Suchergebnisse

Joost Coté
This article surveys the unpublished correspondence of the four sisters of Kartini, Roekmini, Kardinah, Kartinah and Soematrie, written to Rosa Abendanon-Mandri, in the period 1905 to 1925. The period covered by this correspondence throws some light on the life of women from this stratum of society in Java at the time. At the same time it contributes to a more adequate contextualisation of the life and correspondence of Raden Ajeng Kartini herself, whose correspondence has been the subject of attention for most of this century. Together the correspondence by the five sisters forms a continuous archive of private correspondence, amounting to almost three hundred letters, stretching over a quarter of a century which is probably unique in Indonesian history. Carefully considered, this represents a significant source for the historical investigation of the 'inner domain' of this stratum of Javanese society.
The article represents a preview of the letters currently being translated for publication. The writer argues that these can be read as indicative of an emerging culture of modernity amongst an educated and modernist generation of Javanese elite. The correspondence shows how the strands of feminism and nationalism, apparent in Kartini's writing, are extended in the context of a rapidly changing Java, and how the emerging debates about Indonesian national identity impinged directly on the nascent feminist discourse. While the claims made for the value of this correspondence are modest, and attention is drawn to their focus on continuing the relationship established by Kartini and Roekmini with Rosa Abendanon, the Javanese women writers are shown to inhabit a rapidly changing world within which they continued to negotiate a feminist agenda. At the same time, intrusions into the correspondence by their husbands make clear how an emerging Indonesian nationalism incorporated within it a new patriarchy which demanded that women safeguard the inner domain of the cultural identity upon which the nationalist project was based.

"Cars, Conduits and Kampongs offers a wide panorama of the modernization of the cities in Indonesia between 1920 and 1960. The contributions present a case for asserting that Indonesian cities were not merely the backdrop to processes of modernization and rising nationalism, but formed a causal factor. Modernization, urbanization, and decolonization were intrinsically linked. The various chapters deal with such innovations as the provision of medical treatments, fresh water and sanitation, the implementation of town planning and housing designs, and policies for coping with increased motorized traffic and industrialization. The contributors share a broad critique of the economic and political dimensions of colonialism, but remain alert to the agency of colonial subjects who respond, often critically, to a European modernity" --

Sugar was the single most valuable bulk commodity traded internationally before oil became the world's prime resource. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, cane sugar production was pre-eminent in the Atlantic Islands, the Caribbean, and Brazil. Subsequently, cane sugar industries in the Americas were transformed by a fusion of new and old forces of production, as the international sugar economy incorporated production areas in Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. Sugar's global economic importance and its intimate relationship with colonialism offer an important context for probing the nature of colonial societies. This book questions some major assumptions about the nexus between sugar production and colonial societies in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, especially in the second (post-1800) colonial era