Rethinking Raffles

Rethinking Raffles PDF Author: Syed Muhd. Khairudin Aljunied
Publisher: Cavendish Square Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Based on a study of Sir Stamford Raffles' letters and related documents, the book argues that Raffles had a variety of opinions about the religions observed amongst the Malays that he encountered during his tour of duty in the Malay Archipelago. These religions included Islam, Hinduism-Buddhism, Paganism and Christianity. The common idea running through these opinions that the author had identified was Raffles' unwillingness to accept that the Malays should continue to maintain the religious beliefs which he observed amongst them. The author further argues that Raffles had an ambivalent stance with regard to these religions, an attitude that would attest to the "shades of alterity" lingering in his mind and perhaps in the minds of most Europeans at that time. Another objective of this book is to uncover some of Raffles' ideas on what constitutes the term 'religion'. The author asserts that Raffles' unequal and inconsistent accounts of the religions were an outcome of his repeated emphasis on several features that he considered were essential to any religion. TARGET AUDIENCE: Policy makers, researchers, tertiary students, and others who are interested in the study of Stamford Raffles and British colonial history.

Rethinking Raffles

Rethinking Raffles PDF Author: Syed Muhd. Khairudin Aljunied
Publisher: Cavendish Square Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Based on a study of Sir Stamford Raffles' letters and related documents, the book argues that Raffles had a variety of opinions about the religions observed amongst the Malays that he encountered during his tour of duty in the Malay Archipelago. These religions included Islam, Hinduism-Buddhism, Paganism and Christianity. The common idea running through these opinions that the author had identified was Raffles' unwillingness to accept that the Malays should continue to maintain the religious beliefs which he observed amongst them. The author further argues that Raffles had an ambivalent stance with regard to these religions, an attitude that would attest to the "shades of alterity" lingering in his mind and perhaps in the minds of most Europeans at that time. Another objective of this book is to uncover some of Raffles' ideas on what constitutes the term 'religion'. The author asserts that Raffles' unequal and inconsistent accounts of the religions were an outcome of his repeated emphasis on several features that he considered were essential to any religion. TARGET AUDIENCE: Policy makers, researchers, tertiary students, and others who are interested in the study of Stamford Raffles and British colonial history.

Muslims and Matriarchs

Muslims and Matriarchs PDF Author: Jeffrey Hadler
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 080146160X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Muslims and Matriarchs is a history of an unusual, probably heretical, and ultimately resilient cultural system. The Minangkabau culture of West Sumatra, Indonesia, is well known as the world's largest matrilineal culture; Minangkabau people are also Muslim and famous for their piety. In this book, Jeffrey Hadler examines the changing ideas of home and family in Minangkabau from the late eighteenth century to the 1930s. Minangkabau has experienced a sustained and sometimes violent debate between Muslim reformists and preservers of indigenous culture. During a protracted and bloody civil war of the early nineteenth century, neo-Wahhabi reformists sought to replace the matriarchate with a society modeled on that of the Prophet Muhammad. In capitulating, the reformists formulated an uneasy truce that sought to find a balance between Islamic law and local custom. With the incorporation of highland West Sumatra into the Dutch empire in the aftermath of this war, the colonial state entered an ongoing conversation. These existing tensions between colonial ideas of progress, Islamic reformism, and local custom ultimately strengthened the matriarchate. The ferment generated by the trinity of oppositions created social conditions that account for the disproportionately large number of Minangkabau leaders in Indonesian politics across the twentieth century. The endurance of the matriarchate is testimony to the fortitude of local tradition, the unexpected flexibility of reformist Islam, and the ultimate weakness of colonialism. Muslims and Matriarchs is particularly timely in that it describes a society that experienced a neo-Wahhabi jihad and an extended period of Western occupation but remained intellectually and theologically flexible and diverse.

1819 & Before

1819 & Before PDF Author: Kwa Chong Guan
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
ISBN: 9814951420
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
The essays published here began as a series of lectures commemorating the bicentennial of Thomas Stamford Raffles’s establishment of a British Station in 1819. The essays draw on thirty-five years of archaeological investigations on and around Fort Canning, new readings of the Malay Annals, early Chinese records reporting Singapore, and the Portuguese and Dutch records to probe and challenge our understanding of Singapore’s history before Raffles. Altogether, these essays suggest that Singapore had a pre-1819 past that was deeply connected to the millennium-long maritime history of the Straits of Melaka and its links to the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Race and British Colonialism in Southeast Asia, 1770-1870

Race and British Colonialism in Southeast Asia, 1770-1870 PDF Author: Gareth Knapman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315452162
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This book explores colonial debates on race, liberalism, colonial expansion and equality in South-East Asia, focusing on the writings of John Crawfurd, one of the British Empire’s leading racial theorists and colonial administrators in Asia.

