Some Perspectives on Southeast Asian Historiography PDF

Some Perspectives on Southeast Asian Historiography Author(s): Nicholas Tarling Source: Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society , 1995, Vol. 68, No. 2 (269), SHEPPARD MEMORIAL ISSUE (1995), pp. 53-58 Published by: Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Stable URL: https:...

Some Perspectives on Southeast Asian Historiography Author(s): Nicholas Tarling Source: Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society , 1995, Vol. 68, No. 2 (269), SHEPPARD MEMORIAL ISSUE (1995), pp. 53-58 Published by: Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41493645 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society This content downloaded from 122.161.69.180 on Thu, 17 Oct 2024 02:29:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  PART 2, 1995 Somè Perspectives on Southeast Asian Historiography by Nicholas Tarling perhaps rarely to an historian of Southeast Asia. It prompted me to consider An perhaps connexions connexions invitation between rarely between to speak the two fields to an the to historian of historiographical two theindeed, activity. Some, fieldsofCambridge of Southeast of historiographical seminar Asia. on It international prompted activity. Some, me history to indeed, consider comes of my own work has been based on and conduced to the belief that the two have something to offer each other. It was not perhaps simply that the seminar was held in my old College - and even in a room where I used to study - that led my presentation to take on a somewhat autobiographical aspect. What perspective should I offer forty years on? The first was that of Southeast Asian historiography in general, considered both in terms of its sources and of the attitudes of those that use them. The sources for Southeast Asian history offer problems that have rightly been taken as opportunities. Geographers have described the region as 'demographically immature', and historians might use some comparable phrase. Certainly written records are limited, both in span and in approach, and historians have often had to seek other sources, epigraphical, oral, mythical, traditional, comparative. That has, of course, been no bad thing. Southeast Asian historians - with J.C. van Leur as a pioneering example - have turned other disciplines to account. The recent work of Leonard and Barbara Andaya has triumphantly demonstrated the value in juxtaposing different kinds of Indonesian and European materials. The linguistic and technical problems are formidable, though the rewards are substantial. The problems are, moreover, attitudinal as well as practical. What kinds of evidence are acceptable? How can an historian take account of the bias in the sources, mythical, dynastic, and - most of all in respect of the written ones - colonial? In the 1950s and 1960s, as I pointed out to my Cambridge audience, the main attitudinal problem was related to contemporary decolonisation. Did history-writing need to be decolonised also? What was the proper role of what John Bastin described in his Kuala Lumpur inaugural as the 'Western element' in Southeast Asian history? What were the prospects for what John Smail termed an 'autonomous' history? That raised problems of structure and presentation, not merely of attitude. Would it suffice merely to turn 'colonial' history-writing on its head? In the event, the controversy became less significant as more work was done, more of the possibilities revealed. The controversy invited historians to keep an open mind. Writing about Southeast Asia required a sensitivity to meanings, a readiness to see evidence from a number of points of view, as much as, if not more, than writing about the history of other areas. 'Orientalism', if it ever existed, was quickly dispersed. Nor did Southeast Asian historians adopt extremes of relativism that might indeed have brought them to a halt. Recognising that total objectivity is impossible did not imply that efforts should not be made to attain greater objectivity. In recent years, however, the controversy seems to be re-emerging in a new form. Some Filipino and Thai historians are now advocating what they call 'national' history and insisting that it can be written only by nationals and in the national language. Writing school text books to fulfill the curricula in such countries may indeed require a 'national' focus, and any 'abridgment', to use Herbert Butterfield's phrase, is likely to produce a Whig interpretation. But it does not seem to be merely a matter of writing textbooks. Even if it were, one might still hope that the material presented to modern school students would be 53 This content downloaded from 122.161.69.180 on Thu, 17 Oct 2024 02:29:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  JMBRAS, VOL.68 less biased than the one-sided material once purveyed in British schools. The approach, however, goes beyond the somewhat cynical view that what is good for school students is not necessarily what is good for scholars. It is designed to inform research and writing about history at all levels. A reaction perhaps to globalisation, it recalls the earlier reaction to colonialism. It may damage the very causes it seeks to serve, national unity and national security. It may also, of course, damage the historiographical cause. To a seminar on international history, these shifts seemed important. International historians, like those of Southeast Asia, must continually remind themselves of the range of their sources and of their limits. The tension between 'globalism' and 'nationalism', like the earlier tension between 'imperialism' and 'colonialism', is relevant to both fields. My own work, as I recalled, had taken me in the direction of ' imperial ' history. Indeed, my participation in Southeast Asian historiography had begun with a study of British policy towards the Dutch and the native princes in the Malay peninsula and archipelago between 1 824 and 1871. Then, perhaps, I also shared in the move to look at the history of what I had come to call the Malay world from perspectives other than the European. 