The Myth of the Colonial State

This study argues that Java in the early nineteenth century —the prototype of modern Indonesia— was not a ‘colonial state’, but rather a ‘political economy’ that entangled European administrations with demarcated central Javanese court elites; transregional indigenous groups from Arabia, South Asia and China; regional migrants from the Malay Archipelago; and ‘other’ Europeans, including Biracial communities, Mardijkers and Africans.
Over 90 per cent of the island’s increasing population from 8 to 12 million remained marginalised, including ‘externalised’ regional populations (such as the Sunda, Badui and Tenggerese), Madurese immigrants, and kalang forest communities occupying much of Java’s territory, as well as ‘internalised’ wong cilik (‘little people’, or peasants). Some 2.5 million people died as a result of war, famine and disease. The book offers a significant contribution to the study of early modern Southeast Asian history and early-nineteenth-century political economies.
Bold and original in its claim that ‘Java’ did not exist as a unified island or identity in the early nineteenth century, Myth presents multiple, mutable, and overlapping ideas of space and personhood there. Excavating multilingual sources and forgotten voices, Thomas Oey richly analyzes a place where identity and identification were grounds for struggle.
– Christian C. Lentz, Associate Professor of Geography and Environment, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
This is a fascinating and thought-provoking study. Piercing through colonial and nationalist ideological lenses, Oey shows us a fragmented world in which most people lived in precarious conditions. He reveals how concepts such as ‘Javanese village’, ‘colonial state’, ‘European’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘Javanese’ were constructed to overcome this fragility but at the same time obfuscated the realities of social marginalisation.
– Dr Ulbe Bosma, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, The Netherlands