaat Djambi (zuid-sumatra) en het Indische gouvernement (Batavia)—met op de achtergrond nog het Ministerie van Koloniën in Den Haag—kiest daarin een eigen positie. De periode van circa een eeuw (1830-1907, gevolgd door een epiloog tot 1949), die wordt bestreken, verschaft een dwarsdoorsnede van de geschiedenis van het Nederlands kolonialisme, waarin de afzonderlijke lagen met hun verschillende kleuring zichtbaar worden. Op deze wijze komen zeer uiteenlopende aspecten aan bod: politieke misverstanden rond 1830, buitenlandse bemoeienis met de regio, een Amerikaanse avonturier en de rol van politieke rituelen. Deze vormen—tezamen met de lange tijd succesrijke overlevingsstrategieën van een onbereikbare sultan, oliebelangen, oorlog en een guerrilla—de bouwstenen van het verhaal. In een slothoofdstuk vergelijkt de auteur het Nederlandse optreden in Djambi met andere expedities, die rond 1900 de koloniale staat tot een eenheid smeedden. Toetsing van de Djambische geschiedenis aan de imperialismetheoriëen leidt tot de conclusie dat de Nederlandse expansie zeker als Nederlands imperialisme is aan te merken. Redenen ontbreken om Nederland buiten het internationale patroon te plaatsen.
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Islanders of the South is an ethnography of the kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific. This is the first book to examine the interplay of Polynesian and Western ideas within contemporary social and economic practices, not from the point of view of Tongan aristocracy, but from that of the common people.
The first describes contemporary Tongan society and the main means of subsistence: agriculture, fishing, and manufacturing. An analysis of the kinship system, with its economic, political, and ideological dimensions, is intertwined with a discussion of Tongan attitudes on life and death, marriage and divorce, social rights and obligations, migration and remittances. Later chapters deal with the crucial questions of land ownership and the circulation of gifts. A large number of genealogies, biographies, and case studies help convey how Tongans live together and how they experience their relationship to nature.
Effects on Tonga of global developments—predominantly capitalist in nature—are expressed in the commercialization of the means of subsistence, bringing about changes often regarded as progress. The author raises doubts about this ideology of progress by referring to aspects of nature and culture in Tonga which are disappearing. Up to now Tongans have largely been able to preserve the circulation of gifts and economic self-sufficiency.
The first describes contemporary Tongan society and the main means of subsistence: agriculture, fishing, and manufacturing. An analysis of the kinship system, with its economic, political, and ideological dimensions, is intertwined with a discussion of Tongan attitudes on life and death, marriage and divorce, social rights and obligations, migration and remittances. Later chapters deal with the crucial questions of land ownership and the circulation of gifts. A large number of genealogies, biographies, and case studies help convey how Tongans live together and how they experience their relationship to nature.
Effects on Tonga of global developments—predominantly capitalist in nature—are expressed in the commercialization of the means of subsistence, bringing about changes often regarded as progress. The author raises doubts about this ideology of progress by referring to aspects of nature and culture in Tonga which are disappearing. Up to now Tongans have largely been able to preserve the circulation of gifts and economic self-sufficiency.
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In this book an outline is given of the morphology of Wambon with an emphasis on placing the data in the wider context of the present typological knowledge about Papuan languages. The descriptions are amply illustrated by examples. These examples, mostly taken from recorded texts, have been provided with word-for-word glosses and English translations. Four Wambon texts complete the description.
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This volume is the product of an international workshop on Women and Mediation, organized in Leiden in 1988 by the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (KITLV) and the Werkgroep Indonesische Vrouwenstudies (WIVS), a Dutch interdisciplinary study group on Indonesian women. The book contains a selection of fourteen contributions—sociological, anthropological, and historical—ranging geographically ‘from Sabang to Merauke’ from the Toba Batak (North Sumatra) to the Dani (Irian Jaya). Loosely centred around the concept of mediation, many of the articles include new data derived from archival research and fieldwork.
