Review: [untitled]

Author(s): William R. Roff

Source: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Feb., 1981), pp. 425-426
Published by: Association for Asian Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2054926 .
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BOOK REVIEWS - SOUTHEAST ASIA 425

Islam di Malaysia [Islam in Malaysiki. Edited by KHoo KAY KIM. Kuala

Lumpur:PersatuanSejarahMalaysia, 1979. 238 pp. Plates, Notes. M$10.00.
Lembaran Akhbar Melayu [Essays on Malay Newspapers]. Edited by KHOO
KAY KIM. Kuala Lumpur:PersatuanSejarahMalaysia, 1980. 225 pp. Plates,
Notes, M$7.50.
Malaysia: Sejarah dan Proses Pembangunan [Malaysia: History and the Devel-
opment Process]. Edited by KHoo KAY KIM. Kuala Lumpur: Persatuan
SejarahMalaysia, 1979. 369 pp. Plates, Notes. M$12.00.
These three volumes mark an important extension of the publication policies of
the MalaysianHistorican Society (PersatuanSejarahMalaysia). Founded in 1953, and
with the active encouragement since independence of the country's three successive
prime ministers, the society has for many years had two national journals (one in
English and one in Malay) and several flourishing state branches. Always closely
linked to the universities, it has also been singularly successful in engaging the
interests and energies of other groups.
These books represent the society's first venture into monographic publication.
Each is a collection of essays on a single theme, the first two being drawn for the most
part from the vast repository of unpublished "academic exercises"written by genera-
tions of graduating B.A. (and occasionally M.A.) students. The importance of this
material is hard to overstate, because it probably represents a larger body of original
researchon Malaysian history and society (especially at the local level), employing
oral and written sources, than the whole corpus of work on this subject published
worldwide since 1945. This does not necessarily say anything about its scholarly
quality, since undergraduatestudents are, by definition, "learning the ropes." There
is, however, much to choose from, and Dr. Khoo Kay Kim-Professor of History at
the University of Malaya, editor of these volumes, and the principal force behind
their appearance-has done an excellent job in preparing them for publication.
The first, Islamdi Malaysia, contains eighteen essays, the majority recounting the
histories of leading figures, Muslim associations and schools, state religious councils,
and local reformist movements, widely scattered throughout the peninsula (with a
small amount of material on Sabah and Sarawak).The final paper is a bibliography of
257 items compiled originally for an exhibition on the advent and spread of Islam in
Malaysia, but ranging much more widely than this might suggest and drawing
especially on the unpublished academic exercises already referredto.
LembaranAkhbar Melayu is a similar volume containing ten essays on Malay
newspapers of historical note and importance, ranging from the Islamic reformist
Al-Imaimof 1906-1909 to the political commentaryKritikof 1956-1957. Newspapers
and journalism generally have been at the heart of modern nationalism and social
change in Malaysia. In the absence of any detailed historical assessment of their role,
essays such as these make an important contribution.
The final volume, Malaysia: Sejarahdan ProsesPembangunan,is the product of a
conference on Malaysian History held at the National University in 1978, under the
auspices of the Malaysian Historical Society. The twenty-two papers included, all
save one by Malaysian historians, cover a wide range of subjects: the role of archeolog-
ical researchin national development, religious movements, administrative and local
studies, and the growth of history teaching in Malaysianschools. The editor, again, is
Khoo Kay Kim.
426 JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES

On the evidence of these publications, it is once more clear that Malaysia is

outstanding among "developing" countries for the amount of attention it is prepared
to devote to examination of the past in understanding the present, and well-served by
its scholars and students.
WILLIAM R. ROFF
ColumbiaUniversity

West Irian and Jakarta Imperialism. By KEES LAGERBERG. New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1980. ix, 171 pp. Maps, Plates, Appendixes, Bibliography,
Index. $18.95.
After more than a decade as a government official during the 1950s and early
1960s, in what was then the Netherlands New Guinea, Kees Lagerbergnow teaches
cultural anthropology at the Catholic University of Tilburg in the Netherlands. His
1962 doctoral dissertation at the University of Utrecht on West New Guinea's
political and economic development during the final twelve years or so of Dutch
control remains one of the most usefully comprehensive studies of its subject and is
particularly valuable for its description of the evolution of early Papuan political
parties and interest groups before the Indonesian takeover. In writing the present
volume, which reflects visits to the region in the late 1970s, Lagerberg appears to
regard himself as something of a pioneer: "No book, no article, no broadcast was
devoted in the 1970s to the fate of West Irian and its inhabitants, the Papuans," he
rathersweepingly claims (p. vii), disregarding not only certain books written during
the 1970s that are cited in his own bibliography but a number of scholarly articles as
well.
Although this volume contains little that will be new to the specialist-and
despite the tendentious referenceto "Jakartaimperialism" in its title, which signals a
rather consistent anti-Indonesian perspective throughout its pages-it still deserves
to be widely read. Not only does it offer a comprehensive description of this unique
territoryand of the economic and political modernization of Papuan society undertak-
en before the Dutch relinquished control in 1962, it also sketches the many problems
of the subsequentIndonesianadministration, succinctly if not alwaysfairly. Lagerberg's
account highlights the alleged Indonesian inability to understand Papuan culture
and, more recently, Papua's nationalistic self awareness and Indonesia's futile at-
tempts to "coverup" Papuan insurgency. The difficulties in assimilating the Papuans
into Indonesian life are also stressed: Lagerbergdescribes how, in Jayapura in 1976,
he observed a school parade celebrating United Nations' Day. Among the "hundreds
of children"participating, only six were Papuans, although "in the beautiful masquer-
ade the teachershad even dressed up three of the darker, more frizzy-hairedIndonesian
children as cannibals to play Papuan children" (p. 115).
Perhapsthe most controversialfeature of Lagerberg'sbook, however, and one that
has been eagerly seized on by anti-Indonesian Papuan nationalist exiles in the Nether-
lands and elsewhere, is his analysis of data concerning the territory's population. In
1976, he states, the official Indonesian estimate of West New Guinea's population
was 923,000. In 1961, however, the Dutch had provided the United Nations with a
total population figure of 717,055. If, as Lagerberg most problematically asserts, it
"can be safely assumed" that population increasedby approximately 2 percent annual-