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> Research & Reports , , Islam Transnational Motors of ‘Nationalist’ Struggles in Southeast Asia

In my reading and teaching on Southeast Asia over the past several years, I have come to Philippines. Far beyond any other attractive energies remained powerful believe that existing scholarship has underestimated the role of crucial transnational forces colony in Southeast Asia, Vietnamese for years to come. Indeed, the national- Research > – most notably nineteenth-century Liberalism, twentieth-century Communism, and were exposed and attract- ist cause championed by Sukarno ral- South Asia ‘modernist’ Islam – in favour of more narrowly national, and nationalist, narratives. ed to powerful transnational currents lied Indonesians around his slogan of Therefore, in the course of two years of research and writing, I shall be working to elaborate emanating both from and from NASAKOM – Nasionalisme, Agama and substantiate a revisionist account of what scholars have described as nationalist , even as the proximity of China, (), Komunisme – and, under cir- struggles in Southeast Asia, one which shows how the driving forces behind these struggles the networks of Vietnamese migrants cumstances decisively different from were profoundly transnational in nature. in neighbouring , , and, those facing Vietnamese revolutionar- beyond , independ- ies, both Communist and Islamic net- By John Sidel fates of the immigrant ‘Chinese’ (and its of these transnational horizons soon ent Siam, and the unique circum- works resurfaced in the Revolusi of ‘Arab’ and ‘Indian’) merchant commu- became apparent, both in the tensions stances of a Vichy French-Japanese 1945-49 that followed the Japanese he backdrop to this proj- nities. As commercial and financial within the itself, and in the condominium in 1941-45 offered interlude. Even as nationalist leaders Tect is, of course, the influential intermediaries they played crucial roles aftermath of US occupation and colo- additional room for like Soekarno engaged in diplomatic account of provided by in colonial Southeast Asia and have nization of the archipelago at the turn of manoeuvre. negotiations with the Dutch, popular Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Commu- dominated its business classes since the century. With the as resistance persisted, especially where nities: Reflections on the Origins and . The second and most its colonial master and as the ascendant Nasionalisme, Agama, the ideals and organizations associated Spread of Nationalism, which draws on original thread entails the three most global hegemon, and with colonial Komunisme with transnational Communism and Southeast Asian history and has power- important transnational , net- and Filipinization entrench- If we take Indonesia as a final exam- Islam enjoyed greatest strength. fully shaped its subsequent historiogra- works, and horizons which captivated ing the Chinese mestizo elite in the seats ple, yet another point of transnational Thus the first 50 years of independ- phy. Anderson’s arguments about the the hearts and minds of Southeast of power, European cosmopoli- influence comes into view. As else- ence have been dominated by tension role of colonial administrative bound- Asians in the nineteenth and twentieth tanism and Liberalism ceased to provide where in Southeast Asia, the ferment between the residues of these two very aries, bureaucratic and educational pil- centuries – Liberalism, Communism, a subversive vantage point from beyond in China culminating in the Revolution different transnational currents of mobi- grimages, and languages of state in gen- and Islam – in the lived experiences and the metropole or a horizon for struggle of 1911 inspired and emboldened the lization and by the domesticating erating modern national consciousness activities of both the urban intelli- in the colony. Hence the striking weak- small ‘Chinese’ mercantile minority in impulses and imperatives of successive indeed tell us much about the once gentsia(s) and broader mass publics. ness of ‘nationalist’ movements in the the Dutch East Indies, spurring inno- national state leaders. Today, the alleged seemingly arbitrary, but strikingly The third thread concerns colonial and American colonial Philippines in the vations in associational activity and members of the shadowy Jemaah enduring, boundaries of national iden- post-colonial responses of state author- twentieth century. demands for greater freedoms in the Islamiyah network emerged out of tity in Southeast Asia. These arguments ities, as they worked with varying suc- colony. These trends, in turn, stimulat- Islamic schools affiliated with conser- allow us to trace and explain much