One cluster of articles concentrates on theoretical questions concerning the concept of mediation. Another cluster deals with brokerage in the economic and social fields. A third cluster focuses on mediation in the cultural domain, which many extend to mediation between different ‘cultures’(elite-agrarian, Western-Indonesian) or between the human and the suprahuman world, between macrocosm and microcosm.
Mediation by women has been overlooked not only in the social sciences in general but also in the field of women studies in particular. The present volume explores the theme of mediation by women in general, and in Indonesia in particular.
One cluster of articles concentrates on theoretical questions concerning the concept of mediation. Another cluster deals with brokerage in the economic and social fields. A third cluster focuses on mediation in the cultural domain, which many extend to mediation between different ‘cultures’(elite-agrarian, Western-Indonesian) or between the human and the suprahuman world, between macrocosm and microcosm.
Mediation by women has been overlooked not only in the social sciences in general but also in the field of women studies in particular. The present volume explores the theme of mediation by women in general, and in Indonesia in particular.
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Het Buginees—met een geschat aantal sprekers van tweeëneenhalf miljoen de grootste taal van Zuid-Sulawesi—kent een eeuwenlange schriftelijke overleving. Daaronder bevinden zich belangwekkende producten van historiografische en letterkundige aard. Hoe erkend belangrijk deze ook zijn, wetenschappelijke verantwoorde edities van dergelijke teksten zijn schaars, een omstandigheid die voor een groot deel kan worden verlaard door de aard van het Buginese schrift dat vatbaar is voor meerdere uitleg.
In de hier uitgegeven tekst zijn op geraffineerde wijze literaire en historische elementen met elkaar vervlochten. In de vorm van een heldendicht, toloq, wordt het verhaal verteld van Arung Labuaja, een op Zuid-Sulawesi nog steeds roemrucht hoofd met grote militair-tactische talenten. Ruime plaats is in het gedicht toegekend aan de gebeurtenissen tijdens de door het Nederlands-Indische leger uitgevoerde Vierde Boné-expeditie van 1905, waarna het Bonése vorstenbestuur ophield te functioneren en werd vervangen door het Nederlands gezag. Met Arung Labuaja als middelpunt van het verhaal, vervult de tekst—gehuld in poëtisch gewaad—de hoofdzakelijke Nederlandse bronnen over de periode op verscheidene punten aan.
De hier gepresenteerde uitgave van de Toloqna Arung Labuaja beoogt aan zijn literaire, geschiedkundige en teksthistorische aspecten recht te doen, in de overtuiging dat een teksteditie meer behoort te zijn dan transcriptie en vertaling: verheldering en verklaring van de tekst dient altijd voorop te staan.
In de hier uitgegeven tekst zijn op geraffineerde wijze literaire en historische elementen met elkaar vervlochten. In de vorm van een heldendicht, toloq, wordt het verhaal verteld van Arung Labuaja, een op Zuid-Sulawesi nog steeds roemrucht hoofd met grote militair-tactische talenten. Ruime plaats is in het gedicht toegekend aan de gebeurtenissen tijdens de door het Nederlands-Indische leger uitgevoerde Vierde Boné-expeditie van 1905, waarna het Bonése vorstenbestuur ophield te functioneren en werd vervangen door het Nederlands gezag. Met Arung Labuaja als middelpunt van het verhaal, vervult de tekst—gehuld in poëtisch gewaad—de hoofdzakelijke Nederlandse bronnen over de periode op verscheidene punten aan.
De hier gepresenteerde uitgave van de Toloqna Arung Labuaja beoogt aan zijn literaire, geschiedkundige en teksthistorische aspecten recht te doen, in de overtuiging dat een teksteditie meer behoort te zijn dan transcriptie en vertaling: verheldering en verklaring van de tekst dient altijd voorop te staan.
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Deze economisch-antropologische studie gaat over de rol van handelaren en handelsallianties in het proces van economische verandering dat in de tweede helft van de negentiende eeuw op het eiland Madura op gang kwam na de invoering van het rechtstreekse koloniale bestuur.
