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2024, “Fashioning Cultural Representations: Pioneer Colonial Explorers and Dutch Borneo’s Gentle Headhunters”, Moussons, 43: 5-58. https://journals.openedition.org/moussons/11484
Abstract
Photographic images of interior Dutch Borneo’s nature and, more particularly, her peoples and cultures are examined as they were produced and used around the turn of the twentieth century, from their creation in the context of pioneer exploration across the island to their presentation and display, in various forms, for consumption by the general public back in Europe. A young Dutch army medical officer, later university professor, Anton Nieuwenhuis, a talented Indo military topographer and photographer, Jean Demmeni, and an elderly Norwegian professional explorer, Carl Lumholtz: These three major, yet quite different, players of the “there and then” scene strongly contributed, each in his own way, through the combined power of their visual and textual testimonies, to the shaping of affirmative representations, ideas, and imageries among their home public about Borneo and the peoples of her hinterland, these independent Dayak tribes, which had long been suffering from prejudiced reports, disrepute, and outright ignominy.
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The article concerns a description found in an early account of Central Borneo of a "rice dance" among the Kayan people, based on observations made in 1896. This ritual will be analyzed mainly as imagery enacted according to an iconic code. It explores a symbolism of evocative displays of meaning largely beyond language, making manifest other possible worlds. The celebration was connected with the sowing of rice in swiddens. At this time, the Kayan chieftaincy displayed, in a series of tableaux vivant, an imaginary narration of rice and divinely inspired authority as related to political power. A chief of divine descent initiated the sowing, and it was in his power to bring together the forces of Heaven, Earth, and Underworld into unity to bless the sowing and ensure the growing of rice. Finally, the article offers some brief comparative remarks in the wider Southeast Asian context, and points to similarities found in the construction of imagery of political ritual. [Southeast Asia, Borneo, Kayan, political symbolism, rituals of agriculture, death, chiefs, comparison].
Ritual, Politics, Social Organisation and Ethnogenesis: the Aoheng of Borneo
by Bernard Sellato
Through a study the history of the Aoheng of Borneo, this paper attempts first to elucidate the connection between ritual - or, rather, traditional religion as expressed in ritual - and ethnic identity. It shows that ritual, the basis for the emergence of the Aoheng as a new composite ethnic entity, is a major factor in ethnogenesis. Through a study of social organization, it shows how a major ritual, pengosang, has been utilized by an ethnic fraction of the Aoheng as a political tool to counterbalance the formal political prominence achieved by another ethnic fraction through social stratification and maintain control of all aspects of the village's political life, in domestic affairs as well as in foreign relations.
The Norwegian explorer and ethnographer Carl Lumholtz (1851–1922) wrote the influential ethnographic studies Among Cannibals and Unknown Mexico (both reissued in this series) after his journeys through Australia and Mexico respectively. In 1913, Lumholtz went on his final expedition, which aimed to explore the large parts of Borneo unknown to the rest of the world. Interested by tales of head-hunting, he wanted to spend time with the indigenous people and conduct research. Originally published in 1920, this two-volume work is Lumholtz's account of his expedition. Many of the illustrations in the work are from photographs taken by the author, including pictures of members of the different tribes he stayed with. Volume 1 begins with an overview of Borneo and goes on to describe the expedition's journey into the jungle, and the various ceremonies experienced during the journey, which provide interesting insights into tribal life and belief systems.
In 1880 the Norwegian ethnologist, zoologist and explorer Carl Lumholtz embarked on an expedition to Australia, with the purpose of observing the life and customs of the Australian Aborigines. This book focuses on his experiences while living for a year with a community in Queensland that had never previously come into contact with white people. 'Not only are many of the Australian Aborigines cannibals', says Lumholtz, 'but most of the tribes have not yet emerged from the Stone Age in the history of their development'. He goes on brilliantly to document a complex and fascinating society. Containing detailed maps to illustrate the explorer's travels and many images, the book also includes informative appendices outlining Australian history, geology, flora and fauna. First published in 1889, Lumholtz's classic account of the events and practices he witnessed retains the power to shock, educate and entertain the modern reader.
