Book Reviews - G.N. Appell, Michael B. Leigh, Checklist of holdings on Borneo in the Cornell University Libraries. Made with the assistance of John M. Echols. Data paper: Number 62, Southeast Asia Program. Department of Asian Studies. Ithaca, Cornell University, 1966. 62 pages. - R.E. Downs, P. Middelkoop, Headhunting in Timor and its historical implications. Oceania Linguistic Monograph No. 8. The Univeristy of Sydney, Sydney, 1964. 423 pp. - M.G. Swift, Rosemary Firth, Housekeeping among Malay peasants. London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology, No. 7. The Athlone Press, London 1966. Pp. xiv and 242. - Umar Junus, Harsja W. Bachtiar, Negeri Taram: A Minangkabau village community in Koentjaraningrat, ed., Villages in Indonesia. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1967. 445 pp. - William R. Roff, Judith Djamour, The Muslim matrimonial court in Singapore. London School of Economics, Monographs on Social Anthropology. No. 31. Athlone Press, London, 1966. 189 pp. - Paul Wheatley, O.W. Wolters, Early Indonesian commerce: A study of the origins of Srivijaya. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1967. 404 pp., 4 maps. - M.P.H. Roessingh, Th. P.M. de Jong, De krimpende horizon van de Hollandse kooplieden. Hollands Welvaren in het Caribisch Zeegebied (1780-1830). Van Gorcum en Comp., Assen, 1966. 352 pp., 2 ills., 1 krt. Oorspr. proefschrift Groningen, met een voorwoord van de schrijver; tevens verschenen als Anjerpublicatie nr. 9, met een woord vooraf van de promotor, Prof. Dr. H. Baudet. - M. Leifer, James de V. Allen, The Malayan Union. Yale University, Southeast Asia Studies, 1967. Monograph Series No. 10. XIV + 181 pp., with appendices. - P. Voorhoeve, M.A. Jaspan, Folk literature of South Sumatra. Rejang Ka-Ga-Nga Texts. Australian University Press, Canberra 1964. 92 pp. In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 124 (1968), no: 2, Leiden, 279-304
This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl
BOEKBESPREKINGEN MICHAEL B. LEIGH
with the assistance of
JOHN M. ECHOLS,
Checklist of Holdings on Borneo in the Cornell University Libraries. Data Paper: Number 62, Southeast Asia Program. Department of Asian Studies. Ithaca, Cornell University, 1966. 62 pages. Price US. $ 2.00. The Cornell University Libraries contain one of the most complete collections of Borneo materials in the United States. This very useful and welcome checklist itemizes the books and serials in that collection by two geographical areas: "Indonesian Borneo" and "Malaysian Borneo and Brunei". For those attempting to locate and consult items from Cotter's exhaustive bibliography of Malaysian Borneo and Brunei or from Kennedy's bibliography, this checklist is a very useful source particularly since the library call number for each item is included. It should be noted, nevertheless, that while the compilers have attempted to identify books and serials that have relevance to Borneo but which may not have been: catalogued as such or identified as relevant by title, there apparently are several minor omissions such as Alfred Russel Wallace's work and Delacour's study of the birds of Malaysia. This failure ito include the unobvious manifests itself also in the serial section. For example, the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (now Malaysian Branch) is not listed although in it there appears significant material for Bornean research, and surely it must be present in the Cornell Library system. Thus no reference is found to those issues of this Journal that are devoted entirely to Borneo such as Gossens' dictionary of Papar Dusun and Banks' work on the mammals of Borneo. In addition, a briet perusal of this checklist indicates that there are some minor omissions in CorneU's holdings such as Smythies' work on Sarawak trees; Bruce's memoirs; the agricultural census of North Borneo; Glyn-Jones' study of the Penampang Dusun; some of Woolley's excellent but brief studies of customary law; and some of the minor publications of the Borneo Literature Bureau. With. regard to the latter it would be extremely useful to have located in one library the complete collection of these publications. However, some of these omissions may be accounted for by the apparent delay between receipt of an item and its accession. For example, the mimeographed dictionary of the Rungus language prepared by my wife and myself does not appear in the checklist although it was received by the Cornell Library almost a year previous to the cutoff date at which the list was compiled. In conclusion, during a recent trip to Cornell I was informed by
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Giok Po Oey, the Southeast Asian Bibliographer, that the Library is aggressively expanding its Borneo collection and any ommissions brought to his attention will be welcomed and quickly reotified. Thus we are assured of the continuing excellence of CorneU's Borneo holdings. We must indeed be grateful to Giok Po Oey and to the various members of the Southeast Asian Program for building up such a superb Borneo collection, and we must also be most graiteful to Leigh and Echols for preparing this useful checklist and making the extemt of the Borneo holdings in the Cornell Libraries known to other scholars. Peabody Museum, Harvard University
G. N. APPELL
P. MIDDELKOOP, Head Hunting in Tintor and its Historical Implications. Oceania Linguistic Monograph No. 8. The University of Sydney, Sydney, 1964. 423 pp.
Price $ 6.00. The book consists basically of a number of texts recorded by Dr. Middelkoop and others from native informanits on Timor between 1925 and 1956, most of them dating from before the Second World War. Both the original texts and English translations of them are presented, and most of them are accompanied by introductary notes. In addition there is an initial section in which a number of aspects of head-hunting in Timor are discussed by the author. The occasion for the recording of most of the texts was the conversion of the informants to Christianity and consequent renunciation of their "pagan" ways. The accounts were offered mostly in conneotion with the various objects of "enemy magie" associated with headhunting which they were handing over to the missionaries. The majority of the texts give accounts of actual headhunting clashes between various groups on the island and are therefore of value in reconstructing historical relationships between them, and in addition offer considerable detail on the ritual practices involved in headhunting. There is, further, much of interest and significance in Dr. Middelkoop's introductory discussions and explantions of the texts, but he has not attempted to provide in them a comprehensive analysis of headhunting and its various ramifications on Timor, nor has he consistently related his material to that reported by others. As a result there are several intriguing indications in the texts as to possible symbolic significances of headhunting which cannot be satisfactorily followed up. For example, reference is made to a distinction between "itame" and
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"wild" enemies (pp. 19 f.) and it is associated with one between "male" and "female" groups, or moieties as they are called on p. 241. There is also an unexplained reference in one of the texts (p. 147) to "male" and "female" headhunters (meo). "Tame" enmity is said to have obtained between Oematan (male) and Amfoan (female) (p. 19), and this also appears to be true of Nai Toto (male) and Nai Mela (female) (p. 241). However, "tame" enmity supposedly obtained as well between Oematan of Netpala and Oematan of Numbena who are both classified as "male" (p. 20), and the "male-female" classification is not applied at all to Molo and Amanuban, who were "wild" enemies. Cunningham, however, merely states that wars within a princedom are with a tame enemy and those with another princedom are with a wild enemy (Cunningham, 1964:64). One wonders, furthermore, what connection there might be between these categories and affinal links between headhunting groups. There are several references in the texts to a connection between headhunting and marriage and fertility, and it is said that the conclusion of peace involved the exchange of women in marriage (pp. 45, 61, 293). Elsewhere (p. 77) two groups are said not to be enemies because one traditionally provided women for the other, yèt Kruyt once reported (1923, p. 431) that the death of a member of the ruling lineages of Amanatun and Amanuban, who were possibly linked by marriage (Kruyt 1921, p. 790), required the killing of someone from the other district and that both had to attend each other's funerals. Of cour'se, the long period of time which elapsed between the recording and publication of most of the material must have made it impossible for Dr. Middelkoop to pursue all the important leads to be found in it, and as it stands it does provide first-hand information on headhunting in Indonesia of a kind which is all too rare. One must be very grateful to the author, therefore, for not only having recorded the texts in the first place, but for having had the perseverancé necessary for recovering them after the war on Timor, where they had been hidden during the Japanese occupation, and for having finally made them generally available. I do believe, however, that the value of the material would have been greatly enhanced if it had been presented somewhat differently and if the author had been better served by his publisher. Most of the explanatory remarks are in the form of introductory notes without precise references to the passages in the texts themselves, and given the length of most of the texts, one has the greatest difficulty in keeping the two together in one's mind. Furthermore it appears that alternative
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names are sometimes used in the notes and the texts for the same groups or places. If the notes had been inserted at the appropriate places in the texts, and if a glossary of native terms, personal names, and place names had been provided, the reader's task would have been enormously simplified. The need for all of this is particularly acute in that the book, which is in stencilled form, is replete with typographical errors. There is a list of well over 200 errata at the back of the book, but it by no means exhausts the errors in the English text alone, and without knowing the native language one cannot guess at the number remaining in the original texts. There is a further difficulty in that the English text, in spite of its supposedly having been corrected, is in many places quite unidiomatic, not infrequently ambiguous, and sometimes quite unintelligible. The situation would have been much better if, as is usual, a word by word translation of the native texts had been provided as well. There are, finally, a number of errors and omissions of varying importance. On p. 32 the final word of the title of Scharer's book is rendered as "Talenkult" instead of "Totenkuit". On p. 34 the footnotes given as 57a, 57b, and 57c should read 51a, 51b, and 51c respectively. On p. 36, line 10 from the bottom, the photograph referred to is not reproduced. The footnotes referred to on pp. 60 ff. are inserted on a separate page between pp. 125 and 126 are not listed in the table of contents. On pp. 83, 85 and 108 the letters and numbers im the text, which refer to parts of sketches in 'the original text, are noit indicated there. On p. 121 the drawing referred to is missing. On p. 277 a footnote indicated in the text is missing. It seems a pity to spend so much time on such matters in a review, but since anthropological data of this sort cannot be checked or gathered again by another, it is obviously vital that it should be presented as accurately and clearly as possible. R. E. DOWNS
REFERENCES Cunningham, Clark E. 1964. Order in the Atoni House. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 120:34-68. Kruyt, A. C. 1921. Verslag van een reis door Timor. Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsen Aardrijkskundig Genootschap 38: 769. 1923. De Timoreezen. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië 79:347-490.
