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Narrative Form and Political Incorporation: Changing Uses of History in Aceh, Indonesia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

John R. Bowen
John R. Bowen
Affiliation:
Washington University, St. Louis
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Extract

Writing about the development of historical writing in the West, Hayden White argues that “narrative in general, from the folktale to the novel, from the annals to the fully realized ‘history’, has to do with the topics of law, legality, legitimacy, or, more generally, authority.” But precisely how does narrative treat the different forms of social authority? One answer is that historical narrative is a universal form representing time and experience that Western historians have made particularly persuasive and authoritative. The modern historian, according to this view, has brought narrative to its natural culmination by constructing such historical plots as the “Rise of the Nation-State” or the “Development of Modes of Production.” This perspective is put forward primarily by students of European historiography.

Type
The Foundations of Historical Discourse
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , October 1989 , pp. 671 - 693
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1989

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References

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Ethnological Society (San Antonio, 1987). I have benefited from discussions with Steven Caton, David Edwards, Raymond Grew, and Anthony Reid in writing this version. Fieldwork in 1978–80 was supported by the Social Science Research Council and a Fulbright-Hays grant.

1 White, Hayden, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,” in On Narrative, Mitchell, W. J. T., ed. (Chicago, 1981), 13.Google ScholarPubMed

2 I take this position to be the common ground of much recent writing on historiography and narrative. Hayden White emphasizes the contrasting plots and tropes of different historians (and thus their artifical character) whereas Louis Mink emphasizes the universal quality of narrative form in history writing. Paul Ricoeur provides a philosophical (and, ultimately, theological) grounding for emphases such as Mink's, claiming that all discourses about human lives are integrated by an overall narrative structure. Ricoeur sees a panhuman desire to overcome discontinuity and finitude by organizing events into sequences with a synoptic meaning. White, Hayden, Metahistory (Baltimore, 1973);Google ScholarMink, Louis O., “Narrative Form as a Cognitive Instrument,” Historical Understanding (Ithaca, 1987), 182–203;Google ScholarRicoeur, Paul, Time and Narrative, vol. 1 (Chicago, 1984).Google Scholar

3 Geertz, Clifford, “Person, Time and Conduct in Bali,” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973), 360–411.Google Scholar Marshall Sahlins has shown how the contrasting forms of Hawaiian and Maori cosmogonic narratives imply differing views of human ontology and action, Islands of History (Chicago, 1985), 13–20, 54–72.Google ScholarPubMed

4 For recent, insightful studies of competing and changing historical forms, see Farriss, Nancy M., “Remembering the Future, Anticipating the Past: History, Time, and Cosmology among the Maya of Yucatan,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 29:3 (1987), 566–93;CrossRefGoogle ScholarFox, James J., “‘Standing’ in Time and Place: The Structure of Rotinese Historical Narratives,” in Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia, Reid, Anthony and Man, David, eds. (Singapore, 1979), 10–25;Google ScholarSilverblatt, Irene, “Imperial Dilemmas, the Politics of Kinship, and Inca Reconstructions of History,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 30:1 (1988), 83–102;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPeel, J. D. Y., “Making History: The Past in the Ijesha Present,” Man, 19:1 (1984), 111–32;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDenoon, Donald and Kuper, Adam, “Nationalist Historians in Search of a Nation: The ‘New Historiography’ in Dar Es Salaam,” African Affairs, 69 (1970), 329–49;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and (of course) the essays in Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1984).Google Scholar

The controversy over Balinese time appears to have resolved into the recognition of a functionally segregated plurality of cyclical and linear ideas, and ceremonial and everyday institutions; see Geertz, “Person, Time, and Conduct”; Bloch, Maurice, “The Past and the Present in the Present,” Man, 12:2 (1977), 278–92;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHowe, L. E. A., “The Social Determination of Knowledge: Maurice Bloch and Balinese Time,” Man, 16:2 (1981), 220–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Lombard, Denys, Le Sultanat d'Atjeh au Temps d'Iskandar Muda (Paris, 1967).Google Scholar

6 For a comparison of the relation of “true tales” to “tales” on Roti, see James J. Fox, “‘Standing’ in Time and Place.” Gayo accounts of an object's origin carry power over that object. For example, healers use a certain citrus in their cures that must be induced to cooperate by claiming knowledge of its origin, saying, “I know how you came to be,” and pronouncing its special creation names.

