Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Scott Abel
given its geographic position and history as a diverse, multicultural region for centuries.
However, for reasons including climate disadvantageous for document preservation and
the recurrence of conflict, few documents exist revealing the perspectives of native
Southeast Asians from before the 20th century. Therefore, many documents telling us
about Southeast Asia, particularly in the archipelago, usually come from outsiders like
Europeans, Arabs, Chinese, and Indians. The lack of indigenous perspectives represented
in history prompt some historian to question the possibility of writing Southeast Asian
history from the perspective of the native. But numerous other historians ignored such
claims and dug for the pieces of information recording statements of Southeast Asians or
employing foreign and imperial perspectives as a means for understanding the lives of
natives and how they structured their societies. By vigorously searching for native
perspectives in court documents, letters, and government reports historians may find first-
plenty about the lives of natives as many foreigners required accurate information
knowing the boundaries and definition of autonomous history so that the historian or
John Bastin noted the inescapable influence of European culture on historians of that
1
lineage and therefore Euro-centrism, but also those biases fail to prevent good historians
from writing from an Asian perspective effectively. Rather, the biases and different
cultural backgrounds make writing from the Southeast Asian perspective more difficult,
even for Southeast Asians who learn about modern historical methodology from Western
centric perspective that employs a world culture system rather than an old closed world
system. Also, the historian uses modern techniques that exclude usage of supernatural or
which is often expressed in the demand for a history of Southeast Asia in which the
Asians, as host in his house should stand in the foreground while the European (or the
Hindu or the Chinese) should stand the rear.3 An autonomous modern Southeast Asian
history primarily examines the perspective of a native Southeast Asian through an open
the colonial era but flourished in the post-colonial era when historians sought detachment
from the old colonial biases. Although there existed native Southeast Asian histories
prior to modern autonomous histories, accounts were not in the category of modern
works. The first generally accepted European to write an autonomous history was J. C.
van Leur in 1934 while studying at Leiden University. Van Leur argued the non-native
1
John Smail, On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia, Autonomous
Histories, Particular Truths, edited by Laurie Sears (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press,
1993), 40-41.
2
Smail, On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia, 41,42.
3
Smail, On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia, 43.
2
layer of influences on Southeast Asia was rather thin and criticized the Indian
colonization theory by saying the petty trade was too weak for major influences on
native society. Although van Leur joined the Dutch East Indies government and died in
the Battle of the Java Sea while fighting the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1942, his work
lived on as the publishing of Indonesian Trade and Society came out in English in 1955.4
Regardless of the accuracy of van Leurs argument, he brought about a change in the way
Southeast Asian historians approached their work. Of course the transition took years
before the practice of writing from the Southeast Asian perspective became widespread
views of the region and its people as many were either travelers or members of an
imperial project, but gradually the field became more conscious of indigenous
perspectives. In certain senses the imperial project of European nations matched with the
Stamford Raffles, who wrote History of Java while there between 1811 and 1816, along
with the writers of the Straits Asiatic Society started in 1877. Native historians such as
Hoesein Djajadiningrat of the Dutch East Indies and U Tin of Burma added new
perspectives to the historiography. However, with World War II and the uprooting of the
European colonial powers the rational of employing history in concert with legitimizing
imperial power became less feasible. Furthermore, the establishment of Southeast Asian
University of Michigan, and Northern Illinois University, along with programs in the
4
John Legge, The Writing of Southeast Asian History, The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia Vol. I,
From Early Times to c. 1800 edited by Nicholas Tarling, (New York: Cambridge UP, 1992), 7-8.
3
western Pacific region pushed the field away from Eurocentric perspectives derived from
the colonial era.5 The end of European colonialism in Southeast Asia removed the need
for the legitimization colonial rule, but rather the new states that replaced them and their
social history, the field of Southeast Asian history moved toward autonomous history
through significant structural changes in the demography of the historians and the
dedicated historians overcome. Smail wrote that the main problem for understanding
Southeast Asians perspectives was the lack of primary sources, particularly in the pre-
colonial era.6 Despite the relative dearth of primary sources from Southeast Asian
native Southeast Asians. Historians such as James F. Warren and Eric A. Jones
uncovered testimonies by native Southeast Asians and incorporated their statements into
a larger argument regarding Southeast Asian history that uncovered more information
about the subject. Warren found statements by raiders captured by British forces off the
East coast of Malaya and proved the sophistication of Iranun raiding operations from
Sulu and provided insight into the crews of Iranun warships. Jones study of women in
colonial Batavia revealed how the Dutch East India Company structured society based on
loyalty to the company through employment and familial relation. His study employed
documents from the court of the Alderman in Batavia to show the companys hierarchy in
5
John Legge, The Writing of Southeast Asian History, 10-16.
6
Smail, On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia, 41.
4
Batavia and its overall impact on its residents. There must certainly be more documents
that reveal more about the lives and perspectives of ordinary Southeast Asians prior to the
20th century.