The book is available (free of charge) on Google Books:
https://play.google.com/store/books/details/J%C3%A9r%C3%B4me_Rousseau_Central_Borneo?id=HjZ9EAAAQBAJ
This article examines the position of Chinese photographers in the visual colonial landscape. The Chinese toekang potret were involved in both commissioned photographs and the production of commercial images, but the latter was less widespread. Contrary to the image that Chinese photographers' clients were from the lower strata of society, this article shows that they were commissioned by the European, Chinese and Javanese elite. The image materiality of the portraits reveals the visual traces of circulation and exchange. Hence, the Chinese photographers were indirectly involved in these elite networks as well.
This article, largely based on archival research, highlights two contradictory outcomes of colonial state formation in central Borneo. The first is characterized by territorial consolidation and efforts to neatly sedentarize peoples within each colonial territory, while the second is characterized by pacification that unwittingly liberalized the flows and movements of people and commodities transgressing colonial state boundaries. The 1924 Kapit Peacemaking Agreement in colonial Sarawak is often noted for its significance in bringing a final end to the practice of inter-ethnic headhunting, principally between the Iban of Sarawak and the Kenyah from Dutch Borneo. While it marked the successful outcome of a long phase of colonial pacification and territorial consolidation for both colonial states in Borneo, the agreement's outcome simultaneously highlights the contradictory inter-colonial motives and expectations regarding the resulting increase of cross-border flows of people and commodities. The presented case highlights challenges facing Dutch colonial state formation when attempts to subjugate and sedentarize riverine peoples, who were geographically tied to fluid commodity chains and flows, directly undermined the former's own efforts to establish authority in its borderland frontier.
Images of the Tropics critically examines Dutch colonial culture in the Netherlands Indies through the prism of landscape art. Susie Protschky contends that visual representations of nature and landscape were core elements of how Europeans understood the tropics, justified their territorial claims in the region, and understood their place both in imperial Europe and in colonized Asia during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her book thus makes a significant contribution to studies of empire, art and environment, as well as to histories of Indonesia and Europe. © 2011 Koninklijk Instituut, voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde. All rights reserved.
This article is a reprint of McKinley, Robert. 1976. “Human and proud of it! A structural treatment of headhunting rites and the social definition of enemies.” In Studies in Borneo societies: Social process and anthropological explanation , edited by G. N. Appell, 92–126. DeKalb, IL: The Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University. The appendix, containing reflections on a debate between J. van Baal and the author, was written for publication in HAU.
The paper focuses on borders and boundaries as practiced, perceived, changed, and enforced by different actors in the Apo Kayan region, an isolated plateau in the interior of Indonesian Borneo at the border between Sarawak (Malaysia) and Indonesia. The paper proposes a longitudinal and multi-faceted description of “border” that takes into account the complexity of its historical, political, economic, and cognitive connotations in the context of practices and interactions across the border. The combined ethnohistorical and cognitive approach of this study makes it possible to unravel the contradictions that are inherent in the concept of “border.”
Born in 1948 in Sweden, Ann Christine Eek now lives in Norway, where she has worked as a photographer at the University of Oslo's Museum of Cultural History since 1982. She attended Stockholm's Photo School from 1968 to 1971 and has done extensive freelance work in documentary photography, photojournalism, and landscapes and in writing reviews and articles on photography. Her photographs have been widely exhibited and published, including in Betraktelser av ljus [Perceptions of Light], Arbeta—inte slita ut sig! [Work—Don't Wear Yourself Out!], Min barndoms landskap [The Landscape of My Childhood], and Albanere fra landsbyen Isniq, Kosova 1976 [Albanians from the Village Isniq, Kosovo 1976], which is part of her long-term documentary series of photographs about Albanians in the Balkans.