BOEKBESPREKINGEN. ROSEMARY FIRTH, Housekeeping
283
among Malay Peasants,
London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology, No, 7. The Athlone Press, London 1966. Pp. xiv and 242. £ 2.2.0. Originally published under the restricting conditions of 1943, Mrs Firth's Housekeeping has been out of print for many years, and frequently not available even in libraries. But it has continued to appear in reading lists for students of Malayan society because it was not only the first, but for many years the sole, modern study of the Malay family. We must therefore welcome the belated initiative of the L.S.E. Monographs Committee in arranging for a second edition of this work. It is doubly welcome in that about a fifth of this second edition comprises new material gathered when Professor and. Mrs Firth made a brief (6 weeks) visit to Kelantan in 1963. Further data from the 1963 field trip are available in the new edition of Professor Firth's Malay Fishermen. The bulk of the book reprints, with only minor verbal corrections and a few extra footnotes, the first edition. Even without the new material this would have been worth having, for despite obvious differences in detail following the passage of more than twenty years, it is noteworthy how little the organisation of the Malay family has changed, and how familiar the material seems to some one who has worked among Malays elsewhere, or who has read other studies of the Malay family, such as the two volumes of Dr J. Djamour (No.s 21 and 31 in the same series). Now that anthropologists are increasingly dissatisfied with synchronic studies, and wish to place their field daita in the context of historical developments, earlier studies of one's area of interest acquire a particular value. They are far more likely to provide a satisfactory base-line for the analysis of development and change than the usual scanty historical data with which the anthropologist is forced to work. An anthropologist working elsewhere in Malaya would need to use data derived from Kelantan with care, but it can be used, and for this alone we should welcome the new éditions of the Firths' Kelantan studies. But we have more; although the final two chapters cannot rival in detail the main body of data deriving from the earlier research, they nevertheless provide a clear picture of the direction of change in Malay Kelantan, and of the pressures exerted by modern developments, demographic economie and technological. From the point of view of society as a whole change has been far-reaching, and has clearly not yet run its course. But to confine comment here to> the institutions of family and household, the main concerns of the author, what is striking is the way these have retained their basic form. This point could be generalised; regardless of regional, economie and politica] variations, the Malay family impresses with the similarity of its form, indeed, great similarities can also be seen with Javanese family organisation.
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BOEKBESPREKINGEN.
The family would appear to be an isolated institution in Malay society, obviously dependant on the existence of other economie and political structures, but not so closely tied in with any specific form of these that change in the wider society will necessarily give rise to compensating change in the form of family and household. It is here that the main social reason for the high Malay divorce rate should be sought. Discussions of this issue in Malaya are usually phrased in terms of "why is the Malay divorce rate so high", but a sociologically more useful way of putting the question would be to ask why other societies have lower rates. In other words, it should be accepted as nortnal that partners in a human relationship, especially a relationship as diffuse and intimate as marriage, should grow dissatisfied with each other and seek to change partners unless there are pressing reasons why they should not do so. The isolation of the Malay family from the rest of the social structure permits a high divorce rate, and explains why the divorce rate is so high and so similar throughout the Peninsula and also wherever in the Indonesian area a similar loose type of bilateral kinship structure is found; baldly stated, because there are no reasons why it should not be. M. G. SWIFT
HARSJA w. BACHTIAR, Negert Taram: A Minangkabau Village Community, in KOENTJARANINGRAT, ed., Villages in Indonesia. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1967. 445 pp., price $ 10.—.
As a descriptive work, the paper under review deserves praise. It gives a minute description of almost every aspect of the life of the community under investigation. Accordingly, the description should be understood as the description of this single community, and can not beregarded as the pattern for every Minangkabau village, as Bachtiar has forewarned us. However, the publication may benefit other works that deal with the whole pattern of Minangkabau society. The author of the work under review should be given credits for some of his unconventional views on the structure of Minangkabau society. He states that no single nagari or negeri can be regarded as a typical Minangkabau village community (p. 349) and a suku is neither a genealogical nor a territorial unit (p. 374). The reviewer himself has come to quite similar conclusions.1 The reviewer, however, says 1
cf. Umar Junus: "Some remarks on Minangkabau social structure", B.K.I. 120 (1964), 293-326.
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285
nothing on the non-existence of suku as either a genealogical unit or a territorial one, for it may exist in some Minangkabau communities. Accordingly, it may be assumed that there are at least two kinds of village structures in Minangkabau, namely, the "original" villages and the "new" settlements. Bachtiar's view is assumed to be valid only for those of the second type. Nevertheless, the assumption needs to be proved by further investigation. For the time being, Bachtiar's conclusion on the nature of suku, in contrary to what he tends to claim, is only valid for this community. The extension of that view to the nature of suku in every Minangkabau village can be regarded as premature. There are some other concepts that fall into this category, e.g. the nature of panghuluship (369-73), and the power of mamak (366-9). Although, on the whole, accurately described, there are some points in this work that distort the accuracy. The discussion concerning the rules of residence in the third paragraph of page 366, for instance, may bring us to a misleading conclusion. If the husband remains at his own family's ancestral house, and the wife does not leave her ancestral house either, how can the union take place? The reviewer believes that, in fact, Bachtiar means a quite different thing as is proved by his statement in the first part of page 367. Bachtiar also deals with several connected items. On page 260, he speaks about the founders of the nagari and "new" settlers, while on pages 372-3 and 378-9, he speaks about the social "classes". However, he says nothing about the possibility of correlating these two phenomena. Does the elite group have something ito do with the founders of the nagari, as may be the case in other communities, e.g. Silungkang 2 ? Bachtiar also says nothing about the possibility of an extended family to improve their social "class", or about whait factors can depress their "dass". It is quite an interesting problem, at least. There are either some misspellings or some inconsistenties in spelling the native terms: gala is spelled as galar (p. 371), lumbuang as lumbuang (p. 358), buit datuak as datuk (pp. 370 ff), while nagari is spelled as negeri, the latter being Indonesian rather than Minangkabau. It is better to use the correct native terms rather than the Indonesianized forms. Mamak is understood by Bachtiar as simply a mother's brother (p. 368). In faat, it has another meaning, i.e. every grown-up man who is held responsible for the business of his extended family. This meaning is an extension of the first meaning.3 A man may be a mamak to his own sisters, especially if they have no mother's brothers at all. UMAR JUNUS
2
cf. Junus, op.cit. 308. 747-63.
3
cf. Elman R. Service, "Kinship Terminology and Evolution", AA, 62 (1960),
286
BOEKBESPREKINGEN. JUDITH DJAMOUR, The Muslim Matrimonial Court in Singapore. London School of Economics, Monographs on Social Anthropology No. 31. Athlone Press, London, 1966. 189 pp. Price 35/-.
