You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
It has always been a matter of national pride that independence came to Indonesia not as the result of a negotiated transfer of sovereignty, though the process was completed in that way, but through a struggle of heroic proportions in whose fires the nation itself was forged. The revolution, indeed, is central to the Republic's perception of itself. To call it a revolution is, of course, to beg a number of important questions. What is a revolution? Is the concept, developed in modern thought on the models of the French and Russian revolutions, applicable to a nationalist struggle for independence? Or must a revolution involve also a transfer of power from one social class to another and a su...
The pilgrimage to Mecca, or Hajj, has been a yearly phenomenon of great importance in Muslim lands for well over one thousand years. Each year, millions of pilgrims from throughout the Dar al-Islam, or Islamic world, stretching from Morocco east to Indonesia, make the trip to Mecca as one of the five pillars of their faith. By the end of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the twentieth, fully half of all pilgrims making the journey in any given year could come from Southeast Asia. The Longest Journey, spanning eleven modern nation-states and seven centuries, is the first book to offer a history of the Hajj from one of Islam's largest and most important regions.
Becoming Arab explores how a long history of inter-Asian interaction fared in the face of nineteenth-century racial categorisation and control.
A comprehensive biography of the Indonesian nationalist leader and Prime Minister of the Indonesian Republic, Sutan Sjahrir. This work is both a study of an individual and the social conditions that shaped him. The author has conducted extensive research and interviews with those who knew Sjahrir personally, politically, and by reputation.
Des Alwi tells of his childhood on the eastern Indonesian island of Banda, where he was befriended and adopted by the two nationalist leaders, Mohammad Hatta and Sutan Sjahrir, exiled there by the Dutch colonial regime. He describes his experiences on Banda and Java during the Japanese Occupation and his involvement in the underground struggle for Independence.
Southeast Asia: A Testament gives a personal account of the US involvement in Indochina and covers the tragic history of post war Indonesia from its successful struggle against the Dutch to Suharto's bloody overthrow of Sukarno in 1965.
Amir Sjarifoeddin explores the experiences of a central figure in the Indonesian revolution, whose life mirrored the idealism and contradictions of the anti-colonial and post-war world of twentieth century Indonesia. Amir was born at the edge of an empire in a time of change. Imprisoned by the Dutch for anti-colonialism, he was sentenced to death by the Japanese for anti-fascism. He survived to become the prime minister of the new Indonesian republic. Disappointed by the direction the Indonesian elites were taking, Amir turned increasingly to the left. In 1948 he joined the armed uprising against both the Indonesian government and the corruption of the national revolution, and was captured and executed as a traitor. In Amir Sjarifoeddin, Rudolf Mrázek unveils the human dimensions of a figure who is widely mythologized but often poorly understood. Through Sjarifoeddin's life, it is possible to study the moral ambiguity and complexities of the political revolutions of the twentieth century.
An obvious hiatus amidst the abundance of Pacific War studies is the story of Indonesia during that period. The Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the Pacific War, edited under the aegis of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, now fills that gap. This state of the art work reflects the different experiences and historiographic traditions of Indonesians, Japanese, and Dutch. The aim is to present the developments in the Indonesian archipelago in as much a rational and dispassionate way as possible, taking into account regional and social variations and interpreting them within the international context of pre- and post-war trends. With due acknowledgement of different perspectives, ambiguities, unresolved issues and conflicting views, it sets out to enhance mutual understanding and academic dialogue.
Biography of Sutan Sjahrir, first Indonesian prime minister.
Defending Traditional Islam in Indonesia examines the rise of young preachers of Arab descent (habaib) and their sermon groups in the region and shows how Islam and politics coexist, flourish, interlace, and strive in Indonesia in complex, pragmatic, and mutually beneficial relationships. The book argues that the emergence of Arab preachers in the late 1990s, when traditional forms of Islamic authority came under growing challenge from a diverse array of Muslim groups and ideologies, is closely tied to contestation between traditionalists and their puritanical rivals, the Salafi-Wahhabi. Not only have the habaib featured prominently in defending traditionalism, they have also used this conte...