Eric Tagliacozzo

Chinese circulations : capital, commodities, and networks in Southeast Asia

Chinese merchants have traded with Southeast Asia for centuries, sojourning and sometimes settling, during their voyages. These ventures have taken place by land and by sea, over mountains and across deserts, linking China with vast stretches of Southeast Asia in a broad, mercantile embrace. Chinese Circulations provides an unprecedented overview of this trade, its scope, diversity, and complexity. This collection of twenty groundbreaking essays foregrounds the commodities that have linked China and Southeast Asia over the centuries, including fish, jade, metal, textiles, cotton, rice, opium, timber, books, and edible birds’ nests. Human labor, the Bible, and the coins used in regional trade are among the more unexpected commodities considered. In addition to focusing on a certain time period or geographic area, each of the essays explores a particular commodity or class of commodities, following its trajectory from production, through exchange and distribution, to consumption. The first four pieces put Chinese mercantile trade with Southeast Asia in broad historical perspective; the other essays appear in chronologically ordered sections covering the precolonial period to the present. Incorporating research conducted in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, Malay, Indonesian, and several Western languages, Chinese Circulations is a major contribution not only to Sino-Southeast Asian studies but also to the analysis of globalization past and present. Contributors . Leonard Blusse, Wen-Chin Chang, Lucille Chia, Bien Chiang, Nola Cooke, Jean DeBernardi, C. Patterson Giersch, Takeshi Hamashita, Kwee Hui Kian, Li Tana, Lin Man-houng, Masuda Erika, Adam McKeown, Anthony Reid , Sun Laichen, Heather Sutherland, Eric Tagliacozzo, Carl A. Trocki, Wang Gungwu, Kevin Woods, Wu Xiao

Navigating communities: race, place, and travel in the history of maritime Southeast Asia

This paper examines intersecting notions of distance, place and community across Insular Southeast Asia for the last several hundred years. The piece is not an attempt to chronicle all these affiliations over time and space, but is rather an effort to re-think how people have moved in Southeast Asian history, who they did this with and why. The essay is divided into three parts. The first section looks at some of the meanings of place in the last five centuries, as place has pertained to communities in ‘centers’ and maritime ‘peripheries’, as well as in several supposedly discrete arenas. The second section focuses on people, and how different communities in Southeast Asia have envisioned the terms and conditions of movement in divergent ways. The last third of the paper concentrates on period, or how conceptions of community, distance and travel have changed over time. It is hoped that this essay will show how all three of these variables – people, place, and periodization – have intersected in specific, complicated ways in shaping local notions of ‘community’.

The Indonesia reader : history, culture, politics

Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelago, encompassing nearly eighteen thousand islands. The fourth-most populous nation in the world, it has a larger Muslim population than any other. The Indonesia Reader is a unique introduction to this extraordinary country. Assembled for the traveler, student, and expert alike, the Reader includes more than 150 selections: journalists’ articles, explorers’ chronicles, photographs, poetry, stories, cartoons, drawings, letters, speeches, and more. Many pieces are by Indonesians; some are translated into English for the first time. All have introductions by the volume’s editors. Well-known figures such as Indonesia’s acclaimed novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer and the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz are featured alongside other artists and scholars, as well as politicians, revolutionaries, colonists, scientists, and activists. Organized chronologically, the volume addresses early Indonesian civilizations; contact with traders from India, China, and the Arab Middle East; and the European colonization of Indonesia, which culminated in centuries of Dutch rule. Selections offer insight into Japan’s occupation (1942–45), the establishment of an independent Indonesia, and the post-independence era, from Sukarno’s presidency (1945–67), through Suharto’s dictatorial regime (1967–98), to the present Reformasi period. Themes of resistance and activism recur: in a book excerpt decrying the exploitation of Java’s natural wealth by the Dutch; in the writing of Raden Ajeng Kartini (1879–1904), a Javanese princess considered the icon of Indonesian feminism; in a 1978 statement from East Timor objecting to annexation by Indonesia; and in an essay by the founder of Indonesia’s first gay activist group. From fifth-century Sanskrit inscriptions in stone to selections related to the 2002 Bali bombings and the 2004 tsunami, The Indonesia Reader conveys the long history and the cultural, ethnic, and ecological diversity of this far-flung archipelago nation.

Morphological shifts in Southeast Asian prostitution: the long twentieth century

This article examines the history of prostitution as a regional phenomenon in Southeast Asia over the course of the twentieth century. I argue that this institution changed shape several times during that period, and that a number of rubrics might be employed to best study this evolution. The first part of the article looks at some of the traditional parameters of prostitution as it was practised both in island and mainland Southeast Asia, while the second part of the essay traces some new developments in the burgeoning colonial age. The third part of the piece then looks at war-time prostitution as a separate phenomenon from these earlier developments, while the fourth examines the rise of sex tourism in the region, partially as an offshoot of these same armed conflicts in the middle decades of the century. Finally, the last section of the article looks at how borders, cities, and economic inequalities have acted upon each other in today’s world to change the shape of regional prostitution in Southeast Asia yet again.

Smuggling in Southeast Asia: History and its Contemporary Vectors in an Unbounded Region

This article examines the historical roots of a contemporary phenomenon of large scope in Southeast Asia: smuggling and the movement of contraband commodities. Smuggling is by no means a new issue in this part of the world; states and proto-state polities have been identifying (and attempting to hunt down) smugglers for many centuries. Documentation for this war of wills is particularly voluminous once we enter the colonial period, especially in the first half of the twentieth century. The article analyzes these historical dimensions, and then traces these patterns through the passage of illicit “commodities” today. Two specific contraband lines are chosen as windows into these processes: the transit of narcotics and the movement of smuggled human beings. The essay argues that smuggling is a long-standing phenomenon in this region that is not likely to disappear as a feature of the Southeast Asian landscape anytime soon.