From early in the colonial history of the Malay peninsula the protected states each equipped themselves wiith an apparatus of kathis and kathis' courts, empowered to exercise jurisdiction over matters of Muslim matrimonial and other personal law and certain sorts of Muslim "offence". Though there existed a general uniformity within these systems, which shared a common origin, they were in fact quite separate, reflecting as they did the religious authority of the separate state Rulers — an authority somewhat magnified under the deprivations of politica] power which marked British rule, and carefully guarded to the present day. The position in the Straits Settlements colony, which possessed no indigenous traditional authority, was dif: ferent again, for although provision was made by the British for the appointment of kathis from within the Muslim community these persons, unlike their counterparts in the peninsular states, were not government officials in receipt of salary, did not have courts at their disposal, and exercised powers which were largely confined to the solemnisation of marriages in which the woman had no wali (guardian), the granting of certain limited sorts of divorce to women, and the formal registration of all marriage and divorce. In states and settlements alike, Muslim marriage and divorce was from the beginning of the present century rendered subject to compulsory registration, but the legal validity of a union or separation was not made dependent on such registration and many divorces in particular were privately accomplished and never recorded. The incorporation of Penang and Malacca into the Federation of Malaya in 1948 as separate entities made little difference to previously existing arrangements, so that at the time of Merdeka in 1957 the Muslim community of the peninsula and its periphery was governed by a great variety of religious authorities, alike in essentials but differing a good deal from place to place in the manner and detail of their administration, not least in relatiom to matrimonial matters. In all this, one of the constants, to the growing concern of both religious and secular Malay and Muslim leaders, was a generally high annual rate of divorces to marriages, ranging in the early 1950s from more than 90 percent in the northern states of Kelantan and Perlis to about 30 percent in Malacca and Johore, and in most areas close to or more than 50 percent.1 Discussion of causes and remedies was much complicated by the disparities between the separate legal and administrative systems on the one hand (it was held, for example, though the statistics seemed not to support this, that the unpaid kathis of the settlements, dependent on registration fees, tended to increase 1
These figures represent the total number of divorces in any one year expressed as a percentage of the total number of marriages for the same year.
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divorce rates, and, more cogently, that strict regulation in one state could be readily evaded by visiting a more accommodating one nearby), and on the other hand by the socio-economic variety of the Muslim community itself, which encompassed both bilateral and matrilineal systems of kinship organisation and included all conditions of men from poorly educated fishermen and peasanit farmers to urban professional and propertied sophisticates. From about 1950 onwards, several of the peninsular sitates introduced legislation designed to improve the administration of Muslim affairs in general, and to tighten up regulations concerning marriage and divorce.2 For the most part, however, beyond stating more clearly the legal rights and responsibilities in Islam of the parties to a marriage and reinforcing the powers of kathis in relation to these, the measures differed little from' their predecessors. In particular, despite some pressure from Western-influenced women's and other groups, they did not attempt to modify .the right of a man to repudiate his wife at will by utterance of the formula, amy kathi remained empowered to solemnize a marriage in which the woman had or claimed to have no proper wali, and walis in general continued to have an unrestricted right to dispose of their womenfolk into polygynous unions. Divorce rates continued at much the same level. And then in Singapore in August 1957, in culmination of some years of continued urging from reform interests, a Muslims Ordinance was enacted in the Legislative Council, introducing radical elements of change. The ordinance stipulated that only divorces by mutual consent might be registered by a kathi, and it made provision for the constitution of a special Shariah Court (set up in November 1958), under the presidency of a suitably trained Muslim, which would exercise jurisdiction in relation to all matrimonial disputes. The effect of this was to ensure that any divorce which was not a divorce by consent could be registered only by the Shariah Court. In a further attempt to reduce the factors tending to marriage instability the 1957 ordinance gave to the Chief Kathi (who had previously been merely primus inter pares in relation to his fellows) an exclusive right to act as wali in no-wali marriages, and an Amending Ordinance of 1960 gave this official a similarly exclusive right to solemnize or authorize the solemnization of polygynous unions.3 Finally, an attempt was made in the 1960 amendment to deal with the absence of sufficient economie deterrent to divorce (feit by many reformers to be of prime importance) by empowering the Shariah Court to order a husband to pay to his divorced wife a consolatory gift or mata'ah. It is the effect of this legislation, and of the working of the Shariah Court, which were 2 3
For details, see the recent compilation by Ahmad Ibrahim, Islamic Law in Malaya (Singapore, 1965). For case material, see M. Siraj, "The Control of Polygamy", Malaya Law Review, VI, 2 (December 1964). These exclusive rights have since been abrogated by the Administration of Muslim Law Enactment, 1965 (No. 27 of 1966).
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BOEKBESPREKINGEN.
examined in great detail by Dr Judith Djamour during 1963, and which form the substance of the book under review. Students of Malay society are already in debt to Dr Djamour for her Malay Kinship and Marriage in Singapore (1959), the only full study of the Malay family to have been made since the war. In the course of this earlier work (the research for which was undertaken in 1949-50) Dr Djamour became particularly interested in the instability of Malay marriage and the reasons for the frequency of divorce. Though the facility with which, in law, divorce could be obtained was obviously of some importance im maintaining high rates, Dr Djamour was ablé to list this as only one of a number of predisposing and congruent factors, and its relationship to other factors remained indeterminate. Between 1957, the year in which ithe Muslims Ordinance became law, and 1962, the divorce rate among Singapore's Muslims feil from 52.1 percent to 30.3 percent, a dramatic reduction which, it was generally agreed, was due in large part to the operation of law. The desirability of studying ithe law in action, and of relating this to a larger re-study of Malay marriage and divorce, was clear, and though Dr Djamour found that the first of these tasks occupied !the whole of the time at her disposal (February to July 1963) and has had to postpone the second, the resultant monograph is a contribution of great value to both Islamic and sociological studies in this part of the world. Following upon an initroductory chapter in which the cultural and historical background in' Singapore is discussed, and the Shariah Gourt described, the book is divided into four principal sections, each dealing with one of the four types of divorce differentiated in the registers: talak (unconditional or ordinary repudiation), ta'alik (repudiation in virtue of breach of a conditional clause written into the original marriage contract), fasah (judical dissolution), and khula (divorce by redemption). There is then a chapter on "roja" (revocation of divorce), and finally a discussion of the material and conclusions. The data for the study were obtained from the records of the Shariah Court and Registry of Muslim Marriages and Divorces (which included case material on 150 divorces registered by the Court in 1961 and 1962, together with a number of unsuccessful petitions) and centain other unpublished records; from attendance at Court hearings for six months; and from constant discussions "with kathis, government officials, magistrates, and social workers, and with Muslim men and women of all social strata". Not the least impressive part of the book is the quality and intensity of the fieldwork it represents. Perhaps the most important point to emerge from this useful study is also the most apparent, matnely that it is indeed possible (notwithstanding the continued existence of sociologically predisposing factors in the opposite direotion) radically to reduce the divorce rate in a community of this soit by manipulating legally enforcible administrative regulation in such a fashion as to make it awkward (scarcely more) for husbands to divorce their wives at will without consent, or to contract marriages without at least a minimal sense of social respon-
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sibility — all this being done without, in the last resort, attempting to meddle with Muslim law itself. The lesson has not been lost on the peninsular states where there are now demands from several quarters for the institution of Shariah Courts similar to that in Singapore. Dr Djamour points out that much of the Count's work is at present accomplished by persuasion, particularly in the form of conciliation prior to divorce, and that the crucial element in the success of the 1957 legislation has been the popular belief that registration of a marriage or divorce (which in any case the relevant officials can only delay, not withhold, if proper in Islam) is the proof of its validity. Though there is some reason to suppose that unregistered divorce may be marginally on the increase, there appears .to be sufficient acquiescence in the system, after eight years working of the Court, to suggest that this is not likely to get out of hand, and that the changes legislative reform has effected are likely to last. The interest attaching to Dr Djamour's inquiries highlights the absence of similar information concerning any of the frequently much larger Muslim communities of the peninsular sitates. As the statistics in the accompanying table show, divorce rates throughout the peninsula have tended for the most part to fall during the past decade, if nowhere so strikingly as in Singapore. Though this has probably been brought about in some cases (notably in Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Malacca) by the tightening up of administrative regulation, it seems likely that other factors too are at work, though what in precise terms these are must at present be a matter for speculation. With respect to the continued reduction of divorce and allied ills, reformers in the peninsula usually point to what are regarded as three crucial issues: the achievement of uniform legislation among the states, control of polygyny, and the' desirability of an increase in the economie deterrents to divorce. Little progress has been made towards unification, despite a general acceptance of the need and much discussion in public, in the state Religious Affairs Departments, and in the Conference of Rulers (which is the final arbiter). It seems clear that individual state establishments remain jealous of their identities and their powers, and there is in any case no real agreement on the detail of the measures needed. Singapore's reforms are regarded by many Muslim officials in the states (even the more liberal) as being "too Western" in character, and there are other reasons why it is likely to be difficult to take Singapore as a model, not least the fact ithat it is a predominantly non-Muslim state. Singapore itself, since Dr Djamour's study was completed, has had to bow to conservative pressure and retreat from the position taken in 1960 concerning no-wali and polygynous unions, which are now registrable again by any kathi, and it seems improbable that the other states will, for the time being, be more successful. The current cause for the reformers (who in the peninsular states, as Dr Djamour notes for Singapore, tend to be lay Muslims rather than religious officials) is to press for the introduction of mahr amouniting, k has been suggested, to a sum at least equal to one month's earnings by the husband instead
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BOEKBESPREKINGEN.
