4,896 research outputs found
"Outsider" status and economic success in Suharto's Indonesia
I was struck recently [1998] by an exchange I witnessed in a Canberra restaurant, when an Indonesian visitor (Dede Oetomo) was explaining his background as a "Chinese" Indonesian, albeit with quite a few Javanese or Balinese ancestors from the eighteenth and nineteenth century on the mother's side. My Filipino colleague (Rey Ileto) noted with some surprise -- "in the Philippines you would simply be a Filipino; in Indonesia I guess I would be a Chinese." This was rather troubling to this important Filipino intellectual, interpreter of Philippine identity & son of a prominent Philippine general.
How is it that a substantial minority of urban Indonesian culture and language, and mixed ethnic background, is considered Cina and somehow alien in Indonesia, where the analogous group in Thailand or the Philippines is considered simply Thai or Filipino? And how is it possible that passions could be so strong around this single word that otherwise law-abiding Indonesian citizens should feel no shame in reviling, robbing, killing and raping their fellow-countrymen because of it? In other words, why has this category been constructed by many Indonesians to be outside their moral and political community, at least at times of social stress and breakdown? Perhaps most puzzling, why is it that the most terrifying outburst of anti-Chinese hostility since 1947, and potentially since 1740, should occur in 1998, a time when the whole Sino-Indonesian community is more culturally integrated into the mainstream than at any time in the past? (First two paragraphs of paper)
Approaching "Asia" from the southeast : does the crisis make a difference?
Asian Studies Institute inaugural lectur
Approaching "Asia" from the southeast : does the crisis make a difference?
Asian Studies Institute inaugural lectur
Chinese on the Mining Frontier in Southeast Asia
The influx of Chinese into Malaysia in particular and �Central Southeast Asia� more generally is often popularly attributed to colonial rule, as if the pluralism they exemplified were not �natural� to the region. In reality, the Peninsula has always been highly plural, and the advance of the Chinese mining frontier within it preceded the British.1 This essay documents some of the means by which Chinese mining advanced the economic frontiers in Southeast Asia ahead of European capital. Tin, being the most obvious example, takes center stage in this stor
The Unthreatening Alternative: Chinese Shipping in Southeast Asia 1567-1842
For most of the past millennium China was the major trading partner of
Southeast Asia. In the thirteenth century Marco Polo (1298, 209)
pointed out that for every shipload of tropical Asian spices that
arrived in Venice there were a hundred arriving at the Chinese port of
"Zaiton" (Quanzhou). That advantage was lost during the enormous
explosion of European demand for spices in the "age of commerce," but as
late as the 1820s there was still a larger tonnage of Chinese than of
European shipping in the South China Sea.1 Until the Nanjing Treaty
of 1842 the bulk of the foreign trade of Vietnam, Siam and Cambodia,
and a substantial proportion of the remainder, was carried in "Chinese"
junks - though frequently Southeast Asia-based
The Identity of "Sumatra" in History
Any endeavours such as the 1981 Conference on 'North Sumatra',
and the present book, raise questions about the most fruitful
and appropriate boundaries for scholarly enquiry. Although
two of my own books (1969; 1979) are premised on a quite
different definition of 'North Sumatra' - including Aceh but
excluding Tapanuli - I would be the first to concede that the
Hamburg Conference did show the value of looking at the present
(since 1956) province of North Sumatra as a distinct unit.
Behind this question of definition, however, there lies an older
and deeper question, whether Sumatra as a whole should be
distinguished as a field of enquiry
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