Het boek begint met een uiteenzetting over de sociaal-geografische omstandigheden en de historische achtergronden van het proces van economische veranderingen, waarbij het eiland geleidelijk werd betrokken in het Indonesische handelsverkeer. In het tweede deel wordt ingegaan op de economie van het dorp Prenduan, waar De Jonge een jaar veldwerk deed, is een van de belangrijkste handelsplaatsen aan de zuidkust van Madura. Sinds de ontsluiting van het eiland spelen handelaren uit het dorp een voortrekkers rol in de Madurese economie. Het laatste deel van het boek beschrijft de belangrijkste groep ondernemers uit het dorp, de tabakshandelaren. Tabak vormt het voornaamste produkt van Madura. Handelaren uit Prenduan beheersen de handel in het oostelijke deel van het eiland en monopoliseren de belangrijke handelscontacten met Java. Hun activiteiten zijn in belangrijke mate bevorderd door de verbreiding en verfijning van de islam. Dankzij deze godsdienst konden ze zich als groep emanciperen en hun positie legitimeren. De ontwikkelingen in de takbakswereld zijn in hoge mate representatief voor de veranderingen in andere handelssectoren.
De auteur verschaft in dit boek nieuwe inzichten in de aard van economische ontwikkeling in perifere gebieden, rol van handelaren in dit proces en de relatie handel en islam.
Het boek begint met een uiteenzetting over de sociaal-geografische omstandigheden en de historische achtergronden van het proces van economische veranderingen, waarbij het eiland geleidelijk werd betrokken in het Indonesische handelsverkeer. In het tweede deel wordt ingegaan op de economie van het dorp Prenduan, waar De Jonge een jaar veldwerk deed, is een van de belangrijkste handelsplaatsen aan de zuidkust van Madura. Sinds de ontsluiting van het eiland spelen handelaren uit het dorp een voortrekkers rol in de Madurese economie. Het laatste deel van het boek beschrijft de belangrijkste groep ondernemers uit het dorp, de tabakshandelaren. Tabak vormt het voornaamste produkt van Madura. Handelaren uit Prenduan beheersen de handel in het oostelijke deel van het eiland en monopoliseren de belangrijke handelscontacten met Java. Hun activiteiten zijn in belangrijke mate bevorderd door de verbreiding en verfijning van de islam. Dankzij deze godsdienst konden ze zich als groep emanciperen en hun positie legitimeren. De ontwikkelingen in de takbakswereld zijn in hoge mate representatief voor de veranderingen in andere handelssectoren.
De auteur verschaft in dit boek nieuwe inzichten in de aard van economische ontwikkeling in perifere gebieden, rol van handelaren in dit proces en de relatie handel en islam.
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The results of fieldwork in Wetan, conducted by J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong, founder of the 'Leiden School' of cultural anthropology, are published here. These materials consist of texts of tales collected by De Josselin de Jong in Wetan, in the Babar Archipelago, and include his annotations of texts, grammatical notes, a Wetan vocabulary and an English index to the vocabulary.
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In de koloniale periode werd het buitenlandse beleid van Nederland vanzelfsprekend in belangrijke mate bepaald door de belangen van Nederland-Indië. De betrekkingen met Engeland en de Verenigde Staten werden er verregaand, die met China, Japan en Australië zelfs uitsluitend door bepaald. “Het buitenland” was voor Indië zelf ook nog iets anders dan voor Nederland; Indië had zijn eigen buurladen. Daartoe behoorde ook die andere Maleise archipel, de Philippijnen.
Na meer dan drie eeuwen deel uitgemaakt te hebben van het Spaanse wereldrijk werden de Philippijnen in het begin van de twintigste eeuw door de Verenigde Staten veroverd. De Amerikanen leverden daartoe een strijd met de Spanjaarden, maar meer nog met de in 1898 uitgeroepen Philippijne Republiek, die pas na drie jaar werd verslagen. De Verenigde Staten ontdekten vervolgens dat zij als het ware de sluitsteen vormden van de Europese koloniale overheersing in Zuidoost-Azië. Bij veel Amerikanen wekte dat weerzin, maar ook de voorstanders van het Philippijnse “avontuur” lieten herhaaldelijk uitkomen dat zij niet wilden worden gerekend tot de “koloniale club” van Engeland, Frankrijk en Nederland. In 1916 en 1934 zetten de Verenigde Staten, onder impuls van de Democratische Partij, de beslissende wetgevende stappen in de richting van Philippijnse onafhankelijkheid.
