In Republicanism, Communism, Islam, John T. Sidel provides an alternate vantage point for understanding the variegated forms and trajectories of revolution across the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam, a perspective that is de-nationalized, internationalized, and transnationalized. Sidel positions this new vantage point against the conventional framing of revolutions in modern Southeast Asian history in terms of a nationalist template, on the one hand, and distinctive local cultures and forms of consciousness, on the other. Sidel's comparative analysis shows how—in very different, decisive, and often surprising ways—the Philippine, Indonesian, and Vietnamese revolutions were informed, enabled, and impelled by diverse cosmopolitan connections and international conjunctures. Sidel addresses the role of Freemasonry in the making of the Philippine revolution, the importance of Communism and Islam in Indonesia's Revolusi, and the influence that shifting political currents in China and anticolonial movements in Africa had on Vietnamese revolutionaries. Through this assessment, Republicanism, Communism, and Islam tracks how these forces, rather than nationalism per se, shaped the forms of these revolutions, the ways in which they unfolded, and the legacies which they left in their wakes.

The Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer made a distinction between a “downstream” literary reality and an “upstream” historical reality. Pramoedya suggested that literature has an effect on the upstream flow of history and that it can in fact change history. In Situated Testimonies Laurie Sears illuminates this process by considering a selection of Dutch Indies and Indonesian literary works that span the twentieth century and beyond and by showing how authors like Louis Couperus and Maria Dermoût help retell and remodel history. Sears sees certain literary works as “situated testimonies,” bringing ineffable experiences of trauma into narrative form and preserving something of the dread and enchantment that animated the past. These literary works offer a method of reading the emotional traces that historians may fail to witness or record—traces that elude archival constructions where political factors or colonial conditions have influenced processes of what is preserved and how it is shaped. Sears’ use of Donna Haraway’s notion of “situatedness” reiterates the idea that all of us speak from somewhere. Testimony, especially eyewitness testimony, is a gold standard in historical methodology, and the authors of literary works are eyewitnesses of their time. But the works of authors like Tirto Adhi Soerjo and Soewarsih Djojopoespito are first of all written as literature, and literary or stylistic devices cannot be ignored. Sears finds substantial evidence of the movement of psychoanalytic theories between Europe and the Indies/Indonesia throughout the twentieth century. She concludes that far from being only a Jewish or European discourse, psychoanalysis is a transnational discourse of desire that has influenced Indies and Indonesian writers for more than a century. Psychoanalytic ideas, and the suggestion by French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche and Indonesian author Ayu Utami that memories, like literature, can move us back and forth in time, have inspired Sears’ thinking about historical archives, literature, and trauma. Soekarno’s words haunt this book as he haunts Indonesia’s past. Situated Testimonies rewrites portions of the literary and social history of Indonesia over a sweep of many decades. Historians, scholars of literary theory, and Indonesianists will all be interested in the book’s insights on how colonial and postcolonial novels of the Indies and Indonesia illuminate nationalist narratives and imperial histories.

A detailed guide to getting poetry into print.

A unique study of the growth and development of the Indonesian press and its influence on the birth of a modern Indonesian socioeconomic and political consciousness. It details the evolution of the vernacular press and its resulting conflicts with colonial forces. It also examines the development of modern Indonesian society.

The ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, numbering more than six millions, constitute the largest single group of ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. They are economically strong, culturally diversified, and socially active. This book presents the profiles of leading figures in the Indonesian Chinese community in the twentieth century in the economic, political, religious, cultural, academic, and social fields. This is the first systematic and comprehensive book of its kind. It is useful for scholars interested in research on Indonesia or Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia generally. First published in 1971, it was revised and developed into the present format in 1978 and has since been revised several times. This is the third and most up-to-date version.