The floracrats: state-sponsored science and the failure of the Enlightenment in Indonesia

Abstract

In The Floracrats: State-Sponsored Science and the Failure of the Enlightenment in Indonesia, Andrew Goss examines in sharp and engaging detail the relationship between science, state and society in modern Indonesia. Goss follows the professional careers of state-sponsored naturalists or “Floracrats” as they sought to expand their scientific knowledge and authority and examines how their Enlightenment vision to achieve societal transformation through science became absorbed or “co-opted” by the colonial and postcolonial state. In carefully researched chapters spanning from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, Goss argues that the integration of scientists into the state bureaucracy has characterized the enduring failure of the Enlightenment in Indonesia. This book, while part of a blossoming literature on the history of science and technology in modern Southeast Asia, represents an important departure from existing work in its attempt to address the legacy of colonial science for postcolonial societies 1) (Moon 2007; Mrazek 2002; Pols 2009). In contrast to recent studies that examine the political uses of science to reinforce authoritarian regimes or to fashion the self-identity of nationalists who protested against them, Goss instead focuses his work around the question of why science became so readily available for the colonial and postcolonial state’s use and how this relationship imposed critical limits on scientific innovation. 2) This work therefore serves as an important contribution not only to the history of science in Indonesia but to its social and political history as well. Across a series of richly detailed episodes, Goss analyzes how science, particularly botany and natural history, developed into a tool of the Indonesian state. Most interesting are the chapters on the establishment of the Buitenzorg Gardens and their transformation into a scientific empire under the careful stewardship of naturalist Melchior Treub. Treub was tasked with the challenge of both promoting the international status of the Gardens and making the plant and animal collections at Buitenzorg “legible” to colonial bureaucrats who sought to affect more practical changes at home. In the chapter on “Quinine Science,” Goss explores the emergence of this notion that scientists prove their value to colonial capitalism by creating economically useful knowledge.