Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-x5cpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-30T09:43:22.518Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Believing Is Seeing: Perspectives on Political Power and Economic Activity in the Malay World 1700–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Heather Sutherland
Affiliation:
Centre for Asian Studies Amsterdam Free University, Amsterdam

Extract

Western historiography assumes a chronological linear unfolding of progress, and early Western commentators on Asian societies tended to see them as stagnant variants of earlier phases in European history, as feudal despotisms and passive, unchanging village communities. In assessing levels of “development” or “progress” such observers looked for recognizable specialist institutions in politics and the economy; finding few such institutions, they saw only “backwardness”. To most Europeans, trying to make sense of unknown societies and cultures, the alien could only be made comprehensible by identifying it with the familiar. It was then all too easy to proceed as if the unknown was simply a mutant or primitive version of the known. Ideas, social relationships and values which were literally beyond their ken, were often simply not seen at all. In their observations of both political and economic systems, they saw decline, corruption and confusion because they failed to recognize the patterns which structured society. So it seemed natural that the West should dominate such societies and guide them on the correct path.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the seminar on “Historical Dimensions of Development, Change and Conflict in the South”, organized by the Directorate General of International Co-operation of the Netherlands Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and held in The Hague in April 1993. The Proceedings were issued in 1994 under the same title by the Ministry as volume 9 of their series Poverty and Development-Analysis and Policy. I am grateful for permission to rework and publish the paper.

1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the seminar on “Historical Dimensions of Development, Change and Conflict in the South”, organized by the Directorate General of International Co-operation of the Netherlands Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and held in The Hague in April 1993. The Proceedings were issued in 1994 under the same title by the Ministry as volume 9 of their series Poverty and Development- Analysis and Policy. I am grateful for permission to rework and publish the paper. F. Braudel, Civilisation and Capitalism I5th–18th Century, vol. II, The Wheels of Commerce (London: Collins, 1982), p. 120Google Scholar; Leur, J.C. van, Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History (The Hague and Bandung: W. van Hoeve, 1955).Google Scholar

2 Chaudhuri, K.N., Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 See Mario Rutten, Asian Capitalists in the European Mirror, volume 14 in the Comparative Asian Studies series of the Centre for Asian Studies Amsterdam (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1994). For an attempt to grapple with such problems, see A.J.S. Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450–1680, vol. I, The Lands Below the Winds (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988)Google Scholar, and vol. II, Expansion and Crisis (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; and for an indication of how many questions remain unresolved, Raben, Remco, “The Broad Weft and Fragile Warp: Conference on the Eighteenth Century as a Category in Asian History”, Itinerario 28, 1 (1994): 1018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See inter alia Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells, “Restraints on the Development of Merchant Capitalism in Southeast Asia before c. 1800”, in Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era, ed. Reid, Anthony (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

5 Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce, p. 134.

6 An early, classic statement in this Journal's predecessor was Smail's, JohnOn the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia”, Journal of Southeast Asian History 2 (1961): 72102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 There is an overwhelming literature on this topic; two interesting contributions with very different approaches are by Badie, B., “Comparative Analysis and Historical Sociology”, International Social Science Journal 133 (1992): 319–27Google Scholar, and Chakrabarty, Dipesh, “Post-coloniality and the Artefice of History: who speaks for the Indian past?”, Representations 37 (Winter 1992): 126CrossRefGoogle Scholar; several recent monographs bear witness to both the difficulties and rewards of attempting a more even-handed approach: Ricklefs, M.C., War, Culture and Economy in Java 1677–1726: Asian and European Imperialism in the Early Kartasura Period, ASAA Southeast Asia Publications Series no. 14 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1993)Google Scholar; Andaya, Barbara Watson, To Live as Brothers: Southeast Sumatra in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Andaya, Leonard Y., The World of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modern Period (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993).Google Scholar

8 Sutherland, Heather, “Mestizos as Middlemen? Ethnicity and Access in Colonial Makassar”, Papers of the Dutch-Indonesian Historical Conference held at Lage Vuursche, The Netherlands, June 1980 (Leiden/Jakarta: PRIS, 1982).Google Scholar

9 See, inter alia, Parakitri T. Simbolon, “Tapping on the Wall: Ethnicity and Marketplace Trade in the Urban Context of Jakarta” (Ph.D. diss., Free University, Amsterdam, 1991).Google Scholar

10 For example the monographs cited in note 7 above, and such recent collections as Ashin Das Gupta and Michael Pearson (eds.), India and the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800 (Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Ptak, R. and Rothermunde, D. (eds.), Emporia, Commodities and Entrepreneurs in Asian Maritime Trade, c. 1400–1750 (Stuttgart: Fransz Steiner for the Southeast Asian Institute, University of Heidelberg, 1991).Google Scholar

11 Kathirithamby-Wells, , “Merchant Capitalism”; Milner, A.C., Kerajaan: Malay Political Culture on the Eve of Colonial Rule (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982).Google Scholar

