Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T14:56:31.281Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Man's Role in Changing the Landscape of Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Karl J. Pelzer
Get access

Extract

The theme of this paper, a theme close to the heart of the geographer, was in a slightly varied form the title of an international symposium organized by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research in 1955. This symposium on “Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth” provided ample opportunity for fruitful dialogues between scholars representing the full range of disciplines from the natural sciences through the humanities to the social sciences. In this truly interdisciplinary symposium of some seventy-five scholars, no less than thirty percent represented the discipline of geography.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , February 1968 , pp. 269 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1968

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

This paper is a revised version of the presidential address presented at the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Chicago, March 20–22, 1967. The original version was built around a selection of some fifty photographs illustrating the changes of the landscape that I observed in Southeast Asia between 1940 and 1967. Since the editor advised me that it would be impossible for him to publish the photographs, the address had to be rewritten. I had to present my ideas and experiences based on field research by means of words only rather than by a combination of words and pictures.

1 Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, edited by Thomas, William L. Jr. with the collaboration of Sauer, Carl O., Bates, Marston, and Mumford, Lewis (Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1956)Google Scholar.

2 Carl O. Sauer, “The Agency of Man on the Earth,” in Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, p. 49.

3 Marsh, George P., Man and Nature; or Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (New York: Charles Scribner, 1864)Google Scholar. A revised edition appeared in 1882 under the title, The Earth as Modified by Human Action: A new edition of Man and Nature. A modern edition is included in the John Harvard Library. Marsh, George Perkins, Man and Nature, edited by Lowenthal, David (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965)Google Scholar.

4 Lowenthal, David, George Perkins Marsh: Versatile Vermonter (New York: Columbia Press, 1958)Google Scholar.

5 Ibid., p. 348.

6 Ibid., p. 269.

7 Outstanding among the agriculturists/agricultural extension specialists of the century was Karel Frederik Holle (1829–1896) who spent no less than fifty-two years (1844–1896) of his life in Java and was a prolific writer among others on matters pertaining to destructive forms of land use and antierosion and soil conservation measures.

8 Mumford, Lewis, The Brown Decades: A Study of the Arts in America, 1865–1895 (New York, 1931)Google Scholar. Mumford refers to George P. Marsh as “the fountainhead of the conservation movement” (p. 78).

9 Marsden, William, History of Sumatra: Containing an Account of the Government, Laws, Customs and Manners of the Native Inhabitants, with a Description of the Natural Productions, and a Relation of the Ancient Political State of that Island (Third edition, with corrections, and plates, London, 1811)Google Scholar.

10 Raffles, Thomas Stamford, History of Java (2 vols., London, 1817)Google Scholar. A veritable gold mine of data on the natural and cultural ecology of Malaya, Singapore, Java, and Sumatra are Raffles' letters and reports which were published in excerpts in Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S.; Particularly in the Government of Java, 1811–1816, and of Bencoolen and its Dependencies, 1817–1824; with Details of the Commerce and Resources of the Eastern Archipelago and Selections from his Correspondence, By His Widow (London: John Murray, 1830)Google Scholar.

11 The great British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace traveled in the Amazon in 1848–1850. (Travels in the Amazon and Rio Negro … 1853) and in Southeast Asia from 1854 to 1862. The latter trip b reported in his book The Malay Archipelago. The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise. A Narrative of Travel, with Studies of Man and Nature (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1869)Google Scholar.

12 James, Preston E. and Jones, Clarence F., editors, American Geography. Inventory and Prospect (Syracuse University Press, 1954), p. 13Google Scholar.

13 Sauer, Carl O. “The Morphology of Landscape” in: Land and Life. A Selection from the Writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer, edited by John Leighly (Berkeley 1963), p. 343Google Scholar. See also: “Forward to Historical Geography,” ibid., pp. 351–79.

14 Wittlesey, Derwent “Sequence Occupance,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 19 (1928) 162–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Andrew H. Clark, “Historical Geography” in Preston E. James and Clarence E. Jones, op. cit., pp. 71–105, especially 80–93.