'Piracy' had become the foci of my interests, and in studying it I subjected the British documents to what would later be termed 'deconstruction'. What was 'piracy'? The label was widely applied by the British in the nineteenth century. What was the 'reality'? In describing robbery at sea as piracy, the British were rationalising intervention; they were also establishing an interpretation. In a sense, this was again 'international ' history. The application of the term could have the effect of denying international existence to Malay states and delegitimising their activities. Pacifying the seas, like pacifying the peoples, was part of the creation of an imperial framework in Southeast Asia. Another focus of mine was on the sultanate of Brunei. Interest in British policy had interested me in Sir James Brooke's venture, and his interpretation of piracy was controversial even at the time. But my study of Britain, the Brookes and Brunei seems to me in retrospect to have turned into something else. In some respects, partly because of the contemporary controversy, and partly because current historiography encouraged the reading of European documents 'against the grain', the book comes to see things from a Brunei point of view. Certainly Sultan Hashim takes his due place as the last minute saviour of Brunei's independence. A later book focused on Sir James Brooke himself, while I had also examined British policy in nearby Sulu without perhaps understanding the mechanics of that 'segmented' state even as well as I had understood those of Brunei. Luckily Donald E. Brown, the anthropologist, was also studying Brunei, and Thomas Kiefer Sulu. For my approach could still be seen as too imperial, and my main sources were British archives, public and private. Perhaps this trend was confirmed when, attracted by the Wilsonian opening of the British archives, I became curious about the other end of the official British venture in Southeast Asia, and in particular about the inter-war period and that immediately following the war. Now the colonial framework that had been established was first under challenge and then overthrown. The attempts to return at the end of the second world war and do a better job as a result of planning and 'partnership' have been of particular interest. It also became possible for historians to study the British in Southeast Asia over the whole period of their imperial connexion, to measure the continuities and discontinuities. Mary Turnbull was to compare the return of the British to Malaya in 1945-6 with the intervention of 1 874, and my book on postwar Burma was called, in a phrase borrowed from 54 This content downloaded from 122.161.69.180 on Thu, 17 Oct 2024 02:29:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms PART 2, 1995 Aung San himself, The Fourth Anglo-Burman War. My interest in the British in Southeast Asia over the whole period led me also more directly into imperial history. Historians of the British Empire have, not surprisingly, concentrated on the settler Dominions, on India, on Africa. But, while the interests of the British in India greatly influenced what they did in Southeast Asia, some of the policies adopted elsewhere were affected by what happened in Southeast Asia. For example, the fall of Singapore in 1942 influenced Margery Perham's thinking about Africa and the emerging concept of partnership. More generally, studying Britain's approaches to Southeast Asia in all their diversity helps to illuminate its approach to other parts of the world. In Southeast Asia Britain had colonies and protectorates; it also sustained relations with other colonial powers, two of them, Spain and the Netherlands, owing much to its patronage and resenting it; and it worked with the monarchy in what Palmerston termed the 'imperfectly civilized' state of Siam. Britain's approach to protecting its interests in Southeast Asia was clearly a flexible one. Recalling that makes more sense, perhaps, of its policy elsewhere in the world, in particular of the attempts to measure to what extent the empire was, or could be, an entity in international relations. Such a comparative or inclusive approach might yet in turn add something to the historiography of Southeast Asia. On one of the points of contact, Nadzan Harun's work on the military in Malaya was especially illuminating. European empires generally preferred to use the threat of force than force itself. If they had to use force, it had to be loyal. The British relied on their navy, and on forces drawn from minorities or from other parts of their empire. A military force drawn from the majority people was a source of risk rather than security. National feeling, as Seeley saw, would be the end of the empire in India. My interest in these wider issues arose not only from my research on the British in Southeast Asia and the mix of hunches and explorations that research usually involves. It was also aroused by a programme of teaching that stretched me rather thinly. Universities were smaller a generation or so ago, and so were History Departments. Staff had often to be generalists as well as specialists. But that had advantages as well as drawbacks. Interests could be broadened. The narrower could be put into the context of the broader. That helped me to offer a third perspective in my Cambridge seminar, and, after those from a Southeast Asian point of view and from an imperial one, one more directly related to international history. Remaining a Southeast Asianist, and perhaps an historian of empire, I am certainly something of a recent recruit to this field. The major endeavour so far has been to study Southeast Asia between the outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 and the outbreak of the Pacific War in December 1941, and in particular the British attempts to preserve the stutus quo while deeply involved elsewhere. One problem with such studies is not, as often is the case with Southeast Asian historiography, the paucity of material, but its abundance. Another is to relate anew the dramatic events in Europe in these years and establish their connexion with those in Southeast Asia. The venture seems worthwhile to a Southeast Asian historian, whether or not it is to an international historian. An international approach still has its explanatory value in Southeast Asian historiography, even amidst a renewal of the controversy over 'national' history. The success of the Thais in maintaining their political independence - both under the absolute monarchy and under its successors - cannot be explained merely by analysing the structure of Thai policy-making or appraising the success of Thai statesmen. The international situation offered them opportunities that they saw and took. The Indonesians' success in winning their independence depended