of the cess, and with diverse (and often unin- From to ed a ‘native’ reaction, most notably the vative modernist groups – Al-Irsyad and variation in the trajectories and forms of tended) consequences, to create Communism founding of the in 1912, Persatuan Islam – founded in the nationalism in the region. boundaries of various kinds to contain In the starkly contrasting case of the first as a mutual for batik and . With the demise of global Yet Anderson’s and other scholars’ and domesticate these transnational Vietnamese Revolution much that has traders in Java, and by the end of the Communism and the triumph of glob- subsequent writings suggest alternative forces. Combined with the broader con- long been attributed to extraordinary decade as a vehicle for broader popular al Liberalism, the school networks, pil- accounts, in which the boundaries of text of international conflicts, most patriotic fervour can likewise be recast radical mobilization. grimages, and intellectual circuitries national identity and sovereignty are notably World War II, these threads in terms of ’s unparalleled Within the Sarekat Islam, two ideo- associated with , understood as externally imposed lim- combine to weave a tapestry of modern exposure to and immersion within logical strains merged, intermingled, Malaysia, the southern Philippines, and its and domesticating constraints on Southeast Asian history and that transnational currents and interna- and competed for supremacy, each with constitute the one remaining other, profoundly transnational impuls- refutes existing scholarly literature, tional conflicts. After all, China was not its own source of origins and inspiration potentially counter-hegemonic transna- es and aspirations, rather than as the which has long stressed the peculiarities only the origin of an immigrant mer- far from the Indonesian Archipelago. tional force in the region. engines or goals of nationalist struggle. of individual countries and the process- chant minority but a huge, dynamic On the one hand, the currents of Islam- A revisionist account of the formative These accounts show that so-called es of ‘localization’. neighbour whose historical influences ic emanating from the Mid- struggles of modern Southeast Asian ‘nationalist struggles’ – as they are usu- on Vietnamese culture and its own dle East had begun to wash up on the history contests the existing scholarly ally glossed – are driven by transnation- Liberalism and Freemasonry internal transformations exposed intel- shores of Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi, literature, which has tended to focus on al networks, movements, and horizons. In this context, for example, the Rev- lectuals to sources of inspiration and carried by Arab immigrants from the individual nationalist narratives and to Arising out of Southeast Asians’ olution in the Spanish colonial Philip- forces of change far beyond colonial Hadramaut, returning pilgrims from stress processes of cultural translation, encounters with capitalist pines at the end of the nineteenth cen- control. Schooled in Chinese language the Hajj, and scholars returning from indigenization, and localization. The and their exposure to and incorporation tury might be understood not as Asia’s and literature and steeped in the Con- Al-Azhar in Cairo and other major cen- guiding influences of Liberalism, Com- within international ideological currents first nationalist revolution, but as a fucian classics, Vietnamese intellectu- tres of Islamic learning. Thus the early munism, and Islam in the modes of and institutional networks, these cur- product of the rising tide of Liberalism als were unique in Southeast Asia in decades of the twentieth century saw expression and forms of political asso- rents and networks extended beyond the in the archipelago. The opening of their unmediated access to the enor- considerable expansion and innovation ciation and activity of the urban intelli- boundaries of the colony and even of the Philippine ports in the mid-nineteenth mous intellectual and political energy in the realm of Islamic schooling in the gentia, who occupy centre stage in most colonial metropoles. As such, they pro- century, after all, brought the ascendant and ferment in China in the late nine- Dutch East Indies, with the founding of accounts of ‘nationalist movements’ in vided an especially subversive vantage class of assimilated Chinese mestizo teenth and early twentieth centuries modernist madrasah and the formation Southeast Asia, must be demonstrated point from which Southeast Asians merchants, moneylenders, and (and to Chinese logistical support and of modernist organizations like Muham- rather than merely asserted. In the tra- could understand, and