The East India Company is such obvious thesis fodder that a small library has been written on it. The most useful introduction is perhaps H. Furber’s John Company at Work. A study of European expansion in India in the late eighteenth century (Harvard UP, Cambridge, Mass. 1948).
Sukarno has attracted a large literature of vilification and hagiography, much of it in Dutch. Wearily complete as a political record is G. Penders’s The Life and Times of Sukarno (Sidgwick and Jackson, London 1974). Set against this is the highly journalistic Soekarno: An Autobiography (Bobbs-Merrill, New York 1965), actually written by the American, Cindy Adams. The subsequent My Friend the Dictator (Bobbs-Merrill, New York 1967) sheds valuable light on the circumstances of the production of this work, a book that still grossly embarrasses Indonesian officialdom.
Important Dates
1781 born
1795 enters East India Company as a clerk
1805 Assistant Secretary to Governor of Penang; marries Olivia
1807, 1808 visits Malacca
1810 to Calcutta
1811 invasion of Java; Raffles appointed Lieutenant-Governor
1812 land reform in Java
1813 death of Olivia
1815 dismissed
1816 returns to England
1817 History of Java; knighted; marries Sophia
1818 to Bengkulu
1819 founds Singapore
1820 death of son
1822 deaths of two other children
1823 death of infant daughter
1824 fire on Fame
1826 dies in England
Map of Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia
Illustrations
Penang Harbour
A Dutch judge and dignitaries witnessing the execution of criminals
Surveying Prambanang Temple
View of Gunung Salak, near Buitenzorg
The palace at Bogor
The memorial to Olivia Raffles, Bogor
‘A Javan of the lower class’
Portrait of Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles
by George Francis Joseph, now hanging in the National Portrait Gallery, UK
A gender, a musical imstrument from the Raffles collection
Raffles House, Bengkulu
Hamilton Monument, Bengkulu
Raffles’ country house, Bengkulu
A flower of the species Rafflesia arnoldia
The palace at Pagaruyung, Minangkabau
The Raffles Statue, Singapore
Raffles Institution, Singapore
Also by Nigel Barley
published by Monsoon Books
Rogue Raider
The tale of Captain Lauterbach and the Singapore Mutiny
NIGEL BARLEY
It is the First World War and the Flashmanesque German naval reserve captain, Julius Lauterbach, is a prisoner of war in the old Tanglin barracks of Singapore. He is also a braggart, a womaniser and a heavy drinker and through his bored fantasies he unwittingly triggers a mutiny by Muslim troops of the British garrison — the 1915 Singapore Mutiny — and so throws the whole course of the war in doubt. The British lose control of the city, its European inhabitants flee to the ships in the harbour and it is only with the help of Japanese marines that the Empire is saved.
Rogue Raider is the adventure story of how one ship, the Emden, ties up the navies of four nations and audaciously starts the Battle of Penang in Malaysia, and how one man eludes Allied Forces in a desperate chase across Indonesia and the rest of Asia to America as he attempts to regain his native land. It is fictionalised history but a true history that was deliberately suppressed by the British authorities of the time as too embarrassing and dangerous to be known. Revealed here, it brings vividly to life the Southeast Asia of the period, its sights, its sounds and its rich mix of peoples. And through it an unwilling participant in the war becomes an accidental hero.
Island of Demons
NIGEL BARLEY
Many men dream of running away to a tropical island and living surrounded by beauty and exotic exuberance. Walter Spies did more than dream. He actually did it.
In the 1920s and 30s, Walter Spies — ethnographer, choreographer, film maker, natural historian and painter — transformed the perception of Bali from that of a remote island to become the site for Western fantasies about Paradise and it underwent an influx of foreign visitors. The rich and famous flocked to Spies’ house in Ubud and his life and work forged a link between serious academics and the visionaries from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward, Miguel Covarrubias, Vicki Baum, Barbara Hutton and many others sought to experience the vision Spies offered while Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, the foremost anthropologists of their day, attempted to capture the secret of this tantalizing and enigmatic culture.
The Devil’s Garden
Love and war under the Japanese flag
NIGEL BARLEY
Gardens are magical places – images of Nature and Culture, models of paradise, spaces where plants live in war and peace, co-operation and competition. It is 1942 and Singapore is Syonanto, part of the Japanese Empire, where violence and starvation stalk the streets but in the Singapore Botanic Gardens a bizarre tranquillity reigns between warring nations and even love awakes as old identities melt away in the heady atmosphere of the Orchid House.
From its unique perspective and with a mixture of humour and romance, The Devil’s Garden pictures a formative moment in the emergence of Singapore, where loyalties are less secure than those of the official histories and truth is anything but simple.
Love and war in Singapore under the Japanese flag.
Toraja
Misadventures of an anthropologist in Sulawesi, Indonesia
NIGEL BARLEY
In 1985, Dr Nigel Barley, then senior anthropologist at The British Museum, taught himself Indonesian and set off for the relatively unknown Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Here he hoped to find unsullied cultures to study and unspoilt natives to investigate and Barley soon found plenty to wonder at and plenty to admire among the Toraja, a vastly interesting people whose culture includes headhunting, transvestite priests and the massacre of buffalo.
In witty and finely crafted prose, Barley offers fascinating insight into the people of Sulawesi and their lifestyles, and he recounts hilarious tales of the many memorable characters he meets there, not least the four Torajan woodcarvers the author invites back to London to construct an Indonesian rice barn in The British Museum. This quartet of Indonesian Marx Brothers soon discover the joys of pornographic films and the London Zoo, although they never get to grips with turning off bathroom taps.
Toraja is a delightful and truly memorable read from the acclaimed author of The Innocent Anthropologist, Rogue Raider and Island of Demons.
About the Author
Nigel Barley was born south of London in 1947. After taking a degree in modern languages at Cambridge, he gained a doctorate in anthropology at Oxford. Barley originally trained as an anthropologist and worked in West Africa, spending time with the Dowayo people of North Cameroon. He survived to move to the Ethnography Department of the British Museum and it was in this connection that he first travelled to Southeast Asia. After forrays into Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan and Burma, Barley settled on Indonesia as his principal research interest and has worked on both the history and contemporary culture of that area.
After escaping from the museum, he is now a writer and broadcaster and divides his time between London and Indonesia.
Also by Nigel Barley
The Innocent Anthropologist
A Plague of Caterpillars
Toraja (previously sold as Not a Hazardous Sport) *
Foreheads of the Dead
The Coast
Smashing Pots
Dancing on the Grave
The Golden Sword
White Rajah
Rogue Raider *
Island of Demons *
The Devil’s Garden *
(* published by Monsoon Books)
Copyright
First published in digital form in 2013 by Monsoon Books
ISBN (ebook): 978-981-4423-32-8
Copyright©Nigel Barley, 2013.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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