Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society最新文献

{"title":"A Borneo Healing Romance: Ritual Storytelling and the Sugi Sakit, A Saribas Iban Rite of Healing by Clifford Sather (review)","authors":"Kamal Solhaimi Fadzil","doi":"10.1353/ras.2021.0046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2021.0046","url":null,"abstract":"a nationalist leader who dared to challenge the West. He made Indonesians proud (p. 441). In terms of historical figure research, the cases provided in this book are thought-provoking. Jose Rizal, a significant historical figure in the history of the Philippines, is an awkward person in the scholarship of Malaysian and Indonesian studies. On the one hand, Filipino scholars are clear that one dimension of his nationalist identity is ‘Malay’. On the other hand, many studies on Malayness in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore, intentionally or unintentionally ignore the case of the Philippines. Rommel A. Curaming’s study of Rizal enriches our understanding of Malayness: an image of a non-Muslim, Christian Malay leader. Ramon Guillermo elaborated Tan Malaka’s account of Andreas Bonifacio, another Filipino leader, recognised as a proletarian leader and ‘pure Indonesian’ (p. 424). From Thum Ping Tjin’s in-depth study of Lim Chin Siong, we have a good reference for academic researchers to study leftist political leaders. Thum’s penetration through several sources of historical material and his articulation of Lim's political ideas sheds light in dealing with the ideological development of the left-wing political parties and leaders in Singapore and Malaya. Teo Lee Ken discussed Usman Awang’s poems in the context of Malaysian politics. While the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) leadership advocated Malay political primacy and Malay economic privilege as a notion of justice, Usman Awang’s poetry has repeatedly highlighted that justice should instead be based on political equality (p. 236). Southeast Asia has attracted much attention as a region worthy of study in recent years. The geographical scope of Nusantara mentioned in this book is Peninsular Malaya, Borneo, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines. Brunei is absent while there is only one article related to Sarawak. What the book does is to re-examine the linkages of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines in the context of the historical consciousness of the 1950s and 1960s, bringing to light aspects which have been neglected in history left-wing history, anti-colonialist struggles and ethnic tensions in the new nation-states.","PeriodicalId":39524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"94 1","pages":"236 - 238"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42438292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"William Scott in Penang: Missing Material, Maritime Matters, and More","authors":"F. Smith","doi":"10.1353/ras.2021.0032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2021.0032","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:William Scott, a relative of James Scott, lived in Penang between 1795 and 1798 and between 1800 and 1805. His handwritten diaries have been transcribed by Marcus Langdon and published in JMBRAS (2019). Two pages missing from the copy used by Langdon are transcribed here from another copy. They cover Scott's first departure in 1798 and the eventful voyage to Cape Town in a frigate of the Royal Navy commanded by Samuel Hood Linzee. William Scott's unpublished papers include detailed logs that describe this and other voyages. Events on the voyage to Cape Town are described here and Linzee's life before his premature death after a highly successful naval career is summarised. Also summarised are the maritime career of Robert Scott, William's brother and a commander of private trading vessels, and the later death by piracy of another ship's commander, Hugh Drysdale, with whom William travelled in a voyage from Calcutta to Penang. William's later life in Scotland is also summarised.","PeriodicalId":39524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"94 1","pages":"185 - 197"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43862483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Federated Malay States Museum, Kuala Lumpur, 21 September 1945","authors":"Office of Strategic Services, India Burma Theater","doi":"10.1353/ras.2021.0048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2021.0048","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"94 1","pages":"197 - 200"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48680993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cross-Cultural Exchange and the Colonial Imaginary. Global Encounters via Southeast Asia ed. by H. Hazel Hahn (review)","authors":"Nicolas Weber","doi":"10.1353/ras.2021.0036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2021.0036","url":null,"abstract":"within the same chapter, is not always negotiated smoothly; readers would have been assisted by section headings that were more clearly connected to the chapter title and that moved systematically to a final paragraph(s) summarising the main points of the chapter and making appropriate connections to that which follows. The huge cast of characters, many re-entering the story at different times and in different places, requires readers to be extremely alert, and will leave them grateful for the index and its sub-entries. It is similarly difficult to follow marriage, kinship and Chinese assistant-Western mentor relationships; a chart depicting these connections visually would have been helpful. We are given a Chinese glossary and a description of archival sources, but a list of the abbreviations applied to missionary societies and churches would also have been useful. In addition, there are minor production issues. The book is amply illustrated, but the reproduction of contemporary postcards and maps is not stellar and the small print is almost impossible to read. Considerations of price certainly justify the paperback edition, but one could wish that the pages would lie flat on the table without being forced. Ultimately, any book must be evaluated on the degree to which it has achieved its goal, which in this case was to track the history of the Brethren movement and to locate it in a global context. DeBernardi’s painstaking research in unearthing this complex story ensures that Christian Circulations will be an indispensable reference source for anyone studying mission history in Asian societies, especially Singapore and Malaysia. Stimulating other researchers to follow paths now opened up, it will remain an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of the Christian endeavour in Asia, and particularly to our understanding of the processes by which evangelistic Christianity has gained such a following.","PeriodicalId":39524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"94 1","pages":"210 - 212"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45658630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Uses of Magic: Local Knowledge and the 'Unscientific Native' in Colonial Malaya","authors":"F. Noor","doi":"10.1353/ras.2021.0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2021.0028","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Colonial