Analyzing Collective Violence in Indonesia: An Overview

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashutosh Varshney
Keyword(s):  
East Timor ◽  
New Order ◽  
Collective Violence ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Japanese Military ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
Primary School Age ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Military

In 2001, using violent junctures in the life of a seventy-year-old Indonesian as a metaphor for the whole nation, Benedict Anderson summarized the history of violence in Indonesia in a poignant manner:A seventy year old Indonesian woman or man today will have observed and/or directly experienced the following: as a primary school age child, the police-state authoritarianism of … Dutch colonial rule …; as a young teenager, the wartime Japanese military regime, which regularly practiced torture in private and executions in public …; on the eve of adulthood, four years (1945–49) of popular struggle for national liberation … at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives; as a young mother or father … the cataclysm of 1965–66, when at least 600,000 and perhaps as many as two million people … were slaughtered by the military; in the middle age, the New Order police-state, and its bloody attempt to annex East Timor, which cost over 200,000 East Timorese lives …; in old age, the spread of armed resistance in … Aceh and West Papua, the savage riots of May 1998 … and … the outbreak of ruthless internecine confessional warfare in the long peaceful Moluccas. (Anderson 2001, 9–10)

In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Second World War ◽  
New Order ◽  
Japanese Empire ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World

The destruction of Japan’s empire in August 1945 under the military onslaught of the Allied Powers produced a powerful rupture in the histories of modern East Asia. Everywhere imperial ruins from Manchuria to Taiwan bore memoires of a great run of upheavals and wars which in turn produced revolutionary uprisings and civil wars from China to Korea. The end of global Second World War did not bring peace and stability to East Asia. Power did not simply change hands swiftly and smoothly. Rather the disintegration of Japan’s imperium inaugurated a era of unprecedented bloodletting, state destruction, state creation, and reinvention of international order. In the ruins of Japan’s New Order, legal anarchy, personal revenge, ethnic displacement, and nationalist resentments were the crucible for decades of violence. As the circuits of empire went into meltdown in 1945, questions over the continuity of state and law, ideologies and the troubled inheritance of the Japanese empire could no longer be suppressed. In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire takes a transnational lens to this period, concluding that we need to write the violence of empire’s end – and empire itself - back into the global history of East Asia’s Cold War.

scholarly journals Book Reviews

2008 ◽  
Vol 162 (2) ◽  
pp. 352-405
Author(s):  
Redactie KITLV
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
East Timor ◽  
New Order ◽  
Border Crossings ◽  
Land Claims ◽  
Austronesian Languages ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Michael Williams

Michael Williams; Deforesting the earth; From prehistory to global crisis (Greg Bankoff) Alexander Adelaar, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann (eds); The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar (René van den Berg) Wim Ravesteijn, Jan Kop (eds); Bouwen in de archipel; Burgerlijke Openbare Werken in Nederlands-Indië en Indonesië 1800-2000 (Freek Colombijn) Susan Rodgers; Print, poetics, and politics; A Sumatran epic in the colonial Indies and New Order Indonesia (Bernhard Dahm) Robert A. Scebold; Central Tagbanwa; a Philippine language on the brink of extinction; Sociolinguistics, grammar, and lexicon (Aone van Engelenhoven) Adrian Vickers; Journeys of desire; A study of the Balinese text Malat (Amrit Gomperts) B.J. Terwiel; Thailand’s political history; From the fall of Ayutthaya to recent times (Hans Hägerdal) Robert van Niel; Java’s Northeast Coast 1740-1840; A study in colonial encroachment and dominance (Mason C. Hoadley) Terence H. Hull (ed.); People, population, and policy in Indonesia (Santo Koesoebjono W.L. Korthals Altes; Tussen cultures en kredieten; Een institutionele geschiedenis van de Nederlandsch-Indische Handelsbank en Nationale Handelsbank, 1863-1964 (Koh Keng Weh) William van der Heide; Malaysian cinema, Asian film; Border crossings and national cultures (Benjamin McKay) Angela Romano; Politics and the press in Indonesia; Understanding an evolving political culture (Soe Tjen Marching) Simon Harrison; Fracturing resemblances; Identity and mimetic conflict in Melanesia and the West (Toon van Meijl) Daniel Fitzpatrick; Land claims in East Timor (Johanna van Reenen) Susi Moeimam, Hein Steinhauer; Nederlands-Indonesisch Woordenboek (Stuart Robson) Terance W. Bigalke; Tana Toraja: a social history of an Indonesian people (Dik Roth) K. Alexander Adelaar (with the assistance of Pak Vitus Kaslem); Salako or Badameà; Sketch grammar, texts and lexicon of a Kanayatn dialect in West Borneo (Hein Steinhauer) John Bowden, Nikolaus Himmelmann (eds); Papers in Austronesian subgrouping and dialectology (Hein Steinhauer) Sebastiaan Pompe; The Indonesian Supreme Court; A study of institutional collapse (Bryan S. Turner) Gerd R. Zimmermann; Indonesien; Eine geographische Landeskunde (Robert Wessing) REVIEW ESSAY Dick van der Meij; Latest editions of Indonesian classical texts A. Teeuw, R. Dumas, Muhammad Haji Salleh, R. Tol, M.J. van Yperen (eds); A merry senhor in the Malay world; Four texts of the Syair Sinyor Kosta Julian Millie; Bidasari; Jewel of Malay Muslim culture. A. Teeuw, S.O. Robson (eds); Bhomāntaka; The death of Bhoma J. Noorduyn, A. Teeuw; Three Old Sundanese poems In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI), no. 162 (2006), no: 2/3, Leiden