Colonialism, Violence and Muslims in Southeast Asia

Colonialism, Violence and Muslims in Southeast Asia PDF Author: Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113401158X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This book deals with the genesis, outbreak and far-reaching effects of a legal controversy and the resulting outbreak of mass violence, which determined the course of British colonial rule after post World War Two in Singapore and Malaya. Based on extensive archival sources, it examines the custody hearing of Maria Hertogh, a case which exposed tensions between Malay and Singaporean Muslims and British colonial society. Investigating the wide-ranging effects and crises faced in the aftermath of the riots, the analysis focuses in particular on the restoration of peace and rebuilding of society. The author provides a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of British management of riots and mass violence in Southeast Asia. By exploring the responses by non-British communities in Singapore, Malaya and the wider Muslim world to the Maria Hertogh controversy, he shows that British strategies and policies can be better understood through the themes of resistance and collaboration. Furthermore, the book argues that British enactment of laws pertaining to the management of religions in the post-war period had dispossessed religious minorities of their perceived religious rights. As a result, outbreaks of mass violence and continual grievances ensued in the final years of British colonial rule in Southeast Asia - and these tensions still pertain in the present. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of law and society, history, Imperial History and Asian Studies, and to anyone studying minorities, and violence and recovery.

Islam in Malaysia

Islam in Malaysia PDF Author: Syed Muhd. Khairudin Aljunied
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190925191
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
This book surveys the growth and development of Islam in Malaysia from the eleventh to the twenty-first century, investigating how Islam has shaped the social lives, languages, cultures and politics of both Muslims and non-Muslims in one of the most populous Muslim regions in the world. Khairudin Aljunied shows how Muslims in Malaysia built upon the legacy of their pre-Islamic past while benefiting from Islamic ideas, values, and networks to found flourishing states and societies that have played an influential role in a globalizing world. He examines the movement of ideas, peoples, goods, technologies, arts, and cultures across into and out of Malaysia over the centuries. Interactions between Muslims and the local Malay population began as early as the eighth century, sustained by trade and the agency of Sufi as well as Arab, Indian, Persian, and Chinese scholars and missionaries. Aljunied looks at how Malay states and societies survived under colonial regimes that heightened racial and religious divisions, and how Muslims responded through violence as well as reformist movements. Although there have been tensions and skirmishes between Muslims and non-Muslims in Malaysia, they have learned in the main to co-exist harmoniously, creating a society comprising of a variety of distinct populations. This is the first book to provide a seamless account of the millennium-old venture of Islam in Malaysia.

Liberalism and the British Empire in Southeast Asia

Liberalism and the British Empire in Southeast Asia PDF Author: Gareth Knapman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351622765
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
This collection of essays collects the leading scholars on British colonial thought in Southeast Asia to consider the question: what was the relationship between liberalism and the British Empire in Southeast Asia? The empire builders in Southeast Asia: Lord Minto, William Farquhar, John Leyden, Thomas Stamford Raffles, and John Crawfurd - to name a few - were fervent believers in a liberal free trade order in Southeast Asia. Many recent studies of British imperialism, and European imperialism more generally, have addressed how the anti-imperialist tradition of Eighteenth century liberalism was increasingly intertwined with the discourses of empire, freedom, race and economics in the nineteenth century. This collection extends those studies to look at the impact of liberalism on. British colonialism in Southeast Asia and early nineteenth century Southeast Asia we see some of the first attempts at developing multicultural democracies within the colonies, experiments in free trade and attempts to use free trade to prevent war and colonisation.

