chapter four Articles of faith Religion, fear and fantasy in Indies landscapes

In recent years, much has been written on Europeans arriving in the Netherlands than Christianity. It is the representation of Dutch representations of the Aceh War in a Indies in the late-colonial period would environments shaped by faiths rarely held wide range of textual media, from journalism have noted a diversity of religious practices by European observers themselves that is to �ction, and on the portrayal of the war that they were largely unfamiliar with at examined here. by colonial photographers.¹ Such studies home. Landscapes marked by Christian Europeans in the Indies were most likely to demonstrate the resounding controversy places of worship were relatively few, as pass through landscapes marked by Islamic sparked by the Dutch conquest of Aceh in Christianity commanded only a small or Hindu and Buddhist places of worship the early twentieth century, as revealed in following throughout the archipelago. �is and, in many instances, to meet Muslims, various genres of reportage and literature. remains the case in Indonesia today,² with who comprised by far the largest proportion By contrast, other scenes of late-colonial the exception of Maluku, which had been of the population.⁴ �is chapter examines violence such as South Bali, which was subject to sustained contact with Europeans how growing political challenges to Dutch brought under Dutch administration between since the sixteenth century. Elsewhere, rule in the late-colonial Indies provided the 1906 and 1908, were very quickly erased from evidence of Christianity during the colonial context for differentiation between Hindu- the public record. Indeed, apart from a few period was mainly con�ned to large cities Buddhist and Islamic landscapes in Dutch administrative reports and photographs, the with signi�cant European populations. �e colonial visual culture. In particular, colonial brutal destruction of several ruling Balinese church spires that punctuated the skylines artists routinely distinguished between the houses at the hands of knil troops was rarely of Batavia and other Company settlements historicity and serenity of Hinduism, on the mentioned for the remainder of the colonial from the seventeenth century onward serve to one hand, and the difference and belligerence period. �is chapter examines the conquest illustrate. �e further spread of Christianity in of Islam on the other. As is well established in of Bali and Aceh from a fresh perspective, parts of the Indies from the mid-nineteenth the historical literature, Bali’s Hindu heritage focusing speci�cally on how fundamentally century onward remained relatively limited, inspired an unprecedented outpouring of divergent colonial attitudes toward Indies largely due to the colonial state’s reluctance western art, literature and scholarship, and the religions shaped the way in which landscape to press Christian missions upon populations island came to occupy a unique imaginative �gured in European painting during the early hostile to conversion.³ Most Indies landscapes position in late-colonial views of the Indies. twentieth century. therefore bore the imprint of religions other By striking contrast, European depictions of

103 landscapes from Islamic regions of the Indies tropicality, and thus provided a backdrop are notable for the absence of imaginative upon which colonial fantasies concerning intervention that informs their composition. ‘eastern’ religions could be projected. To Despite the external origins of both religions, European observers, these religions left an in India and Arabia respectively, only Islam indelible mark on Indies landscapes, which was portrayed by the Dutch as a ‘foreign’ were represented as charming, peaceful and imposition upon Indies landscapes with no eternal, despite frequent evidence to the ‘natural’ resonance in the tropics. Certainly, contrary. �e timelessness and purity of

1 See, for example, the recent essays the landscapes that enfolded Islamic environments touched by Hinduism and in Dolk 2001, cited throughout this communities were often noted with curiosity Buddhism, their ostensible imperviousness chapter. On photographic accounts by European observers, who recorded their to historical change and their fragility in the of the Aceh War, see Nieuwenhuys topographic features and showed particular wake of ‘foreign’ (primarily Islamic) in�uence, 1988:149–63; Zweers 1989:110–9; Groeneveld 1991a, 1991b; Ouwehand interest in built landmarks like mosques became an article of faith for colonial 2009. and Muslim graves. However, following artists. Fear and fantasy thus informed 2 In the early 1930s, the 1.7 million the advent of the Aceh War in the 1870s differentiated representations of Islamic Christians in the Indies comprised – during which local resistance to Dutch and Hindu landscapes. As an antidote to around 3% of the total population (Van Klinken 2003:7, 10). In 2000, around expansion was framed in terms of jihad (holy colonial anxieties about Islam, Hinduism 9% of the Indonesian population war) – Islam was portrayed by colonists as a and Buddhism were portrayed in European considered themselves Christians lurking, militant imposter in the Indies. �e landscape art as organic to the Indies, a (Suryadinata, Arifin and Ananta protracted con�ict in Aceh evoked a rising ‘natural’, historic outgrowth of Asian religious 2003:104). 3 The Batak highlands of Sumatra, as pan-Islamic tide of anti-colonial nationalism sentiment. well as Manado, the Toraja highlands that was perceived by the Dutch as dangerous of Sulawesi, Flores, and West New not only to the stability of the colonial state, Commanding past and future: Javanese Guinea were the major sites of but also to other European colonial regimes antiquities and colonial agency Christian mission influence in colonial Indonesia (Cribb 2000:48; Reid in the region. 2005:15; Vickers 2005:22). �e �rst two sections of this chapter, which It was at the end of the Company period 4 Today around 88% of the focus on European images of Hindu and and the dawn of the Dutch colonial era that population of Indonesia is Islamic, Buddhist antiquities on Java and Bali, are European explorers on Java encountered although the distribution of Muslims varies according to province, with intended to set the context for a subsequent the remains of some of the most signi�cant the highest number of Muslims examination of the impact of the Aceh War Hindu and Buddhist monuments in concentrated in Java and Sumatra on late-colonial representations of Indies Southeast Asia. Europeans �rst laid eyes upon (Cribb 2000:44). landscapes. I argue that images of pre- the temple ruins of what is now known as 5 Jordaan 1996:13. Loro Jonggrang, or ‘Slender Maiden’, is the local Javanese Islamic Javanese antiquities, contemporary the Loro Jonggrang complex, at Prambanan name for Durga, one of the gods Buddhist temples in urban Chinese near Yogyakarta, during the late eighteenth represented in statue form within the quarters, and Hindu sites of worship on century.⁵ Construction of the complex had Shiva temple (Jordaan 1996:5). Bali resonated with European notions of probably commenced some time in the eighth

104 articles of faith