Nederlands-Indië heeft veertig jaar met dit buurland zich langzaam uitbreidende betrekkingen onderhouden. Zij worden in dit boek op drie niveaus onderzocht: dat van de Nederlandse regering in Den Haag, de Indische regering in Batavia en de Indonesische nationalistische beweging. Dat gebeurt in het ruimere verband van de internationale verhoudingen, die vooral door Engeland met de Comminwealth, de Verenigde Staten en Japan werden bepaald.
Deze studie behandelt als eerste de relatie tussen de Philippijnen en Nederlands-Indië en is het enige Nederlandstalige overzicht van het Amerikaanse bestuur van de Philippijnen. De auteur heeft hiertoe uitgebreid onderzoek verricht in Nederlandse, Amerikaanse en Engelse archieven.
Na meer dan drie eeuwen deel uitgemaakt te hebben van het Spaanse wereldrijk werden de Philippijnen in het begin van de twintigste eeuw door de Verenigde Staten veroverd. De Amerikanen leverden daartoe een strijd met de Spanjaarden, maar meer nog met de in 1898 uitgeroepen Philippijne Republiek, die pas na drie jaar werd verslagen. De Verenigde Staten ontdekten vervolgens dat zij als het ware de sluitsteen vormden van de Europese koloniale overheersing in Zuidoost-Azië. Bij veel Amerikanen wekte dat weerzin, maar ook de voorstanders van het Philippijnse “avontuur” lieten herhaaldelijk uitkomen dat zij niet wilden worden gerekend tot de “koloniale club” van Engeland, Frankrijk en Nederland. In 1916 en 1934 zetten de Verenigde Staten, onder impuls van de Democratische Partij, de beslissende wetgevende stappen in de richting van Philippijnse onafhankelijkheid.
Nederlands-Indië heeft veertig jaar met dit buurland zich langzaam uitbreidende betrekkingen onderhouden. Zij worden in dit boek op drie niveaus onderzocht: dat van de Nederlandse regering in Den Haag, de Indische regering in Batavia en de Indonesische nationalistische beweging. Dat gebeurt in het ruimere verband van de internationale verhoudingen, die vooral door Engeland met de Comminwealth, de Verenigde Staten en Japan werden bepaald.
Deze studie behandelt als eerste de relatie tussen de Philippijnen en Nederlands-Indië en is het enige Nederlandstalige overzicht van het Amerikaanse bestuur van de Philippijnen. De auteur heeft hiertoe uitgebreid onderzoek verricht in Nederlandse, Amerikaanse en Engelse archieven.
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Until about 1870 the Sa’dan-toraja of Sulawesi had little contact with the outside world. Several factors, of which the introduction of the coffee-growing and the coffee trade was chronologically one of the first, have changed their life as a megalithic people enmeshed in mythology and ritual drastically. The conversion of nearly half the population to Christianity after 1945 brought a particularly profound change in Sa’dan-Toraja society. Old customs, in particular as regards funerary rites, have a tenacious life, however.
In autochthonous Toraja culture rituals are the main focus of attention. They are divided into ceremonies of the East and those of the West. The former, associated with sunrise and life, comprise feasts of the living; yellow and white are the colours belonging to these joyous festivals. The West is associated with sunset, death and darkness; the main colour connected with it is black. So death rituals are referred to a “night ceremonies”. In time these death feasts grew more and more complicated, finally overshadowing the festivals of the East.
