Timothy P. Barnard, Cynthia Chou, Indonesian Sea Nomads; Money, Magic, and Fear of the Orang Suku Laut

Home , Javanese language, Western New Guinea

Book Reviews -Timothy P. Barnard, Cynthia Chou, Indonesian sea nomads; Money, magic, and fear of the Orang Suku Laut. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, xii + 159 pp. -R.H. Barnes, Toos van Dijk, Gouden eiland in de Bandazee; Socio-kosmische ideeën op Marsela, Maluku Tenggara, Indonesië. Leiden: Onderzoekschool voor Aziatische, Afrikaanse en Amerindische studies (CNWS), Universiteit Leiden, 2000, 458 pp. [CNWS Publications 94.] -Andrew Beatty, Peter G. Riddell, Islam and the Malay-Indonesian world; Transmission and responses. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001, xvii + 349 pp. -Peter Boomgaard, Richard H. Grove ,El Niño - history and crisis; Studies from the Asia-Pacific region. Cambridge: White Horse Press, 2000, 230 pp., John Chappell (eds) -Bernardita Reyes Churchill, Florentino Rodao, Franco y el imperio japonés; Imágenes y propaganda en tiempos de guerra. Barcelona: Plaza and Janés, 2002, 669 pp. -Matthew Cohen, Stuart Robson, The Kraton; Selected essays on Javanese courts. Translated by Rosemary Robson-McKillop. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2003, xxvi + 397 pp. [Translation series 28.] -Serge Dunis, Ben Finney, Sailing in the wake of the ancestors; Reviving Polynesian voyaging. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 2003, 176 pp. [Legacy of excellence.] -Heleen Gall, Jan A. Somers, De VOC als volkenrechtelijke actor. Deventer: Gouda Quint, Rotterdam: Sanders Instituut, 2001, x + 350 pp. -David Henley, Harold Brookfield, Exploring agrodiversity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001, xix + 348 pp. -David Hicks, Ernst van Veen ,A guide to the sources of the history of Dutch-Portuguese relations in Asia (1594-1797). With a foreword by Leonard Blussé. Leiden: Institute for the history of European expansion, 2001, iv + 378 pp. [Intercontinenta 24.], Daniël Klijn (eds) -Nico Kaptein, Donald J. Porter, Managing politics and Islam in Indonesia. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002, xxi + 264 pp. -Victor T. King, Monica Janowski, The forest, source of life; The Kelabit of Sarawak. London: British Museum Press, 2003, vi + 154 pp. [Occasional paper 143.] -Dick van der Meij, Andrée Jaunay, Exploration dans la presqu île malaise par Jacques de Morgan 1884. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2003, xiv + 268 pp. Avec les contributions de Christine Lorre, Antonio Guerreiro et Antoine Verney. -Toon van Meijl, Richard Eves, The magical body; Power, fame and meaning in a Melanesian society. Amsterdam: Harwood academic, 1998, xxii + 302 pp. [Studies in Anthropology and History 23.] -Otto van den Muijzenberg, Florentino Rodao ,The Philippine revolution of 1896; Ordinary lives in extraordinary times. Quezon city: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2001, xx + 303 pp., Felice

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Noelle Rodriguez (eds) -Frank Okker, Kees Snoek, Manhafte heren en rijke erfdochters; Het voorgeslacht van E. du Perron op Java. Leiden: KITLV Uitgeverij, 2003, 103 pp. [Boekerij Oost en West'.] (met medewerking van Tim Timmers) -Oona Thommes Paredes, Greg Bankoff, Cultures of disaster; Society and natural hazard in the Philippines, 2003, xviii + 232 pp. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, xviii + 232 pp. -Angela Pashia, Lake' Baling, The old Kayan religion and the Bungan religious reform. Translated and annotated by Jérôme Rousseau. Kota Samarahan: Unit Penerbitan Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, 2002, xviii + 124 pp. [Dayak studies monographs, Oral literature series 4.] -Anton Ploeg, Susan Meiselas, Encounters with the Dani; Stories from the Baliem Valley. New York: International center of photography, Göttingen: Steidl, 2003, 196 pp. -Nathan Porath, Robert W. Hefner, The politics of multiculturalism; Pluralism and citizenship in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001, ix + 319 pp. -Jan van der Putten, Timothy P. Barnard, Multiple centres of authority; Society and environment in Siak and eastern Sumatra, 1674-1827. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2003, xvi + 206 pp. [Verhandelingen 210.] -Jan Piet Puype, David van Duuren, Krisses; A critical bibliography. Wijk en Aalburg: Pictures Publishers, 2002, 192 pp. -Thomas H. Slone, Gertrudis A.M. Offenberg ,Amoko - in the beginning; Myths and legends of the Asmat and Mimika Papuans. Adelaide: Crawford House, 2002, xxviii + 276 pp., Jan Pouwer (eds) -Fridus Steijlen, Kwa Chong Guan ,Oral history in Southeast Asia; Theory and method. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian studies, 2000, xii + 172 pp., James H. Morrison, Patricia Lim Pui Huen (eds) -Fridus Steijlen, P. Lim Pui Huen ,War and memory in Malaysia and Singapore. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian studies, 2000, vii + 193 pp., Diana Wong (eds) -Jaap Timmer, Andrew Lattas, Cultures of secrecy; Reinventing race in Bush Kaliai cargo cults. Madison/London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998, xliv + 360 pp. -Edwin Wieringa, Kartika Setyawati ,Katalog naskah Merapi-Merbabu; Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia. Yogyakarta: Penerbitan Universitas Sanata Dharma, Leiden: Opleiding Talen en Culturen van Zuidoost-Azië en Oceanië, 2002, ix + 278 pp. [Semaian 23.], I. Kuntara Wiryamartana, Willem van der Molen (eds) -Julian Millie, Jakob Sumardjo, Simbol-simbol artefak budaya Sunda; Tafsir-tafsir pantun Sunda. Bandung: Kelir, 2003, xxvi + 364 pp. -Julian Millie, T. Christomy, Wawacan Sama'un; Edisi teks dan analisis struktur Jakarta: Djambatan (in cooperation with the Ford Foundation), 2003, viii + 404 pp. -Julian Millie, Dadan Wildan, Sunan Gunung Jati (antara fiksi dan fakta); Pembumian Islam dengan pendekatan struktural dan kultural. Bandung: Humaniora Utama Press, 2002, xx + 372 pp.

In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 160 (2004), no: 2/3, Leiden, 363-415

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Cynthia Chou, Indonesian sea nomads; Money, magie, andfear of the Orang Suku Laut. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, xii + 159 pp. ISBN 0.7007.1724.2. Price: GBP 55.00 (hardback).

TIMOTHY P. BARNARD

The Orang Suku Laut (commonly translated as Sea Nomads) are a well- known minority group in the Malay World. Their ability to harvest important sea products and act as a navy, as well as their knowledge of local geography, made them a particularly vital component in the rise and fall of Malay polities for over a millennium. In the eighteenth century, however, Bugis and Lanun sailors surpassed the Orang Suku Laut in the Melaka Straits region, resulting in a diminished status for these sea nomads. This marginalization continued for the next two centuries, and even accelerated recently as governments in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia have promoted mod- ernization. The lifestyle and culture of the Orang Suku Laut are now seen as detrimental to attempts to portray these nations as civilized and developed. The interaction and integration of Orang Suku Laut ihto larger economies and governmental structures, and the conflicting identity politics involved, are the focus of this book. The author, Cynthia Chou, is a Singaporean anthropologist who received her training in the United Kingdom and currently works in Denmark. She spent several years living among the Orang Suku Laut in the Riau Archipelago, and this allows for a certain amount of ethnographic detail in the text. For example, at one point Chou becomes involved in a complicated negotiation over payments for the services of a bomoh, a traditional healer, who is being hired to develop an antidote to a love potion. Using such tales as a backdrop, Chou examines how money has influenced the relationship between the Orang Suku Laut and others, particularly Malays. Within the Malay World, Malays and Orang Suku Laut have a complicated relationship. The Orang Suku Laut are considered to be asli, original or indigenous, while at the same time they are denigrated for not being civilized, which is usually equated with a sedentary lifestyle and adherence to Islam. Thus, Malays and Orang Suku Laut try to avoid any direct interaction, particularly shar- ing and assistance in times of need, often using black magie and differing notions of Malayness as a justification for their attitudes toward each other. The infusion of money into the modern economy of Indonesia, however, has transformed this interaction. Money, being a neutral object, allows for

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Malays and Orang Suku Laut, as well as Chinese businessmen, to buy goods from each other without fears of cultural contamination or black magie. This transaction has also transformed the identiry of the Orang Suku Laut as they are now being drawn into a modern economy, adding an additional layer onto the interactions that the Orang Suku Laut have with other groups, thus further complicating their status and role in the region. Chou's accounts of her informants and events affecting them reflect a concern for their well-being, as well as a deeper understanding of the complex economie and identity issues involved. She has constructed a work that captures the difficult transition that nomadic and marginalized groups are undergoing in our modern world. No work is perfect, however. More in- depth accounts of the Orang Suku Laut lifestyle, particularly as it intersected with modern markets in Singapore and Tanjung Pinang, would have pulled even greater nuances out of the material. In addition, some of the chapters are extremely short - for example Chapter II, 'The Setting', describes the history and geography of the region and the Orang Suku Laut in less than five pages of text - while others are quite long considering the length of the book. Aside from such minor editorial criticisms, this is an excellent addition to studies on identity and marginalization of minority groups in the Malay World.

Toos van Dijk, Gouden eiland in de Bandazee; Socio-kosmische ideeën op Marsela, Maluku Tenggara, Indonesië. Leiden: Onderzoekschool voor Aziatische, Afrikaanse en Amerindische Studies (CNWS), Universiteit Leiden, 2000,458 pp. [CNWS Publications 94.] ISBN 90.5789.048.8. Price: EUR 38.57 (paperback).

R.H. BARNES

The golden island Marsela is a very small island with a population of about 2,000 in the Babar Archipelago in the South Moluccas. Van Dijk offers an extremely well organized, clearly presented, and detailed ethnography of these people. In the course of setting out his material he makes numerous apt comparisons to similar features on other islands of the archipelago, elsewhere in the Sóuth Moluccas and to a lesser extent farther afield in eastern Indonesia. The structure of the book facilitates the description and analysis, beginning with a chapter on the yearly cycle, including farming, palm wine tapping, fishing, hunting, head hunting and the raising of animals. There follows a discussion of the gods, autochthonous inhabitants or first arrivals and the ancestors, the house, the village, social relations, gold and textiles, the life cycle and finally the luli ritual. The uniting thread through all of this material

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 365 is a set of prescriptions or prohibitions and analogies or metaphors. The following is a selection of the associations van Dijk draws out. The opposition between odd and even numbers, that is to say incomplete and complete numbers, is of symbolic importance, and the number seven is particularly important. The rule of turning to the right governs the construction of fences around the field against pigs and goats, building of houses, weaving, burial, circle dancing, and erecting the wall around the village. In the house the trunk ends of horizontal pieces of wood must lie to the right, exactly the opposite of Kédang, Lembata, where the identical rule of 'travel to the right' is interpreted as requiring that the tips lie to the right. Vertical pieces of wood must have the top ends up. Bamboo pieces are sometimes oriented in the reverse direction of wood. The opposition of hot and cold is of ritual importance, goats are hot and pigs cool. Building a house is like a dangerous trip and associated with heat. Fish traps are seen as living beings with eyes, ears and feet. Although the analogy between boats and houses is not as developed as on other Babar islands, the house is orientated to the length of the island and compared with a boat and both the boat and the house are regarded as living, female bodies. The house is a turned over boat. The appearance of Pleiades in the east just after sunset is a sign for planting. Pleiades also carries illness to the west. Space limits any further listing of the analogies revealed in this very rich ethnography. It might be mentioned though that the descent groups are pat- rilineal, linked by ties of marriage in which the relationship between men and their sisters and sisters' offspring and between wife-givers and wife-tak- ers is of central importance, while the relationship terminology is cognatic and does not embody a marriage rule. Van Dijk offers a very clear and detailed description of weaving. He states that the direction in which the thread is spun is not technically determined, and it is his opinion that they have chosen the Z-spun pattern because of the general preference for turning to the right. Be that as it may, eastern Indonesian thread is generally Z-spun. A right-handed person would normally produce such thread with a drop spindle. Given the very many local words, it is a great help that he has supplied a glossary, but not all expressions are to be found in it. Unfortunately there is no index. The diagrams are excellent and the maps and photographs useful. A broken off sentence occurs on page 48. Otherwise Van Dijk has written a very satisfying book.

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Peter G. Riddell, Islam and the Malay-Indonesian World; Transtnis- sion and responses. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001, xvii + 349 pp. ISBN 0.8248.2473.3. Price: USD 42.00 (hardback).

ANDREW BEATTY

This useful and compendious book covers the entire period of Islam in Southeast Asia, from its earliest establishment almost a millenium ago up to 1998 - coincidentally a fateful year for the region's largest Muslim nation. In contrast to most such surveys, the author eschews the social and political aspects of Islamization in favour of a focus on theology. Riddell is not concerned with the how and why of conversion - there is nothing here about the missionary saints or the fall of Majapahit. Instead he asks what kind of Islam grew among the spirit cults and Hindu-Buddhist ruins. How did it develop from its classical Arabic roots? What scholarly contacts were main- tained? And what in turn did Malay and Indonesian ulama contribute to the broader currents of Islamic civilization? Unlike most surveys of the field, Riddell takes the trouble to tracé the precise scholarly connections between the Muslim heartlands and Southeast Asia, charting the changing influence of Arab thinkers on Islam's furthest shores. The book begins with a long - though necessarily compressed - account of the scriptural and intellectual foundations of Islam, highlighting the debates that would become central in the development of Southeast Asian Islam. Particular attention is given to questions of reason versus revelation, disputes about the orthodoxy of monism, and Islamic responses to decolonization. There are concise sections on the fixing of the canonical texts and the exegesis of the Qur'an, again highlighting commentators whose work became influential in Southeast Asia. Part II covers Malay-Indonesian Islam up to 1900 and Part III concerns the region in the twentieth century. In each section Riddell briefly sets out the terms of theological debate on such issues as free will and determinism, eschatology, and Sufi heterodoxy, and proceeds to identify their analogues in the Malay-Indonesian world. Each section is illustrated with quotations from the principal thinkers and bullet-point summaries. As with theological disputes in other traditions, one finds reported here a mixture of the weighty and the arcane, the impressive and the tedious. Apparently no-one wondered how many angels could dance on a pinhead, but Malay commentators did worry whether women as well as men would appear naked before God on judgment day. ('So I asked, "O Prophet of God! Won't all the women feel ashamed?'")- Beyond the scholastic quibbles, however, in the translation of Islam across regions, subtler, more far-reaching modulations could also be feit, in particular a concern with cultural pluralism and an emphasis on narrative exegesis - designed, Riddell suggests, to capture a wider audience. In

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 367 the new setting, the diversity of Islam and the terms of that diversity were reproduced. In Riddell's presentation, certain countercurrents also emerge. In contrast to the Middle East, it was during the formative period of Islam in Southeast Asia that Sufism predominated; likewise the debate over reason and revelation followed, rather than preceded, the institutional quarrel between Sufi theosophy and shariah-minded Islam - reversing the pattern of Middle Eastern history. Even so, the effect of Riddell's dogged tracing of parallels across a millenium is to emphasize how closely and consistently Southeast Asian Islam has been integrated into the wider Islamic community - a sharp reminder to those of us who have taken an interest in its local diversions and deviations. And yet the exclusive focus on texts must, surely, tend to exaggerate this effect. Local understandings, syncretic practices, oral traditions, and heterodox reactions are not so well recorded, or else must be read between the lines of officially sanctioned texts. (In the stories of mystical martyrs, it is the heretics, like Milton's Satan, who mostly get the best lines.) In normative Islam the text may be primary, but the unwritten living context, as Riddell would no doubt agree, remains an important part of the picture. And once we stray beyond orthodoxy the relation of reader to text, or word to reality, is quite different. A textual reading of Ranggawarsita might reveal echoes of Ibn al-'Arabi or Hamzah Fansuri, but how important are such echoes? Without knowing how Javanese mystical texts were (or are) actually used, it is hard to teil. Given the centrality of practice in Javanese mysticism, a literal-minded reading is not in question: the eclectic number schemes and mystifying classifications of 'emanations' and 'stages' are no more than pointers in the personal quest for mystical experience; as such they enter into the rich mix of wayang lore, esoteric oral tradition, contemplation and practical philosophy that is Javanism. In Java, at least, a textual concern with 'transmission and response' reaches its natural limits. Theology gives way to ethnography. Such observations do not detract from the essential value of this book. With his command of the Arabic and Malay sources, his effective selections and comparisons, and his succinct expositions of doctrine, Riddell has performed a useful service to all students of the region.

