Discovering ‘Religion’: Nineteenth Century Colonial Attitudes Towards Religious Identity and Difference in Southeast Asia

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to show how the example of colonial writings in Southeast Asia display, but also complicate, some already identified patterns in how religion, and the world religions paradigm (WRP), alongside such discursive terms as ‘superstition’, were applied to the religious practices and worldviews of indigenous Southeast Asians through the nineteenth century. Such figures as Sir Stamford Raffles and John Crawfurd, amongst others, from both the British and American colonial enterprise, are examined in terms of how both Islam and other forms of religiosity are framed in their writings. The paper focuses upon merchants, adventurers, and officials rather than scholars in terms of how they framed these traditions in their writings, and developed influential ways of representing this region and its peoples, which was also created in the process of so-called ‘discovery’. The imbrication of race, religion, and civilisation is critically discussed, alongside how mercantile pragmatics also played into the formation of categories.

KEYWORDS:

• Southeast Asia
• religion
• superstition
• orientalism
• decolonisation
• race

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We need not, here, rehearse the debates over how the Latin term ‘religio’, as piety, denoting a singular reality of medieval Christendom, became a plural with the Reformation (Catholic and Protestant religio), and then a term to name a presumed universal human category of culture as the world’s many ‘religions’, but see W.C. Smith (1978 [1963]) and J.Z. Smith (1998), and the recent critical overview in Hedges (2021a: 19–43).

2 Given the importance of the Southeast Asian sea routes, many missionaries active in China passed through, were stationed here at times, or had interactions with Southeast Asia, especially given the local Chinese populations. James Legge, the great nineteenth century Sinologist and missionary was stationed, as a school master, in Malacca for three years (Legge 1905), while the man seen as the first Protestant missionary to China, Robert Morrison, helped set up the Malacca mission (Hancock 2008; Bowman 2016). Most critical work on mission thought focuses either on China, i.e. Norman Giradot’s work on Legge (Giradot 1999, 2001, 2002), or on India, see, e.g. Hedges (2001). On the diasporic connections of Southeast Asian missions, see Harvey (2011).

3 For example, in the work of Purchas (1613), see also Hedges (2021a: 213–14, 287–88).

4 It is wrong, though, to draw simplified correlations that always and everywhere race and religion were treated this way, or that religion was always denied as a marker for political reasons, see Hedges (2021a: 183–84, 505n.51).

5 This includes more widely in postcolonial studies (see Huat 2008, and more widely the special issue this forms a part of which discusses various contexts, available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cpcs20/11/3).

6 Crawfurd would also later take part in the writing of a three volume work on China (Crawfurd et al. 1843).

7 Vis-à-vis, the category of religion, see Hedges (2012).

8 The classic work remains Smith (1978 [1963]); see also Masuzawa (2005).

9 Notably, terms such as ‘Heathen’, ‘Pagan’, and ‘idolatry’ still hold currency today in some discursive narratives.

10 These local forms of Southeast Asian religiosity cause problems for scholars stuck within the WRP as deemed problematically ‘syncretic’, see Hedges (2021a: 72–9, 84–8), and Hedges (2024, forthcoming).

11 Itself a problematic classifier, see Hedges (2021a: 46).

12 Islamophobic tropes existed long before colonialism but were exacerbated in a global contestation for power (at both religious and political levels, see Hedges 2021b), and have their own afterlife in Southeast Asia, see Hedges (2022).

13 Echoing the ideas of Raffles who wrote decades before her, Isabella Bird would also regard Islam as a religion, but one that was opposed to progress, for: ‘Islamism is always antagonistic to national progress. It seems to petrify or congeal national life, placing each individual in the position of a member of a pure theocracy’ (Bird 1883: 139, 140, 338–39).

14 Exceptionally solid accounts were also appearing in English at this time, with Rowland Williams’(1856) work being recognised by late twentieth century scholars as exceptional for its time, see Hedges (2001: 64–5, especially 65n.78). Though, it should be noted, this work focused on South rather than Southeast Asia, with the latter often neglected.

15 For the connections of race and religion, see Hedges (2021a: 174–77), and Hedges (2021b: 84–94, 96–8, 134–5).

16 This propensity to compare some Southeast Asian communities to native Americans was not limited to the so-called ‘primitive races’. Other authors, such as the British anthropologist Walter William Skeat, made similar comparisons, as in his work Malay Magic (1900). Writing about child-rearing practices among the Malays Skeat he explicitly draws parallels with Native Americans: ‘Another most curious custom which recalls a parallel custom among North American Indians, is occasionally resorted to for the purpose of altering the shape of the child’s head. When it is considered too long (tĕrlampau panjang), a small tightly-fitting “yam leaf cap” (songko’ daun k’ladi), consisting of seven thicknesses of calladium (yam) leaves is used to compress it. This operation is supposed to shorten the child’s skull, and the person who fits it on to the child’s head uses the words—“Muhammad, short be your head” in the case of a boy, and “Fatimah, short be your head” in the case of a girl.’ (Skeat 1900: 337, emphasis added.)

17 While some conflate missionary and colonial agendas, distinct tensions sometimes existed, see Stanley (1990). Certainly, Brookes condemned both Muslim and Christian missionaries whose proselytising disturbed the peace, see Tan (2012: 15, 17). Brookes’ concerns have some contemporary resonances, see Mohamed Taib and Hedges (2019), while stereotypes from the colonial period persist, see Hedges (2022).

18 While distinguishing missionary and scholarly frames, alongside those of scholar-officials, we must note that these overlapped. For instance, Legge became the first professor of Chinese studies in Oxford University, and another missionary, from India, John Nicol Farquhar became the UK’s first professor of comparative religion at Manchester University. But while, in missionary and scholarly thought, Hinduism and Buddhism (alongside Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) typically became framed as ‘world religions’, the same was not true of the indigenous traditions dismissed by these colonial officials (see Masuzawa 2005; Hedges 2001: 248–50; Hedges 2021a: 182–5). We noted above Legge’s dismissal of popular devotion, and he was influential in framing Daoism as being ‘properly’ concerned with certain ancient texts as opposed to actual folk practice, see Giradot (1999). This fitted wider missionary discourse on Chinese religion, see Hedges (2001: 250–3).

19 As North America was invoked by these writers, we may aptly note Tink Tinker’s (2020) resistance to his Native American traditions being termed a religion. Broadly, on Southeast Asia, North America, and Africa, see also Hedges (2021a: 182–85).