Present-day Indonesia Research Articles

Recultivating Connections across the Indian Ocean

ABSTRACT How did enslaved people in the Dutch East India Company’s empire use food to maintain their cultural identities? These people – from Malabar, Coromandel, Bengal in present-day India, together with the eastern part of today’s Indonesia – were forcibly transported across the ocean to the Company’s ports littered along the littoral. By shifting our perspective away from colonial elites, we can grasp a very different sense of the ocean, one that speaks of lost homelands, families, and selves. This article explores food from the perspective of enslaved cooks and cultivators on Ambon, the Company’s first conquest in the Indian Ocean,, in present-day Indonesia. By spotlighting how enslaved people transported, grew, and processed familiar plants from their homelands, it explores how the ocean signified both disconnection and loss as well as opportunities for reconnecting with their cultural identities through food. Using food as an analytical object, the article reconstructs how enslaved people used food to grapple with their disconnection from their homelands, forging links, however partial and incomplete, with memories of self before their enslavement.

Kerkelijke Eigendom : Memahami Hak Milik Gereja Di Indonesia Era Kolonial

This research aims to elucidate the history of land ownership by Christian Church institutions in the Dutch East Indies colony. In addition to providing a descriptive account of its development, this article endeavors to delve into various documentary sources concerning ownership, particularly the legal status associated with the Christian Church as an institution within the colonial legal framework. Through an examination of its legal standing, this research seeks to discern the nature of the Church's land ownership. Given the historical nature of this study, the historical method is employed to guide the research towards a comprehensive reconstruction. This method comprises five phases: document exploration (heuristic), critical analysis, exceptions, interpretation, and reconstruction. Emphasis is placed on authentic documents to ensure the accuracy and objectivity of the information presented in this reconstruction. In conclusion, this report elucidates the legal status of the Christian Church under the colonial legal system and its implications for material ownership by the Church based on its legal standing. Thus, shedding light on the origins of asset ownership status held by the Christian Church in present-day Indonesia.

Navigating Legal Awareness in the Digital Era: Cultivating A Digital Culture in Indonesia

This research investigates the various impacts of digital transformation on legal culture and societal norms in present-day Indonesia. By examining the convergence of legal changes, technological progress, and cultural shifts, the study underscores the significance of maintaining traditional values in the face of rapid digital advancements. Emphasizing the importance of legal literacy, the paper advocates for innovative educational initiatives, such as those utilizing film and podcasts, to improve public comprehension of legal concepts. The analysis highlights the careful equilibrium needed for Indonesia to embrace digital culture while preserving its diverse cultural legacy.

Sunken Red: Inscribing the Pacific War as a Cultural Trauma into Dutch Cultural Memory

ABSTRACT Bezonken Rood, a novel by the Dutch author Jeroen Brouwers published in 1981 and translated as Sunken Red in 1988, has long been the subject of a fierce debate regarding the Pacific War in the former Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia). The novel, a work of autofiction, aimed to bring the Pacific War, which was considered ‘an omitted war’ at the time, into the public eye. Despite the novel’s claim to be true to life, critics identified upon its publication numerous historical inaccuracies, with the most significant critique being that the Pacific War was erroneously depicted as equivalent to the Holocaust. I will study both the novel and debate: I will examine the ways in which the Pacific War is represented and remediated in the novel; and I will analyse the ways in which the novel has contributed to the inscription of the Pacific War as a cultural trauma into Dutch cultural memory. Throughout my analysis, I will draw on concepts derived from the fields of autobiographical writing, critical trauma studies, cultural memory studies, and cultural trauma studies.