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Richard H. Grove and John Chappell (eds), El Nino - history and crisis; Studies from the Asia-Pacific region. Cambridge: White Horse Press, 2000, 230 pp. ISBN 1.87426.742.1. Price: GBP 35.00 (hardback).

PETER BOOMGAARD

When the Dutch meteorologist H.P. Berlage published his analysis of tree- rings of ancient Javanese teak trees in 1931, it is unlikely that he foresaw that his findings would still be used in mainstream meteorological research 70 years later. He documented a cycle of weather anomalies, occurring on aver- age every 3.5 years, which today would be called El Nino or ENSO events, ENSO being an acronym for El Nino-Southern Oscillation (the Southern Oscillation was an earlier term linked to what we now call the El Nifto cycle). Prior to 1997, apart from meteorologists, only some agronomists, social scientists and historians with an interest in environmental factors were aware of the existence of these cycles. However, after the severe El Nino event of 1997- 1998 terms such as 'ENSO phenomenon' and 'El Nino event' became part of the Standard equipment of many social scientists, particularly those with an interest in the Pacific in the broadest sense of the word. The volume of essays under review capitalizes on that increased aware- ness. It consists of 12 papers; there is no explanation of how the book was put together, and the papers are of quite a diverse nature. The first chapter (by Richard Grove and John Chappell) deals with the archival record over the last 500 years. The next four chapters have a more or less technical character. Two of them (one by Michael Gagan and John Chappell, the other by Malcolm McCulloch, Graham Mortimer, Chantal Alibert and John Marshall) deal with the coral record, and one (Simon Haberle) with pollen analysis, while the fourth (Neville Nicholls) is a brief paper dealing with a variety of topics. The next chapter (Rosalie Woodruff and Charles Guest) stands alone, dealing with public health and epidemiological prospects. The other six chapters are all focused on specific areas: three on New Guinea (Bryant Ellen, Chris Ballard, Michael Bourke), one on Indonesia Qames Fox), one on India (Cezary Kapuscinski) and the fïnal one on Australia (J.C.G. Banks). The three chapters on New Guinea (two on Papua New Guinea and one on what was then called Irian Jaya) and the one on Indonesia all deal with the 1997-1998 ENSO event. There has been no attempt to formulate a framework for these papers, let alone a final chapter in which the findings of the essays are been drawn together. Social scientists will be most interested in the first chapter, on the past 500 years, and in the area studies. The 'technical' chapters are sometimes hard to follow, as not all writers are prepared to explain the symbols and terminology they are using - an observation that also applies to the chapter on India,

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 369 an otherwise informative paper. The first chapter probably contains food for thought for everyone. One of its main objectives is to show that severe El Niftos are certainly not a recent phenomenon, as has been suggested by some in an erroneous attempt to link the ENSO events to the phenomenon of global warming. This wide-ranging chapter is often more suggestive than conclusive and this, at the present state of our research, it not something to be held against it. One of its suggestions is that although ENSO events are usually thought of as phenomena pertaining to the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, links with European patterns are also a distinct possibility. The chapter also contains a warning against regarding all droughts and other weather anomalies as ENSO-related. It is also made clear that the effects of ENSO events are quite uneven - although the authors stop short of saying that not all ENSO events generate weather anomalies, which would appear to be a logical corollary of such a warning. Although it is quite clear that until recent years the role of weather anomalies in history has been underestimated, the authors of this chapter from time to time appear to have succumbed to the temptation of going to the opposite extreme and attribut- ing too many historical developments to ENSO events.

Florentino Rodao, Franco y el imperio japonés; Imdgenes y propaganda en tiempos de guerra. Barcelona: Plaza and Janés, 2002, 669 pp. ISBN 84.01.53054.7. Price: EUR 17.31 (hardback).

BERNARDITA REYES CHURCHILL

This book tells of the relations between Spain and Japan, both Axis powers, from 1939-1945, a period covering the Second World War in Europe and in the Pacific. Mutual interests (in a 'New Order' in their respective spheres, North Africa and East Asia) that developed between Spain and Japan during the decade before 1939 resulted in their working closely together both in the international and the domestic spheres during the war. World War II was an important but difficult period in the history of Spain. The war broke out five months after the Spanish Civil War ended (in April 1939). Officially Spain remained neutral in the war, but Franco drew closer to Germany after the fall of France in 1940 when it seemed that Germany would win the war. Late in 1942, however, the tide of war began to turn against Germany and Franco became friendlier towards Britain, the United States, and other Allied countries, while relations with Japan started to deteriorate. The historiography of Spanish politics and international relations during the war years has focused primarily on relations with the Axis powers in western

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Europe. There has been scant attention to the other important arena of the war in the Pacific and East Asia, where the role of Japan was foremost, and where relations with the United States and the Philippines figure prominently. Florentino Rodao's book fills this important gap in the historiography of Spain in World War II. In writing this book the author has drawn on his extensive knowledge of Japanese studies and facility with the Japanese language, which has enabled him to situate Franco's Spain in the context of developments in Japan. This is a study for which extensive and impressive research has been undertaken, using archival, printed, and unpublished materials not only from Spain and other European countries but also from Japan, the United States, and the Philippines. The book is significant in its portrayal of a four-point relationship - Spain and Japan, and the United States and the Philippines. Extensive details are presented regarding the various positions and motivations of Spain in its relations with Japan, and its espionage activities in the United States. Attention is given to the implications of the American occupation of the Philippines, a former Spanish colony where a fairly substantial Spanish community still lived. Starting in 1939, Spain helped Japan in its war effort in the Pacific and against the United States. It assisted Japan in crucial espionage activities with a valuable network in the United States, as well as with information from the Spanish Ministry of Intelligence relating to the impending war in the Pacific. It provided representation for Japanese citizens in the Americas (in War Relocation Centers in the United States, and in Brazil and Peru where there were large Japanese communities). Spain also attempted, albeit with very little success, to make provisions for the exchange of raw materials needed by the Japanese war machine. It even undertook to encourage occupied territo- ries accept Japanese rule, although in the Philippines its lack of success in this endeavour was reflected in the very strong and widespread anti-Japanese guerrilla movement which operated in the islands. Spain and Japan initially thought that mutual collaboration would be possible above all in the Philippines where they shared a common enemy, the United States. But it did not take long for Madrid to realize that this was not possible: support for the Japanese occupation of the Philippines did not become a reality, and eventually it also became apparent that such support would not benefit Spain either. As a consequence there was increasing ten- sion between Madrid and Tokyo. In the end Madrid turned against Japan, reacting very strongly to the massacre of Spanish and Filipinos in Manila in February 1945 and at the same time anticipating the radically changed circumstances which an Allied victory would bring. In Rodao's opinion friendly relations between Spain and Japan did not survive the war because a stable base of meaningful commercial, economie, or political relations was lacking. Racial antipathy and socio-cultural differences, as well as geographi-

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 371 cal separation, were also contributory factors. The book is a valuable contribution to the historiography of World War II. Rodao describes in detail the role of espionage and propaganda during the war using a wide collection of Spanish, American, and Japanese sources including interviews with several key actors of the time. He also presents new interpretations of certain issues - for instance, the Franco government's recognition of the Japanese-sponsored Philippine Republic under José P. Laurel and the intended revival of Spanish influence or dominion in the Philippines. The section in the book that touches on the Spanish community in the Philippines during the war points to a need for in-depth study of this important group in Philippine society. Philippine historiography has been remiss in looking at the Spanish interface of Filipino society and the decline of the Spanish legacy after the Philippines was lost to the United States in 1898 and Philippine independence was recognized in 1946. This book tells part of that story, and points at the same time to areas in which research still needs to be undertaken. It is one of the few books which looks at the Pacific War from the Spanish perspective.

Stuart Robson (ed.), The Kraton; Selected essays on Javanese courts. Translated by Rosemary Robson-McKillop. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2003, xxvi + 397 pp. [Translation Series 28.] ISBN 90.6718.131.5. Price: EUR 33.00 (hardback).

MATTHEW COHEN

A flowering of Oriëntalist scholarship took place in the royal court cities of Yogyakarta and Surakarta in the last decades of the colonial period among a circle of Javanese, European, and Eurasian educated elites. This research and study on Java, past and present, co-articulated with new opportunities for tertiary education for the Principalities' hereditary nobility. It also interacted with cross-ethnic interest in theosophy and associated schools of thought cel- ebrating Eastern Wisdom; the establishment of training courses open to both Europeans and Javanese in traditional Javanese arts and culture, such as the Yogyakarta dance school Krida Beksa Wirama (founded 1918); the embracing of European pastimes including whist, embroidery, social dancing, and chamber music by Asian elites; and the appropriation of traditional Javanese symbols and motifs by European modernists both in Java and in Europe. This was a radically hybrid, and somewhat rarefied, cultural world. Wayang wong dance-theatre spectacles held at the Kraton (royal courts) were avidly anticipated by both Javanese and Dutch spectators; a traditional Javanese

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access 372 Book reviews ruler such as Mangkunagara VII could exposit on wayang kulit symbology in Dutch to the Solonese Cultural-Philosophical Study Circle; and advanced photographic technologies were scrupulously employed to record the minu- tiae of court ritual and heraldry. For much of the nineteenth century, Javanese courtiers and kings were occupied creating new forms of pageantry and writing mythology adjusted to the circumscriptions of colonialism. During the twentieth century, their descendents were busy codifying and researching these invented traditions - often in tandem with Europeans and Eurasians. The hub of Oriëntalist activity in the Principalities was the Yogyakarta-based Java Institute, which organized regular congresses featuring lectures and artistic performances in different cities of the archipelago, and published the Dutch-language cultural journal, Djdwd. The congresses and journal attracted a mixture of amateur 'Javanologists' and Javanese cultural enthusiasts and professionally trained historians, philologists, and anthropologists. Stuart Robson's anthology is a selection of eighteen articles originally published in Dutch in Djdwd in the period 1927-1941 (with two exceptions). All deal primarily with the subject of the Kraton of Yogyakarta and Surakarta. Articles range from detailed discussions of palace architecture and symbolic understandings of associated spaces and places (including Yogyakarta's royal cemeteries, shrines and royal ruins); royal rituals (Islamic holidays, royal weddings, royal offerings to tutelary spirits, and the like); and the practice and patronage of literature and the classical performing arts in the courts. 'A note on the articles and their authors' concluding the volume reveals that the volume's Javanese, European, and Eurasian contributors worked in the Principalities in government, education, lexicography, translation, and (pos- sibly) electrical engineering. One author was a son of Yogyakarta's sultan, and later a senior Kraton official, writing from an insider's perspective on royal ritual. Another was a devoted French student of Javanese language, dance, and gamelan, and later an archaeologist, writing about the cross-culrural aesthetics of wayang wong. Irrespective of their different social positions, the authors unanimously embrace the Principalities' courts as the cynosure of Javanese culture. A short foreword by Hamengku Buwono X and an all- too-brief introduction by Robson situate the scholarship within the late colonial period, and demonstrate 'the continuing respect in which the Kraton is held [...] in Yogyakarta' today (p. xxiii). With the exception of some of the articles on the arts, most of the contributions are descriptive rather than analytical. There is precious little reference to palace intrigue or the personalities or characters of royals - the stuff reported daily in the popular press was found 'extremely embarrassing' for those concerned' (p. 169). Instead we are treated to magisterial accounts of public processions, detailed descriptions of interior spaces, long notes on royal garb. Perhaps most interesting for today's reader will be the many details regarding

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 373 how Java's hereditary nobility negotiated late colonialism in their rites and practices. We read, for example, of a sacred bedhaya dance from Yogyakarta that can 'never [be] performed outside the Kraton, except once a year on 31 August on the Queen's birthday at the residence of the Governor' (p. 230). Ancestors and holy men of the distant past received unpalatable foods such as pecel tawon - boiled bees in spicy peanut sauce - as royal offerings, while more recent ancestors demanded Koh-i-Noor brand Egyptian cigarettes, bread with egg, and a rose in a vase (p. 209). In the past, newly married royal couples were secluded indoors, but from 1939 onward they were permitted to visit shops and cinemas (p. 175). Poignant transformations take place in the use and treatment of pusaka, the royal heirlooms in which much of the power and authority of the Kraton is stored. A dough doll must be regularly offered to Kyai Pengarab-Arab, the cleaver formerly used for royal executions, to appease 'its former bloodlust' (p. 254); the many lances that are the Kraton's most sacred pusaka were used in parades as banner-poles. The English translation by Robson-McKillop is solid, though there are a number of conspicuous typographical errors. One thought that struck me is that a volume of this sort, which deals in the concrete details of Kraton architecture and practices, would have been better suited to appear as a DVD-ROM than as a book. Abstract descriptive passages could be supple- mented with actual photographs and films, archival and recent, of places and performances depicted. The poetry of P.A.A. Mangkunagara IV, which 'should [...] be taken as a sort of score for singing' (p. 293), could be heard rather than just described. Such an electronic edition of The Kraton, including both the Dutch texts and their English translations, is an obvious project for the future. Anyone interested in 'traditional' Javanese authority and its construction will gain much from studying The Kraton. Devotees of the arts will be delighted by the volume's inclusion of classic essays by Pigeaud, Damais and Ki Hadjar Dewantara on Javanese literature and performance.

Ben Finney, Sailing in the wake of the ancestors; RevivingPolynesian voyaging. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 2003,176 pp. [Legacy of Excellence.] ISBN 158.17802.49. Price: USD 19.95 (paperback).

