Suchergebnisse

Melayu antecedents -- Emergence of Malayu -- Ethnicization of the Minangkabau -- From Malayu to Aceh -- The Batak Malayu -- The Orang Laut and the Malayu -- The Orang Asli/Suku terasing and the Malayu

The aim of this essay is to show through just one greatly valued trade item - in this case, the bird of paradise - how even the most distant and apparently isolated areas of the world could be linked to the major metropoles through trade. Yet this trade was anything but a simple bilateral exchange. It involved a complex series of networks that extended from the collectors to various levels of intermediaries and secondary ports, and then to foreign shippers bringing the desired product to its ultimate destination in various world markets. There is, however, another aspect of this essay which focuses not on the economic but the cultural value of trade. Most studies of the bird of paradise have commented on the cultural impact of its feathers on Western fashion, yet few have examined other cultural interpretations of the feathers that are closely associated with authority, fertility, and even invulnerability. These attitudes found in eastern Indonesia and New Guinea continue a tradition that has its roots in Southeast Asia in the early centuries of the Common Era. (J Southeast Asian Stud/GIGA)

This study of Timor and the surrounding islands between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries provides evidence that, after the demise of the Portuguese Estado da India, an 'informal' or 'shadow' empire persisted but in uniquely localised ways. It describes the emergence of the 'black Portuguese' community known in Timor and the Solor archipelago as the Topasses. Their singular identity was based on the melding of indigenous and Portuguese blood and cultural forms. Their ability to access the sources of spiritual authority in both the Catholic and the Timorese domains assured their survival and that of the Portuguese in Timor until well into the twentieth century.

Based on linguistic, archaeological, and historical evidence, this essay describes the environment that produced the culture associated with the 'Melayu', or the Malays. It also argues that Melayu ethnicity was never predetermined but was contested on both sides of the Straits of Melaka.

In the formation of ethnicity the interaction between the views of outside observers and insiders themselves is an important process. The Minangkabau, whose homeland is located in the uplands of central Sumatra, have been a popular source of study because of their matrilineal social organisation and the practice of themerantau, where young Minangkabau men leave the homeland to seek knowledge and fortune abroad. Since the 1970s as a result of the women's movement, there has been a growing number of works focusing on the matrilineal principles which underlie Minangkabau society. Themerantau, too, has often been cited for the dynamism in Minangkabau society which has led to its considerable contributions to the Indonesian state in a number of fields. It is not surprising, therefore, that today the Minangkabau themselves see matriliny and themerantauas primary components in their identity. While these components were present in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they did not play the central role in ethnic identity as they do today. As I hope to show in this paper, there were different historical circumstances in those years which required another approach to ethnic identity.

The first reference to a 'Sea of Melayu' is from an Arabic document dated c. 1000, which noted that travellers 'reaching the Sea of Melayu, were approaching the area of China'. While the location of the Sea of Melayu is not specified, the practice of naming a sea after a dominant people surrounding its shores suggests that this particular body of water must have been the Straits of Melaka. This is clear in the only other known reference to the use of this name, which is found inDescription of Malacca, Meridional India and Cathaywritten in 1613 by Emanuel Godinho de Eredia, a Eurasian Jesuit born in Portuguese Melaka. Eredia refers to the Sea of Melayu as that 'land-enclosed sea between the mainland of Ujontana [Malay Peninsula] and the Golden Chersonese [Sumatra]'. He was clearly referring to the Straits of Melaka, though it was obviously not yet called that by his contemporaries. Eredia's description of that 'land-enclosed sea' clearly reveals a commonly held assumption of the greater significance of a land mass over a body of water. But for Malays and many other sea and riverine peoples, the focus was on water, not land, and entities were formed by seas and rivers joined by short land passages.

In Bugis-Makassar society a king was identified in terms of his function in assuring the spiritual and material well-being of the whole community. Though distinguished from the rest of the population by the paraphernalia and "white blood" of kingship, the individual ruler did not reign in splendid isolation from the people. He was a visible presence whose active participation in the affairs of the community was an expected norm. On one level, he was regarded as an essential intermediary or link between mankind on this earth and the gods (or God) of the Upperworld; and, on another level, he was seen as an instrument of the people in maintaining the adat, or the laws and customs of the land. These two variant but co-existing beliefs in the role of kings reflect an existing tension between the rulers and the adat guardians, which had its roots at the very inception of kingship in this society.

Introduction of kingship among the Bugis and Makassar people of South Sulawesi. Spread of Islam into this region in the sixteenth century. Kingship's tasks in dealing with disputes between communities over land rights, inheritance and other matters of custom and practice (adat). Failure of kingship and the Islamic administrative bureaucracy to replace the authority of the traditional structure based on the adat. Abolition of kingship in South Sulawesi in 1952. (DÜI-Sen)

The identity of "Southeast Asia" has been debated since the 1950s, when the region began to develop as an area of academic viability around which courses could be constructed, programmes built, and research published. Much less controversy has accompanied the growing use of "early modern", a term which seems set to displace "precolonial" in periodizing Southeast Asian history. The phrase, of course, comes from scholarship on Europe, where it was popularized as a result of efforts to find shared "periods" that would facilitate the writing of a general history. It would be surprising if questions as to the applicability of "early modern" in Southeast Asia do not spark off some debate, especially in light of subaltern writings that reject the notion of modernity as a universal. For such historians the very invocation of the word implicitly sets a "modern Europe" against a "yet to be modernized non-Europe". But whatever decision is made regarding terminology, scholarship on Southeast Asia is increasingly viewing a period that stretches from about the fifteenth to the early nineteenth century as rather different from those traditionally described as "classical" and "colonial/modern". The term "early modern" itself is at present a convenient tool for historical reference, and only time will tell whether it will find general acceptance.

2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute. The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, as it was then called, was established in 1968 by then Deputy Prime Minister Dr Goh Keng Swee in order to enable the newly independent city-state better understand the region and its complexities. Since its establishment, ISEAS has dedicated itself to researching the political, economic and socio-cultural dynamics and trends in Southeast Asia for policymakers, scholars, and other relevant stakeholders. On 12 August 2015, the Institute was officially renamed ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute, in honour of Singapore's first President. This book presents three public lectures given to commemorate the Institute's Golden Anniversary. Professor Leonard Y. Andaya delivered the first lecture entitled "Developments in the Scholarship of Southeast Asian Studies" on 21 February 2018. The second public lecture was delivered by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on 13 March 2018. Professor Wang Gungwu delivered the final public lecture entitled "Before Southeast Asia: Passages and Terrains" on 3 October 2018. Collectively, these three public lectures exhort ISEAS to continuously reflect on its research agenda, the region, as well as the contemporary landscape and challenges it has to operate in.