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