15 The Chinese Communists who were forced back into the jungle of Malaya during the emergency years began to produce their own food in small jungle clearings. Because they planted their crops in an unmistakenly Chinese manner rather than in that of Sakai or other indigenous forest dwellers of Malaya, their gardens could easily be detected from the air. Soon these Chinese were relying on forest people to do their planting for them in order to create a genuinely non-Chinese “agricultural isle” in the forest which would not attract the attention of the Royal Air Force and would therefore escape being sprayed with poison and defoliants. See Pelzer, Karl J., “Land Utilization in the Humid Tropics,” Climate, Vegetation, and Rational Land Utilization in the Humid Tropics.Proceedings of the Ninth Pacific Science Congress of the Pacific Science Association, 1957. Vol. 20 (Bangkok, 1958), 124–43Google Scholar. Reference on p. 126. See also Williams-Hunt, P.D.R., An Introduction to the Malayan Aborigines (Kuala Lumpur, Government Press, 1952), Chapter 10, Material Culture, pp. 52–63Google Scholar.

16 See, for example, Ho, Robert, “Land Settlement Projects in Malaya: An Assessment of the Role of the Federal Land Settlement Authority,” Journal of Tropical Geography, Vol. 20 (1965), pp. 1–15Google Scholar. Wikkramatileke, R., “Trends in Settlement and Economic Development in Eastern Malaya,” Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 3, 1 (1962) pp. 27–50Google Scholar.

17 Conklin, Harold C., Hanunóo Agriculture. A Report on an Integral System of Shifting Cultivation in the Philippines (Rome, FAO, 1957), p. 3Google Scholar. That shifting cultivators are aware of the cause and effect relationship between their agricultural system and the spread of grasslands at the expense of the forest is demonstrated by the Mnong Gar of Central Vietnam as Georges Condominas has shown in his book Nous Avons Mangé la Forêt de la Pierre-Génie Gôo (Hii saa Brii Mau-Yaang Gôo). Chronique de Sar Luk, village Mnong Gar (Tribu Proto-Indochinoise des hauts-plateaux du Viet-nam central) (Paris: Mercure de France, 1957)Google Scholar.

18 Pelzer, Karl J., Pioneer Settlement in the Asiatic Tropics. Studies in Land Utilization and Agricultural Colonization in Southeastern Asia (New York: American Geographical Society, 1945)Google Scholar. See especially Chapter VII, The Land Beyond, pp. 185–231 and Figures 123–161, pp. 176–184.

19 Volker, A., “The Deltaic Area of the Irrawaddy River in Burma” Scientific Problems of the Humid Tropical Zone Deltas and their Implications. Proceedings of the Dacca Symposium, 24 February to 2 March 1964 (Paris, UNESCO, 1966), pp. 373–379Google Scholar.

20 Government of Pakistan and UNESCO, Scientific Problems of the Humid Tropical Zone Deltas and their Implications: Proceedings of the Dacca Symposium, 24 February to 2 March 1964 (Paris 1966)Google Scholar. 21 pp. See review by Pelzer, Karl J. in Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 26, 3 (1967) pp. 497–499CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 P.D.R. Williams-Hunt, op. cit., p. 31.

22 For good descriptions of the relationship between natural ecological systems and the forest people see Chapman, F. Spencer, The Jungle is Neutral (London 1949)Google Scholar; Campbell, Arthur, Jungle Green (London 1953)Google Scholar and Slimming, John, Temiar Jungle: A Malayan Journey (London 1958Google Scholar).

23 Harold C. Conklin (1957) op. cit.

24 Karl J. Pelzer (1945) op. cit., Chapter II, pp. 16–42.

25 Ibid., Chapter III, pp. 43–78 and 115–119.

26 F. Hollerwöger, “The Progress of the River Deltas in Java” in Government of Pakistan and UNESCO, op. cit., pp. 347–354.

27 Karl J. Pelzer (1945) op. cit., figures 34–39 on pp. 40–41.

28 Pelzer, Karl J., “The Agrarian Conflict in East Sumatra” Pacific Affairs, Vol. 30, 2 (1957) pp. 151–159CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially p. 153.

29 Pelzer, Karl J., “Physical and Human Resource Patterns” Indonesia, McVey, Ruth T., ed. (New Haven: Southeast Asia Studies, 1963) p. 19Google Scholar.

30 The agricultural geography and agrarian history of East Sumatra for the period from 1863 to 1959 will be covered in my forthcoming book tentatively entitled Emerging from Colonialism. The Struggle Between Peasant and Planter (in preparation).