Romain Bertrand

L'histoire à parts égales

S’il n’a jamais ete autant question d’« histoire-monde », c’est souvent la meme histoire du monde qui s’ecrit : celle de l’Europe et de son « expansion » en Afrique, en Asie et aux Ameriques. Pour Romain Bertrand, il n’est d’autre remede a cet europeocentrisme obstine qu’une histoire a parts egales, tramee avec des sources qui ne soient pas seulement celles des Europeens. C’est ce qu’il propose dans ce texte, en offrant le recit detaille des premiers contacts entre Hollandais, Malais et Javanais au tournant du XVIIe siecle. Il montre que l’Europe ne detenait alors aucun avantage sur les societes du monde insulindien, que ce soit en matiere de competences nautiques et cartographiques, de grand negoce ou de technologies militaires. Lorsque les vaisseaux de la Premiere Navigation de Cornelis de Houtman jettent l’ancre en juin 1596 dans la rade de Banten, a Java, ce n’est pas a un monde « primitif » qu’ils ont affaire. Le lecteur decouvre au contraire une societe complexe et cosmopolite, inseree depuis des decennies dans des reseaux de commerce a grande distance, maillee de lieux de debats politique et religieux intenses et sophistiques, qui font etrangement echo a ceux qui ont alors cours en Europe. Un livre qui propose une maniere radicalement nouvelle de faire de l’histoire globale. Romain Bertrand est directeur de recherche au Centre d’etudes et de recherches internationales (CERI, Sciences Po). Specialiste de l’Indonesie moderne et contemporaine, il a consacre de nombreux travaux a la question des dominations coloniales europeennes en Asie du Sud-Est.

Locating the ‘Family-State’: The Forgotten Legacy of Javanese Theories of the Public Domain (17th–20th C.)

Abstract ‘Javanese culture’ often is associated with ‘patrimonialism’ at its worst, that is, as a prelude to predation. Yet a closer look at some of the well-known court-centred serat (mystical songs) and babad (chronicles) written in Central Java during the late 18th and the 19th centuries provide us with a very different picture. Pujangga (court-poets) crafted sophisticated imaginings of the negara: the State, or rather the domain of both moral and political authority. In territorial terms, they made a distinction between what the ruler could freely dispose of and what he could not alienate. Moreover, the very process of the imperial expansion of the negara under the reign of Sultan Agung (r. 1613–1646) led to the birth of a group of ‘government specialists’: the service nobility of the priyayi. This group held a view of legitimate authority running contrary to any despotic temptation: for the priyayi, exercising power was an art, a craft involving skills that had to be learnt, whereas for the para bangsawan (members of the blood nobility), power was something to be possessed by virtue of the fame of a family name. Yet, during the colonial period, Dutch Orientalists, colonial administrators and high-ranking Javanese Regents came to give a wholly distorted view of this old priyayi conception of power, turning it into the cultural alibi of imperial authoritarianism.

Spirited Transactions. The Morals and Materialities of Trade Contacts between the Dutch, the British and the Malays (1596–1619)

On June 22, 1596, a small Dutch fleet came to anchor in the bay of the city of Banten, on Java’s north coast. Placed under the command of Cornelis de Houtman and Gerrit van Beuningen, this privately-chartered commercial expedition comprised four vessels manned by some 249 crew members.

Jakarta’s Spring: Democracy-Building Organizations and the Renaissance of Indonesian Multipartism

On the morning of May 21, 1998, Suharto made a public declaration from the presidential palace renouncing the exercise of power and entrusting the country’s reins to his heir apparent and adoptive son, vice president Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie. This theatrical gesture signaled the inauguration of a period of political change known as Reformasi. However, it did not straightaway give rise to joyous celebrations marking the end of the general president’s authoritarian system. As far as I can recall, the dominant feeling prevailing in Jakarta during the summer of 1998 was one of strong anxiety. No one knew yet if the military, the pillar of the New Order regime, was going to resign itself to “go back to its barracks” as student demonstrators and graffiti vociferously incited it to do. Moreover, B. J. Habibie was considered not as a dissident or a reformer but as a pure product of the Ancien Regime. Finally, many from the urban middle classes as well as small rural landowners expressed a virulent fear of the country toppling into “anarchy.” In the countryside of East Java, severely hit by the economic crisis, entire villages barricaded themselves while collective raids against rice granaries and public teak tree plantations seemed to give consistency to a catastrophic scenario.1 In short, the political future was awaited with anxiety.

Norbert Elias et la question des violences impériales: Jalons pour une histoire de la « mauvaise conscience » coloniale

L’etude des presences europeennes en Asie a l’aube de l’ere moderne puis durant la periode coloniale tardive permet de mettre a l’epreuve les theories de Norbert Elias. Au moment meme ou la violence s’apaise en Europe de l’Ouest, elle se dechaine aux points limites de sa progression imperiale, dans les comptoirs des Indes (orientales et occidentales). Au 16e siecle, la progression des Portugais dans la mer de Chine s’accompagne ainsi d’exactions qui auraient ete jugees intolerables sur le sol « metropolitain ». Pourtant, au 19e siecle, la violence des outre-mers coloniaux ne va plus de soi : elle peut « faire scandale » parmi les publics lettres de Londres ou de La Haye. Ainsi la guerre d’Aceh (1873-1906) provoque-t-elle un profond malaise aux Pays-Bas. En etudiant les modalites de la fabrique politique de ce « scandale colonial », et en restituant l’histoire longue de ses conditions de possibilite, il s’agit ici de montrer que les elites neerlandaises sont habitees, au tournant du 20e siecle, d’une « mauvaise conscience » coloniale, passible d’une analyse sociologique en termes de « paliers de sensibilite » nouveaux a la violence.