SERGE DUNIS

Sailing in the wake of the ancestors; Reviving Polynesian voyaging is more than just Volume 3 of the Hokule'a trilogy. The 168 pages of this valuable little book (140 pages of lavishly illustrated text, 20 pages of notes, glossary, references and index) condense Ben Finney's incomparable contribution to anthropol-

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access 374 Book reviews ogy. In 1979, Hokule'a; The way to Tahiti chronicled the epoch-making voyage of the first reconstructed double-hull Polynesian canoe able to reconnect one of the summits of the Polynesian triangle, Hawai'i, with its centre of gravity, Tahiti, more than 2,000 nautical miles away. lts well illustrated 300 pages read like a novel and taught its readers about, among other things, pre-European dead reckoning: the uncanny ability to sail for a month without any instrument, relying on stars, swells, birds and clouds to take bearings, in a feat of the kind of practical knowledge of nature that Claude Lévi-Strauss had recently extolled in his forbidding study of the American Indians. In 1994, Voyage of rediscovery; A cultural Odyssey through Polynesia needed 400 pages to tracé the repeat of the 1976 feat and its transformation into an almost complete rehearsal of the settlement of the Pacific as originally launched from Samoa-Tonga by the Polynesians, after they had acquired their new identity in transit from Southeast Asia through island Melanesia. Named after the zenith star of Hawai'i, Hokule'a had crisscrossed the blue of the Polynesian triangle to another apex: New Zealand, via seven archipela- gos and across 12,000 nautical miles. Volume 2 was thorough and demanded concentration to assimilate its wealth of data. Let us now praise Volume 3, which strikes a beautiful balance between its two predecessors. An ever- youthful Ben Finney is enjoying the vantage point of his recent retirement to look at things from the proper perspective. For Sailing in the wake of the ancestors is a vivid synthesis of a lifetime dedi- cated to the Pacific, to anthropology born anew amidst the ocean waves, and to Polynesians. Living up to what our calling is all about, the urge to rescue threatened cultures, Ben Finney is too noble a colleague to admit that he is the one who triggered off the bailing out of the Polynesian navigational past which had been sunk by contact with the Western world. The magie of this terse little book consists in embarking us on this enterprise of refloating the art of landfinding. Against all odds, namely Sharp and Heyerdahl, Ben Finney left his native California on his own reconstructed doublé canoe, bound for Hawai'i to launch the reconstructed doublé canoe able to show that the Polynesians were no mere drifters or raft makers. These ancestors knew that the trade winds would drop and allow the west winds to take them further and further into the east, until South America was within reach to contribute the precious sweet potato needed to claim both altitude and latitude. The transition from ego to synergy is here fundamental: Ben Finney is a boatman pointing to the immaterial seamark of tale, legend or mythology in order to show the far-reaching cultural and practical implications involved in building a voyaging canoe with the people first and foremost concerned by this Renaissance, a process implying the capacity to discard what is no longer culturally relevant. Constantly juggling with erudition, shipbuilding and group dynamism, the book mirrors the author's life. We are thus ferried

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 375 across the widest ocean on earth by someone who never minimizes the risks involved, but remains undaunted. We follow Nainoa ma (the Polynesian word ma refers here to the young Hawai'ian and his followers who are taking over from the Micronesian master navigator and initiator Mau) ploughing the former traditional sea routes, simply because sailing without instruments from one archipelago to another is once again possible: past, present and future are back in a working concatenation. That this feat originated in an Americanized island (Polynesia's superlative example of Western assimila- tion?) could even be considered refreshing since cultures, like individuals, seem to have a propensity to reach their breaking point before being able to bounce back. True to his proverbial self-effacement, after having wrapped us in the web of Hawaiki, the mythical homeland, to explain the raison d'être of the contemporary 'regatta' of six canoes illustrating the cultural resilience of the Hawaiian, Cook Islanders and Maori in Tahitian and Marquesan waters, Ben Finney winds his brisk work around the gripping biography of Nainoa's father, 'Pinky' Thompson, the one native bridge between past and present who could not be fooled by bygone ethnic rivalries. Sailing in the wake of the ancestors is the précis which students, lovers and sailors of the Pacific needed to bid a final farewell to armchair anthropology.

Jan A. Somers, De VOC als volkenrechtelijke actor. Deventer: Gouda Quint, Rotterdam: Sanders Instituut, 2001, x + 350 pp. ISBN 90.387.0865.3. Price: EUR 52.25 (paperback).

HELEEN GALL

Het hier besproken boek is de handelseditie van de op 6 december 2001 aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam verdedigde dissertatie. Hierin wordt het optreden van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in Azië vanuit een Europees volkenrechtelijk gezichtspunt beschreven. Daarbij is gekozen voor een beperking tot Java, de Molukken, Ceylon en Kaap de Goede Hoop. Andere Aziatische gebieden, zoals Perzië, China en Japan, komen niet aan de orde omdat de VOC aldaar niet of nauwelijks de kans kreeg om volkenrechtelijk te opereren. Het boek bevat twaalf hoofdstukken die voorafgegaan worden door een viertal pagina's waarin doel, kader en opzet van de studie uiteengezet worden. Na een korte Finale wordt het boek afgesloten met bijlagen, kaar- ten van de behandelde gebieden, een namen- en zakenregister, een lijst van de geraadpleegde literatuur en een samenvatting zowel in het Engels als in het Indonesisch. De bijlagen bevatten de gebruikte bronnen die weliswaar

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access 376 Book reviews elders in gedrukte vorm te vinden zijn, maar toch als dienstverlening zijn opgenomen. In Hoofdstuk 1 wordt uiteengezet hoe het volkenrechtelijk opereren van de VOC het beste kan worden begrepen. Een volkenrecht zoals wij dat heden ten dage kennen, bestond aan het begin van de zeventiende eeuw nog niet. In die tijd gingen staten in hun internationale betrekkingen uit van hun eigen staatsrecht. Bij gebrek aan regelgeving vanuit het moederland - maar wel voorzien van een door de Staten-Generaal verleende volmacht, vastgelegd in het Octrooi van 1602 - paste de VOC de in het moederland bestaande staats- rechtelijke regels toe. Hoofdstuk 2 is gewijd aan de politieke en economische constellatie in de Nederlanden waarvan het opereren in Azië niet los gezien kan worden. In Hoofdstuk 3 komt het reilen en zeilen van Europeanen in Azië die de Nederlanders daarnaar voorgegaan waren, aan de orde. Na in Hoofdstuk 4 de voorlopers van de VOC, de zogenaamde voorcompagnieën behandeld te hebben, worden in Hoofdstuk 5 de oprichting van de VOC, het aan de Compagnie door de Staten-Generaal verleende Octrooi en de volkenrechtelijke gevolgen daarvan beschreven. Hoofdstuk 6 is besteed aan het twaalfjarig bestand, de voor de VOC nadelige invloed daarvan op de handel in Azië en aan het met Engeland gesloten accoord. De Hoofdstukken 7 tot en met 11 zijn achtereenvolgens gewijd aan de verovering van Jakatra en de stich- ting van Batavia, de verhoudingen van de VOC vanuit Batavia tot Bantam en Mataram en de toestand op de Molukken, op Ceylon en aan de Kaap de Goede Hoop. In elk hoofdstuk wordt aan het einde aandacht aan de volkenrechtelijke aspecten gegeven. Het laatste hoofdstuk bevat een samenvattend overzicht en conclusies waar het de VOC als volkenrechtelijke actor betreft. De auteur geeft in de eerste vier pagina's aan dat hij zich ervan bewust is dat hij door louter gebruik te maken van Europees bronnenmateriaal eenzijdig te werk is gegaan. Tegelijkertijd geeft hij aan dat die eenzijdigheid 'onontkoombaar [is] vanwege het ontbreken van betrouwbare Aziatische bronnen' (p. 2). Bedoelt hij daarmee alleen uitgegeven of ook (nog) niet uitgegeven bronnen? Al lezend bekroop mij bovendien het gevoel dat de auteur ook waar dit het gebruik van het Europees bronnenmateriaal betreft, te eenzijdig te werk is gegaan. Hij heeft immers alleen uitgegeven bronnenmateriaal geraadpleegd. Wellicht kan het inventariseren en uitgeven van-bronnenmateriaal dat zich in de archieven van bijvoorbeeld Jakarta, Colombo en Kaapstad bevindt, een aanzet zijn voor een vervolgstudie. Daarvoor is het hier besproken boek een prachtige uitvalsbasis.

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Harold Brookfield, Exploring agrodiversity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001, xix + 348 pp. ISBN 0.231.10232.1, price USD 78.00 (hardback); 0.231.10233.X, USD 36.50 (paperback).

DAVID HENLEY

Normally speaking, books with words like 'complexity' or 'diversity' in their titles contain few strong arguments and condescendingly imply that their readers assume the world is simple. In Exploring agrodiversity, however, the central theme is not the mere fact of diversity, but its usefulness. This book is a celebration, as well as an exploration, of the dynamic diversity of small-scale farming: diversity of crops and strains, of techniques and knowledge, varying from place to place, between individual farmers in the same area, within a single holding, and above all from one period to another - that is, change over time. Making effective use of historical data from parts of Asia and Africa where until recently farming behaviour tended to be described in terms of, or at least in relation to, particular sets of practices identified as inherited traditions, Brookfield convincingly does away with the lingering idea that small farmers are instinctively conservative. Instead they are shown to be adaptable and enterprising, taking rapid advantage of whatever commercial opportunities opportunities are available to them. Yet at the same time, Brookfield argues, the characteristic diversity of their crops and techniques, as well as their wide-ranging expertise in such areas as biological pest control and their interest in long-term investments in tree crops and in land improvements such as terracing, are ultimately better for the stability and resilience of agricultural ecosystems than are the chemical-drenched, genetically modified monocul- tures often created by large agribusinesses. The agrodiversity of small farms, in other words, is a valuable resource for the future. Harold Brookfield is familiar to Southeast Asianists from works such as Southeast Asia's environmental future; The searchfor sustainability (1993), which he edited with Yvonne Byron, and In place of the for est; Environmental and socio-economic transformation in Borneo and the eastern Malay Peninsula (1995), which he wrote together with Leslie Potter and Yvonne Byron. The scope of Exploring agrodiversity is global, with emphases on New Guinea (the site of extended field research by Brookfield from 1958 to 1970) and parts of Europe, Africa and Latin America as well as Southeast Asia. Nevertheless it is Southeast Asia which provides the greatest number of case studies: the Ifugao highlands and the interior of Mindoro in the Philippines, four villages near Kuala Lumpur in West Malaysia, communities in several parts of Java, and the areas inhabited by Iban, Kantu', Kayan and Kenyah swidden culti- vators in Borneo. In many cases these locations were chosen because they were the sites of important descriptive monographies in the past, and the

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access 378 Book reviews way in which Brookfield's historical approach reveals such classic studies as Freeman's Iban agriculture (1955) and Conklin's Hanunóo agriculture (1957) as elaborate snapshots of fleeting moments in time, rather than encyclopediae of integral and persisting farming systems, is sometimes almost disconcert- ingly illuminating. Two common patterns of change here are a development of swidden farming in the direction of commercial smallholder agroforestry (with rice increasingly giving way to rubber), and a wholesale displacement of small farmers by logging and oil palm plantations. Building as it does on earlier works such as Richards' Indigenous agricultural revolution (1985) and Netting's Smallholders, householders (1993), Exploring agrodiversity is not a dramatically innovative book. But it does provide a lucid and interesting summary of a new view of small farmers and their relationships with environments and markets which has emerged over the last 20 years. Along the way it also illuminates many related topics of equally general interest: there is, for instance, an excellent discussion of the theories surrounding agriculrural intensification, and a handy critical overview of the Green Revolution and its consequences. Chapter V, 'Understanding soils and soil-plant dynamics', provides a wealth of useful material on tropical soils in relation to agriculture - a subject on which concise, accessible and reliable information is otherwise surprisingly difficult to find. Critical readers may regret that the book contains little serious consideration of land tenure and the question of what determines whether farms are small or large; that the ecology of irrigated farming is not discussed in detail; and (on a more practical front) that page numbers are never included in the literature references even when these relate to specific points of information. But Exploring agrodiversity, like Brookfield's other books, is an important work of wide appeal, not least to Southeast Asianists and to environmental historians.

Ernst van Veen and Daniël Klijn, A guide to the sources of the history of Dutch-Portuguese relations in Asia (1594-1797). With a foreword by Leonard Blussé. Leiden: Institute for the History of European Expansion, 2001, iv + 378 pp. [Intercontinenta 24.] ISSN 0165.2850 (paperback).

DAVID HICKS

The vast array of documents catalogued here includes, but is not limited to, journals, narratives, letters, administrative papers, maps, contracts, books, notary statements, messages, reports, instructions, resolutions, propositions, logbooks, and interrogations, each dated and identified as to provenance.

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In his introduction Ernst van Veen, who apparently did most of the work of compilation itself, remarks that the documents inventoried derive for the most part from the involvement of the Portuguese in Asia as observed by personnel of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC). The massive size of the documentation extant in the VOC archives made it a matter of practical necessity, he remarks, to limit the scope of the present work only to those materials dating from the first Dutch voyages to the East Indies and - af ter the VOC had been established in 1602 - to the documents sent from Asia to the company in the Netherlands. These are preserved at the Algemeen Rijksarchief (now the Nationaal Archief) in The Hague. Among them are the Overgekomen brieven en papieren which consist of copies of letters and documents exchanged between the central VOC administration in Batavia and the local governors, factory heads, and captains of the Asian fleets. Once or twice a year these papers would be assembled and sent to the Gentlemen XVII in Amsterdam as appendices to the Generale missiven for their information and to be filed. Van Veen and Klijn would appear to have ransacked the Overgekomen brieven en papieren with implacable resolve in their determination to make their inventory as comprehensive as possible, and one can imagine that few significant documents containing references to the Portuguese could have eluded their sharp scrutiny. The results of this aspect of their research are contained in the chapter entitled 'General inventory of the incoming and out- going documents of the VOC (1607-1797)'. The majority of the other chapters consists of documentation arranged according to the different geographical regions in which the Portuguese were in contact with the Dutch, and these are entitled 'VOC and Goa'; 'VOC and Malacca'; 'VOC and Coromandel, Bengal and Burma'; 'VOC and Ceylon'; and 'VOC and Macassar'. Another chapter, 'The first Dutch fleets to the Indies', comprises pre-VOC material, and the volume concludes with a listing of published works containing transcriptions of selected documents and literature related to the early commercial expansion of the Dutch in Asia and their confrontations with the Portuguese. It goes without saying that this volume is an essential reference tooi for every scholar working on the history of the Portuguese and Dutch in Asia. Well over two thousand documents are catalogued and each is contextualized by the compilers by means of annotations - some expansive, some consisting of a single sentence, but each informative - that augment its value. This splen- did work was made possible by a happy collaboration between the Comissao National para as Comemora^öes dos Descobrimentos Portugueses and the Leiden Centre for the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction, in the persons of António Manuel Hespanha, Arturo Teodoro de Matos and Leonard Blussé, and they deserve thanks for encouraging the two compilers to work on this project and for helping bring it to an impressive conclusion.

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Donald J. Porter, Managing politics and Islam in Indonesia. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002, xxi + 264 pp. ISBN 0.7007.1736.6. Price: GBP 65.00 (hardback).

NICO KAPTEIN

This clearly written book deals with state-Islam relations in Indonesia, beginning essentially with the rise to power of President Soeharto and ending with the 1999 General Election under President Habibie. The book consists of two major parts. The first part (Chapters II to VI) provides a theoretical and analytical overview of the initiatives taken by the Suharto administration to manage state-Islam relations; while the second part of the book (Chapters VII to X) deals with the growing opposition to the Soeharto regime, and analyses where and why it went wrong. The main argument of the book is that in the 1970s and 1980s the state excluded the political aspirations of Muslim interest groups, while in the 1990s more inclusionary strategies towards Islam were followed. The author is well aware that many scholars, like Hefner, Schwarz, Ramage and others, have already dealt with the relationship between Islam and state in Indonesia, but in a rather pretentious introductory chapter he claims that 'these early studies because of the time that they were made, were unable to explore in depth the outcome of Soeharto's strategy of co-optation' (p. 5). Interestingly, among his predecessors he does not mention the well-known political scientist R. William Liddle, although two papers by this scholar (from 1977 and 1993 respectively) are listed in the references. In addition to this advantage of hindsight, another novel thing about the book is that Porter aims to examine the specific strategies used by the Soeharto administration to deal with the aspirations of the Muslim population within the national context, which he claims have not yet received much scholarly attention (p. 5). Throughout the book, Porter uses the concept of state corporatism as the main analytical tooi with which to study the power relations between the state (including the military), the umma and other interest groups. It is shown that the New Order administration either incorporated particular interest groups within structures of its own creation, or excluded and repressed interest groups which were not willing to be co-opted. It is from this perspective that all well-known historical events are presented and understood: the merging of the political parties, the strengthening of Golkar, the establishment of the Majelis Ulama Indonesia and other religious organizations, the promulgation of the Pancasila as the sole foundation of all organizations, the introduction of the P4 indoctrination programmes, and the establishment in December 1990 of Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia (ICMI, Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals) which had Soeharto's support and which Porter sees

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 381 as an instrument to reduce the influence of the army as well as to co-opt the Muslim community. It is in this same vein that the fall of Soeharto in May 1998 is interpreted by Porter: as an event which occurred because corporatist exclusion was no longer an effective strategy to cope with the growing pluralist challenges to the existing power structure (Chapter IX). As a whole, I think this book does not have many new insights to offer to persons who are familiar with the political history of Indonesia. Of cour se it can be useful to teil a well-known story from a fresh perspective, but I am afraid that taking state corporatism as the analytical framework is not original in the case of Indonesia. In a 1996 article entitled 'The Islamic turn in Indonesia: a political explanation' (Journal of Asian Studies 55:613-34), R. William Liddle already characterized ICMI as 'an instrument designed and used by President Soeharto for his own purposes' and 'a state corporatist organization like many others created by the government during the New Order for the purpose of controlling important social groups' (p. 615). Another point of criticism is that I think an attempt to understand the extremely complicated socio-political reality of the last decades entirely from the internal dynamism of the political system within Indonesia itself cannot be adequate. As we all know, many institutions from outside Indonesia have played important roles in shaping recent history. They include the World Bank, the IMF, and ASEAN, as well as foreign Islamic organizations and individuals like the Muslim World League, the al-Azhar University in Egypt, the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah, Neo-Salafi preachers from Saudi Arabia, and so forth. Porter, to be fair, is aware of the limitations of his interpretational framework (p. 213, note 2; p. 244). However, from my point of view it is strange to write about the internal politics of a country as if they are not affected by influences from abroad. Be that as it may, for political scientists who have no knowledge of Indonesia Managing politics and Islam in Indonesia might be of use, since in an eloquent way it offers insights into the shifting patterns of repression, co-optation, accommodation and conflict between the state and Islam in Indonesia.

