Lambard's opus dissects Indonesian mentalities

Lambard's opus dissects Indonesian mentalities

Nusa Jawa: Silang Budaya (Javanese Crossroads);
Vol 1: Batas-Batas Pembaratan (The Limits of Occidentalization), 309 pages;
Vol 2: Jaringan Asia (The Asia Network), 498 pages;
Vol 3: Warisan Kerajaan-Kerajaan Konsentris (Heritage of the
Concentric Kingdoms), 346 pages;
By Denys Lombard;
Published by Gramedia, Jakarta, December 1996

JAKARTA (JP): This three-volume, 1,027-page work originated in
a post-doctoral dissertation (These d'Etat) defended at the
Sorbonne (University of Paris IV) in 1990.

One already gets the impression of "globality" from the 63-
page list of references (including those in Dutch, German,
Portuguese, and even Russian and Chinese), the 2,489 footnotes
and 138 maps and illustrations.

Javanese Crossroads is not Lombard's first book. Some of his
earlier works that have already been translated into Indonesian
and published by Balai Pustaka, Aceh under Iskandar Muda and The
Kingdom of Champs, which he edited, received very little
publicity.

To Indonesian scholars who have studied social sciences in
France, the name of Lombard must be familiar. He has helped some
35 of them to graduate in the last 20 years at the Ecole the
Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) of Paris.

EHESS was founded and initially directed by prominent
historian Fernand Braudel and still hosts a large part of the
leaders of the New History (Nouvelle Histoire) school.

In its original form as a dissertation, the title used by the
author was Recherches sur l'histoire des mentalites a Java:
Societe insulaire ou carrefour maritime? (Research on the History
of Mentalities in Java: Insular Society or Maritime Crossroad?).
When becoming a three-volume book, it received a completely new
title: Le Carrefour Javanais: Essai d'Histoire Global (Javanese
Crossroads: An Essay in Global History). It is interesting to
note that Lombard uses the expression "global history", not
nouvelle histoire, coined by his colleagues some 15 years ago.
What does "global history" mean? Is it different from nouvelle
histoire?

Approach

The writer recounts his research by the original approach of
"cultural geology". The earth's layers are called strata and
each stratum should be examined beginning with the one above it
and gradually downwards.

Cultural layers (Lombard uses the expression "mental
constellations") are studied and described according to their
time of influence: First the latest one, western culture, also
the more significant according many people; then, the culture
formed by the double impact of Islam and China on trading harbors
since the fifteenth century; and finally, the deepest, the Indian
culture reminiscent of agrarian kingdoms.

The first volume of Javanese Crossroads investigates the
limits of the influences of western culture (occidentalization)
by making use of Dutch and Indonesian sources. It tries to show
the impact of Western culture since the 17th century.

After describing the image of the "Beautiful Indies" (Les
Belles Indes) as the view that everything eastern is exotic, the
first chapter explains the important stages of colonial history
up to the development era after independence (Les Terre de
Colonisation); the second chapter (Les Cellules Occidentalisees)
deals with the social groups that were directly influenced by
Western thoughts and culture (Christian converts, the priyayi,
members of the colonial army, etc.).

The third chapter analyzes in detail the elements of the
Western conceptual heritage (technology transfer), the role of
exploitation technique (encadrement, costume change and political
discourse). The fourth chapter deals with the influence of the
western model on literature, architecture and other arts. The
fifth chapter discusses the various standpoints taken by
Indonesians in the face of Western culture: ranging from the wish
to assimilate to a blunt rejection of that foreign culture,
feeling it as a big threat.

The second volume of Javanese Crossroads investigates the
"Asia network", that is the urban and trade milieu (clearly
marked by Islamic and Chinese influences) of those groups that
became opponents of the Europeans who often underestimated their
skills and perseverance.

Two sources are used: Classic Malay literature to study the
stimulating role of Islam and an ethnohistoric study of the
Chinese community.

The first chapter describes chronologically the maritime
network in Nusantara from the beginning. This reverse long-term
study provides an opportunity to focus on the intensification of
trade from the 13th century onwards and to stress the importance
of the apogee of the Islamic sultanates beginning in the
sixteenth century. The emergence of several trade cities is
discussed and aspects of them are compared with Venice and Genoa
and other places in Europa where very important social and mental
changes occurred.