Critique on Salafibism and it’s Significance for Indonesian Islamic Moderation: Study on Khaled Abou El-Fadhl’s Thought

This paper aims to prove the importance of Khaled Abou el-Fadhl's (b. 1963) critique on Salafibism for mainstreaming Islamic moderation in contemporary Indonesia. This research examines Khaled's critique using the approach of ‘ilm uṣūl al-fiqh, a technique that analyzes the nature, secrets, and purposes of Islamic teachings including its laws. The problem examined in this research is the significance of Khaled's critique on Salafibism for mainstreaming Islamic moderation in contemporary Indonesia. This research concludes that from the perspective of ‘ilm uṣūl al-fiqh, Khaled's critique on Salafibism is crucial for mainstreaming Islamic modernization in present-day Indonesia. The significance of the critique lies in three things: (1). Providing the new awareness and energy for Indonesian Islamic scholars to campaign for moderate Islam and rejects puritanical Islam, especially Salafibism. (2). It provides theoretical guidance for the Islamic moderation movement in Indonesia, especially the importance of the balance between literalism and maqāṣid as well as between text and context in understanding the holy book. (3). Creating the practical guidance for the Islamic moderation movement in Indonesia to counter extremism. This research indicates that adopting a moderate approach to Islam holds significant promise for achieving local, national, and global religious harmony. In contrast, the puritanical approach, which hinders such concord, should be abandoned.
 
 Keywords: Critique, puritanism, salafibism, Islamic moderation, contemporary Indonesia

Uṣūl al-Fiqh Literacy for the Local Community: A Study on Shaykh Mukhtar Ambai’s Manuscript

Ancient manuscripts with uṣūl al-fiqh themes remain rare amidst the increasing efforts to inventory, categorize, and digitize old manuscripts in present-day Indonesia. Nevertheless, literacy initiatives related to uṣūl al-fiqh can still be identified within manuscripts exploring different subjects. This study aims to elucidate how a non-uṣūl al-fiqh-themed manuscript can encompass uṣūl al-fiqh insights intended for a local community. Employing a documentary approach, it relies on primary data from Risālah Marḍiyah by Shaykh Mukhtar Ambai Kerinci. Subsequently, content analysis utilizing a qualitative model captures messages, meanings, linguistic styles, and symbolic interactions. The study reveals that uṣūl al-fiqh’s topics in the manuscript are conveyed using five methods: illustration and exemplification, the statement-argument-example pattern, comparison, argumentative conjunction, if-then pattern, and citation models. The argument posits that scholarly uṣūl al-fiqh literacy efforts in the past need not be solely assessed by the quantity of ancient uṣūl al-fiqh-themed manuscripts; instead, they can be discerned in other manuscripts employing more operationally creative, contextual, and easily comprehensible delivery methods, serving a broader audience.

From Critical Psychology and Cultural-Historical Psychology to “Culturally-Turned” Psychology

Critical psychology and cultural-historical psychology are two approaches emerging as critiques to mainstream psychology that is often perceived to be hedonistic and individualistic. Adopting the spirit of critical psychology and cultural-historical psychology that strive to break the grips of mainstream psychology as well as absorbing the inspiration from Thomas Teo’s psychological humanities, Svend Brinkmann’s cultural psychology, Richard Johnson’s cultural circuit, and Stuart Hall’s cultural studies, as a critical review this article proposes an approach coined as psikologi berhampiran budaya (culturally-turned psychology) based on the socio-cultural realities of the present-day Indonesian society. Psikologi berhampiran budaya offers four models of psychological research in the production of knowledge on both the subject and the society of the present-day Indonesia. The application of the four models in such culturally turned production of knowledge is expected to simultaneously and serendipitously produce a specifically Indonesian psychology.

Human Genetic Research in Wallacea and Sahul: Recent Findings and Future Prospects.

Genomic sequence data from worldwide human populations have provided a range of novel insights into our shared ancestry and the historical migrations that have shaped our global genetic diversity. However, a comprehensive understanding of these fundamental questions has been impeded by the lack of inclusion of many Indigenous populations in genomic surveys, including those from the Wallacean archipelago (which comprises islands of present-day Indonesia located east and west of Wallace's and Lydekker's Lines, respectively) and the former continent of Sahul (which once combined New Guinea and Australia during lower sea levels in the Pleistocene). Notably, these regions have been important areas of human evolution throughout the Late Pleistocene, as documented by diverse fossil and archaeological records which attest to the regional presence of multiple hominin species prior to the arrival of anatomically modern human (AMH) migrants. In this review, we collate and discuss key findings from the past decade of population genetic and phylogeographic literature focussed on the hominin history in Wallacea and Sahul. Specifically, we examine the evidence for the timing and direction of the ancient AMH migratory movements and subsequent hominin mixing events, emphasising several novel but consistent results that have important implications for addressing these questions. Finally, we suggest potentially lucrative directions for future genetic research in this key region of human evolution.

