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