In autochthonous Toraja culture rituals are the main focus of attention. They are divided into ceremonies of the East and those of the West. The former, associated with sunrise and life, comprise feasts of the living; yellow and white are the colours belonging to these joyous festivals. The West is associated with sunset, death and darkness; the main colour connected with it is black. So death rituals are referred to a “night ceremonies”. In time these death feasts grew more and more complicated, finally overshadowing the festivals of the East.
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Antillianen en Surinamers in Nederland, 1634/1667-1954.
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In this article, the author attempts to demonstrate that the study of inland fisheries can provide additional insight into the culture of the Meybrat, a tribal community living around the Ayamaru lakes in the northern part of the Western Bird's Head of Irian Jaya. The author discusses the following: the significance of pusaka (sacred hereditary goods) in fishery; the role of ancestor worship and cosmology; the rise of a class of native immigrant 'big men' such as 'bankers' in ikat textiles (kain timur); the role of imported kain pusaka as part of the so-called kain timur-complex; newly discovered aspects of myths from the western and eastern Bird's Head, that are often culturally imposed.
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This collective volume contains several articles on Indonesia.
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This study sketches the way in which Dutch colonial authority penetrated in the Vorstenlanden of Central Java. The focus is on the relations of the Dutch government with the Javanese princes in the fields of legal matters, agriculture (land use) and administration. Chapters 1,2,3,5 and 6 place the relationship government-princes within the context of the 19th century developments in these fields. The last three chapters discuss the legal and agricultural reorganizations that took place in the 20th century, and their consequences. The focus is on the decision-making process preceding the reorganization. Ch. 4 looks at the European administration in the Javanese Gouvernementslanden, in order to compare the situation there with the Vorstenlanden.
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This collective volume contains papers and comments on these papers from an international symposium on "Indonesia as a Field of Anthropological Study" held in Leiden, 22-26 November 1982. The following contributions are listed: P.E. de Josselin de Jong, “A field of anthropological study in transformation” (with comments by G.B. Milner) / Robert Blust, “Indonesia as a ‘Field of Linguistic Study’” / A. Teeuw, “Indonesia as a ‘Field of Literary Study’. A case study: genealogical narrative texts as an Indonesian literary genre” (with comments by Els Postel) / Sandra Niessen, “Textiles are female... but what is femaleness? Toba Batak textiles in the Indonesian field of ethnological study” (with comments by Wolfgang Marschall) / David S. Moyer, “South Sumatra in the Indonesian Field of Anthropological Study” (with comments by C.W. Watson) / J.J.J.M. Wuisman, “The Rejang and the Field of Anthropological study concept” (with comments by William D. Wilder) / Peter J.M. Nas, “Settlements as symbols: The Indonesian town as a Field of Anthropological Study” / Hans-Dieter Evers, “Cities as a ‘Field of Anthropological Studies’ in South-East Asia” / R. Hagesteijn, “Continental Southeast Asian political myths compared” / J.D.M. Platenkamp, “The Tobelo of Eastern Halmahera in the context of the Field of Anthropological study” (with comments by Cécile Barraud) / L.E. Visser, “Who are the Sahu and what do they belong to?” (with comments by E.K.M. Masinambow) / Rodney Needham, “The transformation of prescriptive systems in Eastern Indonesia” / P.E. de Josselin de Jong, “Summary and conclusions”
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Land reforms are usually associated with political regimes trying to restructure rural society in accordance with principles of equality and justice. In striking contrast the colonial land reform discussed in this book led to the introduction of a land floor below which small owners lost their property rights. Thus the regional authorities dealt very firmly with the agrarian crisis which became manifest in Cirebon residency in West Java at the beginning of the 20th century. The study explores the historical background of these developments, highlighting the role of agribusiness in the underdevelopment of the peasant economy. Underlying the new, rather drastic policy was the colonial government’s attempt to encourage social differentiation at the village level in order to pave the way for capitalistic agricultural development. Caught between the dominant interests of the large-scale sugar estates in the area and the ideals of the protagonists of a doctrine of more populist inspiration, the land reform was bound to fall short of the stated objective: the development of a viable peasantry which would become the economic and political backbone of a stable colonial order. The final part of the book, in which the analysis shifts from the regional to the national level, discusses rural stratification and rural policies in post-colonial Indonesia.