Book reviews

2010 ◽  
Vol 166 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 331-380
Author(s):  
Redactie KITLV
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
East Timor ◽  
New Order ◽  
Timor Leste ◽  
New Business ◽  
History Of ◽  
Asian History ◽  
Malaysian Chinese

Edward Aspinall, Islam and nation; Separatist rebellion in Aceh, Indonesia. (Gerry van Klinken) Greg Bankoff and Sandra Swart (with Peter Boomgaard, William Clarence-Smith, Bernice de Jong Boers and Dhiravat na Pombejra), Breeds of empire; The ‘invention’ of the horse in Southeast Asia and Southern Africa 1500–1950. (Susie Protschky) Peter Boomgaard, Dick Kooiman and Henk Schulte Nordholt (eds), Linking destinies; Trade, towns and kin in Asian history. (Hans Hägerdal) Carstens, Sharon A. Histories, cultures, identities; Studies in Malaysian Chinese worlds. (Kwee Hui Kian) T.P. Tunjanan; m.m.v. J. Veenman, Molukse jongeren en onderwijs: quick scan 2008. Germen Boelens, Een doel in mijn achterhoofd; Een verkennend onderzoek onder Molukse jongeren in het middelbaar beroepsonderwijs. E. Rinsampessy (ed.), Tussen adat en integratie; Vijf generaties Molukkers worstelen en dansen op de Nederlandse aarde. (Fridus Steijlen) Isaäc Groneman, The Javanese kris. (Dick van der Meij) Michael C. Howard, A world between the warps; Southeast Asia’s supplementary warp textiles. (Sandra Niessen) W.R. Hugenholtz, Het geheim van Paleis Kneuterdijk; De wekelijkse gesprekken van koning Willem II met zijn minister J.C. Baud over het koloniale beleid en de herziening van de grondwet 1841-1848. (Vincent Houben) J. Thomas Lindblad, Bridges to new business; The economic decolonization of Indonesia. (Shakila Yacob) Julian Millie, Splashed by the saint; Ritual reading and Islamic sanctity in West Java. (Suryadi) Graham Gerard Ong-Webb (ed.), Piracy, maritime terrorism and securing the Malacca Straits. (Karl Hack) Natasha Reichle, Violence and serenity; Late Buddhist sculpture from Indonesia. (Claudine Bautze-Picron, Arlo Griffiths) Garry Rodan, Kevin Hewison and Richard Robison (eds), The political economy of South-East Asia; Markets, power and contestation. (David Henley) James C. Scott, The art of not being governed; An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia. (Guido Sprenger) Guido Sprenger, Die Männer, die den Geldbaum fällten; Konzepte von Austausch und Gesellschaft bei den Rmeet von Takheung, Laos. (Oliver Tappe) Review Essay Two books on East Timor. Carolyn Hughes, Dependent communities; Aid and politics in Cambodia and East Timor. David Mearns (ed.), Democratic governance in Timor-Leste; Reconciling the local and the national. (Helene van Klinken) Review Essay Two books on Islamic terror Zachary Abuza, Political Islam and violence in Indonesia. Noorhaidi Hasan, Laskar jihad; Islam, militancy, and the quest for identity in post-New Order Indonesia. (Gerry van Klinken) Korte Signaleringen Janneke van Dijk, Jaap de Jonge en Nico de Klerk, J.C. Lamster, een vroege filmer in Nederlands-Indië. Griselda Molemans en Armando Ello, Zwarte huid, oranje hart; Afrikaanse KNIL-nazaten in de diaspora. Reisgids Indonesië; Oorlogsplekken 1942-1949. Hilde Janssen, Schaamte en onschuld; Het verdrongen oorlogsverleden van troostmeisjes in Indonesië. Jan Banning, Comfort women/Troostmeisjes. (Harry Poeze)

scholarly journals An Image of Korean Women during the Japanese Occupation of the Peninsula, as It Emerges from Literary Masterpieces

