Setting the ground for Indonesian history writing

Setting the ground for Indonesian history writing

Indonesian Historiography;
By Sartono Kartodirdjo;
Kanisius Publisher, 2001;
191 pp;
Rp 25,000

The writer of this work, a collection of 12 papers he wrote
between 1987 and 1998, needs no introduction as one of the
country's most prominent historians.

While many, if not most, of the sources used for the writing
of Indonesian history are Dutch or Western-oriented, Sartono
believes Indonesian history must be written from the perspective
of Indonesia as a nation-state.

In one of his papers, he praises the attempts of some younger
historians to focus on the socioeconomic history of the country,
therefore attaching importance to the people. Social events and
economic happenings are focused on people, and it is these people
that must be the focus of a country's historiography.

He believes Indonesians must be given the role of the
protagonist in a historical plot, with Indonesian society as the
setting. This is what he calls the decolonization of Indonesian
historiography.

While the first part of the book deals with national history
as a symbol of national identity, the second deals with matters
related to historical approaches and perspectives.

This part is more interesting and less philosophical than the
first. Here, Sartono writes about discrete fragments of
Indonesian history, such as rural conflicts and the aristocracy
of Java in the 19th century and 20th century.

There is also an article on a historical novel written in
Dutch by Indonesian Soewarsih Djojopuspito, Buiten het gareel
(Outside the Main Track). The novel is a blend of history and
literature, with the author seeking to evoke the nationalist
ideology of the characters by investigating their spiritual
dimensions. But of course, to understand this, one must have a
good grasp of the social relationships of colonial society.

This is an example of how history must be understood not only
at the macro level but also at the micro level, by delving deep
into the mentality of the dramatis personae.

In the last few pages of the book, Sartono writes quite
interestingly about history and historians. He writes, "A
historian should never forget, but, morally speaking, he has to
forgive" (p. 180). Historical knowledge, he says, is derived from
conceptual reconstruction originating from living experience and
retrospection. Here the historian is the one who endures the
above experiences and remembers it

-- Lie Hua