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Believing Is Seeing: Perspectives on Political Power and Economic Activity in the Malay World 1700–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Heather Sutherland
Heather Sutherland
Affiliation:
Centre for Asian Studies Amsterdam Free University, Amsterdam
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Extract

Western historiography assumes a chronological linear unfolding of progress, and early Western commentators on Asian societies tended to see them as stagnant variants of earlier phases in European history, as feudal despotisms and passive, unchanging village communities. In assessing levels of “development” or “progress” such observers looked for recognizable specialist institutions in politics and the economy; finding few such institutions, they saw only “backwardness”. To most Europeans, trying to make sense of unknown societies and cultures, the alien could only be made comprehensible by identifying it with the familiar. It was then all too easy to proceed as if the unknown was simply a mutant or primitive version of the known. Ideas, social relationships and values which were literally beyond their ken, were often simply not seen at all. In their observations of both political and economic systems, they saw decline, corruption and confusion because they failed to recognize the patterns which structured society. So it seemed natural that the West should dominate such societies and guide them on the correct path.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 26 , 25th Anniversary Special Issue 1: Perspectives on Southeast Asian Studies , March 1995 , pp. 133 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1995

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References

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the seminar on “Historical Dimensions of Development, Change and Conflict in the South”, organized by the Directorate General of International Co-operation of the Netherlands Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and held in The Hague in April 1993. The Proceedings were issued in 1994 under the same title by the Ministry as volume 9 of their series Poverty and Development-Analysis and Policy. I am grateful for permission to rework and publish the paper.

1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the seminar on “Historical Dimensions of Development, Change and Conflict in the South”, organized by the Directorate General of International Co-operation of the Netherlands Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and held in The Hague in April 1993. The Proceedings were issued in 1994 under the same title by the Ministry as volume 9 of their series Poverty and Development- Analysis and Policy. I am grateful for permission to rework and publish the paper. F. Braudel, Civilisation and Capitalism I5th–18th Century, vol. II, The Wheels of Commerce (London: Collins, 1982), p. 120Google Scholar; Leur, J.C. van, Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History (The Hague and Bandung: W. van Hoeve, 1955).Google Scholar

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