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This book is about the Agrarian Struggle in East Sumatra 1947-1958.
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Joannis Cornelis Verschueren (1905-1970) worked as a Roman Catholic missionary in southern Irian from 1931 until 1970. In the 1950s he wrote a number of papers on the Yéi. These papers, based on older field notes and a research trip through the area, are recapitulated in this volume. Verschueren provides genuine inside information and his data are new and authentic. The four papers in this volume create a picture of a typical lowland culture with a surprising emphasis on headhunting, an uncommon way of segregating the sexes, and a highly elaborated system of phallic symbolism. Topics discussed in this volume are territorial, clan and moiety organization; kinship, marriage and conjugal life; the founding myths of Yéi-nan ritual and other rituals; initiation; sickness and healing; death, burial and mortuary feasts; other ceremonies.
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The Darul Islam rebellion, striving for the establishment of an Islamic State of Indonesia, broke out in several areas since 1949. The author describes each of these Darul Islam rebellions and identifies some of the factors which may help to explain their outbreak and persistence. Ch. 1 sketches life and background of the most important Darul Islam leader: S.M. Kartosuwirjo. In the next five chapters the political history of the relevant regions (West Java, Central Java, South Sulawesi, South Kalimantan and Aceh) and their respective Darul Islam risings are outlined. Ch. 7 discusses the question of why people joined the Darul Islam.
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The aim of the author's research was to study 1) the thematic elements and the composition of the plays (lelampahan wayang), and 2) their religious and cultural background. She concentrates on one particular play: the story of Bima Swarga. The study is based mainly on fieldwork carried out in Bali over the period 1972- 1976, when materials were collected from oral and written sources.
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The author describes Rindi culture within an analytic framework that illustrates connexions between, and common principles among, often apparently disparate realms of thought and action. The book contains chapters on the house; the village and the domain (an aggregate of villages); space and cosmos; religion (the notions "hamangu" and "ndewa"; divinity and the ancestors; the powers of the earth); the cycle of life and death; social order (class stratification; the division of authority; descent groups) and the system of asymmetric prescriptive alliance by which it is governed; marriage prestations and the various ways of contracting a marriage. The study is based on 22 months of fieldwork.
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This book deals with the property and inheritance system of the matrilineal Minangkabau of West Sumatra in the context of legal pluralism. The author proposes a new anthropological approach to law, property and inheritance. After the description of the Minangkabau socio-political organization and the development of legal and administrative pluralism, three chapters are devoted to property and inheritance proper. First the ideal legal systems are described. Then he illustrates how the Minangkabau actually handle their property and inheritance affairs, and how the various regulating mechanisms have changed through history. Finally the different agents creating and changing legal conceptions are treated in historical perspective. In his conclusions the author shows how the traditional system of common holding and distributing of property by matrilineal descent groups is slowly being undermined through an increasing monetarization and consequent individualization of property relationships which finds its expression in the form of new legislation. This development is reflected in the conceptual system where the formerly predominant diachronic dimension of property relationships is slowly abolished and where property rights are increasingly reified.
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This book is about the pattern of settlement and ecology of the Nuaulu, a group of sedentary swidden cultivators and hunters of southcentral Seram (Eastern Indonesia). It has three inter-related aims: to describe and account for nuaulu settlement; to outline and exemplify a suitable method of assessing the fine inter-action of cultural and ecological variables in small scale communities; and to explore the usefulness of a generative form of analysis in this respect. The fieldwork among the Nuaulu was undertaken between December 1969 and May 1971, and again for three months in 1973. After some basic introductory information, the analysis proceeds by first examining the residential component of the settlement patterns in terms of the processes which determine its location, form and composition. Next, the role of non-domesticated resources in local ecology and the processes of settlement generation in the domesticated component of the Nuaulu environment is investigated. In the final section the general theoretical and methodological issues raised in the introduction are examined in the light of the preceeding analysis.