MUSLIM MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE IN SINGAPORE AND WEST MALAYSIA 1957-1966 Singapore
A
B
Malacca
C
B
A
Selangor
Johore
C
A
B
C
A
B
Penang
C
A
B
C
967 34.1 2448 784 32.0
19S7
2303 1201 52.1 1939 560 28.9 5108 1453 28.4 2835
1958
2332 1149 49.3 1969 536 27.2 4906 136S 27.9 3474 1182 34.0 2181
1959
2116
1960
1814
577 27.3 1977 582 29.4 4942 1447 29.3 3466 1131 32.6 2066 639 30.9 574 31.6 2003 564 28.2 4962 1285 25.9 3104 965 31.1 2358 788 33.4
1961
1560
401 25.7 1865 544 29.2 4493 1163 25.9 2801
649 23.5 1742 690 39.6
1962
1483
449 30.3 1441 213 14.8 4057 1143 28.2 2866
758 24.4 1827 616 33.7
1963
1690
430 25.4 1687 315 18.1 4685 1222 26.1 3166
816 25.6 1947 674 34.6
1964
1698
324 19.1 1633 263 16.1 4906 1072 21.9 3384
836 24.7 1837 595 32.4
1965
1928
336 16.6 1773 260 15.8 4878 1102 22.6 3779
864 22.9 1994 674 33.8
1966
1911 301 15.8 1672 170 10.2 4820 1069 22.2 3785
859 22.7 1784 620 34.8
574 30.5 1796 401 22.3 4776 1232 25.8 3366
898 26.7 2028 669 33.0
Average
1884
Negri S.
Perak
A
B
C
A
B
Pahang
C
A
B
Trengganu
C
A
B
610 28.0
Kelantan
C
A
B
C
1957
5732 2448 42.7 1366 660 48.3 1790 1040 58.1 4944 3350 67.8
1958
5350 2264 42.3 2262
1959
5112 2118 41.4 1286 612 47.6 2092 1187 56.8 4964 2933 59.1 10054 6856 68.2
1960
5430 2074 38.2 1374 681 49.6 1957 1055 53.9 4868 2893 59.4
9810 6363 64.9
1961
4932 1844 37.4 1509 677 44.9 1795 1034 57.8 4402 2725 61.9
7176 5068 70.6
1962
4680 1890 40.4 1431
421 29.4 1813 1072 53.6 4152 2613 62.9
8399 5463 65.0
. 1963 4663 1717 36.8 1296 314 24.2 2036 1056 51.9 4161 2416 58.1 5044 1671 33.1 1311 296 22.6 2057 1104 56.6 4297 2345 54.7 1964
7987 5278 66.1 8264 5270 63.7
1965
5337 1749 32.8 1767 417 23.7 2139 1084 50.7 4140 2357 57.0
8275 5052 61.1
1966
5109 1790 35.0 1648 385 23.3 2048
946 48.1 3926 2126 55.6
8177 4395 53.4
542 35.5 1956 1064 54.4 4454 2673 60.0
8648 5702 65.9
Average
5139 1757 34.3 1525
7611 4747 62.4
760 34.0 1834 1063 58.0 4681 2948 63.0 10723 8530 79.5
A =; No. of Marriages; B = No. of Divorces; C = B as % of A. SOURCE: State Religious Affairs Departments (Kedah and Perlis not replying). Figures for Revocation of Divorce (which reduce the divorce rate slichtly) not included, as not in all cases available. Comparable statistics for the decade 1948-57 may be found in "Marriage/Divorce in the Eleven States and Singapore", Intisari (Singapore), II, 2 (n.d.).
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of the $ 20 or so which is customary at present, though this seems likely to act as a deterrent to divorce only if it is unpaid at the time of marriage and therefore becomes owing at separation. Dr Djamour concludes the introduction to her study by remarking that further work needs to be done to link the effect of legislative reform upon the institutions of marriage and divorce among Muslims in present-day Singapore. While it may be hoped that Dr Djamour will herself return to do' this, her book should serve as a stimulant and exemplar to others to pursue similar enquiries elsewhere in the peninsula, where both the operation of Muslim law and the inwardness of Malay family life are still too little known to scholars. University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.
WILLIAM R. ROFF
o. w. WOLTERS, Early Indonesian Commerce: a study of the origins of Srïvijaya. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1967. 404 pp., 4 maps. Price $ 8.75. The investigation of the early history of the lands and seas which comprise present-day western Indonesia has been justly likened to the reconstruction of a building from photographs taken from several different directions. The meagreness and ambivalence of available indigenous records forces the historian to rely predominantly on gleanings from foreign literatures, primarily Chinese annals and encyclopedias, secondarily various Arabo-Persian sources, and to a lesser extent Indian writings and the Classical literatures of the West. But the interests of these several culture groups were not always focussed on the same aspects of South-East Asia, so that we may extend our metaphor by saying that the photographs of the historical edifice under consideration were often taken, not only from different angles, but also with different filters. Moreover, when indigenous accounts have been preserved, either in epigraphic form or incorporated in alien records, they present special difficulties of interpretation. In the first place, events are often presented in symbolic forms which are not always easily intelligible to the modern mind. Second, even when a factual narrative is apparently being presented it is still necessary to bear in mind that the collective memory, on which the annalists of the past in large part relied, was anhistorical. Unable to retain individual persons and specific events, it was liable to transform them respectively into archetypes and categories, heroes and heroic situations. Because myth, the medium through which the record is often presented to the historian, is the ultimate, not the primal, stage in the creation of an archetype, it is sometimes a matter of great difficulty to reverse the process and reach back to the events at the core of the legend. Furthermore, the progress of comparative historical research has recently confronted the historian investigating any of the early Asian cultures with a new set of problems. It is no longer acceptable for him simply to transpose ancient concepts
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into the terminology of the modern world. Instead he must strive to elucidate the significance that they had at the time for the men who used them. The generalized terms "trade" and "market", for instance, are not necessarily, or even usually, adequate characterizations of the modes of exchange that predominated in the traditional world. "City", unqualified, may not always be a wholly appropriate term to apply to the ceremonial centres of the ancient world. And so on. The problem of restoring to such generalized concepts their original significance is all the more difficult when they are of an abstract character, pertaining, for example, to those nexuses of ideas which are today rendered into English by some such terms as "state", or "loyalty", or "patriotism", or "beauty". The information available about events in Western Indonesia during the early centuries of the Christian era is perhaps the least satisfactory of that for any of the realms of Indianized South-East Asia. This is partly because the Archipelago is remote froni China so that notices relating to it in Chinese annals and encyclopedias are correspondingly late and indeterminate, and partly because archaeology has there been concerned almost exclusively either with prehistorie investigation or wkh the interpretation and preservation of the monumental architecture of the great shrines of later days. Yet, in the early history of South-East Asia particular interest attaches to Western Indonesia, for it was in that regiem that, during ithe first half of the first millennium A.D., there were being laid the foundations of the Sri Vijayan thalassocracy, the polity which was to dominate the western territories of archipelagic South-East Asia for some seven hundred years. It is to this formative phase of Sri Vijayan history that Professor Wolters has directed his attention in the present book, and in so doing he has provided the major advance in our understanding of that empire since, exactly fifty years ago, George Coedès first discerned its lineaments permeating apparently unrelated texts. Professor Wolters's approach to the problems of this obscure era in Indonesian history is distinctive. Whereas previous investigators have almost invariably begun their enquiries with an attempt to restore the admittedly meagre toponymic framework of the time solely on textual and linguistic grounds, Wolters has first examined the contemporary trading patterns of the regiotii and only subsequently fitted the surviving (and sometimes reconstructed) toponymy into the commercial model. After a preliminary survey of the territory already historiographically secure and a definition of the salient problems whose solution is a precondition for further advance (Chap. I), he devotes chapters successively to the function of South-East Asian commercial nodes in the network of early Asian trade, to a reconstruction of conditions in western Indonesia during the third century A.D. as epitomized in snippets of ambivalent information about the shadowy kingdom of *Ka-iw'dng (Ko-ying), and to1 early Indonesian trade with India. The ensuing six chapters constitute a sustained analysis of the *Pua-sie (Po-ssü) trade in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. In detail they deal