Franciscanos nas ilhas da Indonésia: da Idade Média ao século XVII

This article offers an overview of the Franciscan work in the «Archipelago», that is, in present-day Indonesia. The chronology covers between Late Middle Ages and 1641 and the Portuguese abandonment of the port of Malacca (present-day Malaysia), the fundamental platform that defined the entire Portuguese presence in Southeast Asia, particularly in present-day Indonesia. Without forgetting to point out something of the Franciscan presence in the region after the Dutch conquest of Malacca, it intends to articulate the the attempt to spread Christianity in the Archipelago and the Franciscan missions on islands such as Sumatra, Java, Celebes, in the Moluccas and Timor, Flores and Solor. More than evaluating the successes or failures of the mission, the principal objective of the order, it is also essential to clarify the role of the Friars Minor in the knowledge of these islands since the Middle Ages, when they were pioneers in their exploration and travel reports and journeys in search of other stopovers, such as China.

Ancestral Voices, Highland Homecomings and High Society: The Lochbuie Family of Mull, c. 1855–1920

No history of the Scottish diaspora in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would be complete without taking account of the provenance and disposal of repatriated wealth. A case study is the family saga of the Maclaines of Lochbuie, whose estates lay on the island of Mull in the Inner Hebrides. Our account begins with Donald Maclaine (1816–1863), the twenty-second laird, who, as a partner in the Batavia (Jakarta) mercantile business of Maclaine Watson, made his fortune from the trade in sugar cultivated by forced peasant labour in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia). It was the profits from this trade that he used to repurchase the family’s ancestral lands that had been forfeited to their creditors a decade earlier. Donald Maclaine’s enthusiasm for the Highlands was inherited by his Indies-born son, Murdoch Gillian Maclaine (1845–1909), the twenty-third laird, whose life and times, together with those of his wife, Marianne Schwabe-Maclaine (1850–1934), form the main focus of this paper. That enthusiasm extended to the patronage of Gaelic culture and to Highland revivalism in general, but it was also under his stewardship that his family’s cosmopolitan lifestyle revived the less welcome tradition of the ‘luxury trap’, wherein expenditures incurred in London high society also had to contend with declining rentals during a prolonged agricultural depression. Financial pressures of this kind appear to have compelled the twenty-third laird to redevelop Lochbuie in accordance with a late Victorian reimagining of the Highlands as a sporting estate. This was not a gamble that paid off, however, and a once-off infusion of colonial wealth proved inadequate to sustain Lochbuie, which was irretrievably lost to the family during the (brief) tenure of Kenneth Maclaine (1880–1935), the twenty-fourth laird, despite his somewhat unconventional efforts to bolster the family fortunes by taking to the boards in New York and the UK.

On the cultural politics of representing Dutch Moluccans at Barak 1B in the Netherlands

This article considers heritage-making associated with Moluccans who, in 1951, were forced out of political necessity to migrate from what is present-day Indonesia to the Netherlands. Specifically, it examines how this story of movement has been represented at Barak 1B, a museum that marks the presence of the minority group within the Dutch nation. Following a brief history of the community, the article considers the genesis of the museum before outlining myriad strategies adopted within it to raise awareness about the Moluccan migrants, and insert them into the fold of national heritage-making in the Netherlands. It then considers public opinions about the museum to demonstrate how, despite appreciation for the gesture, the museum has also received criticisms revealing old wounds that have not healed, and contrasting ideas about how the community's heritage should be represented. Additionally, the article exposes the ambivalence felt by the community in terms of maintaining its ethnic identity and yet also ‘fitting in’ as Dutch, exposing tensions between the Moluccans and their hosts, as well as among the Moluccans themselves. It ends with implications for how heritage in Southeast Asia—both the region and its diasporas—need to be studied.