Monica Janowski, The prest, source of life; The Kelabit of Sarawak. London: British Museum Press, 2003, vi + 154 pp. [Occasional Paper 143.] ISBN 0.86159.143.7. Price: GBP 25.00 (hardback).

VICTOR T. KING

Anthropologists usually collect ethnographic objects as a sideline and in a rather piecemeal way, unless they are very specifically undertaking research on material culture. It is therefore especially exciting when an anthropolo-

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access 382 Book reviews gist decides,in the course of fieldwork in Borneo, systematically to assemble a collection of artefacts; in this case two parallel collections, one which was destined for the local Sarawak Museum and the other for the distant British Museum. Monica Janowski carried out research in the Kelabit Highlands on the borderlands of Malaysian Sarawak and Indonesian Kalimantan in 1986-1988 and 1992-1993. Most of the items which form the main subject matter of this Occasional Paper were collected in the Kelabit community of Pa' Dalih towards the end of her first period of research in late 1987 and early 1988. A few objects were made by neighbouring nomadic Penan. London received 161 items and Kuching 104 pieces. Interestingly, Janowski commissioned most of the objects and photographed their manufacture. Janowski' s main interest has been the interrelationship between human activity and the natural environment. Her doctoral research focused on rice agriculture, the symbolic role of the rice meal, and the organisation of the hearth group. As her work developed she broadened her range to embrace the ways in which the Kelabit not only intervened in the environment to culti- vate wet and hill rice, but also exploited the resources of the forested uplands through gathering and hunting. For the Kelabit the surrounding landscape is a resource in both a material and a symbolic sense, and Kelabit culture moves from the inner world of the individual, the household and the longhouse through the tamed world of the rice farm to the outer, untamed or 'wild' world of the forest. Janowski's narrative follows this sequence, from 'inside' to 'outside', and explores the Kelabit concept of life force or potency (lalud), 'a wild and potentially dangerous force' which can be managed by humans to give them 'temporal as well as spiritual power' (p. 41). The artefacts which she collected so assiduously and carefully are primarily everyday; her book does not dweil so much on what was once referred to as 'primitive art'. The main objects are mats, baskets, containers, pots, agricultural tools, hunting and fishing equipment, domestic paraphernalia, musical instruments, containers of all kinds, and bodily adornments (including what probably best characterizes the Kelabit in the 'coffee-table' books on Borneo, women's bead caps, and ear pendants). We are also given insight into the properties and use of the main materials for manufacture, most of which are secured from nature: bamboo, rattan, wood, bark, creeper, leaves, grasses, resins, dyes, latex, beeswax and clay, as well as some imported materials like iron and nylon. What is particularly valuable about this book is the contextualisation and skilful visual display of Kelabit material culture. The longish narrative in nine chapters, with an additional introduction and a conclusion, ranges over Kelabit social organisation, agriculture, culture (including religion and religious change), and technology. There are 119 black-and-white plates (taken by the author, her husband, Kaz, and Sally Greenhill who visited the

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Janowskis in the field; some were also provided from the Sarawak Museum's collections), strategically placed line-drawings, and ample appendices (com- prising a Kelabit glossary, a description of materials and techniques used in craftwork, the botanical names of most of the materials used, a very informative catalogue of the two collections, and a guide to Kelabit objects in UK museum collections). The traditional political and economie context of Kelabit culture is changing rapidly as the state, the marketplace, and commercial logging progressively incorporate the once physically remote Sarawak interior into the modern world. Hence the importance of Janowski's collections. She presents skills, crafts and productions, some of which are unlikely to survive for very much longer. Kelabit country, when Torn Harrisson first touched down by parachute some 60 years ago, was isolated indeed. The history of the Kelabit since then has been one of 'opening up', and one of the most significant transformations has been the post-war conversion to Christianity. However, Harrisson, whilst introducing the Kelabit, in what was then colonial Sarawak, to the outside world, in his work of popular anthropology, World within, jealously guarded them from other outside observers. Janowski is one of the few outsiders to have undertaken detailed research among the Kelabit, and this present publication is one of the rare pieces of solid ethnographic work available on them. It is both a readable and a well illustrated ethnography and, of course, a detailed reference work on the collections.

Andrée Jaunay, avec les contributions de Christine Lorre, Antonio Guerreiro et Antoine Verney, Exploration dans la presqu'ile malaise parjacques de Morgan 1884. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2003, xiv + 268 pp. ISBN 2.271.05966.6. Price: EUR 39.00 (paperback).

DICK VAN DER MEIJ

Geneviève Dollfus, in her preface to this volume, describes Jean Marie de Morgan (1857-1924) as 'one of the greatest figures of French orientalism at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century'. Indeed he was. He was a man of many interests - ethnology, archeology, botany, geol- ogy, history, prehistory, protohistory, paleontology, conchology and much, much more - and he made collections of artefacts, coins, and archeological finds which he bequeathed to museums in France (among them the Musée Ethnographique du Trocadéro at Paris and the Musée des Antiquités Nationales at Saint-Germain-en-Laye) and abroad. He is most famous for his archeological explorations in Persia and Egypt and for a multitude of articles

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on archeological, ethnological, and other marters. His interest in Malaysia has, however, received less attention up until now. Yet before embarking on his work in Persia and Egypt, he had already been in Malaysia. A trained mine engineer, he accepted an invitation to explore possibilities of tin explorations in the Perak area of Malaysia in 1884, when he was 27 years old. Having done this, between 16 June and 6 September of that year he made an exploratory trip to the areas of Perak where the 'aborigines' (Orang Asli) lived, people who up to that time had seldom if ever been in close contact with Europeans. During his trip he kept a diary in which he recorded his findings about the nature, culture, language, history, legal system, and other matters of interest he found among the Sakai and Semang peoples there. Not only did he make notes, he also illustrated his notes lavishly, with portraits of people he met as well as drawings of natural, architectural and other subjects. Many - although regretfully not all - of the illustrations are reproduced in this book. Exploration dans la presqu'ïle malaise is in essence an edition of de Morgan's travel notes, but it is also much more. It includes a short biography of Jacques de Morgan - the assumption here is that the interested reader will be able to find further details elsewhere, since Morgan has been the subject of a number of studies - and the travel diary (together with many illustrations taken from it) introduced by Andrée Jaunay. Antoine Verney discusses the notes de Morgan made, which are now preserved in the Musée Baron Gérard de Bayeux, and provides a number of visual examples of what his notes originally looked like. The volume continues with reprints of articles written by de Morgan, which are now hard to find, complemented by a bibliography of all his publications. Apart from this there are seven appendices. Antonio Guerreiro discusses the itinerary and provides many notes on topography and vocabulary, as well as contributing a second annex dealing with the Orang Asli and their culture and languages. Guerreiro, basing himself on materials available at the Trocadéro, also wrote the annex on collectors of ethnographic materials from the Orang Asli during the second half of the nineteenth century. Christine Lorre is the author of the two remaining annexes: an extensive catalogue of materials in the de Morgan collection of the Musée des Antiquites Nationales, and a list of objects from the collection which are no longer to be found there. The book is beautifully produced, and a must for those scholars interested in the subject. It is lavishly illustrated with drawings and other illustrations - among them maps - made by de Morgan himself, and it contains many photographs dating from de Morgan's time. Some of the drawings are in colour, but many have been reproduced in black and white and no indication is provided whether or not they were originally polychrome. The travel account is well written and gives sometimes wonderful descriptions of how the journey was organized and executed. One sees Jacques de

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Morgan and his companions struggling through the jungle on elephant back, and being amazed by the wonders they encounter. Jacques de Morgan also learned Malay, enabling him to communicate with local people in an easygo- ing marmer. Often clad in Malay or Chinese attire, he must have made quite an impression on those he encountered. I have the impression that the biography could have contained more information about de Morgan in the East, instead of paying the attention it does to his exploits in Persia and Egypt. In addition, some more personal information about his life, family, and surroundings would have added to a more comprehensive appreciation of the work he did. Some information about his scholarly surroundings at his time might also have helped to put his achievements into context. These are, however, minor points. It is to be hoped that other scholars, or perhaps the present team, will find the opportunity to do more research on the subject, and that an edition of all the drawings and sketches made by de Morgan may one day appear. Contemporaries of de Morgan mentioned in the 'Avant-propos' (by Christian Pelras) - such as P. Ruck, Alfred Marche, Zavier Brau de Saint-Pol Lias, and others - would also seem worth more attention in order to gain insight into the French interest and presence in the Malay world in the second half of the nineteenth century. Finally, it is a pity that the book is produced in such a way that one virtually has to break the spine if one wants to read it properly. In a book of this beauty and this price, such an important practicality ought to have received more attention.

Richard Eves, The magical body; Power, fame and meaning in a Melanesian society. Amsterdam: Harwood Academie, 1998, xxii + 302 pp. [Studies in Anthropology and History 23.] ISBN 90.5702.305.9. Price: EUR 105.00 (hardback).

TOON VAN MEIJL

The relationships between the body, magie and power constitute the rnain focus of this rich ethnography of the people living on the Lelet Plateau in central New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. It makes a valuable contribution to the debate that aims to transcend the Cartesian assumption that mental processes are essentially different from the body by showing that the cosmic order of the Lelet is not divided between spirit and body, or between irrational and rational. Instead, Eves demonstrates, non-empirical phenomena are physical and embodied in Lelet society, as testified to by the wide range of corporeal imageries that the Lelet deploy in the construction of their world, especially

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in their magical practices. The emphasis on the body in action suggests, Eves argues, that corporeality is the threshold between the Lelet and the outside world. Since metaphors based on the body make the world meaningful for the Lelet, Eves even argues that bodily experience is foundational for the Lelet world view. In spite of the complex argument of this monograph, it is grounded sol- idly in the ordinary and mundane nature of Lelet daily life. Eves makes a real effort to avoid the impression that the Lelet are always engaged in magie, showing that most of their time is spent gardening, going to the market and attending church. Nevertheless, magical ideas seem to be present throughout these daily activities. Magie may not dominate people's active engagement with the world, but it does reflect the way in which the Lelet imagine the world. Eves therefore is not simply studying magical practices as utilitarian acts, but more as revealing corporeal images that guide people's embodied relationship to the world. The relationship between magie and the body suggests a conception of power that is much broader than the narrow political view of power. Following Foucault, Eves is more interested in Lelet cultural notions of power, as present in people's everyday experiences, than in political power that is associated only with issues of authority, leadership and hierarchy. Power in Lelet society is primarily concerned with acts of self-assertion rather that with political acts. It applies mainly to the capacity to achieve things or projects. Thus it is related not only to bodily strength and physical acts, but also to thinking and performing magie for a garden. Eves explains the connection between magie, the body and power in a lengthy theoretical introduction that begins with a brief sketch of the ethnographic setting. Subsequently the argument is developed in eight chapters, while the book is concluded with a short epilogue. In the first chapter the author introduces Lelet conceptualizations of the body in all phases of the life cycle. Thematically this introductory chapter discusses the body in relation to gender constructions, Lelet coneeptions of power, and various forms of magie centering on the body. In Chapter II, Lelet society is situated in a historical perspective sketching the transition from colonialism to postcolo- nialism and from subsistence agriculture to cash cropping. It is argued that taro gardening was continued during these periods, but acquired the new meaning of asserting Lelet cultural identity, while the body's role became more pronounced in the construction of 'otherness'. The changing role of the body in the Lelet world view is further explored in a chapter examining the introduction of Christianity and the marmer in which it was reworked within local horizons. Lelet forms of social organization are then analysed in a chapter on kinship that also focuses on the significance of the body to kinship etiquette. Chapter V explores Lelet religion and spiritual-

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 387 ity as the author elaborates the bodily form and physical nature of non-human spirit beings that inhabit the Lelet world and play an essential role in magical practices. Corporeal imageries used in relation to food, particularly taro, are discussed in Chapter VI, that focuses on agricultural practices and the persisting discourse of famine, from which magie seeks to protect people and their bodies. This chapter is particularly revealing of the poetic cadences and phras- es that guide the Lelef s relationship to the world, a relationship in which the body is a rich source of metaphors and images. The following chapter extends the analysis of agriculture by providing a very detailed overview of magical practices in the gardens. The final chapter discusses the feasting cycle, particularly the continuation of mortuary ceremonies that are revelatory of all kinds of corporeal imageries and manipulations of the body. Mortuary ceremonies are also characterized by forms of intense rivalry, which Eves explains in relation to the circulation of successful memories during these events that are deeply intertwined with the production of fame. This book is not only of interest for the Melanesian specialist, but also provides a welcome addition to the growing corpus of anthropological literature on the bodily basis of self and being. To some extent the book might be said to suffer from a slight discrepancy between analysis and description: the theoretical argument could perhaps have been set out a little more directly in terms of the ethnographic data. As it stands the argument is largely limited to the introduction and to the short introductory and concluding remarks before and after each chapter, whereas the bulk of the book is mainly descriptive. The ethnographic details, however, are so rich and intriguing that The magical body deserves to be read widely.

Florentino Rodao and Felice Noelle Rodriguez (eds), The Philippine revolution of 1896; Ordinary lives in extraordinary times. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2001, xx + 303 pp. ISBN 971.550.386.1. Price: USD 28.00 (paperback).