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first with the expansion of Asian maritime trade during that period, and with those sources which Wolters has felicitously termed the vintage texts, namely such fragments as remain of the Kuang Chih by Kuo I-kung, of the Kuang-chou Chi by Ku Wei, and of the Nan-chou Chi by Hsü Piao. Then two chapters on, respectively, the so-called "pine resin" and the guggulu of the southern ocean illustrate the manner in which South-East Asian aromatics came to be substituted for those of the Middle East and thus led to the forging of commercial bonds directly between western Indonesia and China. Finally this section of the book concludes with two chapters examining specifically the nature of the *Pua-sie trade and the ethnic groups engaged in it. The last third of the book consist of four chapters in which Professor Wolters elucidates the effects of these commercial developments on the political evolution of western Indonesia, and particularly on the emergence of Sri Vijaya as the premier focus of power and authority controlling the Strak of Malaka. This commercial influence was not equally effective throughout the region, and Professor Wolters distinguishes what he calls "isolated coasts" — territories engaging only in the tertiary trading activity which supplied the larger ports — from the "favoured coast of early Indonesian commerce", that is the coast of south-east Sumatra, on which converged both intra- and inter-regional trade routes during the first half-millennium of the Christian era. Here in the third century was the probable location of *Kd-iwang, in the fifth and sixth centuries that of the emporium of *Kan/Kign-t'd-lji (Kan/ Chin-t'o-li) and for seven centuries afterwards the site of the capital of the Sri Vijayan thalassocracy. It is Professor Wolters's thesis that this stretch of coast was the natural focal point for the crystallization of Malay political aspiraitions and achievements not only during these earlier periods but also tbrough subsequent centuries, and even into the colonial period, and Sri Vijaya was only one, even though the most impressive, manifestation of the operation of these predominantly commercial forces in the historical process. A corollary to this exposition is the inescapable inference that the expansion of trade in at least this part of Southeast Asia during the early centuries of the Christian era was an indigenous and not an Indian achievement. This bald summary of content cannot do justice to the subtlety of the arguments which Professor Wolters weaves about the ambivalent evidence at his disposal, nor can it exemplify the courtesy with which he treats dissenting opinion, even when it is less than perspicacious. Let me, therefore, add that in my opinion Early Indonesian Commerce is perhaps the most stimulating essay into early South-East Asian history to have appeared during this decade. Not only does it exhibit that effortless command of source materials which has been characteristic of the masters in this field of endeavour but it also brings a freshness of view and methodology that augurs well for the future. In his assault on the peaks of understanding in early South-East Asian historiography Professor Wolters has attained to a new plateau, from which it will be possible to launch a whole series of new forays. Which, of course,
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raises the question as to the direction they should take. The exiguousness, intractability, and equivocal nature of the available evidence has ensured that the present volume is an interpretation of economie and political development rather than a definitive statement, and I suppose that the next step will involve the testing of this model against whatever new evidence may come to hand in the future. It is also, I think, necessary to realize that Professor Wolters's model is of the kind which physical scientists refer to as "the black-box" variety. It provides a great deal of guidance as to what happened, but less as to hom it happened. The precise nature of the political and economie instruments involved in the transformation from a folk to an urbanized society is still largely undefined. How, for example, were the institutions necessary to handle the large volume of trade attributed to Sri Vijaya integrated with the social, political, and religious institutions implied by the texts ? Some recent authors (though not Professor Wolters) have assumed, on the strength of this trade, that Sri Vijaya was one of Redfield's "cities of heterogenetic change", a city of the entrepreneur where the values of society were structured about the expediential norms of the marketplace, a city of the technical rather than the moral order, and characterized by organic rather than mechanical social solidarity. This I am inclined to doubt. It is not so much the volume of commercial transactions taking place as the nature of the instruments of exchange and the marnier in which they intermesh with society as a whole which is of consequence in the structuring of society, and such information as we have about Sri Vijaya in its heyday seems to me to imply that it lay far over towards the pole of orthogenesis. However, questions such as this will not be solved by speculation but by arduous investigation of unusually initractable texts and an intensification of archaeological exploration. The highest praise that can be accorded Professor Wolters's book — and it is high praise indeed — is that it has advanced our knowledge and our thinking to the point where we can begin seriously to contemplate the formulation of •analytic categories, in other words to begin to investigate the social, political, economie, and cultural components or subsystems of which formal history constkutes the surface morphology. Finally, it should be added that the intellectual excellence of this book is matched by an extensive appwatus criticus, including eightyseven pages of notes and three appendices on technical matters relating to the texts, and that it is furnished with five clear and informative maps, glossaries of Chinese characters and texts, a bibliography, and an analytical index. University College London.
PAUL WHEATLEY
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DR. TH. p. M. DE JONG, De krimpende horizon van de Hollandse kooplieden. Hollands Welvaren in het Caribisch Zeegebied (1780-1830). Van Gorcum en Comp., Assen, 1966. 352 pp., 2 ills., 1 krt. Oorspr. proefschrift Groningen, met een voorwoord van de schrijver; tevens verschenen als Anjerpublicatie nr. 9, met een woord vooraf van de promotor, Prof. Dr. H. Baudet. Prijs fl. 28,50 geb.
Deze dissertatie is de vrucht van een studieproject betreffende Nederlands economische politiek overzee, dat is opgezet door het Instituut voor Economisch Onderzoek der Rijksuniversiteit te Groningen. Een onderdeel daarvan, Nederland in betrekking tot LatijnsAmerika, wordt bewerkt door de socioloog Th. P. M. de Jong. Van zijn hand verschenen reeds verscheidene artikelen over dit onderwerp, i Uit de dubbele titel blijkt al, dat de schrijver twee thema's aan de orde stelt: dat van het karakter van de Nederlandse koophandel van 1780-1830 (,het eigenlijke thema' volgens par. 7 van de inleiding) en, in verband daarmee, de handel en wandel van de Nederlandse koopman in het Caribisch Zeegebied. „De krimpende horizon" — het verval van de Hollandse handel — wordt in een kort slothoofdstuk behandeld, terwijl de voorgaande twee delen met de inleiding gewijd zijn aan resp. de algemene situatie in het Caribisch Zeegebied en aan het Nederlandse optreden aldaar. .Hollands Welvaren' is, met het oog op de behandelde periode, een wat vreemde karakteristiek, en op het eerste gezicht misleidend. We stellen ons daarbij toch iets anders voor dan de handelsmalaise, de gemiste kansen en de doodgelopen initiatieven die de schrijver ten tonele voert in het tweede deel van zijn boek. De voorstelling van dit ,welvaren' leefde in de hoofden van de plannenmakers (koning Willem I voorop) maar is niet kenmerkend voor de feitelijke situatie in het behandelde tijdperk. Hoe de idee van een herleving van de zeventiende-eeuwse Hollandse stapelmarkt de maatregelen van de koning beïnvloed heeft, toont de Jong echter heel duidelijk aan. Tegenover Willem I tekent hij de kooplieden, evenzeer — maar dan in negatieve zin — gevangen in de beschouwing van het verleden, lamgeslagen door de onoverwinnelijk geachte buitenlandse concurrentie en treurend over het verlies van de plantagekoloniën in
1
„Nederland en Latijns-Amerika (1816-1826)", in: Economisch-Historisch Jaarboek, 29 (1963) p. 1-140; „Latijns-Amerika 182S: antecedenten van een cultuurmissie", in: Sociologische Gids, 12 (1965) p. 152-166; „Nederlanders in Centraal-Amerika 1825-1832, zelfobservatie middels een andere wereld", in: Spiegel Historiael, 2 (1967) p. 28-41. Een studie van Dr. de Jong, getiteld: „Economie relations of Western Europe, the United States, Great Britain and Latin America, (1815-1830)" zal in het Economisch-Historisch Jaarboek van 1967 verschijnen.