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-88
Author(s):  
Elena Buja
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Korean Women ◽  
Comfort Women ◽  
Pacific War ◽  
Japanese Occupation ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Japanese Military ◽  
History Of ◽  
Japanese Colonial

Abstract This paper1 aims to offer a picture of the darkest period in the history of the Korean women, namely that of the Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945). The only advantage Korean women enjoyed as a result of their country’s annexation to Japan was access to institutional education, even if this was done in Japanese and from Japanese course books. But this came with a price: many of the Korean teenaged females were turned into comfort women (sex-slaves) for the Japanese soldiers before and during the Pacific War. Not only did these girls lose their youth, but they also lost their national and personal identity, as they were forced to change their Korean names into Japanese ones and to speak Japanese. To build the image of the fate of the Korean women during this bleak period, the research method I have used is a simplified version of content analysis, “an analysis of the content of communication” (Baker 1994, 267). I have explored the content of fragments from a couple of novels authored by Korean or American-Korean authors, which cover the historical events in the peninsula leading to the end of WWII (Keller’s Comfort Woman (2019) and Bracht’s White Chrysanthemum (2018), to mention just a few) and which are focused on the topic of comfort women,2 i.e. young women that were sexually exploited by the Japanese military. The results of the analysis indicate that many of the surviving victims became “unpersons” and led a life of solitude and misery until their death.

scholarly journals Tourism Industry of Sudan: History and Peculiarities of its Development in the 20th and 21st Centuries

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-587
Author(s):  
Igor V. Gerasimov ◽  
◽  
Daniil Yu. Bogdanov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Tourism Industry ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Tourism Sector ◽  
History Of ◽  
Local Companies ◽  
High Level ◽  
Military Campaign ◽  
The Military

The article considers the history of the tourism industry of one of the oldest states in the world — Sudan. The first attempts to organize sightseeing trips for Europeans to the Nile Valley were recorded after Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in the early 19th century, but at that time Sudan was a little-known region. The military campaign of 1821 undertaken by the troops of Muhammad Ali resulted in the submission of Sudan and the establishment of the Egyptian-Turkish administration there. Since that time, the level of European intrusion into the country began to increase. The activities of travel companies only became notable in Sudan after the beginning of the colonial rule by England and Egypt in 1899. In the first decades of the twentieth century the first hotels were created, roads, including the railroad, were built, and cities were expanded as well as modernized. The hotel owners were predominantly foreigners. Tourism developed further after the country achieved independence in 1956. Since that time, national travel companies appeared, and travelers from Western countries and the Arab began to visit the country. Tourism has become an attractive sector for investment and capital raising, both local and international. At the same time, the economic and political problems observed in the period of 1980–2000 did not allow tourism to become a source of significant income for the state and prevented the sector from expanding. Currently, both high-level hotels and modest guesthouses, that mainly provide services for the domestic consumer, are built and operate in the capital of the country and in some cities of regional significance. The activity of travel companies remains at a low level and the number of foreign travelers is small. Local companies have attempted to cooperate with their Russian counterparts, but there are not enough prerequisites for initiating collaboration in this area. Sudanese researchers, economists, sociologists, historians, and marketing experts analyze the tourism sector and try to make recommendations for improving work in this area. This is reflected in a number of works in scientific journals that have been published in recent years.

An Indonesian Islam?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carool Kersten
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Military Coup ◽  
New Order ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Military ◽  
Opening Up

The history of postcolonial Indonesia can therefore be divided into three periods, dominated by different regimes with its own characteristics, during which Islamisation process has continued to evolve. The Sukarno presidency (1945-1965) marks the first period, during which Mayumi established itself as the main Islamic political party. It began with decade of continuing nation building when the young republic was first engaged in armed conflict with the Dutch; experimented with liberal democracy; but then shifted toward ‘Guided Democracy’ and the disbanding of Masyumi. During the same twenty-year period, the unity of Indonesia was also challenged by the Islamist Darul Islam movement. A military coup in 1965 heralded the beginning of the military New Order Regime of General Suharto (1965-1998). Political Islam was kept control and occasionally manipulating it for its own purposes. From the 1970s onward, New Order did make some allowances for Muslim participation in governance, initiating further use of Islam for political purposes between 1983—1993. After the dramatic regime change in 1998, the democratisation process that started in 1999 saw an unprecedented opening-up of the public sphere. This change in Indonesia’s political climate offered new opportunities for socio-political activism across the Islamic spectrum, but also presented a new set of challenges for the world’s largest Muslim nation state. Islamic mass organisations, newly formed political parties, NGOs, think tanks and other platforms began presenting a range of competing Islamic discourses.