OTTO VAN DEN MUIJZENBERG

The worldwide hype of centennial and millennial celebrations around the year 2000 was preceded in the Philippines by a series of celebrations of the Philippine Revolution of 1896, which officially ended in the pact of Biak-na- Bato in December 1897. General Aguinaldo and his companions consented to go in exile in Hong Kong, but returned soon after the May 1, 1898 'battle' of Manila Bay, when US commodore George Dewey sunk the Spanish fleet in the context of the Spanish-American War. Having proclaimed Independence

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access 388 Book reviews on 12 June 1898 following on his return, Aguinaldo proceeded to organize a Philippine Republic, which came into armed conflict with the Americans in January 1899 when it became clear that the Filipinos were determined to take their sovereignty seriously. In the meantime the Americans had bought the archipelago from Spain for twenty million dollars under the Paris agreements, and were poised to accept their 'manifest destiny' of civilizing the Filipinos - by colonizing them, that is. A bloody guerrilla war of resistance and American suppression followed, until the newly independent government under Aguinaldo was captured in 1902. This is schoolbook history of the Philippines. The book reviewed here tries to add an extra dimension to the conventional 'battles and heroes' historiography by opening another perspective on the Revolution, that of ordinary people, on both the Filipino and Spanish sides, who came to see their lives changed in ways which in many cases involved much violence. The chapters form a (partly translated) selection from a larger collection of papers in Spanish which resulted from a conference held in Valladolid by the Asociación Espaflola de Estudios Pacifico (AEEP, Spanish Association for Pacific Studies). In a welcome development, several Spanish scholars have recently acquired a renewed interest in the only major Spanish colony beyond Latin America, the Philippines. As Bernardita Reyes Churchill points out in her encompassing essay, the historiography of the Revolution was long characterized by strong ethnocentric biases on the part of the writers, be they American, Filipino or Spanish. However, Spanish academie work on the Philippines (in general, as well as specifically on the subject of the Revolution) remained rare in the twentieth cenrury, even though Spain is the repository of rich archives on 333 years of colonization. Churchill's chapter shows how the loss of the Philippines resulted in some apologetic writing by participants in the losing phase of Spanish colonialism, including politicians, priests and military officers. After the demise of that generation Spanish historians, by and large, lost interest in their last Asian colony. Only in the mid-1980s did a young generation of historians and anthropologists start to link up with colleagues elsewhere in Europe, and to a limited but increasing extent also with their Philippine counterparts, to re-examine Spanish- Philippine history from new perspectives. Thanks to ceaseless activity on the part of the senior editor and a few colleagues, a series of conferences and publications on Philippine subjects by Spanish historians followed. Most of these were in the Spanish language, but fortunately the present book makes some of the new work accessible to scholars who work on the Philippines but have no command of Spanish. Still, the fact that only three articles of the twelve in this book were written by Spaniards (as against four by Americans and two by Filipinos), indicates that there is still a long way to go.

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Florentino Rodao's Preface characterizes the Spanish colonial experience, in the wider context of Asian colonial projects, as being the only one in which the colonizer tried not only to exploit the material and human resources, but also to transform the minds of the colonized by an extensive and in his view largely successful campaign of Christianization and Hispanization. Less affected by 'scientific' theories of race than the other colonizers in the nineteenth century, the Spaniards found it easier to accept the possibility that Filipinos, through education, would develop to a level of civilization on a par with themselves. So successful was their effort that the colonial regime generated its own negation in the form of a vocal nationalist movement which emerged when the masters proved unwilling to provide Filipinos with opportunities commensurate with the expectations generated. The result was the first national independence movement in Asia, a movement intensified by a fierce anticlericalism that was shared by some of the new colonists who arrived from declining Spain in the last decades of the nineteenth century. While this argument might be criticized for focusing on the upper level of 'ilustrado' Filipinos, the book also aims to enlighten the reader on the fate of 'common people' and their agency in (or against) the revolution. A number of social categories are looked at in succession, including women, the military on both sides, the civilian population in the midst of fighting, the Franciscan clergy as seen by themselves and others, and local administrators. Two articles (by Barbara Watson Andaya and Mina Roces) deal with the gender dimension of warfare and patriotism in Southeast Asian society through the ages, and more specifically in the Philippine revolution. Both authors assert the necessity of viewing women's contribution to the public cause on their own terms, rather than as 'helpers' of their men. Barbara Andaya provides interesting evidence of tendendes toward female eman- cipation among the ilustrado leadership which organized through Masonry and the Katipunan. Roces draws attention to the role of women as agents of change in gender roles from within the kinship and familial spheres. Leonard Andaya takes up the contentious issue of ethnicity in the Philippine Revolution, which many observers and adversaries, including Americans when they entered the fray, was taken to be a revolt of Tagalogs rather than a nationwide movement. Against a broadly sketched socio-historical background he makes a convincing and well-illustrated case for a clear shift from regional to national identification in the six years after 1896. Alfred McCoy and Fernando Palanco Aguado, in another matched pair of essays, look among other things at the armies involved in thé campaigns of 1896-1897. McCoy provides us with a perceptive long-term view on the principles underlying Filipino military organization. He stresses the cultural and organizational continuity from the colonial armies, consisting of Filipino soldiers under Spanish and American officers, up to the present.

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McCoy highlights two important recurring and conflicting principles, pro- fessionalism and revolutionary/political fervour, and describes the patterns of recruitment according to patron-client ties that still characterized the Philippine military in the last decades of the twentieth century. An obvious problem with a focus on 'common people' is the scarcity of documents on them, let alone produced by them. Fernando Palanco Aguado was fortunate enough to unearth a collection of 37 letters by an ordinary Spanish soldier, a family heirloom. These letters demonstrate the ignorance which existed among the ill-trained draftee soldiers regarding the larger issues at stake. They describe experiences of combat and deprivation and feelings of boredom and neglect. Another contribution to military and dip- lomatic historiography, Karl Wionzek's chapter, conforms less exactly to the book's title but is nevertheless highly interesting. providing detailed observations by a staff officer, Paul Hintze, aide-de-camp to German Vice Admiral Von Diederichs during the Spanish-American War (rather than the 1896 Revolution). Illustrating how keenly the German Kaiser observed the poten- tial of the Philippine siruation for colonial expansion, the article provides interesting observations on the way Aguinaldo's headquarters in Cavite was organized in the early days of Jury 1898. The anti-friar sentiment noted above forms the starting point for Franciscan historian Cayetano Sanchez Fuertes' long article on the role of his order in the revolution. Working with materials from the order's archives in Madrid, he shows that only few Franciscans behaved like Father Damaso in José P. Rizal's classic Noli me tangere. On the contrary, detailed descriptions of their vicissitudes in the days of the revolution show that Franciscan priests were by and large accepted, even protected, by their flocks, while the hatred of the Filipino was directed at the Spanish government rather than the (Franciscan) friars. This article fits into the growing literature in which historians like the Jesuits Horacio De la Costa, John Schumacher and Peter Schreurs have tried to demonstrate the one-sidedness of the 'anti-friar' explanation of the Philippine Revolution. As with most of the topics referred to above (gender, the military), perceptions on the role of 'the Church' or its institutions are f ar from just a matter of historical 'objectivity' but should be read in the context of present-day discourses. This applies to another paired set of articles as well. Xavier Huetz de Lemps and Luis Angel Sanchez Gómez both deal with issues of corruption at the centre-local interface in the second half of the nineteenth century. The National Historical Archive in Madrid houses a large collection of papers dealing with court cases against provincial governors. From these the two authors were able to derive a vivid picture of how provinces were run, of a plethora of illegal methods which existed to make private gains or to keep a semblance of government running in the absence of approved funds. Huetz

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 391 de Lemps resists the often-quoted view that corruption was the cause of the decay of the Spanish colonial machinery. Sanchez Gomez's discussion of three extended cases makes clear that apart from those accused, the local officials, their superiors, and the judiciary too were all involved in the same system, which could survive by virtue of complex interdependencies and a conspiracy of silence. If sources seem to be abundant on topics such as this one, the contrary is true for demographic developments or the economie context of the revolution, both rather neglected as yet. In these areas a methodology of building an argument on case materials cannot be followed for lack of consistent series of numerical data, which are hard to come by for the revolutionary period. The Spanish Philippines is unique in Asia in having voluminous surviving registers of births, deaths and marriages for large parts of the colony. By ingenious use of more or less complete registers from six parishes in Cavite province, Glenn May is able to reconstruct the devastatating effects of war and hunger on ordinary Filipinos in 1896-1898. He points out that the defeat of the revolutionary forces was to a considerable extent due to crowding, epidemics, starvation, requisitioning of rice, and the consequent alienation of the non-combatants, not just to losses inflicted on the battlefield. He links the struggle for scarce food resources to the famous political conflict within the revolution between Bonifacio and Aguinaldo. Yoshiko Nagano, for her part, illustrates the difficulties of finding consistent numerical data in the economie sphere. As part of a wider Japanese documentation programme on Asian economie history, her article helps other researchers by detailing the avail- ability of trading statistics in five major institutions and critically reviewing data on Philippine extrernal trade from 1831 to 1940. The embeddedness of Philippine foreign trade in intra-Asian trade, which was in turn connected with Europe and the US through such ports as Hong Kong and Singapore, is convincingly demonstrated. The paper analyses the changing composition of destinations and origins of commodity flows, with the American takeover as a critical turning point. In contrast with May's article, this contribution provides background information rather than addressing a specific question on the Philippine Revolution. The volume offers a set of articles on a broad range of topics, and is recom- mended for that reason. The reader who takes the book's title literally will be disappointed to find that less than half of the articles are directly relevant to it. In the remaining chapters, however, very interesting food for thought can be found regarding the causes of the Philippine Revolution, while the whole book contributes significantly to the social, rather than political, history of the late Spanish Philippines.

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Kees Snoek (met medewerking van Tim Timmers), Manhafte heren en rijke erfdochters; Het voorgeslacht van E. du Perron op Java. Leiden: KITLV Uitgeverij, 2003, 103 pp. [Boekerij 'Oost en West'.] ISBN 90.6718.2214. Prijs: EUR 19,95 (paperback).

FRANK OKKER

Met enige schrik nam E. du Perron begin 1931 kennis van een genealogisch artikel in De LocomotiefVan P.C. Bloys van Treslong Prins, waarnemend lands- archivaris in Batavia. Bloys schreef daarin dat de geboren Fransman Jean Roch du Perron, beschouwd als de stamvader van de familie, op 4 maart 1807 in de Indische hoofdstad zijn testament had laten opmaken met als erfgenamen zijn in Colombo (Ceylon) geadopteerde kinderen Nicolaas en Louis. Voor Du Perron betekende dat een onaangename verrassing, want dat opende de mogelijkheid dat Louis - de overgrootvader van de schrijver - van gemengd bloed was. Du Perron bleef ook later nadrukkelijk vasthouden aan zijn Franse afkomst. In een brief uit 1939 aan Soetan Sjahrir noemde hij zichzelf 'atavis- ties Fransman'. En wie zijn roman Het land van herkomst (1935) heeft gelezen, kent de intensieve naspeuringen van de hoofdpersoon Ducroo, in wie we moeiteloos de schrijver herkennen, en diens vader naar hun feodale voorou- ders in Frankrijk. In Manhafte heren en rijke erfdochters laat Kees Snoek zien dat er in het voorgeslacht van de schrijver meer sprake is van koloniale landjonkers dan van geboren Fransen. Dat voorgeslacht telt heel wat kleurrijke figuren, die er vaak in slaagden een aanzienlijk kapitaal op te bouwen. De indrukwekkend- ste onder hen was Augustijn Michiels (1769-1833), die behoorde tot de laatste mardijkers, vrijgelaten slaven. Diens vader Jonathan was er al in geslaagd een aantal landgoederen te verwerven waaronder Tjileungsir, gelegen ten zuidoosten van Batavia, en het aangrenzende Klapanoenggal. Vooral dat laatste droeg bij tot de welstand van de familie. Op Klapanoenggal bevonden zich kalksteenheuvels waarin zwaluwen nestelden. De eetbare vogelnesten, die bij de Chinezen zeer in trek waren, leverden Jonathan vijfduizend rijksdaalders per jaar op. Dat alles leidde bij zijn dood in mei 1788 tot een nalatenschap van ruim 325.000 rijksdaalders. Zijn jongste (en langstlevende) zoon Augustijn breidde het bezit nog verder uit en bracht het in zijn maatschappelijke loopbaan tot majoor van de burgerij. Vandaar zijn bijnaam Majoor Jantje. In 1807 nam hij ontslag om zich met het beheer van zijn bezittingen bezig te houden. Zijn beheer beperkte zich tot de winstgevende vogelberg, waarvan de inkomsten geschat werden op anderhalve ton; de overige landerijen liet hij door Chinezen exploiteren. Van zijn geld kocht Majoor Jantje het nabijgelegen landgoed Tjitrap en

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 393 leefde daar in een vorstelijke entourage. Hij ontving grote groepen gasten, die er zich vermaakten onder het geluid van de vijftig huisklokken met spel, muziek, eten en drinken. Kleinere gezelschappen werden aan tafel bediend door zo'n vijfentwintig 'hupsche slavinnetjes'. Bij zijn overlijden in 1833 vergde het veilen van de nalatenschap van Majoor Jantje niet minder dan een halfjaar. Een gedeelte van zijn bezittingen ging naar een van zijn dochters, Agraphina Augustina, die al weduwe was, toen zij in 1844 trouwde met de kolonel en weduwnaar Petrus Henricus Menu. Door zijn huwelijk werd Menu eigenaar van onder meer Tjitrap en Kampong Melajoe in Meester Cornelis, ten zuidoosten van Batavia. Het landhuis op Kampong Melajoe, dat later de naam Gedong Menu kreeg, zou het geboortehuis van E. du Perron worden. In navolging van Majoor Jantje ging Menu na zijn tweede huwelijk met pensioen om zijn landerijen te beheren. Ook legde hij een verzameling oude Javaanse manuscripten aan. Zijn oudste dochter Margaretha Catharina, uit zijn eerste huwelijk, trouwde in november 1848 met Hendrik Willem (Henri), de oudste zoon van de eerdergenoemde, uit Colombo afkomstige Louis du Perron die het als daad- krachtig militair tot kolonel in het Nederlands-Indische leger en lid van het Hoog Militair Gerechtshof bracht. Margaretha Catharina Menu en Henri du Perron, de grootouders van de schrijver, waren niet in gemeenschap van goe- deren getrouwd. Om die reden bleef zij na haar scheiding, in 1870, op Gedong Menu wonen met een schare aangenomen inheemse kinderen. Een van die kinderen was trouwens van haar eigen zoon Charles Emile du Perron, de latere vader van Eddy. Henri verliet de kolonie na een succesvolle loopbaan bij de rechterlijke macht. Als vice-president van het Hooggerechtshof én van het Hoog Militair Gerechtshof ging hij met pensioen. Hij vestigde zich in Brussel en stond daar bij zijn familie bekend om zijn amoureuze levenswan- del. Hij overleed in 1900 op straat, terwijl hij met een bloem in zijn knoopsgat op weg was naar een samenzijn met een dame. Het huwelijk van Margaretha Catharina en Henri leidde tot de geboorte van zes kinderen, die blijkens Het land van herkomst hun bestaan danken aan tijdelijke verzoeningen tussen de echtelieden. De oudste zoon Louis Henri ontwikkelde zich tot een succesvol planter. Dankzij zijn gunstige karakter kreeg hij als bijnaam de 'goeie Duup'. De jongste zoon, Charles Emile du Perron, die op 24 juli 1861 te Batavia geboren werd, had een moeilijker en opvliegend karakter. De 'kwaaie Duup', zoals hij genoemd werd, was meer geïnteresseerd in paardenraces en dansen dan in de landbouw. In een uitgaansgelegenheid ontmoette hij Marie Mina Madeline Bédier de Prairie, geboren op 28 augustus 1864, die met de planter J.E. van Polanen Petel gehuwd was. Madeline en Charles waren beiden al in de dertig toen ze, op 24 maart 1898, met elkaar trouwden. Het was een

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access 394 Book reviews huwelijk uit liefde, volgens hun zoon Charles Edgar die op 2 november 1899 in Gedong Menu geboren werd. In Manhafte heren en rijke erfdochters heeft Kees Snoek een zorgvuldig gedocumenteerd en fraai geïllustreerd overzicht gegeven van het voorgeslacht van E. du Perron. Het boek vormt een mooie opmaat voor zijn, nog te verschijnen biografie.

Greg Bankoff, Cultures of disaster; Society and natural hazard in the Philippines, 2003, xviii + 232 pp. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, xviii + 232 pp. ISBN 0.7007.1761.7. Price: GBP 65.00 (hardback).

