The Straits of Melaka is a region of numerous complex communities situated along rivers, coasts and mountain slopes with a vital waterway running through the middle. In the nineteenth century, the communities on either side of the Straits fell under different colonial regimes that divided the ecosystem into British and Dutch spheres of influence. While historians have produced studies of individual polities in the region before and after the imposition of imperial rule, The Camphor Tree and the Elephant is the first to situate this transition in a much larger environmental and religious perspective, thus providing a vibrant reevaluation of approaches to the Southeast Asian past.

The author, Faziah Zakaria, tells this story of shifting environmental perspectives through a study of Batak society. Located in the northern region of the Bukit Barisan range, which runs down the spine of Sumatra, the Batak are a scattered conglomeration of communities that used their access and knowledge of valuable forest products—with camphor being the primary example used in this work—to provide access to the more cosmopolitan trading world of the Straits as well as trading ports on the west coast of Sumatra. The changing relationship Batak communities had with these forest resources forms the key fulcrum of the work.

The monograph has an introduction and conclusion, which bookend three sections that set the scene and then provide the wider analysis. The first section—Structures—contains two chapters, which primarily focus on the traditional structure of Batak society in the highlands of Sumatra. Much of the material in this section is developed through folktales and medicinal/spiritual booklets (pustaha), which provide insight into a society that left few, if any, traditional historical texts. Following the advent of the Padri War, which spread modernist Islamic beliefs from neighbouring Minangkabau territories into southern Batak regions, and eventually brought Dutch colonial forces into the region, in the early nineteenth century, Batak communities subsequently faced tremendous social, ecological and political change. The disruption that these religious and imperial forces wrought is the focus of the remainder of the book.

The section that follows—Representations—also contains two chapters, which focus on the role of literacy and writing in articulating changing worldviews as Batak communities began to convert to Islam and Christianity as well as situate themselves within expanding imperial rule and capitalistic economic systems. This is primarily shown through the stories of Christian missionaries, who developed schools and communities near Lake Toba, and two Batak biographies that describe migration to the eastern side of the Melaka Straits. The first of these biographies is a schoolboy in Singapore while the other is a family involved in tin disputes and expanding British colonial rule in late nineteenth-century Perak. In all instances, these tales reflect a growing distance from traditional beliefs and powers regarding the environment as individuals adopted more objective and abstractive monotheistic religious perspectives.

The third section—Materialities—focuses on how understandings and utilisation of the camphor tree and elephants following these religious conversions and the corresponding introduction of imperialism and capitalism reflect broader changes in how the environment is understood in what the author terms the ‘spiritual Anthropocene’. This is easily the most important section of the monograph. Zakaria begins with a description of camphor, a resin-producing tree (Dryobalanops aromatica) which was a vital component of pre-modern perfumes and incense, and eventually celluloid film. Trees producing resin, however, were difficult to identify, thus making the local knowledge of animistic Batak harvesters an important aspect of its collection. With the advent of capitalistic plantations, and timber harvesting, the forests of northern Sumatra were devastated. Cutting of the trees was done arbitrarily, ignoring local spiritual systems used to identify productive trees, resulting in a sharp decline in harvested resin. Benzoin (g. Styrax), which could be more reliably grown and systematically harvested, eventually replaced camphor in the economy of northern Sumatra. This same tale is told in the Malay Peninsula with elephants being used as an example. Large pachyderms were symbolically important for traditional leaders of Malay polities. In Perak, where many Batak migrated in the nineteenth century, the knowledge and use of these creatures declined as local communities became more diverse and the maintenance of the beasts grew to be onerous in a society and economy that increasingly linked power and prestige to imperial power systems and profits.

In both instances, the importance and knowledge of camphor and elephants and their relationship to political, social and economic systems, declined as Batak communities adopted monotheistic religions and became integrated into the capitalistic world economy. This desacralisation corresponded with the Anthropocene, the era of human influence over the environment, reflecting the larger changes that have occurred in all societies over the past couple of centuries. By linking the role of monotheistic religions, as well as the implementation of modern governmental and economic structures, Zakaria points out the effects of new ideologies and perspectives on Southeast Asia, allowing for deeper insight into interwoven social, religious and political developments during a period of great ecological change, pushing the analysis beyond individual polities and their responses to imperial political rule.

This is an important book. While I am bothered with the liberal use of italics to provide emphasis, and the more personal nature of the anecdotes and arguments, I do not want to be pedantic about the writing and delivery of the message. Instead, it should be emphasised that Faizah Zakaria offers a refreshingly new perspective to the Southeast Asian past. She provides a template that opens up our studies and moves it in new directions, and provides an example of how to do so. This is a new approach to a tired topic, one that should be highlighted and celebrated.