Raum in der Militärgeschichte und Gewaltgeschichte. Probleme, Ergebnisse und neue Felder der Forschung

2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Nübel
Keyword(s):  
Military History ◽  
Spatial Concepts ◽  
Spatial Approach ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
The Military ◽  
Dimensions Of Space

Abstract »Space in military history and the history of violence. Issues, results and new fields of research«. Whilst the history of violence already deals with spatial concepts, military history has largely omitted space as a means of study. This article shows that the concept of space is useful in creating new questions and findings in the field of military history. The article is an introduction into a spatial military history and history of violence. It deals with hermeneutic problems of a spatial approach with specific examples and discusses already existing studies on space and the military. Finally it suggests four conceptions of space which are appropriate to point out when dealing with the multi-faceted dimensions of space.

Patents of Rank in Russia in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Патенты на чин в России XVIII–XIX вв.)

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-176
Author(s):  
И.А. Вознесенская
Keyword(s):  
Russian Empire ◽  
Petersburg Institute ◽  
Complete Collection ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
The Military

This article examines the history of patents of rank, not to be confused with patents of nobility, in Russia from their introduction in 1714 to their elimination as a result of the reforms of the 1860s. Patents of rank as a formal documentary credential confirming the holder’s rank is one of the largest coherent sets of documents available, yet has received very little interest from researchers until now. This article explores the development of the format and texts of these patents on the basis of legal acts published in the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire, various archival documents, and the texts of the patents themselves (drawn from collections in the Library of the Academy of Sciences, BAN; the Military-Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineers, and Communications Forces, VIMAIViVS; and the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, SPbII RAN). The article pays special attention to the decorative elements, the methods of producing the patents, and the costs of producing them. The cost for obtaining one of these patents depended on the rank being conferred: the higher the rank, the higher, naturally, the cost. The article also describes the basic steps in procuring a patent and its range of uses.

scholarly journals Trust in the military in post-authoritarian societies

2020 ◽  
pp. 001139212096976
Author(s):  
Carlos Solar
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Individual Factors ◽  
Military Sociology ◽  
Support For Democracy ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
The Military ◽  
Significant Factors

Why does the military remain one of the most trusted institutions despite, in some cases, their history of violence, corporate abuses and bloody interventions to overthrow the state and punish parts of society? This article analyses the interaction between individual factors and support for the armed forces in Argentina, Brazil and Chile to understand current forms of opinion and trust-shifts in post-authoritarian societies. It explores whether in these three democracies, support for the military is explained by the extent to which citizens support other political institutions, democracy, partisan ideologies, and novel military missions, such as the armed forces combating crime. The empirical results suggest that trust in congress and the police are statistically significant factors explaining variance in the outcome in the three case studies. The findings then vary by country. Support for democracy is positively correlated with trust in the military in Brazil but negatively associated with confidence in the military in Chile, where support for military intervention when there are increasing levels of crime is also statistically significant with confidence in the armed forces. In both Brazil and Chile, individuals supporting the armed forces are more likely to support the military participating in countering crime. These findings have important implications for the study of military sociology and politics.

Nationalist and Separatist discourses in cyclical violence in Papua

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 410-430
Author(s):  
Muridan Widjojo
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Violent Behaviour ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Nationalist Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
National Police ◽  
The Military

AbstractThis article is an attempt to review the cyclical history of violence in Papua, Indonesia. I analyse the ways in which the Indonesian security forces employ nationalist discourse to justify conduct in Papua that includes obstructing justice and intimidating human rights advocates. The birth of the human rights movement in Papua in the mid 1990s in many ways has challenged this security approach. Human rights advocates not only expose excessive violent behaviour on the part of the military during 'secret' operations, but also question the high military troop levels and the conduct of the national police in Papua. The advent of Reformasi in 1998 revived all over the province the demands for secession that had been dormant during the 1980s and 1990s. This has served the army as a pretext to maintain its strong presence in Papua. My main argument is that both the pro-independence Papuans and the security forces have a vested interest in keeping the secession issue as the dominant discourse on Papua. From the early 1960s to 2003, the security forces have been able to argue that the state is under threat of separatism. In turn, the violence and impunity Papuans endure provides the basis for their ever-growing discourse of independence.

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