OONA THOMMES PAREDES

This is a historical study of disaster in the Philippines that explores the interaction between natural hazard and Filipino society? Cultures of disaster makes a powerful case for the growing (and long overdue) paradigm shift towards a more historically and locally grounded understanding of natural hazard that critically re-examines the conventional view of disasters (such as floods, typhoons, landslides, earthquakes) as supposedly 'natural' phenomena. The thesis of this approach is that a given population's vulnerability to hazard (and therefore the extent to which it is disaster-prone) has more to do with the degree to which it is politically, socially, and/or economically marginalized. Typically this means being located in an exposed or otherwise environmentally precarious site that is impossible to defend against natural and other hazards. In other words, a typhoon is transformed from meteorological hazard to full-blown disaster when it hits a vulnerable population, such as one that is squatting on a deforested, eroded hillside. 'Natural' disaster is therefore equally man-made and just as preventable. The Philippines is an ideal case study. The archipelago is not only 'geo- physically and meteorologically one of the world's natural hazard "hot spots'", but also 'experiences more such events than any other country', averaging eight major disasters a year (p. 31). With staggering historical and statistical detail, the author outlines how social phenomena, particularly politics and economie stratification, can structure 'a physical phenomenon into a social crisis' (p. 3). Opening the book with the true story of how something as seemingly benign as jellyfish caused a massive blackout that triggered a near- meltdown of the national government in 1999 is especially apropos - and in its own way, sadly poetic. Bankoff begins the main text by discussing the evolution of a dominant

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'technocratie' discourse pertaining to disaster and development, one which projects a deleterious 'otherness' on the Third World and calls for Western- style 'development' as the cure-all. He then discusses hazard in Southeast Asia before moving on to his analysis of the history, economics, and politics of hazard and disaster in the Philippines. Separate chapters are devoted to known disasters related to red tides and the El Nifto weather phenomenon, and the blow-by-blow accounts that highlight their preventability are sorne- times painful to read. Perhaps the most important part of this book is Chapter VIII, in which Bankoff shows how hazard itself - as a 'frequent life experience' - may be shaping human behaviour and social organization. He asks whether nature may in fact have nurtured particular Filipino attitudes, beliefs, and behav- iours. Could local peculiarities such as the complex supernatural world, the bahala na attitude (a balance of risk-taking and fatalism), the creation of social obligations and cooperation through pakikisama (which relates to a sense of communal unity), the consistently high birth rate, the importance of extended kin, and even the extraordinarily high number of NGOs be cultural adaptations to the frequency of nature's assaults in this particular part of the world? Bankoff presents a strong, plausible case, but concedes in the end that, despite the increasing sophistication of political ecology and similar areas of study, any attempt to attribute to hazard a direct role in the creation of specific elements of human culture is 'fraught with conceptual and defini- tional problems and is simply "unprovable" in the final event' (p. 179). Fortunately, he uses this as an opportunity to drive home his main point - that we must detach our general understanding of hazard and vulnerability from the 'default' Western-dominated discourse and bring it down to its local context. Doing so is critical vis-h-vis theory, but all the more in practical terms. To recognize that local communities may conceptualize or interpret disaster in unique ways also paves the way towards crediting them with alternative 'coping mechanisms' that may in fact be more effective than top-down technocratie approaches to both disaster relief and prevention (p. 181). In other words, 'cultures of disaster' are also cultures of survival, and gearing relief and development efforts towards supporting rather than supplanting these cultures may save the world a lot of grief. Bankoff's writing is clear and well-organized, which makes the book accessible even to non-specialists. Despite its prohibitive price, this important study should be read by everyone who deals with development, disaster, environment, social welfare, and other related fields - not only in the Philippines, but in the rest of the developing world as well.

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Lake' Baling, The old Kayan religion and the Bungan religious reform. Translated and annotated by Jéröme Rousseau. Kota Samarahan: Unit Penerbitan Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, 2002, xviii + 124 pp. [Dayak Studies Monographs, Oral Literature Series 4.] ISBN 983.9357.23.4. Price: MYR 25.00 (paperback).

ANGELA PASHIA

This book is part of the Oral Literature Series published by the Dayak Studies Program at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. However, unlike other works in this series, it is a translation of a written manuscript. The manuscript in question was composed by a native Kayan chief. The original text is presented in the original Kayan language, followed by the translation. Baling's work is divided into two parts: Adat Dipui, the Kayan religion practiced prior to the adoption of Bungan, and Adat Bungan, a religious reformation that gained credibility from the claim that it was a return to an earlier religion which had been corrupted by the deity for which Adat Dipui was named. Baling wrote the original text, completed in 1961, to demonstrate the supe- riority of Adat Bungan over the practice of Adat Dipui. In Part One, Baling stresses that the original Kayan religion placed many more restrictions on economie and other activities than does Adat Bungan. When Dipui replaced a previous rice deity, she imposed many taboos and inaugurated several augury animals. These added restrictions were the source of a good deal of hardship, as Baling presents it. People of ten had to abandon projects and journeys because of bad omens, causing a considerable amount of effort to be wasted. In addition, heavy ritual obligations and long periods of ritually prescribed non-activity often prevented people from working. Baling argues that the difficulty of observing the extensive restrictions caused many deaths, leading in turn to loss of knowledge regarding the proper performance of rituals as fewer ritual specialists were available, so that even more hardship occurred as people forgot the proper observance of custom. Adat Bungan was the result of a dream in which two deities visited Jok Apui and instructed him to discard the restrictions added by Dipui, replac- ing them with a simple prayer to Bungan. Jok Apui had suffered many mis- fortunes before he had this dream, so he heeded the deities because he feit he had nothing to lose. But he did not teil others about it until years later, after his fortunes had changed. Following the account of the origin of Adat Bungan, the greater part of the text consists of lists of rituals and associated taboos, which are far less demanding than those presented in Part One. Toward the end, Baling makes a direct comparison between the two systems in a section entitled 'Adat Bungan is superior to Adat Dipui' (p. 111). Here he reiterates the results of hearing a bad omen under Adat Dipui, including

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 397 wasted effort and wasted time, and then, for each specific augury mentioned, adds that nowadays when omen animals are heard during work 'we catch them and eat them' (p. 114). In the introduction Rousseau warns that Baling wrote this manuscript for Kayan readers, who he assumed would already have the relevant cultural background. I found this to be quite true. Rousseau includes numerous footnotes in the translation to pro vide some contextual information for Baling's statements. Several of these footnotes refer to Rousseau's own ethnographic account of Kayan religion (1998). The bulk of the text itself simply lists the ritual actions that must be performed, any associated taboos, and the proper observance of auguries. It describes what people do, not the beliefs or reasons which they claim He behind the rituals. For this reason I would not recom- mend The old Kayan religion to any reader with little or no a priori knowledge of Bornean religions. For scholars of Kayan culture or the religions of Borneo, however, this is a valuable piece, as it provides a native Kayan perspective on the old religion and the Bungan reform.

Susan Meiselas, Encounters with the Dani; Stories from the Baliem Valley. New York: International Center of Photography, Göttingen: Steidl, 2003, 196 pp. ISBN 3.88243.930.0. Price: USD 40.00 (hardback).

ANTON PLOEG

The title of this book is quite apt. It illustrates the encounters of the Dani, in the Grand Valley of the Baliem in the Central Highlands of West Papua, with American, European and Indonesian outsiders. The members of the 1938 Archbold expedition, Americans and Dutchmen, were the first to enter the valley and marvel at the intensive agriculture that the Dani practised on the valley floor. Meiselas follows through with a long series of further encounters with outsiders: the survivors of the crash of an American war plane and their rescuers in 1945; evangelical and Catholic missionaries since 1954; Dutch colonial administrators and their police from 1956 to 1962; the filmers and other researchers of the Harvard-Peabody Museum expedition in 1960 and 1961; the Indonesian administrators and their armed forces since 1963; Wyn Sargent, the woman who married a prominent Dani man but then almost immediately absconded, in 1973; various researchers, including the Indonesian sociologist Soepangat, since the early 1970s; and tourists with money to spend, from all over the world, since the early 1990s. The encounters with representatives of the Indonesian state come in sev-

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access 398 Book reviews eral installments. They document continuing, serious repression, in several cases leading to shootings in which an unknown number of Dani died. That researchers and tourists were allowed in came about because the Indonesian government thought that the Dani were sufficiently subdued. Since then the overtures to Papuan autonomy made by presidents Habibie and Wahid have been followed by renewed repression, with more killings after Sukarnoputri took office. However, the Indonesians were not the first to fight the Dani. The Dutch did so too when they tried to end the recurrent wars among the Dani themselves. How many Dani died as a result has never become clear. The only episode described by Meiselas that was emphatically not an encounter with the Dani was the struggle between Indonesia and the Netherlands over control of western New Guinea, a conflict which in 1962 was decided in favour of the Indonesians without the Dani knowing about it. To social scientists focusing on New Guinea, many of the encounters that Meiselas sets out, are known. But she manages to add information. She presents her data in a pictorial manner, by means of photographs and also by photocopies of documents. She adds very little text, but she has selected pictures and documents most judidously and has, moreover, highlighted small sections from them, providing English translations for the ones in Dutch. I give a few examples of such documents. Page 13 shows a page from the patrol report by Van Arcken, commander of one of the two military escorts of the 1938 Archbold expedition. Meiselas highlights two glosses, one by 'T.', probably Teerink, commander of the other escort and higher in rank than van Arcken. T. disapproved of the reported killing of a Papuan who had threatened a member of the escort with his spear. A second gloss is more exonerating. The combined comments imply striking caution during first contact. Page 86 has a remarkable picture of controleur Gonsalves, who seriously overreacted to Dani warfare during his posting from 1958 to 1960. The picture shows him chatting with Dani sitting on the ground and eating a sweet potato. Facing the page is a comment by his superior, resident commissioner Eibrink Janssen: 'Crushing resistance is the easiest way, but definitely does not produce the desired result in the long run'. The page has another picture of Gonsalves, on patrol, carrying a rifle. Pages 112-4 show a 1962 letter by Gardner, who produced the film Dead birds, addressed to McGeorge Bundy, at the time Kennedy's security adviser, and earlier Gardner's colleague at Harvard. Gardner questioned the wisdom of letting the Indonesian government administer western New Guinea. McBundy answers without dealing with Gardner's objections. A section beginning on page 142 deals with the military operations of 1977, in which many Dani died and which brought widespread destruction. Here there is a telling quotation by Agus Kossay: 'We divide our history

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 399 between before and after 1977, because in 1977 we realized we had to learn how to be "developed"'. On page 150 Meiselas reproduces writing by Soepangat, an Indonesian sociologist. Soepangat recalls that the (presumably Indonesian) sources that he had read before going to New Guinea 'portrayed the people as highly pas- sive, non-thinking creatures'. Taken together, Meiselas' pictures point to a wealth of primary material that has been studied only in part. Her marmer of presenting her data felicitously underscores this. While she may not see her book as a scholarly accomplishment, she is to be commended, even considering that she could rely on a large number of research assistants, for her efforts to locate sources. I hope that what she has brought together will stimulate future researchers to carry on her work.

Robert W. Hefner, The politics of multiculturalism; Pluralism and citizenship in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001, ix + 319 pp. ISBN 0.8248.2487.3. Price: USD 21.00 (paperback).

NATHAN PORATH

This book is the outcome of a project that its editor directed in 1998-1999 under the title 'Southeast Asian pluralism: social resources for civility and participation in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia'. The original project was multidis- ciplinary, and apart from the editor its participants were all from the countries they were researching and writing on. The aim of the project was to explore the topic of civic associations in the three democratie countries mentioned in the title. The aim of the book is to 'assess the dynamics of ethno-religious pluralism in each country, and to determine what direction civic pluralism might have in years to come'. The contents of the book are rather diverse, covering a number of fields connected with the sociology of pluralism and civic society. Hefner's stimulating introductory article brings together well-known historical literature and established ideas, within the focus of the sociology of plural societies. He discusses the historical development of plural and civic society in the three countries. He first paints a picture of what he calls the Malay-Indonesian civilization, in which what he calls 'flexible ethnicity' and 'canopied pluralism' existed. He reminds us that the western parts of the archipelago were linked to the eastern half through trade, and that all areas drew on the Malayan-Indonesian cultural reservoir. The plural ethnic makeup of the area was canopied by the Malay-Indonesian civilisation. Hefner's article

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access 400 Book reviews reiterates the argument that a more rigid ethnic pluralism in Southeast Asia developed with European colonial involvement, as did the respective nation states. Under the colonial process Europeans not only kept themselves aloof from the rest of society, but also created the political and cultural conditions for other migrant minorities to keep themselves ethnically apart. For example, the British in Malaya designated the Chinese merchants as a 'race' who could serve as economie middlemen between them and Malay society, while the Indians served as labourers and the Malays themselves as peasant farmers. The colonials also used the term 'children of the soil' (bumiputera, pribumi) for the Malays, implying that the other groups were alien. In this way, Hefner cogently explains, Europeans generated the social conditions which would later were be canonised in Furnivall's concept of the 'plural society'. (For a different view, see: A. Milner, 2003, 'Who created Malaysia's plural society?', Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 76:1-24.) The first local reformers who tried to develop an alternative to the European colonial plural society did so around Islamic reform, in the hope of revitalizing an Islamic community of believers. Unlike the situation in the Dutch East Indies, the British authorities saw the Malay Sultans as guardians of religion, gave them the authority over matters of Islam, and colluded with them against Muslim reformists. Islamic schools, consequently, could not develop the kind of para-institutional structure which they acquired in the Dutch East Indies, and the development of a diverse religious public sphere was also restricted. The association of Islam with Malayness marked Malays off from the Chinese and the Indians, and the religion became involved in ethnic rivalry. The alignment of faith and ethnicity also restricted the development of a Malaysian nationalism, which existed mainly as a defence of Malay community interests in the face of other groups. The key concept for Malay nationalist leaders was bangsa Melayu, while the Chinese and Indians were seen as foreigners and as threats to the Malays in their homeland. From this colonial pluralist beginning, in Malaysia, citizenship became a 'differentiated citizenship' which accorded basic citizens' rights to Chinese and Indians in exchange for special legal, political and economie rights for Malays. Islam also became the religion of the state. The Malay ruling party UMNO has pursued preferential policies to create a Malay middle-class. Ironically, as Hefner points out, this has led to a gradual improvement in the relationship between the Malay and Chinese elites (p. 30). The same theme is developed in Embong's article in the book. In the Republic of Indonesia the extent of Chinese influence has been a topic of debate over the years, and the state has consistently implemented policies of discrimination (p. 26). Moreover, Indonesia periodically under- goes what Hefner calls periods of 'foundational crisis' when all of the consti- tutional underpinnings of the state are brought into question as elites make

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 401 sectarian appeals to ethnicity, race and religion in order to advance their own interests (p. 28). Hefner sees these moments of upheaval and civil unrest as the greatest threat to the civil society on which Indonesia's national constitu- tion is based, and also as a threat to its Islamic democratie movements (p. 45). Finally, in briefly discussing Singapore, Hefner mentions its 'flirting with religious pluralism' through the religious education policy that the ruling party (PAP) introduced in the hope that Singaporean youth would learn about universal morals to counter those of Western individualism. It was also hoped that Confucianism would be the most popularly chosen religion. Seven religions were on offer, and the result was that most young people opted for Buddhism and Bible studies. This policy also had the adverse effect of making some Christians and Muslims intensify programmes for religious teachings in their communities. Ultimately it was scrapped and instead the concept of generally shared 'Asian Values' was introduced, which according to some commentators subtly harbours Confucian values. Nevertheless there has been growing public participation in civil decency and growing interest in multiculturalism. Hefner concludes the article by giving suggestions as to what possible roads can be taken to further develop a healthy democratie multicultural civil society in these Southeast Asian countries. The rest of the articles in the book each focus on one specific country and topic, and develop some of the themes mentioned in Hefner's chapter. Embong's paper describes the culture and practice of pluralism in postcolo- nial Malaysia. It takes its cue from the affirmative action programmes of the New Econmic Policy (1971-1990), which played a central role in the formation of the new Malay middle class. Some of the local commentary which Embong quotes to illustrate the improved relations between the Malays, Chinese and Siamese makes one think that Malaysia is indeed overcoming the out-of-date British colonial legacy of racism and ethnic classification which Syamsul, in his paper, characterizes as the product of 'colonial episte- mological conquest'. It is a shame that Embong does not try to explore other ways of characterizing the emerging new Malaysia, that side of Malaysia that might be represented by a younger generation which is trying, as described in Mandal's paper, to move beyond ethnic pluralism and ethnic distinctions in general. Mandal stresses that Malaysia has yet to fully come to terms with its colonial experience as a collective national whole. Loh Kok Wah, on the other hand, suggests that the discourse of developmentalism, and not the discourse of ethnicity, is what will set limits on the counter-discourse of democ- racy. This discourse, accompanied by the liberalization of the economy, has caused many non-Malays to identify with the Barisan Nasional government, which they view as a stable one that generates economie development and prosperity. Syamsul disagrees with Loh Kok Wah that Malaysian interethnic

