Distant Drums And Thunderous Cannon: Sounding Authority In Traditional Malay Society

Pre-modern Malay society was intensely oral and aural, and the texts that are now read were always intended for group recitation and performance. Studies of auditory history in other societies have emphasised that in the past, sounds were experienced differently from the way they are heard today. At the very basic level, thunder—the voice of the heavens—established the benchmark and the basis for comparison for awe-inspiring sounds that humans could attempt to replicate, notably in the beating of drums and the firing of cannon. Together with the noseflute, the drum is the oldest and most indigenous Malay instrument, and the drums that were included in royal regalia were accorded personalities of their own

Book Review – The Factory Of The English East India Company At Bantam, 1602–1682

David Kenneth Bassett (1931–1989) spent several years teaching at the University of Malaya (which was then in Singapore), and at the same institution following its relocation to Kuala Lumpur. In 1965 he was appointed to the faculty of the University of Hull, where he served as Director of the Centre for South-East Asian Studies until 1988, a year before his premature death in 1989 at the age of 59. Bassett's career thus spans a formative period in Southeast Asian studies. In 1950, a Department of Southeast Asian History was established in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and two years later Bassett entered the programme as a doctoral candidate. His dissertation, "The Factory of the East India Company at Bantam 1602–1682," was submitted in 1955, the same year that D.G.E. Hall published his History of South-East Asia, which represents the first attempt at a regional coverage. As one of the early SOAS graduates, Bassett was a pioneer in the embryonic field of Southeast Asian studies, continuing on to become a world-renowned specialist on European trade in the Malay world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

To live as brothers : southeast Sumatra in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Author gave permission for digitization and dissemination via Scholarspace repository

Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in nineteenth-and twentieth-century Riau

The importance of women in maintaining male status is a common theme in academic studies of Bugis society. Presumably, these attitudes would have been embedded in the culture that Bugis migrants brought to the Malay world in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the island of Riau, which became the center for Bugis influence in the kingdom of Johor and the larger Malay world, intermarriage between Bugis and Malays meant these gender imperatives were somewhat diluted. Nonetheless, the influence of women of Bugis-Malay descent was still evident in Riau’s ruling circles in the early nineteenth century. During this period, however, new formulations of gender status began to penetrate Islamic society through the reformist and more fundamentalist teachings of the Wahabi. The influence of these teachings, which strengthened existing ambiguity towards the presence of women in public life, are evident in the Tuhfat al-Nafis, the history of the Bugis diaspora written by the great scholar Raja Ali Haji. By the end of the century, the place of well-born women in Riau is less prominent than a hundred years earlier. However, by examining literary and historical sources, this article argues that the environment created on Pulau Penyengat still allowed women a space in which they could write. A synchronic approach to their publications permits us to see how the kinds of questions their works address shifted according to changing times and the new issues raised by Western influence and ideas about ‘modernity’ in the Muslim worl

From Rum to Tokyo: The Search for Anticolonial Allies by the Rulers of Riau, 1899 -- 1914

Page range: 123-15

The Cloth Trade in Jambi and Palembang Society during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Page range: 27-4

Historical Perspectives on Prostitution in Early Modern Southeast Asia

Kajian-kajian tentang pelacuran di Indonesia,seperti halnya penelitian gender dan perempuan pada umumnya, lebih terfokus pada masa abad ke-20. Kajian-kajian tersebut memfokus pada konteks lokal yang spesifik dan kurang melakukan perbandingan secara lebih luas. Tulisan ini mencoba memberikan dasar historis dan komparatif yang lebih mendalam untuk mendiskusikan pelacuran di Indonesia dengan menempatkannya dalam kerangka perdagangan global di Asia Tenggara antara abad ke-17 dan 18...[...] Penelitian akhir-akhir ini tentang gender dan seksualitas hampir selalu melihat 'perubahan' sebagai sebuah fenomena modern. Tulisan ini berpendapat bahwa asal mula pelacuran di Indonesia dapat dilacak ke masa sebelum abad ke-19, pada masa ketika urbanisasi, perbudakan, kehadiran orang-orang asing, dan pertumbuhan komersialisasi mentransformasikan masyarakat-masyarakat lokal. Sampai sekarang, perempuan miskin dan tidak terdidik masih sering melihat partisipasi dalam perdagangan seks sebagai satu-satunya cara untuk mempertahankan kelangsungan ekonomi mereka

Christianity, Identity, and Marian Devotion in Indonesia

A discussion of the veneration of the Virgin Mary in Larantuka, eastern Flores in Indonesia, where Mary is regarded as the town’s patron and protector…and its Queen.Over the centuries Marionology, the study of the veneration of Mary, has generated an enormous body of literature. In Southeast Asia Mary’s position in local Christianity has been well documented in the Philippines, but there is now increasing interest in Marian devotion in other Catholic communities, such as Vietnam and Indonesia. Because popular belief focuses on Mary’s role as an intercessor, special value is attached to pilgrimages to sites where she is believed to have appeared or with which she has a personal association. In Larantuka, eastern Flores, Mary is regarded not merely as the town’s patron and protector, but as its Queen. However, her image is only available for viewing once a year, from Easter Friday until Easter Saturday, and during this time thousands of pilgrims flock to view “Bunda Maria,” Mother Mary. While including some comparative remarks, the presentation will offer some historical explanations for the special status of Mary in Larantuka, and for the veneration accorded her during the Easter celebrations. Barbara Watson Andaya is Professor of Asian Studies and Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Hawai‘i. She is currently working on a history of the localization of Christianity in Southeast Asia