The Possibility of an Autonomous Southeast Asian History

Scott Abel

Southeast Asian history promises unique advantages in studying as a religion

given its geographic position and history as a diverse, multicultural region for centuries.

However, for reasons including climate disadvantageous for document preservation and

the recurrence of conflict, few documents exist revealing the perspectives of native

Southeast Asians from before the 20th century. Therefore, many documents telling us

about Southeast Asia, particularly in the archipelago, usually come from outsiders like

Europeans, Arabs, Chinese, and Indians. The lack of indigenous perspectives represented

in history prompt some historian to question the possibility of writing Southeast Asian

history from the perspective of the native. But numerous other historians ignored such

claims and dug for the pieces of information recording statements of Southeast Asians or

employing foreign and imperial perspectives as a means for understanding the lives of

natives and how they structured their societies. By vigorously searching for native

perspectives in court documents, letters, and government reports historians may find first-

hand native accounts from a non-elitist perspective. Furthermore, researching the

perspectives of foreign bureaucrats, soldiers, and merchants in Southeast Asia reveals

plenty about the lives of natives as many foreigners required accurate information

regarding the region.

The framework for the understanding of Southeast Asian perspectives requires

knowing the boundaries and definition of autonomous history so that the historian or

reader may distinguish between an Asian-centric or European-centric perspective.

John Bastin noted the inescapable influence of European culture on historians of that

1
lineage and therefore Euro-centrism, but also those biases fail to prevent good historians

from writing from an Asian perspective effectively. Rather, the biases and different

cultural backgrounds make writing from the Southeast Asian perspective more difficult,

even for Southeast Asians who learn about modern historical methodology from Western

sources.1 John Smail defined a Southeast Asian autonomous history as an Asian-

centric perspective that employs a world culture system rather than an old closed world

system. Also, the historian uses modern techniques that exclude usage of supernatural or

paranormal explanations of historical events.2 Smail further explained Asia-centric,

which is often expressed in the demand for a history of Southeast Asia in which the

Asians, as host in his house should stand in the foreground while the European (or the

Hindu or the Chinese) should stand the rear.3 An autonomous modern Southeast Asian

history primarily examines the perspective of a native Southeast Asian through an open

or world-view study rather than a nationalist or ethnicity-based approach that employs

modern historical methodology.

The development of modern autonomous Southeast Asian history commenced in

the colonial era but flourished in the post-colonial era when historians sought detachment

from the old colonial biases. Although there existed native Southeast Asian histories

prior to modern autonomous histories, accounts were not in the category of modern

histories as their methodologies differ from contemporary writing standards of academic

works. The first generally accepted European to write an autonomous history was J. C.

van Leur in 1934 while studying at Leiden University. Van Leur argued the non-native

1
John Smail, On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia, Autonomous
Histories, Particular Truths, edited by Laurie Sears (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press,
1993), 40-41.
2
Smail, On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia, 41,42.
3
Smail, On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia, 43.

2
layer of influences on Southeast Asia was rather thin and criticized the Indian

colonization theory by saying the petty trade was too weak for major influences on

native society. Although van Leur joined the Dutch East Indies government and died in

the Battle of the Java Sea while fighting the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1942, his work

lived on as the publishing of Indonesian Trade and Society came out in English in 1955.4

Regardless of the accuracy of van Leurs argument, he brought about a change in the way

Southeast Asian historians approached their work. Of course the transition took years

before the practice of writing from the Southeast Asian perspective became widespread

throughout the discipline.

Prior to van Leur, professional historians of Southeast Asia possessed outsiders

views of the region and its people as many were either travelers or members of an

imperial project, but gradually the field became more conscious of indigenous

perspectives. In certain senses the imperial project of European nations matched with the

developing historiography during the 19th century as demonstrated by Sir Thomas

Stamford Raffles, who wrote History of Java while there between 1811 and 1816, along

with the writers of the Straits Asiatic Society started in 1877. Native historians such as

Hoesein Djajadiningrat of the Dutch East Indies and U Tin of Burma added new

perspectives to the historiography. However, with World War II and the uprooting of the

European colonial powers the rational of employing history in concert with legitimizing

imperial power became less feasible. Furthermore, the establishment of Southeast Asian

studies programs in the United States in schools such as Cornell, UC Berkeley,

University of Michigan, and Northern Illinois University, along with programs in the

4
John Legge, The Writing of Southeast Asian History, The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia Vol. I,
From Early Times to c. 1800 edited by Nicholas Tarling, (New York: Cambridge UP, 1992), 7-8.

3
western Pacific region pushed the field away from Eurocentric perspectives derived from

the colonial era.5 The end of European colonialism in Southeast Asia removed the need

for the legitimization colonial rule, but rather the new states that replaced them and their

indigenous inhabitants. Aside from broader historiography changes in the direction of

social history, the field of Southeast Asian history moved toward autonomous history

through significant structural changes in the demography of the historians and the

locations of Southeast Asian programs.

The practical difficulty of writing history from a Southeast Asian perspective

remains problematic, but these difficulties remain as an impermanent obstacle that

dedicated historians overcome. Smail wrote that the main problem for understanding

Southeast Asians perspectives was the lack of primary sources, particularly in the pre-

colonial era.6 Despite the relative dearth of primary sources from Southeast Asian

perspectives, the abundance of colonial records occasionally contained testimony from

native Southeast Asians. Historians such as James F. Warren and Eric A. Jones

uncovered testimonies by native Southeast Asians and incorporated their statements into

a larger argument regarding Southeast Asian history that uncovered more information

about the subject. Warren found statements by raiders captured by British forces off the

East coast of Malaya and proved the sophistication of Iranun raiding operations from

Sulu and provided insight into the crews of Iranun warships. Jones study of women in

colonial Batavia revealed how the Dutch East India Company structured society based on

loyalty to the company through employment and familial relation. His study employed

documents from the court of the Alderman in Batavia to show the companys hierarchy in

5
John Legge, The Writing of Southeast Asian History, 10-16.
6
Smail, On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia, 41.

4
Batavia and its overall impact on its residents. There must certainly be more documents

that reveal more about the lives and perspectives of ordinary Southeast Asians prior to the

20th century.