Lords of the land, lords of the sea

Conflict and adaptation in early colonial Timor, 1600-1800

Hägerdal, Hans

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 w... more

Cleanliness and culture

Indonesian histories

Dijk, Kees van and Jean Gelman Taylor (eds)

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 fi lth 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... more

Heirs to world culture

Being Indonesian 1950-1965

Edited by Lindsay, Jennifer and Maya H.T. Liem

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-colon... more

Healers on the colonial market

Native doctors and midwives in the Dutch East Indies

Hesselink, Liesbeth

15 december: Book Launch. Healers on the colonial market by Liesbeth Hesselink

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, histo... more

Tropenstijl

Amusement en verstrooiing in de (post)koloniale pers

Termorshuizen, Gerard (red.)

Met een voorwoord van Thom Hoffman

Ontspanning en vermaak onder de Europeanen in de Nederlandse overzeese gebiedsdelen waren beperkt. De persorganen die in Indië, Suriname, Curaçao alsook in Zuid-Afrika verschenen trachtten deze lacune zoveel mogelijk op te vullen. Journalistieke verstrooiing legde zoveel gewicht in de schaal dat de concurrentiepositie van een krant of tijdschrift in hoge mate werd bepaald door de amusementswaarde ervan.... more

From Lanka Eastwards

The Ramayana in the Literature and Visual Arts of Indonesia

Andrea Acri, Helen Creese, Arlo Griffiths (eds)

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 ... more

A dictionary of Indonesian abbreviations

Free to download, not for sale

Parsidi, Agata and Roger Tol (eds.)

Any reader and speaker of Indonesian experiences the enormous amount of abbreviations and acronyms. They are everywhere: in newspapers, journals, books, on billboards, cars, street signs, flags, in text messages, you name it. Indonesian abbreviations are not only written down and read, but are also part and parcel of the spoken language, in particular slang and youth language. A popular hobby of many Indonesians is to invent (usually funny) abbreviations on the spot, or to create new meani... more

Curaçao in the Age of Revolutions, 1795-1800

Klooster, Wim and Oostindie, Gert (eds)

From 1795 through 1800, a series of revolts rocked Curaçao, a small but strategically located Dutch colony just off the South American continent. A combination of internal and external factors produced these uprisings, in which free and enslaved islanders particiapted with various objectives. A major slave revolt in August 1795 was the opening salvo for these tumultuous five years. While this revolt is a well-known episode in Curaçaoan history, its wider Caribbean and Atlanti... more

Postkoloniale monumenten in Nederland

Post-colonial monuments in the Netherlands

Oostindie, Gert, Henk Schulte Nordholt en Fridus Steijlen; Foto’s van | photographs by Eveline Kooijman

Teksten in het Nederlands en Engels | Texts in Dutch and English
Engelse vertaling door | English translation by Klarijn Loven and Paul Sparkes
 
Postkoloniale monumenten in Nederland geeft een beeld van gedenktekens die in het naoorlogse Nederland zijn opgericht en die op een of andere manier betrekking hebben op de koloniale periode. 
De gemaakte selectie van foto’s alsmede de teksten in dit boekje zijn informatief en interpreterend, ... more

Realisten en reactionairen

Een geschiedenis van de Indisch-Nederlandse pers 1905-1942

Termorshuizen, G.

Realisten en reactionairen biedt een rijke beschrijving van de sociale en culturele geschiedenis van Nederlands-Indië en maakt tevens een tot dusver verborgen historie openbaar.

Het boek geeft een bijzonder beeld van een zeer roerige tijd in het voormalige Indië: de voortdurend in kracht toenemende confrontatie tussen het Indonesische nationalisme en het moederland dat de kolonie ten koste van alles wilde behouden. De Indisch-Nederlandse pers die, op veelbetekenende uitzo... more

The End of Innocence?

Indonesian Islam and the Temptations of Radicalism

Madinier, Remy and Andree Feillard. Translated by Wong Wee

Long cited as a model of harmonious cohabitation between different religions, the most populous Muslim country in the world until recently occupied a special place in the Western imagination. Indonesia, home to a peaceful version of Islam, offered a reassuring counter-model to a rowdy and accusatory Arab Islam. Since 1999, however, confrontations between Christians and Muslims in the Moluccas, excesses of vigilantism in Sulawesi, and espcially the Bali and Jakarta bombin... more

Lost in mall

An ethnography of middle-class Jakarta in the 1990s

Leeuwen, van L.

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 ... more

De gouverneurs van de Nederlandse Antillen sinds 1815

Oostindie, Gert (red.)

A literary mirror

Balinese reflections on modernity and identity in the twentieth century

Putra, I Nyoman Darma

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 th... more

The state and illegality in Indonesia

Aspinall, Edward and Gerry van Klinken (eds)

The popular 1998 reformasi movement that brought down President Suharto’s regime demanded an end to illegal practices by state officials, from human rights abuse to nepotistic investments. Yet today, such practices have proven more resistant to reform than people had hoped.
 
Many have said corruption in Indonesia is "entrenched". We argue it is precisely this entrenched character that requires attention. What is state illegality entrenched in and how doe... more

In search of a path

An analysis of the foreign policy of Suriname from 1975 to 1991

Janssen, Roger

Een zwarte vrijstaat in Suriname

De Okaanse samenleving in de achttiende eeuw

Thoden van Velzen, H.U.E. en Wim Hoogbergen

Waar plantages en slaven zijn, vluchten slaven van plantages. Al vrij snel na de stichting van de plantagekolonie Suriname (1651) ontsnapten Afrikaanse slaven om een menswaardig bestaan op te bouwen in het immense regenwoud. Zij vestigden zich in het labyrint van kreken en rivieren en voerden vandaar een felle guerrilla tegen de blanke planters. Een van deze groepen Marrons, zoals de gevluchte slaven in de literatuur bekend staan, is de Okanisi.
 
Een ... more

The Makassar annals

Translated and edited by William Cummings

Cummings, William

Beginning in the 1630s, a series of annalists at the main courts of Makassar began keeping records with dated entries that recorded a wide variety of specific historical information about a wide variety of topics, including the births and deaths of notable individuals, the actions of rulers, the spread of Islam, trade and diplomacy, the built environment, ritual activity, warfare, internal political struggles, social and kinship relations, eclipses and comets, and more. ... more

Images of the tropics

Environment and visual culture in colonial Indonesia

Protschky, Susie

Mapping the Acehnese past

Feener, R. Michael, Patrick Daly, Anthony Reid (eds)