Southeast Asia's Middle East: Shifting Geographies of Islam and Trade across the Indian Ocean

It has been for some time now a truism of sorts that the Middle East is a wider locale than the arid landscapes traditionally identified by the moniker. The notional geographies that scholars have worked with for decades are no longer so set and bound. A number of high- profile thinkers have helped put into motion this paradigm shift, asking how and in which ways histories of the Middle East might be nudged in different directions. Tagliacozzo’s article travels in these same furrows, arguing that Southeast Asia—a place seldom envisioned as part of the Middle East—is also a part of the latter’s story. Although no one is arguing that the monsoon coasts of Southeast Asia are per se part of the Middle East, they are a component part of the history of this region of the world. Tagliacozzo shows how this embrace across the Indian Ocean came about, primarily though the lenses of commerce and religion, through trade and Islam. He examines this evolution, as human beings and the products they carried started to connect these two places across the breadth of the Indian Ocean world. He also looks at how imperial energies unleashed in a later time period (primarily the nineteenth century) brought these two world arenas closer to one another in certain identifiable manners. Finally, Tagliacozzo reflects on what adding Southeast Asia into the story of Islam and the Middle East ultimately means, and what we as an intellectual community might gain from this project.

The Hajj: Pilgrimage in Islam

Introduction Eric Tagliacozzo and Shawkat Toorawa 1. Pilgrimage in pre-Islamic Arabia and late Antiquity Harry Munt 2. Why Mecca? Abraham and the Hajj in the Islamic tradition Fareeha Khan 3. The early Hajj, seventh-eighth centuries CE Travis Zadeh 4. Women and the Hajj Asma Sayeed 5. Hajj by land Benjamin C. Brower 6. Hajj by sea Eric Tagliacozzo 7. Hajj by air Robert Bianchi 8. Economics: agents, pilgrims, and profits on the Hajj Sylvia Chiffoleau 9. The pilgrimage to Mecca and international health regulations Valeska Huber 10. The Saudis as managers of the Hajj Saud al-Sarhan 11. Performing the Hajj Shawkat Toorawa 12. Decoding the Hajj in cyberspace Gary R. Bunt 13. A pilgrims complaint: recent accounts of the Hajj Michael Wolfe 14. Visualizing the Hajj: imagining a sacred landscape past and present Juan Campo.

Strange Parallels and the Big Picture: “Asia” Writ Large Over a Turbulent Millennium

Every now and again a book comes along that “shakes foundations”, as it were. Such volumes let us know that something novel has appeared on the scene, in terms of new ways of knowing the shape and landscape of the past, the great “undiscovered country” of the proverb. Strange Parallels – not one book, but two – is this kind of project. In an age of hyperbole it is easy to believe the breathless hype of publishers when they tell us, the reading public, that such work has arrived. Many of us often end up feeling deflated, though, when the volume finally gets to our desks. On occasion, though, such books do live up to the praise, and happily this is the case with Victor Liebermans absorbing two volumes. Lieberman is a well-respected historian of Burma; in recent years, his tastes have been ranging further afield, however, as he has sought to connect Burma to larger stories and themes. Strange Parallels is the result of that philandering eye, an occasion when infidelity of ones locus of choice cannot only be forgiven, but applauded because of the result. Lieberman did not just covet his neighbors in this exercise – Siam and Vietnam and the other polities of mainland Southeast Asia. He ended up coveting Eurasia, or the expanse of an entire continent. What happens when you marry a very specific area studies expertise to this kind of vastly expanded vision? What paradigms can be shifted, and what new patterns can be seen? Perhaps most importantly, what new things can be discerned about the “undiscovered country” of the past that previously were hidden, even to cognoscenti ?

The Violence in Ambon

I. SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS ......................................................................................................2 II. BACKGROUND..................................................................................................................................................4 III. WAS THE CONFLICT PROVOKED? ...........................................................................................................6 IV. THE CONFLICT .............................................................................................................................................10 V. RESPONSE OF THE SECURITY FORCES..................................................................................................27 VI. CONSEQUENCES OF THE CONFLICT....................................................................................................28

The National Archives (Jakarta) and the Writing of Transnational Histories of Indonesia

The Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, or National Archives of Indonesia (located in South Jakarta), offers some intriguing possibilities for researchers wishing to write transnational histories of the country over a range of time periods. The voluminous materials stretch back to the seventeenth century, and indeed anyone looking for documents or data on the development of the country should really pass through here, though scholars often spend much of their research time in the Netherlands if they have to make a choice. This can be a mistake in some cases: there are real, often undiscovered riches in the Arsip Nasional that make a sustained trip worth the effort. The present article looks at one aspect of these riches—materials usable for writing transnational histories of Indonesia—as a window into this archive. We have divided our discussion into two parts. The first examines some of the sources that can be used for writing transnational Islamic histories of the archipelago, and the second examines documents and collections that can be used for writing about the Chinese diaspora to Indonesia and connections generally between China and the islands. These are only two of the possible approaches to take, but they are two of the main ones. We hope that once informed about these sources, other scholars will make better use of these considerable riches, which shed important light on Indonesian history as a whole.