Twentieth Century Impressions Of Netherlands India

The story of Penang would be incomplete without the Big Five Hokkien families (the Khoo, the Cheah, the Yeoh, the Lim, and the Tan). It was the Big Five who played a preponderant role not only in transforming Penang into a regional entrepot and a business and financial base, but also in reconfiguring maritime trading patterns and the business orientation of the region in the nineteenth century. Departing from the colonial vantage point, this book examines a web of transnational, hybrid and fluid networks of the Big Five comprising of family relationship, sworn brotherhood, political alliance and business partnerships, which linked Penang and its surrounding states (western Malay states, southwestern Siam, southern Burma, and the north and eastern coasts of Sumatra) together to form one economically unified geographical region, having inextricable links to China and India. With these intertwining networks, the Big Five succeeded in establishing their dominance in all the major enterprises (trade, shipping, cash crop planting, tin mining, opium revenue farms), which constituted the linchpin of Penang's and its region's economy. By disentangling and dissecting this intricate web of networks, this book reveals the rise and decline of the Hokkien mercantile families' nearly century-long economic ascendancy in Penang and its region."e;Wong Yee Tuan's study of the five clans of Penang represents a major breakthrough in the study of the Malayan Chinese. He documents an extremely important aspect of the nineteenth-century Asian diaspora, exposing the intricate links between families, businesses, secret societies, revenue farms and public life of some of the key groups of Chinese in Penang and northern Malaya. The book weaves together the various strands of overseas Chinese life not only in Malaya, but also in the Netherlands Indies, Siam and China. Most importantly, it shows the process by which the Chinese leaders gained political, economic and social power as well as the way by which these powers were lost."e;- Carl A. Trocki, Emeritus Professor, Asian Studies, Queensland University of Technology, Australia"e;This volume can be situated within a growing historiographical current whereby regional studies of connections, networks and interactions are gradually transcending national histories. Incorporating commercial, ethnic and social elements, the history presented can be concurrently seen as a business case study, a sociological exploration, a political economy treatise and an inquiry into Hokkien networking. Wong Yee Tuan is to be congratulated on this signal study in how local, national and broader regional histories can be integrated."e;- Geoffrey Wade, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University"e;By aligning family, socio-political and business interests, the leading Penang Hokkien clans centralized their 'home port' as a hub of regional commercial networks, thus successfully extending the trading colonies of Chinese diaspora westward to the edge of the Indian Ocean. Wong has fastidiously researched and compellingly proven this, with a clear eye for relevant cross-cultural collaborations with indigenous and international actors. The important legacy of the 'Big Five' clanhouses is now firmly embedded in the George Town World Heritage Site, inciting further inquiry into the cultural formation of collective entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia."e;- Khoo Salma Nasution, Heritage Advocate and Local Historian, Penang

In the first major work on Indonesian historiography to have appeared in any language, twenty-two outstanding scholars survey available source materials in Asia and Europe and discuss the current state of Indonesian historical scholarship, the approaches and methods that might be fruitful for future research, and the problems that confront Indonesian historians today. The contributions which can be made to historical studies by other disciplines - such as economics, sociology, anthropology, and international law - are discussed by specialists in these fields. Problems of Indonesian historiography are presented not only from points of view of the diff erent social sciences, but also from those of historians who differ in approach and interpretation from one another. This unique work, now brought back to life in Equinox Publishing's Classic Indonesia series, proves to be great value to historians and social scientists as an introduction to both sources for and diff erent approaches to the history of an important part of the world. Edited by one of Indonesia's leading scholars, Soedjatmoko, as well as Mohamad Ali, G.J. Resnik and George McT. Kahin, An Introduction to Indonesian Historiography features contributions from John Bastin, C.C. Berg, Buchari, J.C. Bottoms, C.R. Boxer, L. Ch. Damais, Hoesein Djajadiningrat, H.J. de Graf, Graham Irwan, Koichi Kishi, Koentjaraningrat, Ruth T. McVey, J. Noorduyn, J.M. Romein, R. Soekmono, Tjan Tjoe Som, F.J.E. Tan, W.F. Wertheim and P.J. Zoetmulder.

This fascinating study of early cinema in the Netherlands Indies explores the influences of new media technology on colonial society. The Komedi Bioscoop traces the emergence of a local culture of movie-going in the Netherlands Indies (present-day Indonesia) from 1896 until 1914. It outlines the introduction of the new technology by independent touring exhibitors, the constitution of a market for moving picture shows, the embedding of moving picture exhibitions within the local popular entertainment scene, and the Dutch colonial authorities’ efforts to control film consumption and distribution. Dafna Ruppin focuses on the cinema as a social institution in which technology, race, and colonialism converged. In her illuminating study, moving picture venues in the Indies—ranging from canvas or bamboo tents to cinema palaces of brick and stone—are perceived as liminal spaces in which daily interactions across boundaries could occur within colonial Indonesia’s multi-ethnic and increasingly polarized colonial society.