On Ki Hadjar Dewantara’s Philosophy of Education

This comparative education article explores the purpose of education in the Indonesian context. My aim is to see if there are any differences between the purpose of education during the colonial era and present-day Indonesia. In order to do that, I draw mostly on the philosophy of Ki Hadjar Dewantara, who is regarded as the father of Indonesian education. This article is particularly relevant because the Indonesian government has recently started to critically re-examine two of the educational concepts proposed by Dewantara, which are "pendidikan karakter" (character education) and "merdeka belajar" (independent learning). In conceptualising education, Dewantara, who was influenced by Tagore, Montessori, and Fröbel, saw the importance of imparting local wisdom and values ignored by the colonial schools. Therefore, in this article, I will compare his educational views with the Dutch view of schooling during the colonial era. I will then look at Indonesia's current approach to education to find the similarities and differences of purpose relative to Dewantara's views of education. In this article, I argue that Dewantara's philosophy is still very much relevant today. I conclude that the Indonesian government should refer back to its history when defining education for its next generation.

The Image of Hong Kong in Dutch Travel Writing

ABSTRACT The travel accounts examined here were written by Dutch travellers to Hong Kong in the late-nineteenth to early twentieth-century. By applying the imagological approach, examples of ethnotypes and Self-Other oppositions found in the travel accounts are analysed. Findings show that the fact that most Dutch travelled from the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) influenced their observations of Hong Kong. This is particularly prominent, where writers compare the influence of the British in Hong Kong with that of the Dutch in the Dutch East Indies, in terms of facilities, infrastructure, activities and other aspects. Hence, this article sheds light on how the Dutch represent the image of Hong Kong through colonial eyes.

Gender, Non- Violence and Character Education: Contextualising Raden Adjeng Kartini’s Thoughts in Reconstructing Islamic Education

<p class="06IsiAbstrak">This paper seeks to examine the strategy, creativity and social involvement of Raden Adjeng Kartini (1879-1904) in developing education in Indonesia, especially women’s education, and its relevance for Islamic education in present-day Indonesia. This study uses qualitative content analysis and hermeneutics to analyse and contextualise Kartini’s ideas in reconstructing Islamic education, most specifically in the context of Indonesia. This paper argues that even though Kartini lived in the late 19th century, her thoughts still found its relevance in the present context. Her thoughts may serve as inspiration and foundation for reconstructing Islamic education in Indonesia. This reconstruction touch upon such issues as gender-conscious education, non-violent education, and character education.</p>

Interpreting practices in a colonial context

Abstract This article investigates the experience of Dutch interpreters of Chinese in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) from the mid-nineteenth century until Indonesia’s independence nearly a century later. In the colonial context, the task of interpreters went beyond orally translating speech. They also served as cultural mediators, who prevented conflicts and resolved misunderstandings. Based on theories of interpreting in colonial contexts, the cases in this study will probe the interpreters’ training, their allegiances, and their search for neutrality. The findings reveal that, in the period from 1860 to 1912, the interpreters tried to mediate for the government by resolving problems and misunderstandings, despite their limited authority. However, in the period from 1913 to 1949, the interpreters had less room to maneuver, as a result of changes in training as well as in the work environment of the Dutch East Indies.

Dissenting Voices: Challenging the Colonial System

This publication emerges from a process of co-creation in which historian Maartje Janse and research journalist Anne-Lot Hoek challenge the dominant national narrative about the colonial experience in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia). In combining journalistic and academic writing with musical performance by musician Ernst Jansz they amplify the critical voices that have spoken out against colonial injustice and that have long been ignored in public and academic debate. Even though it is often suggested that the mindset of people in the past prevented them from seeing what was wrong with things we now find highly problematic, they argue that there was indeed a tradition of colonial criticism in the Netherlands, one that included the voices of many ‘forgotten critics’ whose lives and criticism are the subject of this publication. The voices however were for a long time overlooked by Dutch historians. The publication is organized around the biographies of several critics (whose lives Janse and Hoek have published on before), the historical debate afterwards and includes reflective videos and texts on the process of co-creation. Maartje Janse started the process by tracing the life history of an outspoken nineteenth-century critic of the colonial system in the Dutch East Indies, Willem Bosch. The authors argue that it was not self-evident how criticism of colonial injustices should be voiced and that Bosch experimented with different methods, including organizing one of the first Dutch pressure groups. The story of Willem Bosch inspired Ernst Jansz, a Dutch musician with Indo roots, to compose a song (‘De ballade van Sarina en Kromo’). It is an interpretation of an old Malaysian ‘krontjong’ song, that Jansz transformed into a protest song that reminds its listeners of protest songs of the 1960s and 1970s. Jansz, in his lyrics, adds an indigenous perspective to this project. He performed the song during the Voice4Thought festival in 2016, a gathering that aimed to reflect upon migration and mobility in current times. Filmmaker Sjoerd Sijsma made a video ‘pamplet’ in which the performance of Ernst Jansz, an interview with Maartje Janse, and historical images from the colonial period have been combined. Anne-Lot Hoek connected Willem Bosch to a series of twentieth-century anti-colonial critics such as Dutch Indies civil servant Siebe Lijftogt, Indonesian nationalists Sutan Sjahrir, Rachmad Koesoemobroto, Dutch writer Rudy Kousbroek and Indonesian activist Jeffry Pondaag. She argues that dissenting voices have been underrepresented in the post-war debates on colonialism and its legacy for decades, and that one of the main reasons is that the notion of the objective historian was not effectively problematized for a long time. http://dissentingvoices.bridginghumanities.com/