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Guyana. In zoverre de schrijver ideëngeschiedenis geeft en de motieven voor het handelen van de dramatis personae naspeurt, is de ondertitel dus zeer toepasselijk. De waarde van deel twee en het slothoofdstuk worden verhoogd door het feit dat schr. zijn betoog hoofdzakelijk opbouwt aan de hand van nieuw, d.w.z. nog ongepubliceerd archiefmateriaal. De voorgeschiedenis en de algemene situatie in het Caribisch Zeegebied worden zoals vermeld in de inleiding en het eerste • deel behandeld. „ . . . zelden (is) het Hollandse optreden in het Caribisch Zeegebied beschreven tegen de achtergrond van wat zich daar afspeelde" (p. 27). Daarom is dit gedeelte, behalve als inleiding op de behandelde onderwerpen, van groot belang voor de geschiedschrijving van WestIndië in het algemeen. De schr. gaat eerst de typische verschijnselen van de Spaanse kolonisatie na en bespreekt de discussie die ontstond over de rechtvaardigheid van het Spaanse optreden, o.m. inzake de slavernij. Tegenover de missionaire kolonisatie van de Spanjaarden stond de meer zakelijk gerichte activiteit van de Noordwesteuropese landen. In de strijd met het Spaanse imperium werden de uitspraken van Las Casas tegen de slavernij der Indianen geïnterpreteerd als een veroordeling van het totale Spaanse koloniale systeem. Zo ontstond de .zwarte legende' van de onmenselijke en ondeskundige Spaanse kolonisatie, in de hand gewerkt door de afgeslotenheid van dit imperium. Tijdens de Franse Verlichting met haar idealen van staatkundige vrijheid en vrijhandel werd de kolonisatie als zodanig ter discussie gesteld. De benadering van de overzeese wereld, volgens de visie van die tijd ontdaan van absolutisme en monopolie, krijgt het karakter van een culturele missie. In verband met de tegenstelling: koloniaal monopolie en vrijhandel formuleert de J. het begrip mercantilisme nader. Voor. hem is dit niet zozeer een economische doctrine, eigen aan de grote monarchieën, maar „ . . . een aantal practische inzichten, die het optreden van de natie in de phase van de ontluikende wereldhandel de nodige zekerheid verschafte." (p. 12). „Het mercantilisme bereikte zijn zuiverste vorm in de grote monarchieën. In één opzicht echter deed de Republiek niet onder voor de nabuurstaten: het staatsbelang was er evenzeer een sublimatie van de positie van de mercantiele klasse als elders." (p. 18). Het mercantilisme van de Republiek ligt o.m. verankerd in het octrooi voor Suriname van 1682. De handel op deze bezitting zou ten goede komen „aan alle Ingezetenen gezamentlijk, ende zulks vervolgens aan den Staat zelve". Dit zou geschieden door „het debit van veelderhande manufacturen..." en door het „manufactueren van de rouwe waren ..." (cit. op. p. 16). Deze grondstoffenin voer uit Suriname en de export van bewerkte artikelen naar de kolonie en naar andere landen moest een Nederlandse zaak blijven. Buitenlandse handelaars werden bij uitzondering toegelaten, alleen als het niet anders kon. Zo werden al in de 17e eeuw flinke hoeveelheden paarden, koeien en levensmiddelen uit Nieuw-Engeland aangevoerd. De Directeuren van de Sociëteit van Suriname keurden deze handel achteraf (in 1704) met beperkende
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bepalingen ten aanzien van de uitvoer goed.2 Op p. 19 lezen we hierover: „De Noord-Amerikaanse kooplieden bekwaamden zich zelfs in de handel van Engelse manufacturen tegen muilezels, hoornvee en paarden van de Vaste Kust", (curs. van mij MR). Dit lijkt mij, gezien het bovenstaande, een vergissing. Na de beschrijving van het veranderde sociaal-economisch inzicht ten aanzien van Latijns-Amerika in de Westeuropese landen komt de welvaartssituatie op de Westindische eilanden aan de orde. Omstreeks 1800 zien we de opkomst van St. Thomas en Trinidad als handelscentra, van belang voor de Engelse kooplieden, evenals de opmerkelijke ontwikkeling van Cuba. In 1797 werd de toegang tot de Spaanse eilanden tegen een speciale licentie vrijgegeven, waar vooral de Noordamerikaanse vrachtvaarders van profiteerden. „Qua goederenomzet reikte Cuba in 1815 tot het niveau van havens als Antwerpen en Boston." (p. 54). Het derde hoofdstuk bevat een overzicht van de onafhankelijkheidsoorlogen op het vasteland van Zuid-Amerika. De eerste fase van deze strijd (1810-1821) eindigde met de stichting van de staat Gran Columbia (: Ecuador, Nieuw-Granada en Venezuela). Na 1821 staan Engeland en de Verenigde Staten aan de zijde van de Bevrijder, Simon Bolivar. In Londen sluiten de Independenten dan enorme leningen af, in 1825 oplopend tot 42 % van alle Britse buitenlandse staatsleningen. Daarnaast belegden de Engelsen 250 miljoen pond in Latijns-Amerikaanse ondernemingen. Eind 1825 - begin 1826 kwam aan deze groteske winstverwachting een einde, toen de bankiershuizen van Baring en Goldsmith failleerden. In de volgende periode moet de handel een weg zien te vinden in een door burgerstrijd verdeeld arm land. Venezuela werd in 1830 een onafhankelijke staat, Peru, Bolivia en Ecuador maakten zich in hetzelfde jaar los uit de Statenbond van de Andes en op 17 december stierf Simon Bolivar, die zijn land, Venezuela, teleurgesteld had verlaten. In 1824 was in Centraal-Amerika eveneens een federatie van voormalige Spaanse departementen tot stand gekomen. De belangstelling van het buitenland werd hier vooral getrokken door de plannen tot het graven van een interoceanisch kanaal. De New Yorkse koopman Palmer wist een kanaalcontract af te sluiten maar bleek insolvent, hetgeen de verhouding tussen de V.S. en CentraalAmerika ernstig verstoorde. Door zware belastingheffingen verjoeg men in Centraal-Amerika de bona fide buitenlandse handelaars. De Jong wijst hier op de ambivalente gevoelens van jonge staten tegenover de machtige buitenwereld. Zij streven wel naar internationale erkenning, maar schrikken terug voor de consequenties, zodra deze de eigen kwetsbare economie bedreigen. Het eerste deel van het boek vindt zijn afsluiting in de behandeling van de Noordamerikaanse houding tegenover Latijns-Amerika en de 2
Over de Amerikaanse handel op Suriname de korte maar informatieve artikelen van R. Bijlsma en F. Oudschans Dentz in: De Wcst-Indischc Gids, lb (1919/20) p. 48-51, en 24 (1942) p. 193-200.
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omslag in de visie van de naties op dit gebied. Tot 1825/6 (handelscrisis!) had men grote verwachtingen van een bevrijd Latijns-Amerika, mede onder invloed van de .zwarte legende' over het Spaanse wanbeheer. Daarna slaat deze verwachting om in teleurstelling, en in plaats van de Spanjaarden worden nu de luie, indolente inheemsen de zondebok. Over de strekking van het betoog in deel twee, „Hollands Welvaren in het Caribisch Zeegebied 1780-1830" is hierboven al iets gezegd. De rechtstreekse betrekkingen van de Republiek met het Caribisch Zeegebied gingen in de tweede helft van de 18e eeuw sterk achteruit. De Curacaose handel was vóór 1780 al grotendeels verlopen; de Noordamerikaanse vrachtvaart richtte zich op St. Eustatius en, na de vernietiging van de .Golden Rock' in 1781, op St. Thomas. Óver de oorzaken van en de remedies tegen het verval van de handel ontstond in de Republiek een levendige discussie. Zowel voor- als tegenstanders van de vrijhandel waren het er over eens dat de mercantilistische verhouding met de koloniën gehandhaafd moest blijven. In 1806 noemde de secretaris van de Amerikaanse Raad van der Kemp de teruggave van de Guyana's en Curacao een essentiële voorwaarde voor het drijven van een actieve Nederlandse handel. Deze visie zou later door de Amsterdamse kooplieden worden overgenomen, die de Koning verweten, dat hij onvoldoende voor het behoud van de Guyana's had gestreden. De tegenstelling tussen Willem I en de Amsterdammers werd nog vergroot door de tariefwet van 1816. Amsterdam wilde een monopolistische vaart op de eigen suiker producerende koloniën en voor het overige vrijhandel: ,alle vervoer moet worden bevorderd'. De koning daarentegen koos voor een gematigd systeem van rechten, waardoor de eigen nijverheid en de nationale scheepvaart bevorderd werd en men ,tegen Engeland kon varen met fabriekgoederen'. (p. 130-131). Latijns-Amerika kon in dit herstelprogramma een belangrijke stimulans worden, hetgeen Willem I in de Considerans van de Artikelen van Overeenkomst voor de Nederlandse Handel-Maatschappij vastlegde. Voorwaarde hiertoe was een hervorming van de economie in Nederlands West-Indië. Suriname bleef voorlopig voor buitenlandse schepen gesloten, maar St. Eustatius en Curacao zouden vrijhavens worden. Over het hóe liepen de meningen weer uiteen. De regering aarzelde, wilde de Amerikanen wel toelaten op de eilanden maar hield toch vast aan het batig slot. De koloniale huishouding moest zich, mede uit de douanerechten, zelf kunnen bedruipen. Dat het excentrisch gelegen Curacao niet zomaar de handel naar zich zou toetrekken realiseerde men zich niet. Door de Spaansgezinde politiek van het Curacaose gouvernement werden de mogelijkheden tot handel met de overwal nog geringer. Minister Falck pleitte in 1822 voor een feitelijke erkenning van de oorlogvoerende partij; na enige aarzeling — de Heilige Alliantie zag critisch toe — besloot Willem I tot het zenden van een afgezant naar Bogota. Hoewel op het punt van douanerechten, consulaten e.d. door deze missie van luitenant de Quartel niets werd bereikt, kwam de hele kwestie van de positie van Curacao en van de