The first Europeans (Portuguese and Dutch) who arrived plunged
themselves into this newly formed network. It should be
emphasized that it was only after some time that the Europeans
succeeded in taking control of this Asian network.

The second chapter analyzes "the locomotive effect of Javanese
Islam," and discusses successively the "seafarers," the middle
class of traders (bourgeoisie d'affaires) and the agrarian
Islamic network (with an emphasis on the pesantren network).

The third chapter recounts the major transformation that swept
the Nusantara trading towns in the 16th century, with the
emergence of a cash economy and a new type of dependence on the
individual (and new reflection on death), and the concept of
space (centered on Mecca) and linear time.

Along the same lines, the fourth chapter discusses the Chinese
cultural contribution to "technology transfer" (in the fields of
metallurgy, agricultural engineering, introduction of new
cultigens, handicraft techniques, etc). The fifth chapter,
Fanaticism or Tolerance, looks at the problems that arose when
the mental constellation of Islam came into contact with, first,
local superstitions, second, Christianity, and third, the Chinese
milieu.

The third volume of Javanese Crossroads tells us about the
"heritage of the Concentric Kingdoms" that is, the weight of the
"notion" that existed in Central Java, then moved to East Java
only to return to Central Java (Mataram). The sources used for
this chapter are epigraphs (concerning ancient times) and another
corpus in Javanese.

In the first chapter of the final volume, the author attempts
to describe the agrarian history of Java, a rather difficult
endeavor, as he himself acknowledges, because of the lack of
documents concerning the 16th to 18th centuries. Private property
develops and sikep appears by the turn of the 19th century.

In the following chapter, Lombard studies the kingdom's
hierarchical society, with attention to: 1) the concept of
Kingdom, 2) the role of the nobility, and 3) the dependence of
the desa.

The third chapter analyzes this society's ideology, its desire
for harmonious life, a "system of correspondence" and "arrested
time" (le temps immobile).

The fourth chapter stresses the possible opposition of this
ideology to "modern" ideas of development.

In the final chapter, the author states that he was tempted,
primary in a mythological way, to show how the "Javanese case"
can empirically contribute to shed light on a few questions: The
importance of the concept network (reseaux) and space, the
dichotomy between the agrarian center and the trade-oriented
pesisir (seashores) and the importance of the concept of
crossroads (carrefour).

Ideas

It is impossible to discuss all aspects of such a thick book
in a short review. I tended to look at Lombard's book as a
history of mentalities in Indonesia and a spring of ideas that
will be endlessly discussed.

First, Lombard disagrees with Clifford Geetrz on population
growth in 19th century Java. Geetrz sees it as a reaction to the
Forced Plantation System. The Javanese were obliged to spend an
excessive amount of time on government plantations and the
farmers had no choice but to intensify work on their private
plots. As this required a larger workforce, they had to have more
children.

Lombard concedes that the Forced Plantation System might have
had this effect, but only on a local scale, not island-wide. One
phenomenon with wider effects, that must be taken into
consideration, was due to a long-lasting special conjunction of
two long-term "revolutions."

Lombard also compares Java to China and Europe. China
underwent its first revolution during the Han dynasty and the
second in the 18th century. Java saw both occur in the 19th
century.

Second, Lombard splits his study into three layers, Western
influences, Islamic and Chinese influences (with a trade oriented
pesisir) and Indian influences (agrarian kingdom).

The Islamic and Chinese mental constellations, dealt with in
one volume, obviously display cultural values that are
appropriate for development, whereas in the older layer we find
elements that contradict "modern" ideas of development.

In volume one, Lombard writes: "The blow that killed the
"capitalistic" dynamics of the pesisir was not struck by the VOC
but by Mataram. Even though, by the time we are ready to accuse
Mataram of this "historical mistake," another reflection comes to
us: Is it actually not due to the "federative" values of this
agrarian Mataram that Indonesia, which was at that time as large
as it is now, still exists?"

Third, Lombard discusses the island of Java from a reverse
long-term view; nevertheless, his analysis echoes the future, in
the form of the following comment: "For administrative purposes,
the colonial government had to induce the emergence of a group of
intellectuals who proved later to be the foremost actors in the
national revolution. In today's system, a homogeneous class of
workers has been brought into existence for the purpose of
economic development. Will they become the actors of a future
revolution?"

-- Asvi Warman Adam