From their origin in paddy mud during the final decades of the Dutch East Indies, to unimagined roles within the new structures of a modernising Indonesia, 'Gentry' is the saga of an extended Javanese family heroically pursuing its dream of betterment through a social leap. There was in that era at the start of this story a unique route by which an exceptionally determined peasant might attain the status of a 'priyayi'--a class of functionary gentry with a government salary, bureaucratic aristocrats with duties divorced from manual labour, bearers of noble principles of responsibility,...
From their origin in paddy mud during the final decades of the Dutch East Indies, to unimagined roles within the new structures of a modernising Indon...