All photographs in the folio are by Carl Lumholtz, belong to the Lumholtz Photography Collection, 1890–1917, at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway (www.khm.uio.no), and are copyrighted (©) by the University of Oslo and used here by permission. Except for the first image from Jalisco, 1895, all photographs are from Lumholtz's expedition to Sonora and Arizona in 1909 and 1910.
1. In January 1888 the Danish-American journalist Jacob Riis had presented documentary photographs as a lanternslide lecture in a camera club in New York (Hassner 1977:153).
2. The little stools on which the Huichol idols sit in the photo have considerable antiquity in northwest Mexico. They are called either taburetes or equipales, and are described in the literature as early as 1673 by Antonio Arias, a Franciscan missionary, who wrote of a “house . . . with a table in it which is surrounded by four dry withered corpses. . . . They are seated on chairs they call Ycpallia [equipal]” (McCarty and Matson 1975:204). Such stools and chairs are still being made and can be bought in shops in Nogales and, no doubt, in Tucson as well (Bernard L. Fontana, personal communication). See also Fontana 1977.
3. Personal communication from Phyllis Johnson, who is working with the Lumholtz Collection at the American Museum of Natural History, February 2007.
4. Conversion of film sizes mentioned in the text from inches to approximate equivalents in centimeters: 3″ × 4″ = 7.6 × 10.2 cm; 3¼″ × 4¼″ = 8.5 × 11.2 cm; 4″ × 5″ = 10.2 × 12.7 cm; 5″ × 7″ = 12.7 × 17.8 cm; and 6½″ × 8½″ = 16.5 × 21.5 cm.
5. Even today surprisingly few people in Norway know who Lumholtz was.
6. The exhibition Under Tropenes Himmel (Under the Skies of the Tropics) opened at the Maihaugen Museum in Lillehammer in October 1993 and at the Ethnographic Museum in Oslo in December 1993. The title, also used for the book edited by Klausen and Sørum, was borrowed from the Norwegian title of Lumholtz's Through Central Borneo (New York, 1920), published in Christiania in 1922. At the same time the Norwegian Broadcasting Company made three sixty-minute documentaries about Lumholtz and his travels in Australia, Mexico, and Borneo.
Early photographic and anthropological processes produced specific forms of colonial knowledge. Images of Borneo captured during the colonial period thus offer a snapshot of the emerging field of anthropology. British explorer A.C. Haddon played a role in shaping early anthropological theory, from his 1898 expedition in Torres Straits and Sarawak to the subsequent analysis of his findings upon his return to Britain. During this time, the study of exotic people and places was the object of a new form of empiricism; the period also coincided with the circulation of a range of images of Asia. These images played a crucial part in constructing popular assumptions about colonized peoples and their social positions in the colonial hierarchy. Haddon’s photographic collections were connected to a larger process of colonial knowledge production in which various images — including other photographs, early film footage, paintings and etchings — wrestled with competing representations of the region. His photographs of Sarawak convey the struggle in the emerging discipline of anthropology to distil objective “truths” while competing with the subjective experiences afforded by social relations with local communities.
Until 1900 Dutch rule in eastern Kalimantan was little more than nominal. In January of that year, as if to indicate the rapid changes which the new century would bring to this as to other areas of the Outer Islands till then ignored, the Dutch Cabinet gave approval for the Netherlands East Indies government to intervene decisively in the affairs of the states constituting the region. During the year new contracts were signed with the rulers of these states which transferred to Dutch control the external trade upon which the states depended for much of their income. Henceforth Dutch officials would supervise the harbours and levy customs and excise; control of the salt and opium monopolies also passed to the Dutch, and, in some cases, of pawnbroking and gambling. Annual pensions were arranged for the former holders of these rights.