Minority Stages: Sino-Indonesian Performance and Public Display by Josh Stenberg

Reviewed by: Minority Stages: Sino-Indonesian Performance and Public Display by Josh Stenberg Lee Tong Soon (bio) Stenberg, Josh. Minority Stages: Sino-Indonesian Performance and Public Display. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. xiv, 257 pp., maps, images, photographs, notes, references, index. Hardcover $25.94, isbn 978-08-24-87671-5. What can theater, dance, ritual, and public performances teach us about Sino-Indonesian social histories? In this study, Josh Stenberg systematically shows us how Sino-Indonesian cultural performances reveal the sheer diversity of a community that has generally been understood narrowly as a diasporic group, or in terms of their economic achievements and contributions to the Indies and Indonesia. Emphasizing Sino-Indonesian cultural processes, Stenberg effectively obviates the polarized pitfalls of “sinocentric” and “state-centred” approaches (pp. 4–5), and foregrounds multiple agencies in the shaping of Sino-Indonesian identities. Chapter 1 traces the social history of xiqu (Chinese theater) in the Indies from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Through the use of a wide variety of sources in different languages and through field ethnography, Stenberg sketches early encounters of Europeans with xiqu based on travel observations and other historical records, describes touring local and regional troupes and visiting groups from China since the late nineteenth century, and outlines performances and activities of local amateur groups in the twentieth century. I found the section on “Mixed Audiences, Hybrid Genres, Checkered Reputations” (pp. 33–36) particularly interesting in highlighting the innovative and hybrid theatrical practices of Sino-Indonesian communities from the nineteenth through mid-twentieth century. From patrons and audiences to the character types on stage, from musical instruments and notations to the types of plays performed, Stenberg unequivocally asserts, “It would be an error to imagine that performances occurred in some kind of ethnic Chinese isolation” (p. 33). Using wayang as an organizing framework, chapter 2 examines different forms of glove, string and shadow puppetry performances practiced by the Sino-Indonesian communities. In this context, “wayang” is the localized lens through which Stenberg helps readers to understand the social history of southern Fujian potehi (glove puppetry) from its origins in China through its development in the Indies, Dutch East Indies, New Order Indonesia, and present-day Indonesia. In this trajectory, Stenberg adds, “the hybridity of the genre has prompted many to adopt it as a symbol of Sino-Indonesian integration” (p. 63). In addition to delving into archival sources and ethnography, Stenberg studies Sino-Indonesian potehi and shadow puppetry by focusing on the biography of the dalang (puppeteer), utilizing their collection of puppets, scripts, [End Page 313] personal manuscripts, and interviews to construct a personable approach to historical studies. Chapter 3 comprises a comparative study of the scripts and performances of two huaju (spoken drama) from 1946 and 1959 with the same title and similar plots. Stenberg examines this post-World War II, postindependence Sukarno era in Indonesia in relation to the emerging People’s Republic of China in the same period through the development of huaju, focusing particularly on “how mid-twentieth-century ethnic Chinese intellectuals in the Indies and Indonesia sought to use [huaju] as a way of negotiating their identities” (p. 76) during this period. Both the 1946 and 1959 plays feature structural and textual similarities but were produced and performed in Sumatra against different backdrops during the first decade of the newly independent Indonesia. According to Stenberg, the earlier play affirms the proletarian origins of the Sumatran Chinese and their responsibilities to the Indonesian revolutionaries, while the later play was “quintessentially Sino-Indonesian [and] firmly rooted in the historical realities of the place and confronting the ethnic and political tensions of the young Republic” (p. 95). Exploring urban modern theater as a foundation for modern Indonesian theater is the focus of chapter 4. Stenberg begins by affirming the inherent hybrid contexts of the commercial theater, continuing the thread of Sino-Indonesia agency that binds this book so well together. Broadly speaking, modern Indonesian theaters are effectively global social dramas in terms of their performance spaces, use of the Malay vernacular, the multiethnic audience, translated European and Chinese literary works, publishing of scripts, and...