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contacten met de nieuwe staten in een stroomversnelling. In 1823 werden Columbiaanse schepen in de haven van Curacao toegelaten en van 1824-1826 bouwde de koning een net van handelsagenten der N.H.M. (Haïti, Cuba) en van officiële consuls (Bogota, Guatamala, Truxillo) op. Ook aan Curacao werd aandacht besteed: de oprichting van een rijkspakketvaart (1825), het zenden van de commissie-Krayenhoff in hetzelfde jaar en het delfstoffenonderzoek op Aruba waren evenzovele maatregelen die de economie moesten stimuleren. De taak van de commissie-Krayenhoff was voornamelijk militair, Curacao moest volgens de koning ,een tweede Maltha' worden. Aan het rapport van Krayenhoff's aide-de-camp, kolonel Jan Verveer, betreffende de sociaaleconomische toestand op Curacao wijdt schr. enige belangwekkende bladzijden. Verveer's rapport is vooral interessant in verband met zijn maatschappijbeschouwing: hij onderkende het gesegmenteerd karakter der Westindische samenleving, het naast elkaar — gedistantieerd — leven van Protestanten, Rooms-Katholieken, Joden en de gekleurde bevolking. Hoewel Krayenhoff en Verveer pessimistisch oordeelden over de mogelijkheden op Curacao bleef de koning dit eiland zien als de bèstgesitueerde stapelplaats ,niet alleen in die zeeën, maar welligt in de bekende wereld'. Ten slotte, in 1827, werd de Curagaose haven geheel vrij van lasten voor de internationale scheepvaart opengesteld. Aangezien de gouvernementsinkomsten toch ergens vandaan moesten komen, voerde gouverneur Cantz'laar op hetzelfde moment een tonnengeld en een heffing ter waarborg van schip en lading in. Voor de handel op de overwal, met kleine schepen gedreven, betekenden juist deze nieuwe heffingen een ernstige belemmering. Noch in Nederland — de N.H.M, waagde slechts één lading op Curacao — noch in Columbia en Mexico ontmoette de vrijhaven dan ook veel belangstelling. De operaties van de N.H.M, in het Caribisch Zeegebied van 18251828 waren geen groot succes, hoewel de Maatschappij in speculaties elders veel groter verliezen heeft geleden. De voornaamste redenen van de mislukking waren wel het onvoldoende marktonderzoek en het slecht geëquipeerd zijn van de vaderlandse industrie voor deze projecten. De Jong noemt het opvallend, dat Willem I in de Artikelen van Overeenkomst voor de N.H.M, geen specifieke Caribische of op Curaqao gerichte activiteit aanbeval (pp. 176, 185). Mij dunkt dat het uitdrukkelijk wijzen op de mogelijkheden inzake Latijns-Amerika in de Considerans het Caribisch gebied insluit; voor aanbevelingen speciaal gericht op dit gebied, c.q. op Curaqao, moesten bestaande plannen d.m.v. de missie-Krayenhoff e.d. eerst getoetst en uitgewerkt worden. Ook zijn verbazing over de geringe belangstelling der N.H.M, voor Curacao kan ik niet delen (p. 185). De berichten van de handelsagent te Cuba b.v. waren, althans aanvankelijk, veelbelovend, maar over Curac.ao viel niet veel goeds te melden (zie hierboven, de vrijhavenkwestie). De Maatschappij volgde andere naties op paden waar deze succes hadden (Cuba, Haïti) en wilde wat Curac,ao betreft de uitwerking van de koninklijke stimulantia afwachten.
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De ,zwarte legende' over Spaans-Amerika en de aanvankelijke grote verwachtingen, omslaand in pessimisme komen weer ter sprake in het verhaal over de Nederlandse diplomatieke missie in Centraal-Amerika, 1825-1832. De consul-generaal te Guatemala J. Haefkens, zijn secondant J. van Drunen en de vice-consul voor de Baai van Honduras J. Travers zaten tamelijk geïsoleerd van het moederland, zonder relatie met de N.H.M. Hun uitvoerige berichten verdwenen meestal zonder meer in de archieven, alleen de koning plaatste belangrijke missives nogal eens op de agenda, zo b.v. die betreffende dé mogelijkheden tot doorsnijding van de landengte. In verband met een stoutmoedig plan van Willem I — een lening aan Centraal-Amerika in ruil voor handelsconcessies en een kanaalcontract voor Nederland — vertrok kolonel Jan Verveer in 1828 voor de tweede maal naar de Midden-Republiek (in 1826 had hij het ,Pan-Amerikaanse' Congres van Panama bijgewoond). De kolonel zag mogelijkheden voor een kanaal — Nederlandse waiterbouwkundigen moesten tonen wat hun kleine land vermocht — maar de combinatie van ondernemingen zoals de koning die wenste zou volgens hem verzanden in eindeloze onderhandelingen. Haefken's plan tot vestiging van een kolonie van Nederlandse boeren wees hij als hersenschimmig van de hand. Alleen al de Monroe-dootrine en art. 21 van het verdrag van Panama (1826) maakten een dergelijke onderneming onmogelijk. Hoewel de ervaring Verveer in het gelijk stelde, bleef de koning vasthouden aan zijn oorspronkelijke plan en het eind was, dat de inmiddels tot generaal bevorderde Verveer in 1831, met een onitwerp-handelstractaait in de zak, teruggeroepen werd. De Belgische opstand en de latere adviezen van den Bosch torpedeerden de Centraalamerikaanse onderneming. De uitlatingen van Haefkens, Travers en Verveer over het karakter van de Spaanse creolen, de burgeroorlog e.d., zoals schr. deze presenteert, vormen boeiende lectuur, maar met zijn conclusies kan ik toch niet geheel meegaan. Verschillen in hun reacties wil hij, althans ten dele, afleiden uit hun onderling verschillende posities en uit hun uiteenlopende temperamenten. Is hier niet veeleer sprake van verschillen in milieu van. herkomst, in tropenervaring, in kennis van bestuurspractijk? Wij komen niet te weten wie Haefkens, Travers en van Drunen eigenlijk waren, wat zij tevoren in Nederland deden e.d. De schr. geeft op indirecte wijze het antwoord waar hij schrijft: „Haefkens' reisverhaal maakt de indruk van een dagboek van een verwachtingsvolle jongeling, die zich door het lezen van romantische verhalen had geprepareerd op zijn nieuwe toekomst." (p. 205). Het kolonisatieplam, en Haefkens' ideeën over de Nederlandse koopman die zijn huis in het tropisch oerwoud van eigenhandig omgehakte bomen moet gaan bouwen, liggen geheel in deze lijn. Daarentegen lezen we over Verveer: „ . . . hij kende West-Indië door zijn gouverneurschap van Saba en St. Maarten." (p. 158/9, noot 4). Een laatste poging tot een gericht beleid in het Caribisch Zeegebied (1827-1830) deed Willem I door de zending van Joh. van den Bosch naar de West en door de oprichting van de West-Indische Maatschappij
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(bescheidener van opzet dan de N.H.M, en speciaal op Curacao gericht). Pas in 1829 kwam een handelsverdrag met Columbia tot stand nadat Engeland en de V.S. dit al in 1825 hadden gesloten. De Columbiaanse regering was niet meer zo begerig naar internationale erkenning en bleef wrevel koesteren tegen het smokkelcentrum Curacao. In het laatste hoofdstuk plaatst de schrijver het streven naar Hollands Welvaren in een geografisch breder verband met een schets van de Noordwesteuropese betrekkingen tot het Caribisch Zeegebied, 18151830. Achtereenvolgens behandelt hij de activiteiten van de RheinischWestindische Kompagnie (1821-1843), de opbloei van Hamburg en Antwerpen en de Amsterdamse reactie op de achteruitgang van de koloniale handel. Op de vragen of de opkomst van Hamburg en Antwerpen niet een natuurlijke correctie op een periode van belemmering was en daarentegen de Amsterdamse aarzeling zich te storten in een Latijnsamerikaans avontuur maar al te begrijpelijk, gaat de J. in het Slot, „De krimpende-horizon van de Hollandse kooplieden", nader in. De Bijdragen zijn echter niet de plaats voor een bespreking van deze onderwerpen op het terrein van de Nederlandse economische geschiedenis. Samenvattingen in het Engels en Spaans en drie Appendices — bronnenoverzicht, tabellen van scheepsbewegingen en publicatie van een vijftal brieven — ronden deze studie af. Uit de samenvattingen leren we wat de schrijver eigenlijk onder Caribisch Zeegebied verstaat: „On the analogy of Means's definition of ,The Spanish Main' the term Caribbean Area here comprises the West-Indian Islands and the coastal regions of Venezuela and Central America", (p. 270). Een aparte vermelding verdient Appendix A : Overzicht van het Onderzoek. Dit is nu eens geen dorre opsomming van gebruikte archivalia en literatuur, maar een naar onderwerpen ingedeelde, critische beschouwing van de bronnen, die als afzonderlijke studie gelezen kan worden. De eerste vier paragrafen, waarin de geraadpleegde archieven worden besproken, zijn van belang voor archiefbezoekers, zo b.v. par. 2 betreffende het onderzoek in 19e-eeuwse departementale archieven. Bij de literatuurbespreking-en treffen we interessante beschouwingen aan over mercantilisme, het vraagstuk van de slavenemancipatie etc. Het tweede deel van het .Register' — een alfabetische naamindex — vormt mede een ingang tot het systematisch bronnenoverzicht. Het is jammer dat het eerste deel van dit register, een gespecificeerde inhoudsopgave met paragraaftitels, niet is gecombineerd met de inhoudsopgave voorin. Dit zou de overzichtelijkheid van de uitgebreide stof aanzienlijk hebben vergroot. Tot slot wat zout op kleine slakjes. De auteur van Beschrijving e van de Volk-Plantinge Zuriname (Leeuwarden, 1718) wordt door de Jong steeds aangeduid met de initialen, J.D.H1.' Dit moet natuurlijk J. D. Herlein zijn. De uitgevers-bewerkers van Athanasius Inga, WestIndische Spieghel (Amsterdam, 1624) zijn niet „de gebroeders Wachter" (p. 293), maar Broer Jansz. en Jac. Pzn. Wachter. De schrijver deelt mee dat hij niet heeft kunnen achterhalen of Athanasius Inga,