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Bible translations in Indonesian languages, period 1900-1970.
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From Isolation towards Integration was originally published in Dutch as Volume 41 (1963) in the series Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde.
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The authors worked as doctors in Kalimantan between 1949 and 1959, where they were first introduced to Ngaju Dayak tales. The present anthology contains 20 tales given to them by the Rev. Munte Saha. Both the original text and the Dutch translation are provided. Ten of these are about Sangumang, the cunning one, who used to fool his uncle, the king. The other ten deal with Bapa Paloi, the stupid one, who is constantly being admonished by his wife. Sangumang and Bapa Paloi live in the upper-world, and mythological tales are told of their exploits. In addition to the 20 tales, a modern version of a Bapa Paloi tale is presented, written by the Rev. Munte Saha himself. The scene of this modern tale is not the upper-world but the present island of Kalimantan.
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Eight Dutch Books and Articles about the Islamic States in Java (period 1500-1700).
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The subject of the present study concerns the relationships between men and women and the composition of household groups among the lower Afro-American strata of the society of Curaçao. The material on which it is based was collected in Curaçao in the course of a 15-month period of fieldwork in 1965 and 1966.
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This study is directed towards providing basic background material for the understanding of South Sumatran social organisation. To this end, four legal codes from the first half of the nineteenth century are presented and analysed. The method used in the analysis is a modification of that used by Levi-Strauss for the analysis of myth. The author concludes by stating: "Out of these detailed analyses the most significant phenomenon to emerge is the fact that a relatively small number of formal properties are distributed through a large number of structures within a single legal code, and because of their formal similarities these structures are mutually reinforcing".
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Open Access
A Case Study of Small Power Politics in the Caribbean.
Book
Open Access
The work is concerned with the reconstruction of the phonemes of Proto-Malayo-Javanic, the last proto-language which is directly continued by the Sundanese, Javanese, Malay, and Madurese. Part one contains a lexicostatistical calculation of the degrees of relationship among the four languages and a brief description of the phonology and morphophonemics of each language. Part two is devoted to the reconstruction of Proto-Malayo-Javanic phonemes. It shows inter alia that evidence from Malayo-Javanic languages requires the reconstruction of a number of Proto-Malayo-Javanic phonemes which hitherto have not been reconstructed for proto-languages of higher order or the proto-language of highest order, i.e. Proto-Austronesian. The appendix contains the basic vocabulary lists for the four languages, a map showing previously assumed language boundaries separating Sundanese, Jakarta Malay, Javanese and Madurese, and a revised map showing language boundaries as revealed in the course of the research, as well as Sundanese dialect maps. An index of the Proto-Malayo-Javanic reconstructions follows.
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Open Access
The Matawai Maroon Johannes King (ca. 1830-1898) taught himself to read and write at an advanced age. He wanted to bridge the gap between the generations by publishing his "Book of Horrors" (Skrekiboekoe) and the present book which has been given the title Life at Marispaston. King wanted to explain the root of the problems between him and his elder brother, Chief Noah Andrai, representatives respectively of the church and the state at the village level. King wanted to justify his life in the eyes of the church, the EBG-Moravian Brethren, and his fellow Maroons. This book is an important contribution to the church history of Suriname, yet also offers insights into the history of the Maroon communities in Suriname. This book is one of the first original works in Sranantongo.
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Open Access
This title addresses the Khilafat Movement in India, a pan-Islamic, political protest campaign launched by Muslims of India to influence the British government not to abolish the Ottoman Caliphate.
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Open Access
The first edition of The Stone Age of Indonesia was published as Volume 21 (1957) in the series Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde.
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Mythen zum Totenkult und die Texte zum Tantolak Matei.
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Open Access
Een Engelstalige uitgave van Van isolatie naar integratie is verschenen als Deel 80 (1977, ISBN 9789024719624) in de reeks Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde.
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Open Access
This first edition of The Stone Age of Indonesia has been replaced by the second edition, which is published as Volume 61 (1972; ISBN 9024713005) in the series Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde.