REVOLUTIONARY EUROPE AND THE DESTRUCTION OF JAVA’S OLD ORDER, 1808-1830

At first glance, it may seem strange that Java, an island situated half a world away from France Revolutionary, should the end up being one of the key battle grounds in the global conflict which followed with the fateful Girondin decision to declare war on Austria in the spring of 1792. Yet, in the compass of less than a decade, Java’s own ancient regime that was violently overturned as in quick succession of a Franco-Dutch regime (1808-11) under Napoleon’s only non-French marshal, Herman Willem Daendels (1762-1818), and a five-year British occupation (1811-1816) under the equally dictatorial Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826), transformed the colony. This paved the way for the restoration of Dutch rule in 1816 under the terms of the Treaty of Vienna by which time the commercial dealings of the Company had been replaced by the beginnings of a modern colonial state, the post-January 1818 Netherlands Indies. Over the next century, this would reduce the power of the local rulers and establish Dutch authority in nearly every corner of the archipelago. The boundaries of present-day Indonesia were determined at this time.

Troubling Englishness: The Eastward Success and Westward Failure of the Parsi Theatre

The Parsi theatre that emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century was India's principal commercial theatre and an answer to the bourgeois aspirations of a new middle class. Although its importance has been acknowledged due to its role as the predecessor of the South and Southeast Asian ‘modern’ theatre, there exists to this date no published critical history of the politics of its professionalisation and transregional expansion. This article will serve as a corrective measure, filling in the gap in existing research through a comparative analysis of the reception of the Parsi theatre marked by the Victoria Nāṭak Maṇḍali's (Victoria Theatrical Company's) decision to tour Burma in 1881 and subsequently to participate in the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886 in London. As a vehicle of increasingly globalised mass consumption practices, the Parsi theatre was a resounding success in Southeast Asia, inspiring the creation of ‘imitation Parsi theatre’ in present-day Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. In stark comparison, the Parsi theatre's portrayal of a cosmopolitan, urban, industrially advanced orient was ‘doomed to disappointment’ in London and was an unequivocal financial failure. By demonstrating the reasons for the Parsi theatre's eastward success and westward failure this article demonstrates not merely the unevenness of cultural globalisation but also the need for a reconsideration of the place of material, socio-political and racial imbalances and relatedly of immobilities, embargoes, disjunctures and exclusions in our understandings of global or transnational theatre history.

Beguiling voices: traces of vocality in the Malay literary tradition of the Riau islands

ABSTRACTWhat can we learn about the history of Malay sounding traditions? With no musical notation, treatises or recordings to draw on, I turn to traditional literary adventures from island Riau (present-day Indonesia). This article re-imagines what has long been understood as a literary tradition as a sounding one, recalling that manuscripts were recited rather than read silently and that the stories themselves are rich sources on music and sound, in particular sounding voices. I focus on the particular power of voices in these texts to beguile, persuade and effect plot development, and analyse the vocabulary used to describe such voices. Finally, the article considers how external influences on the world of Malay sounding voices contributed to their separation from the written literary tradition and the eventual decline in popularity of recitation practices. This research seeks to contribute to the theorisation of vocality and to highlight its cultural and historical specificity, including its relation to the colonial encounter.