The Straits Philosophical Society & Colonial Elites in Malaya

The Straits Philosophical Society & Colonial Elites in Malaya PDF Author: Lim Teck Ghee
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
ISBN: 9815011340
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
Founded in Singapore in 1893, the Straits Philosophical Society was a society for the “critical discussion of questions in Philosophy, History, Theology, Literature, Science and Art”. Its membership was restricted to graduates of British and European universities, fellows of British or European learned societies and those with “distinguished merit in the opinion of the Society in any branch of knowledge”. Its closed-door meetings were an important gathering place for the educated elite of the colony, comprising colonial civil servants, soldiers, missionaries, businessmen, as well as prominent Straits Chinese members. Notable members included the botanist Henry Ridley, the missionary W.G. Shellabear and Straits Chinese reformers like Lim Boon Keng and Tan Teck Soon. Throughout its years of operation, the Society left behind a collection of papers presented by its members, the vast majority of which conformed to the Society’s founding rule that its geographical position should influence its work. This produced a large corpus of literature on colonial Malaya which provides important insights into the logic and dynamics of colonial thought in the period before the First World War. In reproducing a collection of these papers this volume highlights the role of the Society in the development of ideas of race, Malayness, colonial modernization, urban government and debates over the political and socio-economic future of the colony. By republishing these papers, The Straits Philosophical Society & Colonial Elites in Malaya seeks to contribute to the intellectual history of colonial and post-colonial Malaysia and Singapore, and to expand our understanding of the ways in which colonial thought has shaped governing systems of the past and present. "The editors of this thoughtful collection remind us how much Malaya’s past could be differently evaluated with generational change. A small collection of the papers had first been published when the British Empire was at the high point of imperial confidence. After two World Wars, in the face of an unforgiving anti-colonialism, most of the papers were forgotten and nearly lost. Reading them in the twenty-first century, we can see how many of the problems of race, identity and social order that were discussed a century ago are still with us. I recommend that the papers be read afresh. With this selection, the editors have done us a favour by inviting us to ask ourselves: Have we become wiser? Do we have better answers? For that, they deserve our thanks."--Wang Gungwu, University Professor, National University of Singapore "What a treasure Lim Teck Ghee has unearthed! To complement the dry official record of CO273 and the public pleading of the newspapers, we can now peer into the private passions and prejudices of the British (and some Chinese) elite at just the period they began to see themselves as architects of a new colonial social order. Their views were often well-informed, and ambitious to bring the latest theories to bear on Malaya. Robustly controversial, they were not politically correct even by the standards of the times. The editors deserve much praise and gratitude for having not only assembled these twenty-seven short papers but made them handily available to readers and provided an insightful introduction."-- Anthony Reid, Professor Emeritus, Australian National University

The Hadhrami Diaspora in Southeast Asia

The Hadhrami Diaspora in Southeast Asia PDF Author: Hassan Ibrahim
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047425782
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This volume originates from the proceedings of an international conference convened by the Department of History and Civilization, International Islamic University Malaysia, in collaboration with the Embassy of the Republic of Yemen, in Kuala Lumpur, from 26 to 28 August 2005. Twelve out of thirty-five papers presented at the conference have been reviewed, thoroughly revised and published in this volume. The introduction and the twelve chapters address the question of Hadhrami identity in Southeast Asia from various perspectives and investigate the patterns of Hadhrami interaction with diverse cultures, values and beliefs in the region. Special attention is paid to Hadhrami local and transnational politics, social stratification and integration, religio-social reform and journalism, as well as to economic dynamism and the cosmopolitan character of the Hadhrami societies in Southeast Asia.

Interpreting Diversity: Europe and the Malay World

Interpreting Diversity: Europe and the Malay World PDF Author: Christina Skott
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315471671
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
This volume departs from conventional historiography concerned with colonialism in the Malay world, by turning to the use of knowledge generated by European presence in the region. The aim here is to map the ways in which European observers and scholars interpreted the ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity which has been seen as a hallmark of Southeast Asia. With a chronological scope of the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, contributors examine not only European writing on the Malay world, but the complex origins of various forms of knowledge, dependent on local agency but always closely intertwined with contemporary metropolitan scientific and scholarly ideas. Knowledge of the peoples, languages and music of the Malay world, it is argued, came to inform and shape European scholarship within a variety of areas, such as Enlightenment science and anthropology, ideas of human progress, philological theory, ethnomusicology and emerging theories of race. But this volume also contributes to ongoing debates within the region, by discussing ideas about the Malay language and definitions of ‘Malayness’. The last chapters of the book present a reversed viewpoint, in examinations of how local cultural forms, theatrical traditions and literature were reshaped and given new meaning through encounters with cosmopolitanism and perceived modernity. This book was previously published as a special issue of Indonesia and the Malay World.