In September 1901, a coalition of Christian parties won the Dutch legislative elections under the leadership of the Anti-Revolutionary Party. Colonial issues were given a strategic dimension by the new government, which strongly advocated the "moral reform" of the Netherlands' colonial policy in the Far East. The "ethical colonial policy" (1901- c.1926), which was defended both by leaders of the conservative Christian parties and by members of the worker-led social-democratic movement, aimed at fulfilling the "moral obligation" of the metropolitan state towards the native population of the East Indies. By focussing on the "moral education" of the native Javanese, this article begins by summarizing the institutional and political developments that gave birth to this "ethical policy". It then examines a number of actions taken by the colonial state in Java concerning educational policy, medical and hygienic modernisation, prison reforms and political "decentralization". The article demonstrates how these public policies were seen as contributing to the "moral reform" of the native Javanese, by introducing them to a capitalist, bureaucratic and Christian "modernity" - a modernity ultimately deemed to be contradictory with political protest and Islamic mobilization.
Manoa 12.1 (2000) 71-73
The Indonesian archipelago is a vast complex of islands, languages, and cultures -- all coexisting in a variety of expressions and overlays. Moreover, the nation's social structures are inextricably bound to religious beliefs and practices, a milieu unfamiliar to modern secular Western sensibilities. These expressions of belief and culture create a delicate and dynamic web of social forms and tensions, and are a daily part of the aesthetic and intellectual endeavors of the nation's citizens. No selection of photographs, no matter how ambitious, could hope to present a complete picture of Indonesia's enormous richness and diversity.
The photographs in this issue of Manoa chronicle a significant one-hundred-year era in the lengthy transformation of Indonesia from its Dutch colonial occupation, which began in the 1500s, to its emergence as an independent nation in 1945. The photographs were selected from an exhibition that I curated in 1991. While historical in nature, the exhibition was meant to carry forward and symbolize the strength and spirit of the Indonesian people, and inspire us all to better understand the complex social and cultural issues facing the country today.
Viewing these photographs now, fifty-five years after Indonesian independence, we can't help but speculate on the variety of meanings that these images have had over the years. Adventurers inspired by European expansion and the colonial, orientalist imagination must have used these early photographs to spin stories of fabulous, decadent kingdoms filled with gold and spices. While some Westerners found paradise in Indonesia's grand and variegated tropical landscape, others imagined that paradise lay in the formal beauty and ritual of the royal court. Both facets of this idealized nation were eroded by the colonial relationship. Four hundred years of Dutch occupation began the process that has resulted in some of the worst environmental disasters of this century. Under Dutch rule the courts turned inward, creating a world of gilded poet-kings, elegant courtiers, and resplendent dancers. But it was also a world of intrigue and deception, nostalgically evoking a classical past that was, in reality, long gone.
Even those people familiar with Indonesian culture will find surprises in the work of the photographers presented here -- surprises based on the revelation of unexpected details, the candor of the subjects, and the placement of the images in the context of this collection of essays, stories, interviews, and poems. Behind the obvious beauty of the subjects of these photographs lies the complexity of the theme under which they were originally gathered: toward independence.
The earliest photographer in this selection is Adolph Schaefer, who studied with Daguerre in France and quickly recognized the daguerreotype's potential. Schaefer did some of his finest work in the 1840s, when he convinced the Dutch government to commission him to photograph monuments and landscapes in what was then the Dutch East Indies.
The adventurers and photographers Walter Bentley Woodbury and James Page met while sailing from England to Australia. After some success in Melbourne, they continued on to Batavia, where they flourished from 1856 to 1861 as the photographic team Woodbury & Page, producing images of architecture, portraits of dignitaries, and views.
Formally trained as an artist, Isidore Van Kinsbergen was retained in 1862 as a photographer for the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences. The society commissioned him to photograph Javanese antiquities on the Dieng Plateau. From April 1873 to June 1874, he photographed the scriptures and reliefs of Borobudur.
Ignoring the tendencies of his contemporaries in the late 1880s to emphasize pictorialism and aestheticism, the German photographer Charles J. Kleingrothe documented tobacco factories, warehouses, and tea plantations in Sumatra, photographing indigenous laborers and Chinese field hands. His images of Indonesia's emerging commercial industries reveal the divisions among classes, races, and professions.
