Colonial and post-colonial cities as arenas of conflict

Abstract

The book under review contains 15 papers on urban processes and problems in Indonesia presented at a workshop held in October 1983 in Leiden. The scholars participating in the workshop were, as far as I am aware, with one single exception (Heather Sutherland from the Free University of Amsterdam), all of them Dutch nationals. It is to be regretted that no Indonesian experts participated in the realization of the present volume, dealing as it does with a subject of crucial signifi cance for the development of their society. The volume starts with a series of papers on the historical develop ment of Indonesian towns, from early pre-colonial times onwards. A striking contribution is that by Professor Sutherland on 'Ethnicity, Wealth and Power in Colonial Makassar'. The author attempts to provide a picture of urban society not dominated by what she calls 'white male imperialist political chronology'. 'With the choice of another perspective come other analytic categories and priorities, the recogni tion that other arenas of action matter. In terms of Makassar's social history, this means that the apparently obvious structures of ethnic ranking and formal office must be reassessed and compared with what we can discover of other hierarchies and informal spheres' (p. 52). A great difficulty 'lies in the nature of the sources. VOC and colonial records covering the eighteenth and nineteenth century, for example, inevitably describe events from the perspective of the Company official' and the colonial civil servant in their formal role.