challenge, colo- landowners into direct contact with military hardware after 1949). This madiyah, Persatuan Islam, and Al- jectories of movement recruitment and nial rule. Thus, rather than nationalists British and other non-Spanish traders, abiding access to China combined with Irsyad, drawing hundreds of thousands, mass mobilization, moreover, this new undertaking nationalist struggles, the raising fears of Liberal, Protestant, and other networks, experiences, and if not millions, of Muslims into new cir- history ‘from above’ must be connect- proponents of Liberalism, Commu- Freemason influence among the con- visions across national boundaries, cuitries of education, experience, asso- ed to existing histories ‘from below’. nism, and Islam actually constituted the servative administrative and ecclesias- making Vietnam a particularly hos- ciation, and consciousness. On the other Finally, the complex pattern of variation driving force of anti-colonial . tical in the colony. Mean- pitable site for revolutionary mobiliza- hand, the sources of inspiration and in the forms, outcomes, and after- With national independence and the while, the experiences of the privileged tion in the mid-twentieth-century. For organization which had carried Ho Chi maths, of those struggles primarily inevitable crystallization of ‘official children of this class who ventured by the end of , more than Minh and his from Paris to understood as nationalist, must be nationalism’ the most subversive and beyond the Philippine Archipelago were 100,000 Vietnamese soldiers had Moscow to southern China to the vil- made compellingly clear, by using var- mobilizing impulses of these move- highly formative. Not only did they find served in Europe, and many more lages of Tonkin and Annam exerted sim- ious points of comparison within and ments, networks, and horizons were in the throes of conflict between sojourners came to in the fol- ilar drawing power in the Indies. Com- beyond the region. domesticated. Their roles in independ- and the entrenched forces of lowing two decades, where they found intern emissaries and local Communist ence struggles have been retrospective- and Crown; elsewhere in a political atmosphere in which social- organizers began to enjoy increasing Dr John T. Sidel is a Reader in Southeast ly downplayed and attributed to that of Europe they discovered republicanism ist and communist parties enjoyed far success organizing workers on the Asian Politics at the School of Oriental and ‘popular nationalism’. Yet, some of these and post-Enlightenment thought far greater influence and freedom than expanding railroads and plantations. African Studies, University of London. He transnational forces live on, most ‘ahead’ of backward Spain. Socializing their counterparts in other colonial While various Dutch policies, not has recently completed a manuscript titled notably those associated with Islamic in London, painting in Paris, and corre- metropoles. From participating in the least the repression which followed ‘Riots, Pogroms, : Religious Violence in learning, worship, and associational sponding with academics in Berlin, founding of the French Communist hard on the heels of the failed Indonesia’ and will be spending the 2003- activity. these highly cosmopolitan, polyglot Party in Paris in 1920, it was a short of 1926-27, kept these two ‘hidden 2004 and 2004-2005 academic years on a It is essential to trace these transna- ilustrados aspired for Liberal reforms in leap for to begin working forces’ in check until the Japanese inva- British Academy Research Readership. tional threads towards and beyond the Spain and the Philippines, curbing the for the Comintern in Moscow, resur- sion and occupation in 1942-45, their [email protected] achievement of national independence power of Church and Crown. facing in southern China and eventu- through rigorous comparative analysis This exposure to ideas and associa- ally in northern Vietnam with a of Info > of the diverging forms and outcomes of tional forms beyond the Philippines and experiences, ideals, organizational anti-colonial struggles in Southeast Asia. beyond Spain inspired not only the nar- tools, and, it might be added, opportu- At the invitation of Oskar Verkaaik (IIAS), John Sidel presented a lecture at the The first thread relates to the inherent- rowly elitist Movement but nities, which were very different from on the broad outlines of his two-year research project ly transnational force of , also the more plebeian (and distinctly those available to José Rizal and his on 8 May 2003. specifically with regard to the diverging Freemason-like) Katipunan. Yet the lim- compatriots half a century earlier in the

IIAS Newsletter | #32 | November 2003 23