violence cannot simply be studied by looking at the instances of wars and battles fought in the age of Empire. Equally important is the working of epistemic violence and the violence that accompanies the process of learning about, framing and categorizing the colonized Other. This paper looks at one aspect of colonial Othering in particular, which is the manner in which colonial functionaries and scholars turned their attention to the local knowledge/s of those who came under colonial rule, and how in the course of collecting, codifying and categorizing these knowledges native texts, histories and narratives were systematically devalued—as 'mythologies', 'legends', or fairy-tales—and in due course relegated to a secondary register as 'non-knowledge' that could not be instrumentalised to serve the needs of racialized colonial-capitalism. Focusing in particular on the works of Walter William Skeat with those of his co-authors Charles Otto Blagden and A. Hillman—officials who were embedded in the machinery of British rule in Malaya—this paper will look at how their study of Malay customs and beliefs was based on Western/Eurocentric understandings of (rational, instrumental) knowledge that in turn downgraded other non-Western epistemologies and belief-systems; and by doing so contributed to the notion of the lazy/backward/unscientific native Other.","PeriodicalId":39524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"94 1","pages":"119 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44050139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Bugis Chronicle of Bone transed. by Campbell Macknight, Mukhlis Paeni, and Mukhlis Hadrawi (review)","authors":"Salina Hj Zainol","doi":"10.1353/ras.2021.0041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2021.0041","url":null,"abstract":"that fulfils the author’s promise for a renewed framework for postcolonial cinema in any definitive way. The book’s critique of postcolonial criticism, while well taken, does appear somewhat unforgiving toward a field that has since evolved beyond the polarizing politics of the likes of Solanas and Gettino’s ‘Third Cinema’ (which the author cites as a point of departure). Recent thinking in the larger field of empire/imperial studies has entwined the politics of late capitalism, globalization, and neoliberalism in ways that the author, building on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire, seems not to give sufficient credit. Surely it is of little debate that the pressures of our global neoliberal present are extensions of, rather than ruptures from, colonial pasts. Relatedly, certain important premises of the book leave room for doubt; for example, the statement that the sovereignties of Malaysia and Singapore ‘did not arise from gunshots or out of revolutions’ (p. 26) seems to be an odd claim given the fact of the Malayan Emergency and other leftist energies that shaped the political identities of the region. While the in-depth and relatively comprehensive coverage of the cinemas of Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia is a definite strength of the chapters, one wonders if there was a missed opportunity to parse out a ‘poetics’ of cinema (as the author puts it) particular to the region’s archipelagic and maritime geo-politics, which differs significantly from that of Mainland Southeast Asia (and is only briefly touched upon in Chapter 1 in the analysis of Charles Lim’s work). As a deeply diverse region, Southeast Asia is deserving of not only new ways of theorizing post coloniality (as Sim rightly points out), but also of heterogenous possibilities within these approaches. Perhaps doing so may have enabled the author to outline a more clearly articulated framework for what they describe as ‘a playbook for theorizing Southeast Asian cinema’. (p. 213) Indeed, much of the book’s introduction and conclusion is spent in defence of the use of critical theory (and other forms of authorial self-reflection) where the argument may have been better served by offering readers a roadmap through the book’s concepts via critical theory instead. Nevertheless, these chinks in the book’s overall framing, which appear mostly in the Introduction, should not detract from the appeal of its individual chapters and the book’s overall contribution to the field of Southeast Asian Cinema—of which there is no doubt. This book would appeal to specialists in Southeast Asian cinema and visual culture, as well as to scholars of postcolonial cinema. Individual chapters would also work well when assigned as reading material for courses on Southeast Asian Cinema.","PeriodicalId":39524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"94 1","pages":"225 - 226"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43207491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Raffles Renounced: Towards a Merdeka History ed. by Alfian Sa'at, Faris Joraimi, and Sai Siew Min, and: Thomas Stamford Raffles: Schemer or Reformer? by Syed Hussein Alatas (review)","authors":"Nurhidayahti Mohammad Miharja","doi":"10.1353/ras.2021.0042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2021.0042","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"94 1","pages":"227 - 230"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45374435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Becoming Malay: The Case of the Batak Orphans in 1930s Perak","authors":"L. Lees","doi":"10.1353/ras.2021.0030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2021.0030","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Huta Uruk Petros emigrated from Sumatra to Perak in the Federated Malay States in 1914. He and his growing family built a new life there until his and his wife's deaths triggered a battle over custody of his children. This essay analyses the children's decisions to 'become Malay' and to convert from Christianity to Islam as they made decisions about their identity and where they belonged. Their story raises questions about the meaning of religion, gender, age, kinship, law, colonial power, and local custom in a small town in British Malaya around 1930. Decisions hinged upon welfare issues and the age of adulthood in British and Muslim law.","PeriodicalId":39524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"94 1","pages":"141 - 167"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46995590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fluid Jurisdictions: Colonial law and Arabs in Southeast Asia by Nurfadzilah Yahaya (review)","authors":"Sai Siew-Min","doi":"10.1353/ras.2021.0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2021.0038","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"94 1","pages":"217 - 219"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48549419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Empires of Vice: The Rise of Opium Prohibition across Asia by Diana S. Kim (review)","authors":"Simon Soon","doi":"10.1353/ras.2021.0034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2021.0034","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39524,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society","volume":"94 1","pages":"203 - 206"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48690249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}