By the final decade of the nineteenth century, the photographic process had become cheaper and more convenient, and photography had begun to establish itself as both a vastly popular medium and a profession. In the 1890s, Onnes Kurkdjian, an Armenian, traveled through Indonesia creating elaborate still lives, lavish portraits, and pastoral landscapes. Kurkdjian's photographic subjects range from the primordial Bromo volcano erupting to the sterile, confined spaces...
The time appears due for a reappraisal of the economic argument in the imperialism debate. For decades the standard procedure has been first to refute Hobson and Lenin on empirical grounds and then to present a non-economic explanation for the European overseas expansion during the era of modern imperialism (1870–1914). Presently a new paradigm is gaining acceptance. It is an approach which puts the emphasis solidly back on the economic side but without its Marxist connotations. Cain and Hopkins took the lead with their theory of ‘gentlemanly capitalism’; they link the landed South and City finance with Imperial policy thus explaining overseas expansion by referring to macroeconomic changes at home. Davis and Huttenback associate the profitability of Empire investments with their ‘two-England hypothesis’ for British business: London investors stood apart, profited more and exerted a greater influence. It is my intention to show that a similar type of non-Marxist economic argument applies also to the case of Dutch expansion in the Indonesian archipelago at the time of modern imperialism.
This paper considers some of the ways in which travellers, administrators and academics in the colonial period sought to categorise the indigenous groups of Borneo. It focuses on Sarawak and North Borneo between about 1850 and 1920, and examines the use of stereotypical images of exoticism, fear and loathing in constructing different categories of peoples in the region. The paper argues that such categorisations were important in structuring the relationships between ruler and ruled, and in the development of particular regional and local identities.
Kyoto University (京都大学) 0048 新制・課程博士 博士(地域研究) 甲第13963号 地博第56号 新制/地/19 UT51-2008-C879 2008-03-24 京都大学大学院アジア・アフリカ地域研究研究科東南アジア地域研究専攻 (主査)教授 速水 洋子, 准教授 石川 登, 教授 田中 耕司, 准教授(北海道大学) 祖田 亮次 学位規則第4条第1項該当
In deze afstudeerdscriptie is onderzoek gedaan naar de volkenkundige Anton Willem Nieuwenhuis. Als eerste reisde Nieuwenhuis het eiland Borneo over. Samen met de plaatselijke bevolking maakte hij een reis van oost naar west. Over zijn reis heeft hij een dagboek bijgehouden en twee boeken geschreven die nogsteeds van encyclopedische waarde zijn. In zowel dagboeken als gepubliceerde boeken komt naar voren dat Nieuwenhuis te plaatsen is in de stroming van het 19e eeuwse evolutionisme.
Few works on modern imperialism (1880–1914) include Dutch political and military behaviour in the Indonesian archipelago. Theories concerning colonial expansion in this period have been based almost exclusively on the activities of the big powers, scrambling for new territories in Africa. The small country of the Netherlands, expanding its colonial frontiers within its nominal sphere of interest, did not arouse much interest, the less so as its history and sources are not easily accessible due to an internationally little known language.
Photocopy. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms International, 1978. -- 22 cm. Thesis--Michigan State University. Bibliography: leaves 256-259.
Changing Spaces and Border Regimes: A Central Borneo Trajectory of ‘Globalisation'”
- Dave Lumenta
Naar de eeuwige sneeuw van tropisch Nederland: de bestijging van het Carstenszgebergte in Nederlandsch Nieuw Guinee
- Anton Colijn
Bijdragen tot de Geographie van Borneo's Westerafdeeling
- J J K Enthoven
Les Indes néerlandaises au Pavillon de Marsan
- Gabrielle Ferrand
New Names for Mountain Ranges
- L H Krol
1894-1895, “Toch naar de Boven Kapoeas op het eiland Borneo
- J Büttikofer
- G A F Molengraaff
Land en volk, geschiedenis en bestuur, bedrijf en samenleving
- Hendrik Colijn