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access 402 Book reviews interests have been reduced to purely economie interests. He reminds us that many interethnic non-governmental civic asociations have also developed in Malaysia which are not focused on the market. Finally, Anwar's paper is a personally involved and highly honest argument on the problems of religious gender reforms in Malaysia. Turning to Singapore, Béng Huat and Kian-Woon's article discusses the historical development and present-day processes of social pluralism in Singapore by looking at groups including the theatre community, voluntary welfare associations, women's associations, several religious communities, and the gay voice. These authors try to map the consequences of the social differentiation occuring in Singapore. They suggest that the stable political- economy has allowed people to make choices in their social pursuits, and the improvement of education has given people a more critical creativity in the arts and culture. Still on Singapore, Siddique's contribution engages Furnivall's original thesis of the 'plural economy' in relation to Muslim pro- fessionals and 'Singapore Inc.'. Moving on to the contributions on Indonesia, Masoed, Panggabean and Azoa describe the social conditions for civilty and participation in Yogyakarta, conditions which they locate in the nationalistic and modernizing direc- tions that the sultanate has taken during the twentieth century. Hadiz discusses class-based religious pluralism in the Indonesian labour force, while Dzuhayatin writes on gender and pluralism in the same country. Sulistiyo's article focuses on ethnoreligious issues in the Indonesian armed forces. His paper is also a nice summary of the ethno-religious turmoil associated with post-Suharto reforms in relation to the Indonesian armed forces. While this book is an important contribution to ethnic studies, the issue of ethnicity is not critically explored and the term is sometimes used in contra- dictory ways. For example, Hefner speaks of a Malayo-Indonesian civilization but then after mentioning how the colonialists ideologically hedged the various peoples of the area into boxes of ethnicity, he states that the Chinese and Indians stopped entering the Malayo-Indonesian ethnicity rather than their civilization. It was not always the case that foreign groups became 'ethnic Malay', and use of the term is highly questionable for the pre-modern period. They were, however, 'civilizationally Malay', as were the myriad indigenous peoples of the area, including the Malay-speaking peoples. The same issue also mars the opening of Embong's paper, which cites Hefner's concept of the Malay-Indonesian civilization but then confines it to Malaysia by suggesting that Malaysia and its plural society is primordial. Neither are conceptions of ethnicity in the three countries compared. Very little is said about Indian communities. Embong's paper does briefly discuss the Siamese and the Orang Asli. I do however think that it is unfortunate that this book does not have one comparative article, written with the framework of its

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 403 study, which covers all of the indigenous peoples (orang asli/suku terasing) who live in these countries. At times the book seems to praise ethnic pluralism rather than be critical of it as a hindrance to the formation of other possible socio-economic relations: a modern equivalent of the older Malay 'flexible boundaries and canopied ethnicity' political process, for instance, or a system based on non-plural civic participation by all nationals. Moreover, the image of a tolerant pluralist society in which ethnic groups have nothing in common except for economie interests and the market may only be one side of the pluralist coin. The other is intolerance and violence: that is, a version of what Hobbes called the state of warre. Hefner points out that Malaysia has managed to maintain a better pluralist record of tolerance than Indonesia, which politically tries to play down pluralism. One might suggest that when the issue of pluralism does emerge in Indonesia it does so in an eruption of intolerance and violence, rather than in the pursuit of common economie interests and goals. Maybe the ideology of pluralism can have no place in Indonesian civic society, which is based on a unity that 'canopies' diversity in a modern version of Hefner's 'flexible boundaries and canopied ethnicity'. This raises sorne questions: how does Indonesian civic culture manage to maintain unity in the face of negative pluralism? What is the nature of the pluralist forces that challenge this unity and under what condition does negative pluralism emerge? All the articles on Indonesia seem to provide implicit answers to these questions, but notwithstanding Hefner's article the questions are not really explored explic- itly. This book is an interesting one, and should stimulate further research on the general topic and the varied themes on which it focuses.

Timothy P. Barnard, Multiple centres of authority; Society and environment in Siak and eastern Sumatra, 1674-1827. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2003, xvi + 206 pp. [Verhandelingen 210.] ISBN 90.6718.219.2. Price: EUR 30.00 (paperback).

JAN VAN DER PUTTEN

Written in the 'Andayas' tradition of combining indigenous literary sources with Dutch and English, and inspired by Henk Maier's ideas about identity and Malay writings, this book explores 150 years of the history of the once illustrious kingdom of Siak on the east coast of Sumatra. This history starts in 1674 when a merchant's gifts, representing five communities in the upper reaches of the Kampar and Siak rivers, were recorded in the VOC books kept at Melaka. Then unfolds a story of polities whose power rapidly grew and

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access 404 Book reviews waned through a myriad of alliances forged between communities in and outside the core region. The story ends in 1827 when the ruler was unable to restore his authority to its former glory and was deposed by the Dutch on the grounds of his insanity. The writer uses the concept of kacu as a guideline with which to lead the reader through the intricacies of a chronologically presented history of a decen- tralized region. The lack of central authority astonished the Dutch across the Straits, as is often highlighted in their sources. The kacu concept is taken from the Hikayat Hang Tuah, in which the protagonist in a famous scène at the court of Indrapura suggests that the Malays at Melaka are as kacukan ('impure') in their language (and this may be extrapolated to include their claim to descent from the legendary founding fathers of the Malay royal line) as is the local population. The reduced form the writer uses in this book is a little awk- ward: where is the original glottal stop at the end? What difference is there from kacau in this form (see Wilkinson's Malay dictionary)? Nevertheless the opposition with sungguh ('pure') is well chosen as an indigenous motif that is found throughout Malay historiography. It plays a central role in Siak's claim to authority in the Malay world, especially so from the beginning of the eighteenth century when Raja Kecik came to power. Claiming to be the only son of the murdered Sultan Mahmud (the last Johorese sultan who could boast a pure line from the legendary first Malay kings at Bukit Siguntang), Raja Kecik succeeded in uniting the different ethnic communities in the region to defeat and temporary occupy Johor. The East Sumatran hegemony over the Malay World was short-lived: soon afterward the Siak ruler was ousted from Johor by Malay-Bugis forces. However, as the writer argues, Raja Kecik's claim was a driving force for unifying different communities throughout the eighteenth century. After Raja Kecik's death the Siak polity was regularly divided into two camps led by direct descendants who both claimed principal authority over Siak. One of the daimants would occupy the throne while the other roamed around the countryside or sea to round up enough muscle from Raja Kecik's former allies to topple the reigning ruler. When he succeeded, the deposed ruler would do pretry much the same by setting out to muster his own support among disaffected groups. Bloodshed in these putsches was kept to a minimum, as the rivals were still next of kin and kept trying, at least, to 'play relatives', a phrase coined by Maier to paraphrase inter-Malay relationships. Agreements and allegiances could be highly volatile: in a period of forty years in the mid-eighteenth-century Siak, a change of power occurred as many as eight times! No wonder the Dutch in Melaka were confused regarding whom to deal with or uncertain whether any deal which had been struck would really result in a cargo of one of the many products that were exported from Siak. The more so as the mental health of the rulers could not always be counted upon: madness, apparently, ran in the family, and Dutch records

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 405 identify several Siak rulers as insane. At one stage in the book Barnard finds a rather remarkable reason to explain the actions of a deposed ruler who surprisingly was given a position at the court of the brother who had deposed him. After being insulted in an audience at court this man went back to his quarters and beat up his wife, who was also the older sister of the reigning ruler. The conflict within the royal family was hushed up, and both parties appeased, on the basis that the mentally unstable husband was unable to cope with the tensions of having one of his kinsmen as strong ruler next to him. This scène is not taken from Mario Puzo's Godfather but from another literary work, the Hikayat Siak, which was apparently commissioned by one branch of the ruling family - although we learn this only on page 162 of the book. The likelihood that the Hikayat's account of the incident is biased should really have been noted here, if only to préparé the reader for the husband's remarkably swift recovery from his 'insanity'. Unquestionably, the use of indigenous sources is as valid and invaluable for the writing of a history as is that of non-indigenous sources. But just as the latter usually incorporate certain biases, local sources too were typically written for particular purposes and ruled by particular conventions. Barnard seems to be inclined to problematize the indigenous sources less than the VOC records, which 'are important for the narrative they provide' but 'also reinforce misconceptions about Siak society' (p. 5). I agree wholeheartedly that texts such as Syair Perang Siak and Syair Ikan Terubuk 'hold important messages for historians' and should not be reserved for literature specialists (p. 107), but caution must be observed with all sources, including the indigenous ones. In Multiple centres ofauthority a critical stance towards the literary sources seems in some cases, including the one just mentioned from the Hikayat Siak, to be missing. Elsewhere in the book we are told that boasting about one's strength, and 'verbal stabbing', are common in the Malay World as a prelude to physical combat: but might this too not be more a topos in Malay writing than an aspect of Malay warfare? The use of such literary sources, nevertheless, enables Barnard to give a very lively and convincing depiction of 150 years of history in East Sumatra, a depiction in which ethnic, cultural, ecological and economie aspects are all covered. This makes the book a very important contribution to our understanding of the Malay world, which we are only starting to fathom in its entirety. For, as Barnard writes in his conclusion, the constant need to forge and reconfirm allegiances between the different groups that were present in Malay polities, and to incorporate outside elements, was the strength of these polities but at the same time their weakness. Changing alliances and new groups entering the scène are only one of the many factors which account for the rapid rise and f all of polities in the Malay world, as this book eloquently shows.

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David van Duuren, Krisses; A critical bibliography. Wijk en Aal- burg: Pictures Publishers, 2002, 192 pp. ISBN 90.73187.42.7. Price: EUR 39.50 (hardback).

JAN PIET PUYPE

This is an extended translation, updated by the inclusion of many more titles, of Krissen; Een beredeneerde bibliografie, a Dutch paperback published in 1998 by the Royal Tropical Institute. The amount of literature on the kris, the well-known icon-like Indonesian dagger, is quite enormous and no doubt results from the f act that it has been collected all over the world for over four cenruries. This fact alone already makes the appearance of Van Duuren's bibliography most welcome. The main value of the introduction is its subdivision, with reference to titles, into specific categories of kris studies, including studies dealing with symbol- ism, manufacture, iconography, typology, and ritual. The well-known term pusaka (p. 10) is not explained. A concise glossary would have been helpful for those readers not conversant with the Indonesian language and traditions. The list of abbreviations at the back lacks 'JRAI' (not 'RJAI' as on p. 115) for the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. The acknowledgements are extensive and gracious - a good English custom so often lacking in Dutch books. The entries are a mix of true critical reviews and pieces which are more or less descriptive in character. The question remains how the user should judge the value of a merely descriptive review. The author must of course be for- given for the fact that the eight kris titles by his own hand (pp. 34-6) do not, could not, really receive a critical treatment (although the present reviewer can vouch for the scholarly standing of many of them). Throughout his work the author displays a profound knowledge on the many aspects of the kris and its literature. He tells us, for instance, that contrary to what is commonly assumed the keris majapahit, generally accepted to be a proto-kris type, 'is far older than the Principality of Majapahit from which it takes its name' (p. 63). We are told that the Sultanate of Banjermasin on Borneo (now Kalimantan) was an important centre of arms production in the first half of the nineteenth century (p. 64). It is also of interest to note which works the author thinks stand out from the others. One of the most difficult things in kris research is the dating of the pieces. Since in very large ethnographic areas like the Indonesian archipelago a tradition in form, style and, ornament tends to extend over long periods of time, examples of krisses with a sound provenance are of extreme value to the historian of artefacts. In discussing an article by C.F. Feest (p. 42), reference is made to a number of other titles discussing krisses with a more or less secure provenance and dating. The oldest reported kris in Europe is one which is now in the Museum

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 407 für Völkerkunde in Vienna and which was present at Graz before 1617. On page 54, I. Groneman's epoch-making study Der Kris der Javaner is treated in detail and with the respect, not to say reverence, it deserves; Van Duuren notes that this study marks 'the point of no return' in the field. P. Holstein's work Contribution a l'étude des armes orientales, published in two volumes in Paris in 1931, is justifiably called a magisterial work and a textbook example of a perspective on the subject which is both businesslike and formal (p. 78). According to Van Duuren the most comprehensive technical treatise ever produced on Javanese kris making is a series of articles by J.G. Huyser which appeared between 1916 and 1918 (p. 80). The well-known work by Jasper and Pirngardie of 1930 is 'one of the timeless, perennial reference works on the Indonesian kris' (p. 84). Regarding K.S. Jensen's 1998 book Van Duuren is critical, but nevertheless finds Jensen's inventory and analysis of 40 historical krisses in famous public collections 'invaluable'. He recognises that H. Maryon was responsible for introducing, in 1960, the term 'pattern weiding' to describe pamor. Among the other works assessed positively here are that by G. and B. Solyom (1978), which Van Duuren praises for its depth and overall quality as well as its 'unusual (for an English-language kris publication) variety of antique Dutch sources', and M.J. Wiener's (1995) historic-anthropological treatise, which is described as a 'brilliant study'. This is a most valuable book, and the English-language edition provides foreign readers with a large number of titles of important Dutch kris studies, most of which have not so far received the scholarly attention they deserve.

Gertrudis A.M. Offenberg and Jan Pouwer (eds), Amoko - in the beginning; Myths and legends of the Asmat and Mimika Papuans. Adelaide: Crawford House, 2002, xxviii + 276 pp. ISBN 1.86333.207.3. Price: USD 39.95 (paperback).

THOMAS H. SLONE

Amoko is a compilation of myths and legends of the Asmat and Mimika peoples of the south coast of Papua (formerly Irian Jaya, and prior to that Dutch New Guinea) in Indonesia. The collection of 29 culture hero legends and 16 ancestor myths represents a large effort by several people to bring the book to publication. The Dutch missionary Father Gerard A. Zegwaard lived among the Asmat from 1947 to 1952 and among the Mimika from 1953 to 1956. Although Zegwaard wrote much of ethnological importance about Irian Jaya, relatively little has been formally published. A partial bibliography of Zegwaard's

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access 408 Book reviews work appears in this book on pages 268-73, but a more extensive bibliography of his writings can be found on the website of the Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen (www.kun.nl / cps / papers.html). Fortuitously, Zegwaard met Offenberg in 1996, shortly before he died, and gave his collected folklore material to her, asking whether she could make a book out of it. Offenberg embarked on enlisting the assistance of several parties. Anthropologist Jan Pouwer collaborated on the editing and contributed his own unpublished folktales from the Mimika. Anthropologist Todd Harple provided a prologue. Previously unpublished tales were also contributed by linguist CL. Voorhoeve, anthropologist Jan Pouwer, linguist Petrus Drabbe, and missionary Sjel Coenen. Permission to use the tales, advice and information was given by the Missionaires du Sacré Coeur, and photographs were contributed from several sources. The tales are restricted to those collected prior to 1962, the year that Indonesia took over administration of what is now Papua. Very little information has been published about the Mimika, and not much on Asmat mythology either, so this collection is a welcome addition to the field of Melanesian anthropology. It is an especially valuable collection because of the way the stories are contextualized by Harple's prologue, which describes enactments of Mimikan mythology at the 1998 Kamoro Arts Festival and its modern interpretation by Mimikans, as well as by the commentaries which follow each story and by the extensive endnotes. Pouwer provides a guide to the tales (pp. 25-60), describing the cosmological landscape. The different methods of story collection and translation are described and compared on pages 16-24. Although the quality of the book is excellent, it could have been further improved by adding an index, a glossary, and a list of folktale motifs for each story. A list of motifs would, for instance, have facilitated comparison of the different stories that are reproduced regarding the origins of sago (pp. 87-93) and humans (pp. 117-29). Offenberg notes that there is substantial related material in missionary archives which is still waiting to be edited and published. Unpublished historical and mythological treasures in Roman Catholic and Protestant missionary archives call for urgent editing. Our anthology is like a choice bunch of flowers: it cannot be complete and is limited to varieties of specifk regions. One can only hope that in the near future an inventory will be made of narrative and mythological data covering various parts of Indonesian West Papua. (pp. x-xi.)