12 See inter alia Souza, G.B., The Survival of Empire. Portuguese Trade and Society in China and the South China Sea, 1630–1754 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, particularly chapter five; Villiers, John, “Makassar: The Rise and Fall of an East Indonesian Maritime Trading State”, in The Southeast Asian Port and Polity: Rise and Demise, ed. Kathirithamby-Wells, J. and Villiers, J. (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1990), pp. 143–60Google Scholar; Sutherland, Heather, “Eastern Emporium and Company Town: Trade and Society in Eighteenth Century Makassar”, in Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the 16th–20th Centuries, ed. Broeze, F. (Kensington: New South Wales University Press, 1989), pp. 97128.Google Scholar

13 Sutherland, H.A. and Bree, D.S., “Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to the Study of Indonesian Trade: The Case of Makassar”, in Dari Babad dan Hikayat sampai Sejarah Kritis. Kumpulan karangan dipersembahkan kepada Prof. Dr. Sartono Kartodirdjo, ed. Alfian, T. Ibrahim, Koesoemanto, H.J., Hardjowidjono, Dharmono and Surjo, Djoko (Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press, 1987), p. 339.Google Scholar

15 Sutherland and Bree, “Indonesian Trade”; Sutherland, “Eastern Emporium and Company Town”; on the China traders, see inter alia Souza, The Survival of Empire and Blusse, L., Strange Company: Chinese Settlers, Mestizo Women and the Dutch in VOC Batavia (Dordrecht: Foris, 1986), vol. 122 in the Verhandelingen series of the KITLV, chapters 6 and 7.Google Scholar

16 Sutherland and Bree, “Indonesian Trade”; Sutherland, “Eastern Emporium and Company Town”.

17 E. Poellinggomang, “Proteksi dan Perdagangan Bebas: Kajian tentang Perdagangan Makassar pada Abad ke-19” (Ph.D. diss., Free University, Amsterdam, 1991)Google Scholar; J.N.F.M. à Campo, Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij: stoomvaart en staatsvorming in de Indonesische archipel 1888–1914 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1992). On Dutch imperial motivations see Locher-Scholten, E., Sumatraans Sultanaat en Koloniale Staat: de relatie Djambi-Batavia (1830–1907) en het Nederlandse imperialisme, Verhandelingen 161 of the KITLV (Leiden: KITLV Uitgebverij, 1994)Google Scholar, or her Dutch Expansion in the Indonesian Archipelago around 1900 and the Imperialism Debate”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 25, 1 (March 1994): 91111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 à Campo, Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij.

19 Dick, H.W., “Prahu Shipping in Eastern Indonesia”, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 11, 2 (1975): 69107 and 11, 3 (1975): 81–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 P. Post, “Japanse Bedrijvigheid in Indonesië, 1868–1942: strukturele elementen van Japans vooroorlogse economische expansie in Zuidoost Azie” (Ph.D. diss., Free University of Amsterdam, 1991).Google Scholar

21 Kaoru, Sugihara, “Japan as an Engine of the Asian International Economy, c.1880–1936”, Japan Forum 2, 1 (April 1990): 127–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shinya, Sugiyama, Japan's Industrialisation in the World Economy, 1859–99, Export Trade and Overseas Competition (London: The Athlone Press, 1988).Google Scholar

22 Post, “Japanse Bedrijvigheid in Indonesië”.

23 Robison, R., Indonesia, the Rise of Capital, no. 13 in the ASAA Southeast Asia Publications Series (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1986)Google Scholar. An excellent introduction to the debate on Southeast Asian capitalism is to be found in McVey, R. (ed.), Southeast Asian Capitalists (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

24 For further explanation and examples see Butcher, J. and Dick, H. (eds.), The Rise and Fall of Revenue farming (London: St. Martins Press, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Anderson, B.R. O'G., “Old State, New Society: Indonesia's New Order in Comparative Historical Perspective”, Journal of Asian Studies 42, 3 (1983): 477–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Adas, M., “From Avoidance to Confrontation: Peasant Protest in Colonial Southeast Asia”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 23 (1988): 217–48; see also Watson Andaya, To live as Brothers, for descriptions of mutual misunderstandings between European and Indonesian.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 L. Nagtegaal, “Rijden op een Hollandse tijger. De noordkust van Java en de VOC 1680–1743” (Ph.D. diss., State University of Utrecht, 1988); Kathirithamby-Wells, “Merchant Capitalism”.Google Scholar

28 R. McVey, “The Materialization of the Southeast Asian Entrepreneur”, in Southeast Asian Capitalists, ed, Ruth McVey, pp. 7–33.

29 Suehiro, A., Capital Accumulation in Thailand, 1855–1985 (Tokyo: UNESCO Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1989), chapter 8.Google Scholar

30 McVey, “The Southeast Asian Entrepreneur”, pp. 24–25; see also MacIntyre, A., Business and Politics in Indonesia, ASAA Southeast Asia Publication Series no. 21 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991).Google Scholar

31 F. Fuglestad, “The Trevor Roper Trap, or the Imperialism of History”, History in Africa (1992): 309–326.

32 Ploeg, J.D. van der, Over de betekenis van verscheidenheid (Wageningen: Wageningen University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

33 Post, “Japanse Bedrijvigheid in Indonesië”.