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„Peruaen van Cusco", dan wel de bewerkers verantwoordelijk zijn voor de anti-Spaanse tendens van het boek. Met Tiele 3 mogen wij aannemen dat Athanasius Inga een gefingeerde naam is en dat de bewerkers aan hun compilatie uit Spaanse schrijvers deze draai gegeven hebben. De uitvoerigheid van deze bespreking wordt m.i. gerechtvaardigd door de rijke inhoud van dit in een pakkende, zeer persoonlijke stijl geschreven boek. In de Nederlandse historiografie over Latijns-Amerika neemt het een bijzondere plaats in. 'M. P. H. ROESSINGH
JAMES DE v. ALLEN, The Malayan Union. Yale University, Southeast Asia Studies, 1967. Monograph Series No. 10. XIV + 181 pp., with appendices.
Every book which touches on the political development of Malaya following the Second World War takes some account of the Malayan Union crisis. The episode is always evaluated as a major turning point for it saw the organized flowering of Malay nationalism. These accounts, however, are ofiten references in passing and leave much to be desired in terms of informationi and explanation. Dr. Allen has done much to remedy this state of affairs by jwoviding an excellent reappraisal of the crisis in which he offers the reader skilful investigation, valuable information, satisfying explanation and savage criticism. This work is in many ways a tale of passion, including the author's, told from a committed viewpoint in which heroes and villains are judged before the bar of history. Yet in spite of the obvious sense of personal retrospective involvement of the author, this monograph is notable for its qualities of scholarship and intellectual attainment, Dr. Allen tells of how, for economie, strategie and even altruistic reasons, an attempt was made to impose a constitutional diktat on the political melange that was British Malaya. The scheme which sought to emasculate the Sultanates and to facilitate critizenship for non-Malays was conceived in war-time London and derived from false premises. lts attempted execution was clumsy and ham-fisted and within a period of four months had to be recast. The process of constitutional imposition was obstructed by a variety of pressures including the campaign by the old Malayan hands in Britain, the attitudes of the Sultans and the political activity of an organized Western-educated Malay elite. Dr. Allen, however, sees the key to the resolution of the crisis in the political skill of Dato Onn bin Jaafar who exploited the British concern with the disturbed security situation in the country and also successfully mobilized the Malay mass by appearing to support the Sultans. Dr. Allen also pays special attention to the Governor-General, Malcolm MacDoftald, whose relationship with 3
P. A. Tiele, Nederlandsche Bibliographie van Land- en Volkenkunde (Amsterdam, 1884) p. 118-119.
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the Labour Party cabinet was extraordinary for a colonial governor and therefore permitted the exercize of special influence. In this tale the villain of the piece is the British Colonial Office and, in justice, it is portrayed as a rigid-minded institution. However in its attempt, however clumsy, to o>vertum the Sultanates one feels that it was guided by more experience than Dr. Allen appears willing to admit. He emphasizes the role of monarchy in Malaya and its traditional roots. One wonders about the depth of these roots. Might not the Sultans be seen as elevated chieftains, indeed chieftains elevated by the British who settled their succession, albeit to colonial advanitage? One should perhaps consider that they who made them feit also that they could break and 'MacMichael' them. M. LEIFER M. A. JASPAN, Folk Literature of South Sumatra. Redjang Ka-Ga-Nga Texts. Australian National University, Canberra 1964. 92 pp.
Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz. This sequence of letters is indispensable in a society that needs diotionaries, telephone directories, etc. But looking at it with a linguist's eye, we must confess it is a most illogical, unsystematic muddie, and it was by a remarkable stroke of genius that Indian grammarians arranged their letters in a strictly phonetic order.1 When Indian scripts came to Indonesia, in some areas this arrangement was lost and replaced by mnemotechnic devices such as the Javanese hanatjaraka and the Batak hakabapanawagadja. But in two places the Indian order persisted: in South Sumatra and in South Celebes. It was a good idea to call the texts written in these scripts ka-ga-nga texts after the first three letters of the phonetic sequence. European publications usually make a distinotion between Lampung script and rèntjong script, but the word rèntjong is not generally known among the people who use this script and the difference between Lampung and rèntjong script is not as great as that between the languages for which they are used. In this first volume of a series of Folk Literature of South Sumatra 1
It seems doubtful, however, whether this was an Indian achievement. Twenty years ago, at the end of an article on the Semitic and Sanskrit alphabets, B. F a d d e g o n concluded 'that both Hindus and Seniites constructed their alphabets systematically... and we may feel some doubts concerning Bühler's hypothesis that Hindu traders should merely have received the characters from the Semites and that no further influence as to the phonetic science should have been exerted.' (Orientalia Neerlandica, Leiden 1948, p. 271).
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the texts are presented in three forms: in a uniform ka-ga-nga (i.e. rentjong) script, devised by the author for use on a typewriter; in Romanized transcription; and, for some specimens, in photographic facsimile. A comparison between these three modes of presentation leads to an obvious quesition: why take all the trouble to invent a uniform rent jong script and have a special typewriter constructed? The originals are clearer and more characteristic. When I put this question to the author he told me that there is at the moment a revival of interest in the ka-ga-nga script among the people.in South Sumatra. His informants themselves had asked him to invent a typewriter on which books in the ka-ga-nga script could be written for offset reproduotion. It seems to me that the radical characters in Jaspan's types are a success, but some of the diacritic signs are not. They are so small that they may easily be lost in the process of reproduction. Even on the excellent paper on which this book is printed this has happened a few times; reproduced on paper of poor quality such a text will scarcely be legible. Moreover, at least one of the diacritic signs seems doubtful to me. Is the distinction between sign no. 7 (two> dashes) and 8 (two döts) in the diagram on p. 8 real? Or is it due to a confusion caused by the fact that the author's informants tried to adapt the ka-ga-nga script to Redjang phonetics? According to Jaspan, sign no. 7 denotes -h, no. 8 -' (final glottal stop). But in Redjang there is no final -h; Malay words ending in -h have -' in Redjang: Mal. -kak = Redj. keua' (not -këa). I suspect that the informant who invented sign no. 8 thought that there should be a small difference between the sign denoting Mal. -h\ Redj. -' and the sign for Mal.-'/Redj.-'. However, there was no need for this invention, because the ka-ga-nga script has a traditional sign for the glottal stop, i.e. the last radical character in the table on p. 11. This should be transliterated 'a. If it is followed by sign no. 13 (tanda bunuh) it denotes -'. An example is the word tungga' (first word of the second line in text D, not tunggu), which is clearly written in the photograph on p. 24. I have dwelt at some length on the subject of the script, because it is fundamental for the editing of these texts. This first publication gives only a few specimens of the literature in the ka-ga-nga script. I hope the author will soon continue the series so that it will cover the whole field of oral and written Folk Literature of South Sumatra. p. VOORHOEVE