It took a tremendous coordination of effort to produce Amoko, and the processing of these other unpublished tales would take an even greater effort on the part of many. Nonetheless, such a project could shed more light on the relationship between language, culture and geography in New Guinea.

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Kwa Chong Guan, James H. Morrison and Patricia Lim Pui Huen (eds), Oral history in Southeast Asia; Theory and method. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000, xii + 172 pp. ISBN 981.305577.4, price SGD 69.90 (hardback); 981.3055774, SGD 39.90 (paperback).

P. Lim Pui Huen and Diana Wong (eds), War and memory in Malaysia and Singapore. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000, vii + 193 pp. ISBN 981.230037.6. Price: SGD 39.90 (paperback)

FRIDUS STEIJLEN

Oral history as a research method has long been accepted by social scientists, but remains somewhat controversial among historians despite the fact tha it has already contributed much to our understanding of the history of non- dominant groups in many societies. In some western countries, including England, the United States and Italy, oral history has been associated with emancipatory movements which, in the 1960s and 70s, became interested in the history of women and of the labouring classes. This gave it the image of a research method especially designed for oppressed groups. At the same time, oral history was being used in Southeast Asia to write the history of the decolonized 'new' nations. In Indonesia, for example, the Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia (ANRI, National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia) and the Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia (LIPI, Indonesian Institute of Science) started an oral history project to fill the gaps in their official administrative records. These official records were incomplete for two reasons: because most of them had been compiled by the Dutch colonizer, and because during the revolutionary period many records of the nationalist government and movement had been destroyed. The collection of oral history in Indonesia was an official state endeavour, and in sharp contrast to the situation in the West it initially remained oriented mainly toward elites. After some years, however, 'ordinary people' were also included in projects dealing with the Japanese occupation. The same sequence can be seen in Singapore, where an official oral history project was started in the 1970s to write the history of independent Singapore by interviewing the political elite, but where later research, on such subjects as vanishing trades and the history of specific ethnic groups, also covered the 'man in the streef. Oral history in the formerly colonized parts of Southeast Asia was also emancipatory in the broader sense that it helped give these nations their own histories, national histories not dominated by the records of the colonizers. In 1990 a workshop on oral history in Southeast Asia was held by the

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Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. It took eight years before the papers from this workshop were published, together with some additional contributions, in Oral history in Southeast Asia. Despite this delay, it was still worthwhile to publish the papers. Although oral history has since developed further, the publication shows us the state of the art of oral history in Southeast Asia in the beginning of the nineties. In ten contributions the value and use of oral history are discussed, and arguments on correct methodology are stated. The contributions do not present insights that are completely new. The topics dealt with include the 'narrative interview process', the 'life history approach', and 'reconstruction of life histories'. Nevertheless they do provide an image of the oral history tradition in Southeast Asia, and draw our attention to the important oral history work that has been done in that region. Partly because of the orientation toward elites which initially characterized oral history research in the region, the problems involved in interviewing members of political and economie elites (time constraints, ideologi- cal agendas) are central to two of the chapters. These contain discussions that will help researchere using oral history to improve their methodological and analytical tools. As elsewhere in the world, a historical episode which is particularly important for oral history research is the Second World War. This is the central topic of a second oral history volume published by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in 2000, this time based on a workshop held in 1995 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war. As with several other oral history projects, the Institute of Southeast Asean Studies (ISEAS) researchere started interviewing about the Japanese occupation in 1973. The result, War and memory, is a very readable and informative book on the ways in which the Second World War is remembered on different levels and in different domains. Particularly impressive is the chapter written by Cheah Boon Kheng on 'Memory as history and moral judgment'. This starts with the author's own recollection of the Japanese occupation as a child of six years old. His account shows how limited, but at the same time significant, such observations can be. Cheah uses them to counter the often moralistic accounts found in other sources. The national narrative, he argues, often functions as ideology. This notion is further discussed in the contribution by Lim Pui Huen, who describes how monuments and memorials in Johor are given meaning depending on the political agenda of the country and on the ethnic group that is linked with the monument in question. Another very informative contribution is written by Brenda S.A. Yeoh and Kamalini Ramdas. In their chapter they discuss how experiences of oppression and violence give meaning to the space people live in and how the passes and permits used by the Japanese administration affected that meaning. Chapters like this one demonstrate how useful oral history is in order to understand how people experienced the past.

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The contribution on 'Memories of war' by Wang Gungwu is complementary to Yeoh and Ramdas's chapter. Gungwu shows how memories of the war vary in different parts of Asia, and how the way in which war is experienced in terms of good and bad determines how people look back at and remember it. He describes an incident in which young South Koreans were upset when they heard an old Korean woman singing Japanese military songs, and argues that their disgust was the result of how they had learned about the Japanese war within the context of what could be called Korean national identity-building. Abu Talib Ahmad, P. Ramasamy and Nimah S. Talib deal with compara- ble issues in their contributions on the Malay, the Indian and Kuching Malay communities respectively. A very different topic is discussed in a chapter by Yeo Song Nian and Ng Siew Ai on how the war is reflected in Singapore- Malayan Chinese literary work. What War and memory in Malaysia and Singapore shows us is how differ- ently war is experienced by different people, and how diverse are the ways in which different communities deal with that experience and the memory of it. It is not a question of which experience or memory is most correct or valuable. On the contrary: this volume shows the value of altemative readings of history from different communities and different domains. It also shows how useful and necessary oral history is in order to describe this kind of history. War and memory proves the importance of the research genre of which Oral history in Southeast Asia gives a state-of-the-art survey.

Andrew Lattas, Cultures ofsecrecy; Reinventing race in Bush Kaliai cargo cults. Madison/London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998, xliv + 360 pp. ISBN 0.299.15800.4, price: USD 59.59 (hardback); 0.299.15804.7, USD 24.95 (paperback).

JAAP TIMMER

This book focuses on Bush Kaliai discourse about 'cargo' and 'the millennium' in stories told about the past, the present and the future. The Bush Kaliai live in the northwestern part of West New Britain where the author spent about thirty months in four villages during a ten-year period from 1985 to 1996. Bush Kaliai people visited Lattas in the houses that he built from bush material and during these sessions, they would recount their beliefs, rituals, and customs. The gatherings often appear to have been sensational in nature as the stories, chiefly related to a cargo movement that was active in the region during the first half of the 1970s, are remarkable in the way they blend the realms of the symbolic and the real. This is embodied in the book

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access 412 Book reviews through an abundantly rich picture of the Bush Kaliai people's creative logic and their particular ways of continuously reworking information, reflections, and expectations. Lattas transcribes the stories in a remarkably rich marmer and successfully conveys, despite the fact that the stories are significantly edited and at times hard to digest, the richness of Bush Kaliai religious beliefs. In often very imag- inative ways, these beliefs link traditional practices with recent experiences of Christian stories and ritual, Western influences and commodities, and contact with a variety of different people bringing new knowledge and objects from places previously unknown to the out-of-the-way Bush Kaliai. Theoretically speaking, the book builds extensively on the works of Kenelm Burridge {Mambu: A Melanesian millenium, 1960) and Peter Lawrence (Road belong cargo; A study of the cargo movement in the Southern Madang District, 1964) yet avoids a thorough discussion of more recently published works on cargo cults. For the reader familiar with Melanesian ontologies, reading Lattas' book will be a feast of recognition. But the book also resonates with studies about the persistence and resurgence of religious phenomena elsewhere. Indeed, Lattas' study fits well within the anthropology of conversions to Christianity, or local Christianity, and recent works on the ways in which cultural models are reinforced, challenged, and reconfigured as part of the processes of glo- balization. To anthropologists with knowledge of cargo cults in Melanesia and, in fact, religious imaginations all over the world, this is nothing new, but Lattas' book moves beyond the way religion mediates the colonial encounter to issues of race and other forms of domination. It is here that the two key terms in the title, secrecy and race, are meaningful and pertinent. Secrecy, the intentional concealing of information, is sketched by Lattas as being very much part of everyday life and discourse among the Bush Kaliai. The Bush Kaliai cargo stories show how what is present in the world has its character formed by the way absences are figured. The seen and the unseen are at the heart of Bush Kaliai ontologies, which are concerned with masks, concealment, trickery, and magie. The political and economie domination by Europeans which the Bush Kaliai cargo cults reacted against in the colonial period is situated in the unseen, among the dead, a representation which ethically repositions the relationship between Melanesians and Europeans. The incorporation of European power into the topographies of the dead and the realms of ancestral myths, Lattas shows, worked to 'familiarize' white domination, allowing Bush Kaliai to bridge new distances imposed by race. The chapters in the book follow a chronological order, moving from pre- contact cult ceremonies, via a variety of cults that developed after the Second World War, to the roots of the 1970s movement. The bulk of the book deals with ideas expressed about this last movement, together with information from secondary sources. Key themes are the revelation of the concealed, the

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 413 affiliation between the living and the dead, interactions between the sexes in the cults, and relationships between Bush Kaliai and Europeans in terms of inequality and race. Towards the end of the book the author brings these themes to bear on the contemporary context, in which issues important in the past cults have become less salient and people tend to focus on the impact of the New Tribes Mission that arrived in the region in 1984. According to Lattas, the new fundamentalist missionaries desired to encourage Bush Kaliai to abandon their traditional culture. Overall, the reader gets a good sense of the conceptual legacy with which Bush Kaliai work upon their world in transforming it. Lattas has gained a lucid understanding of the importance of mythic narrative in the reproduc- tion of Melanesian communities. The fact that such narratives also serve as charters for practice, and lead to social changes, does not receive much attention in the book. Lattas offers little information on the social position of the informants and the actors in their stories, the composition and histories of the different church groups, customary affiliations, or the social effects of colonial administration. Instead he focuses on various expressions of 'cargo' as interpreted in terms of one major analytical idea, an idea that unfortunately underexposes the variety of those expressions through time and largely avoids taking into account the concerns of real actors. While reading this book I often wanted to learn more about the contexts in which the stories were told and the social and political worlds that the symbolic themes allude to. In order not to be overly distracted by the lack of a clear historical and political analysis, it is good to keep in mind that the focus of the book is 'popular covert beliefs and practices through which people went about both embracing and subverting the disciplinary routines and pas- toral regimes of the West' (p. xxi). Lattas has grasped the aesthetics of Bush Kaliai poetics, metaphors and metonyms that seize upon knowledge about Westerners and the Western world and create mimetic channels between them and the West. While this book is of particular interest to scholars concerned with religion and culrural change, its impact is destined to go beyond the anthropology of Melanesia.

Kartika Setyawati, I. Kuntara Wiryamartana and Willem van der Molen, Katalog naskah Merapi-Merbabu; Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia. Yogyakarta: Penerbitan Universitas Sanata Dharma, Leiden: Opleiding Talen en Culturen van Zuidoost-Azië en Oceanië, 2002, ix + 278 pp. [Semaian 23.] ISBN 90.73084.23.7. Price: EUR 15.99 (paperback).

EDWIN WIERINGA

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The subcollection of Javanese manuscripts in the National Library of Indonesia in Jakarta, which are called the Merapi-Merbabu manuscripts, consists of a few hundred palm-leaf manuscripts, dating from the eighteenth, seventeenth and even sixteenth centuries. In fact, the designation 'Merapi- Merbabu' is a shorthand for this collection, because the colophons reveal that the manuscripts originated from many different places of the Central Javanese mountainside, scattered over the slopes not only of the Merapi and the Merbabu, but also of Mounts Telamaya, Telaga and Wilis. It is difficult, however, to date the manuscripts quite precisely, because the exact workings of the chronological system employed in the Merapi-Merbabu manuscripts is as yet not known in all its intricate details. For the greater part the texts are written in a little studied variety of Javanese script which is commonly called Buda ('pre-Islamic') or gunung ('mountain') script. In the eighteenth century the whole collection belonged to a single person, a certain Windusana, who was high priest in the Buda religion, but around the middle of the nineteenth century it came in the possession of the Bataviaasch Genootschap, and is now included in the National Library of Indonesia. Although the existence of the Merapi-Merbabu treasure trove was already known in the academie world since the beginning of the nineteenth century, it has hitherto very much remained what Kuntara Wiryamartana and Van der Molen, in an introductory article in this journal (BKI157, 2001, pp. 51-64), have called 'a neglected collection'. Both scholars, together with Kartika Setyawati, have been working intermittently since the 1990s on a description of this collection, resulting in the present concise Indonesian- language catalogue which for the first time makes its contents available to a wider audience. All necessary items of information are duly given (physical description, notes on contents and a citation of the incipit and explicit to aid textual identification), but all possible references to relevant publications have been left out. Contrary to what one might perhaps expect of a library once belonging to a Buda priest, the texts are not exclusively of a Hindu-Buddhist nature. In fact, a genuine interest in Islam and the outside world beyond the 'isolated' mountain dwellings is well attested in the collection. We find, for example, mystical lessons attributed to Seh Ba Yazid (L 206, peti 32), that is, the famous Persian mystic Bayazld (or Abü Yazïd) al-BistamT (d. 261/874 or 264/877- 8). The Tapël Adam, relating the history of the prophets from the creation of Adam to the mission of the Prophet Muhammad, is found in no less than five manuscripts (155, 194, 217, 297, and 450). The first part of the Muslim profession of faith ('There is no god but God') is connected to the names of dewa (L 64, peti 8), whereas in another text of rapal and mantra, besides Allah, Sulayman, angels (malekat) and the shahada, none other than Durga and Arjuna are mentioned (L 223 VIII, peti 14). And what to think about

Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 06:31:19AM via free access Book reviews 415 the intriguing manuscript 389 I, peti 13, which is described as 'Peringatan akan waktu pemakaman leluhur'? The reference in the quotation to wulan saban makes one wonder about a connection with the eighth month of the Islamic calendar, known as Saban or Ruwah in Javanese, in which graveyards are cleaned and offerings made to deceased family members. A text called Kitab Hasrar appears to be some kind of kinglist (L 155.2, peti 5), but what does its title imply? In manuscript 272a, peti 14 the same Kitab Hasrar is combined with what seems to be the Kidung Lalëmbut ('ingsun ngetang dëmit ing tanah Jawi'), so perhaps the term hasrar should be interpreted here as an Arabic loan-word, derived from asrar (compare the expression asrar al-Qur'an or 'the secret meaning of the Koran'). Was this kinglist, then, perhaps regarded as somehow belonging to the religious domain, dealing with speculations on the rahsa and rasa of Javanese history? Now that this valuable catalogue is published, the next step in gaining access to the precious Merapi-Merbabu collection should be the edition of texts, together with a translation and commentary, to provide insights into this remarkable age-old literary heritage. In fact, this is exactly what Kuntara Wiryamartana and Van der Molen advocated in their preliminary article on the collection (BKI157, 2001, p. 63). Judging from the promising designation 'Pustaka Windusana 1' of the Yogyakarta edition of this catalogue, we may hopefully look forward to other solid works in this new series.

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