not only on those who advocated struggle but those 55 This content downloaded from 122.161.69.180 on Thu, 17 Oct 2024 02:29:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  JMBRAS, VOL.68 who practised diplomacy. Indeed the Indonesian leaders were strikingly better at mobilising international opinion than their Dutch antagonists. But the opportunities had to exist: Britain's concern to put the regional relationships of East and West on a post-colonial footing; then the growing American concern over the advance of Communism. Does a Southeast Asian approach with an imperial emphasis contribute in turn to international history? Study of the activities of the British overseas over the longer term, in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, suggests anew that their concept of the world was always one of states rather than empires, though it may have come about sooner than they expected, and in ways they sometimes found it difficult to accept. Well before the Cold War, they saw international communism as a major threat. That was not merely because of its subversive activities within colonial and dependent or semi-dependent territories. It was also because it offered a rival view of the world as a whole. A Southeast Asian historian will clearly hope that international history, like Southeast Asian history itself, will take account of the systems of relationships among states that pre-dated the international: pre-imperial, imperial, post-imperial. Indeed, even the use of the word 'state' is problematic. There are entities the inter-relationships of which can hardly be described as political, let alone international. Such, for example, are those so ably described in Leonard Andaya's work on Maluku. International historians, like Southeast Asian historians, will have problems of nomenclature and definition, and as a consequence problems of periodisation, also. Historians of Southeast Asia are always conscious, too, of the problematic characteristics of the region. The description came into common usage only in the Second World War with the establishment of Mountbatten's Allied command in 1943. Previously other phrases had been used to describe all or part of the area with greater or lesser degrees of accuracy. Further India, the Indies, the Nanyang, the Nanyo: even Menzies' reference to the Near North antedated Mountbatten's installation. Only in the post-war phase was the description taken up by historians, and there is still some feeling that its use over-emphasises the sense in which the area is a region. Is it an outsider's view? Is it, or is it becoming, the view of those who live in it? International historians share something of the problem: they have to balance emphases among the regional, the national and the international. Current trends in world trade and world politics point them in the same direction. An historian of Southeast Asia who has emphasised the imperial phase can offer another issue for the consideration of international historians that is of great contemporary relevance. Historians of Malaya, and indeed of other territories, write of 'intervention'. Though they differ about its motivation and nature in the Malayan case, they accept that it was a regular practice in the imperial phase of international history. In the post-imperial world, its justification is much less clearly accepted, and its ambit even less well defined. Its role in a world of states can usefully be studied in comparison with its role in an earlier world. My seminar in Cambridge reminded me of my experience there as a graduate student. Then there were no seminars on Southeast Asian, imperial or international history. But Victor Purcell was a supportive supervisor, and perhaps it is not too presumptuous of me to take yet another perspective. He was one in the long series of officials of the British empire in Southeast Asia who also virtually founded its historiography. The list runs from Arthur Phayre to J.S. Furnivall, from William Marsden and Stamford Raffles to Frank Swettenham and Richard Winstedt. Only after the war did Southeast Asia win the universities' attention 56 This content downloaded from 122.161.69.180 on Thu, 17 Oct 2024 02:29:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms PART 2, 1995 in the UK as elsewhere. The gap was then filled by D.G.E. Hall and by men who made a transition from officialdom to academe, like Purcell, like Hugh Tinker. They brought a perspective that their pupils and successors necessarily lacked, that of colonial experience, though some of those were indeed to discover their academic metier through serving in the Vietnam war or in aid organisations. Mubin Sheppard, a man with different affiliations, like Purcell a Cambridge graduate, made a different kind of transition, but he too mixed administration and learning, reflection and experience. He, too, contributed to Malaysian historiography, not only by his own writings, but by his continuous practical encouragement of others, whether they came from within Malaysia or from outside it. He motivated, he helped to publish, he maintained standards, he kept the academics and the community in touch. Reviewing one's own efforts could only make one more grateful to such men and admire them more. 57 This content downloaded from 122.161.69.180 on Thu, 17 Oct 2024 02:29:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  JMBRAS, VOL.68 Published by the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, from its Office and Repository at 130M, Jalan Thamby Abdullah, Brickfields, 50470 Kuala Lumpur. (Tel: 603-2748345 Fax: 603-2743458). Sold at the Society's Office, and at the National Museum, Kuala Lumpur. Printed by Academe Art & Printing Services Sdn. Bhd., 1 0 & 12 Jalan Rajawali 2, Bandar Puchong Jaya, Bt. 8 Jalan Puchong, 47100 Selangor, Malaysia. Sole Agent in Malaysia and Singapore: IBS Buku Sdn. Bhd., Unit B3-06 P.J. Industrial Park, Jalan Kemajuan, 46200 Petaling Jaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. Price to non-members, RM1 5.00 The Society's Representatives overseas are: United Kingdom: J.M. Gullick, 56A, Monkham's Lane, Woodford Green, Essex, 1G8 0NR, England Australia: Dr Mary Hiscock, The Law School, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia United States: Dr К. Mulliner, 38072 Carpenter Hill, Rutland, Ohio 45775, USA. 58 This content downloaded from 122.161.69.180 on Thu, 17 Oct 2024 02:29:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms