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ABSTRACT
That nineteenth-century colonial-era writings have been rightly criticized for their Orientalist bias is no longer a new idea, thanks to the work done by scholars like Edward Said. But they leave us with the question of how they can and should be read by scholars today, what information can be derived from them, and how and why these works are still seen by some as being among the foundational texts of South East Asian studies. In this paper I argue that to dismiss colonial-era works (such as the writings of Raffles, Crawfurd, Roberts, Bickmore, etc.) as ‘half-truths’ or even ‘fake scholarship’ misses the point: these texts reveal more about the authors themselves and the states and institutions they served, and tell us much about Orientalist scholarship’s intimate entanglements with power and colonial-capitalism. They remind us that the earliest writings on South East Asia were produced for other ends apart from knowledge-gathering, and that such works were part and parcel of a more complicated process of empire-building. For South East Asian scholars today, a critical re-reading of these works offers an opportunity to critique Empire ‘from within’, and the opportunity for non-Western scholars to rethink and rewrite a critical history of the West as well, while prompting deeper questions about how South East Asian studies emerged in the first place.
Notes
1 See William Cobbett’s scathing critique of the secret goings-on between the company directors of the East India Company in Cobbett (Citation1813) and Noor (Citation2014)
2 On the subject of Dutch rule, Raffles wrote that ‘the leading traits which distinguish the subsequent administration of the Dutch on Java’ were ‘a haughty assumption of superiority, for the purpose of impressing the credulous simplicity of the natives’ combined with ‘a most extraordinary timidity’ (Raffles Citation1817, Vol. 2, 165).
3 In Raffles’ words: ‘It would be difficult to describe in detail the extent of the commerce in Java, at the period of the establishment of the Dutch in the Eastern seas, as it would be painful to point out how far, or to show in what manner, that commerce was interfered with, checked and changed in its character, and reduced in its importance, by the influence of a withering monopoly, the rapacity of avarice armed with power, and the short-sighted tyranny of a mercantile administration’ (Raffles Citation1817, Vol. 1, 190).
4 Another East India Company functionary – John Crawfurd, who also took part in the Java invasion – described Raffles’ work as hastily written, and not very well arranged. In his review of The History that was published in 1819 (one year before Crawfurd’s own History of the Indian Archipelago was published), Crawfurd noted that Raffles was frequently careless and that his account of the history and religion of Java were the worst chapters of the work, citing errors in chronology.
5 In August 1824 Crawfurd negotiated the treaty between the East India Company and Sultan Hussein Shah and the Temenggung, whereby the British would be given control of Singapore. In the same year the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 led to Holland giving up all claims to Singapore, thereby affording Crawfurd the opportunity to build the colony. Crawfurd encouraged further migration into Singapore, and turned it into a free port – which effectively lured more commercial vessels to the island at the expense of Dutch ports such as Batavia.
6 Crawfurd (Citation1820) maintained that civilization had arrived to maritime South East Asia from the West (p. 8) and argued that the spread and development of civilized communities across the region was not equal: The islands of Sumatra and Java, along with the Malayan Peninsula were, according to him, the ‘most civilised’ parts of South East Asia (8), while civilization had only begun to develop in places such as Celebes (Sulawesi) (pp. 8-9). The third division of the archipelago was seen as the least developed and civilized, where the inhabitants focused mainly on the production of spices. Oddly, the fourth division (of Sulu and other parts of Southern Philippines) was regarded as being ‘more civilised than the third, but less civilised than the first and second’. (p. 10) It was clear that Crawfurd’s history of the archipelago was not merely a recounting of historical data, but he had also introduced a typography that ordered and ranked the communities of South East Asia according to a criteria of development and civilization that was not indigenous, but rather based on their mode of economic production and the value of the commodities they produced.
7 Crawfurd wrote at length about the fortifications of Ava that he inspected personally. He was less interested in the beauty spots that were on offer, and more in its defences. Drawing from the report by Lieutenant Montmorency, he wrote: ‘The city of Ava is surrounded by a brick wall fifteen and a-half feet in height, and ten feet in thickness; on the inside of which there is thrown up a bank of earth forming an angle of forty-five degrees; on the top of this bank there is a terre pleine, in some places, of a good breadth, but in some others, so narrow as to scarcely admit the recoil of a gun.’ (Crawfurd Citation1829, 314–315.) The description of Ava was basically an account of its defensive capabilities, pinpointing the safest routes and approaches for an attack.
8 Crawfurd noted that ‘the petroleum itself, when first taken out of the well, is of a thin watery consistence, but thickens by keeping, and in the cold weather it coagulates. The wells are worked by the simplest contrivance imaginable.’ He also noted that this petroleum was much sought after by the Burmese themselves, who used it in their daily lives for all manner of ends: ‘Petroleum is used by the Burmans for the purpose of burning in lamps; and smearing timber, to protect it against insects, especially the white ant, which will not approach it. It is said that about two-thirds of it is used for burning; and that its consumption was universal, until its price reach that of sesamum oil, the only one that is used in the country for burning. Its consumption, therefore, is universal wherever there is water-carriage to convey it; that is, in all the country that is watered by the Irawadi, its tributary streams, and its branches. It includes Bassien, but it excludes Martaban, Tavoy and Mergui, Aracan, Tongo and all the northern and southern tributary states. The quantity exported to foreign parts is a trifle, not worth noticing. It is considered that the consumption of thirty viss per annum for each family of five and a half persons is a moderate average’ (Crawfurd Citation1829, 55).
9 Crawfurd would later add that ‘the apprehension entertained by the Burmans of our power has, in all likelihood, give rise to the prophesies amongst them, that their country is to be conquered by a race of white men’ (Crawfurd Citation1829, 514).
10 Roberts described the Cochinchinese thus: ‘The inhabitants are without exception the most filthy people in the world. As soon as the boat touches the strand, out rush from their palm-leaf huts, men and women, and naked children and dogs, all having a mangy appearance; being covered with some scorbutic disease, the itch or small-pox, and frequently with white leprous spots. The teeth, even of the children who are seven or eight years old, are of a coal black, their lips and gums are deeply stained with chewing areca, etc., their faces are nasty, their hands unwashed, and their whole persons most offensive to the sight and smell; for the most part the comb has never touched the children’s heads, and a whole village may be seen scratching at the same time from head to foot’ (Roberts Citation1837, 220–221).
11 The most loathsome aspect of Siamese society then for Roberts was the sight of the Portuguese functionaries and interpreters – like Josef Piadade, the Portuguese master of the port of Bangkok – paying homage to the Siamese king, which struck him as a form of ‘un-manly and un-Christian self-abasement’. (Roberts Citation1837, 203) That the Portuguese Catholics had assimilated themselves into Siamese society was something that Roberts lamented, for it meant that their numbers had dwindled and their missionary efforts had come to naught. (Roberts Citation1837:278.) For Roberts, the responsibility for the propagation of Christianity in the kingdom fell on the missionaries, and this they had failed to do (Roberts Citation1837, 270).
12 Bickmore claimed that the people of Ambon were unable to comprehend the need to plan for the future, and thus lived careless lives. As he put it: ‘the great obstacle to every reform among these natives is, that only a very few of them, if they have enough for one day, will earn anything for the morrow. Carpe Diem is a motto more absolutely observed here than in luxurious Rome. The desire of all Europeans to have something reserved for sickness or old age is a feeling which these people appear to never experience’ (Bickmore Citation1868, 197).
13 The fact that he was personally grateful to his Dutch hosts did not imply that Bickmore’s love for his country was compromised. At some points he did speak of America’s greatness when in the company of the natives; if for no other reason than to make it clear to them that the United States was a rising power and was ‘the largest and most powerful of all nations’. As he wrote: ‘Each evening that I was in this village the rajah insisted on my passing hour after hour on is veranda, describing to him the foreign countries he could name. Like many other natives who would like to be free from all European rule, it afforded him great comfort to hear that Tana Ollanda (Holland) was much smaller than France or England. When I came to tell him that Tana America was a still greater country, he listened politely, but a half-incredulous smile revealed his belief that I only spoke of it in such an enthusiastic manner because I was an American’ (Bickmore Citation1868, 174).
14 Michiko Kakutani (Citation1997) had argued that a rather worrying trend had developed among some philosophers and critical theorists who had tried to justify and defend the racist attitudes of writers like T. S. Eliot, Heidegger and Ezra Pound, on the grounds that whatever racist meanings found in their works were a matter of subjective interpretation.
15 As Wittgenstein argued: ‘Proposition 43. For a large class of cases – though not for all – in which we employ the word ‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in a language.’
16 See Wittgenstein: ‘Proposition 199. […] To understand a sentence means to understand a language. To understand a language means to be master of a technique.’ (Emphasis Wittgenstein’s.) (re. endnote 2.)
17 See Wittgenstein: ‘Proposition 5. The teaching of language is not explanation, but training.’; ‘Proposition 19. To imagine a language means imagining a form of life.’