This first of two volumes documents the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Indonesia from 1808, when priests were again allowed in the Dutch colony after two years of exclusion, until 1903, when the number of Catholics started to grow spectacularly. Illustrations.

The Turkic-Turkish Theme in Traditional Malay Literature is the first detailed study of the representation of the Turkic peoples and Ottoman Turks in Malay literature between the 14th-19th centuries. Drawing on a wide range of texts, Vladimir Braginsky uncovers manifold metamorphoses and diverse forms of localisation of this Turkic-Turkish theme. This theme has strongly influenced the religious and political ideals and political mythology of Malay society. By creating fictional rather than realistic portrayals of the Turks and Turkey, imagining the king of Rum as the origin point of...

Freek Colombijn examines the social changes in Indonesian cities during the process of decolonization. That process had major repercussions for urban society. These social changes are studied from the angle of urban space in general, and the provision of housing in particular. This provides fresh insight into how people experienced decolonization. The author challenges the idea that a shift from ethnic to class differences was the overriding social change during decolonization. He argues instead that class differences had already formed the predominant dividing lines in colonial urban...

The practice of everyday life in Tana Toraja (South Sulawesi, Indonesia) is structured by a series of public events, of which funerals are the most important. Even after Indonesia was hit by an economic crisis in the late 1990s, thousands of extravagant funeral ceremonies, requiring huge expenditures, were still organized each year. To understand the paradoxes and complexities of Torajan livelihoods, Edwin de Jong develops an approach that goes beyond existing economically biased perspectives on livelihoods by including both the cultural and the economic realm, positioned in the...

In Indonesia's Overseas Labour Migration Programme, 1969-2010, Wayne Palmer offers for the first time a detailed, critical analysis of the way in which Indonesia's Overseas Labour Migration Programme is managed and how that fits with other developments within the Indonesian government. Commonly portrayed as a corrupt bunch of officials out to line their own pockets at the expense of migrant workers' welfare, here we are shown that they also make exceptions to rules when the law and political climate are not on their side. Wayne Palmer used interviews with over 120 officials in six...

Trading enterprise figures prominently in Indonesian history. Commercial activities penetrated deep into the economy, politics and society of the former Netherlands Indies. Dutch Commerce and Chinese Merchants in Java describes this, largely forgotten, world of commerce. During the period 1800-1942 this vanished world was, however, bustling. Merchants of very different background and stature cooperated and competed with each other. Trading relations were forged and dissolved, contracts were honoured and broken, fortunes were made and lost. Using unpublished archival sources in...

In his richly illustrated Religion and Architecture in Premodern Indonesia Gaudenz Domenig investigates the nature of Indonesian ethnic religions by focusing on land opening rituals, sacred groves, and architectural responses to the custom of presenting offerings. Since deities and spirits were supposed to taste offerings on the spot, it was a task of architecture to attract them and to guide them into houses where offerings were presented. Domenig quotes numerous sources to show that certain material elements of the house were viewed as spirit attractors, spirit ladders or spirit...

Catholics in Independent Indonesia: 1945-2010 concludes Steenbrink's three volume historical account of Catholicism in Indonesia with a detailed report of the survival and growth of this minority religion in Muslim Indonesia since its independence in 1945. Colonial Catholicism survived in the independent Republic of Indonesia during the nationalist Sukarno regime (1945-1965) and regained a new dynamic during the general religious revival that was part of the New Order of Soeharto after 1965. From a Dutch-inspired institution it became a fully Indonesian steered community with a modern...

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Gender Relations in an Indonesian Society offers a comprehensive ethnography of Bugis marriage through an exploration of gender identity and sexuality in this bilateral, highly competitive, hierarchical society. Nurul Ilmi Idrus considers the fundamental concept of siriq (honour; shame) in relation to gender socialization, courtship, sex within marriage, the regulation of sexuality between genders, the importance of kinship and status in marriage, and the dynamics of marriage, divorce, and reconciliation. This analysis considers the practical combination of Islamic tenets with...