7 As sung by Aman Samsir in the village of Isak, 8 September 1979.

8 Such short segments may be the original elements of Malay poetics. See Sweeney, Amin, A Full Hearing: Oralily and Literacy in the Malay World (Berkeley, 1987), 114.Google Scholar

9 See the prose history of Lingë written in 1904–05 by a man from Isak: “The Story of Déwajadi” (Leiden University Cod. Or. 7124, ms. 21).

10 For example, see Louis Mink (“Narrative Form”), who cites both Aristotle and “common sense” in proposing his tests of narrativity; and Hayden White, “The Value of Narrativity.”

11 de Josselin, P. E. de Jong, “Ruler and Realm: Political myths in Western Indonesia,” Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (afd. Letterkunde), 43:1 (1980), 3–19;Google ScholarSahlins, Marshall, “The Stranger-King; or, Dumezil among the Fijians,” Islands of History (Chicago, 1985), 73–103.Google Scholar

12 In Gayo stories “Rum” often appears as one of the three great kingdoms of the old world with China and Minangkabau. Narrators sometimes added the identification “Turki” to “Rum.” In the late nineteenth-century Aceh had endeavored to enlist the Ottoman Empire in its struggle against Dutch aggression. See Reid, Anthony J., The Contest for North Sumatra: Acheh, The Netherlands, and Britain, 1858–1898 (Kuala Lumpur, 1969), 83–4.Google Scholar

13 Hurgronje, C. Snouck, Het Gayoland en Zijne Bewoners (Batavia, 1903), 95.Google Scholar

14 Hurgronje, Snouck, Het Gayoland, 172–3.Google Scholar

15 Kreemer, J., Atjeh (Leiden, 1923), II:186–7.Google Scholar

16 I believe that no such genealogies, in oral or written form, existed prior to this period. I base this conclusion on Snouck Hurgronje's inability (Het Gajoland, 227, 195) to trace ascent of more than three or four generations above the current kejuruns despite his efforts to do so (and the clear political reasons for trying). The kejuruns outside Takèngën (Lingë, Serbëjadi, and Gayo Luës), where the political need for genealogies was less, did not produce them nor can their descendants today recount more than the usual number of ancestors.Google Scholar

17 Bureau, Encyclopaedisch, De Buitenbezittengen: Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden (Weltvreden, 1916), deel 2, afd. 2, 96–98. The published account is a Dutch translation; it is unclear how the story was actually narrated.Google Scholar

18 I take the term “origin structure” from Fox, James J., “Origin, Descent, and Precedence in the Study of Austronesian Societies” (Lecture delivered at Leiden University, 17 March 1988).Google Scholar

19 I obtained a photocopy of the official Bukit genealogy from Kejurun Zainuddin's first wife. It was written by hand in the mid-1930s either by or for Zainuddin.

20 The following story was told to me by the elder sister of Kejurun Zainuddin, Inën Bun, in Jakarta, 21 May 1980.

21 Throughout this paper I reserve the term “Acehnese” for ethnic Acehnese and use “Aceh” in cases where the province and all its residents are concerned.

22 On the social revolution, see Reid, Anthony, The Blood of the People (Kuala Lumpur, 1979);Google Scholar on the Darul Islam rebellion, Morris, Eric, “Islam and Politics in Aceh” (Ph.D. disser., Government Department, Cornell University, 1983).Google Scholar

23 Reid, Anthony, “The Nationalist Quest for an Indonesian Past,” in Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia, Reid, Anthony and Marr, David, eds. (Singapore, 1979), 295.Google Scholar

24 Marco Polo visited the Sumatran coast on his return voyage from China in 1292 and reported that only the people of “Ferlec” (Perlak, on the northeast coast) were Muslims. Polo, Marco, The Travels, Latham, R., trans. (Middlesex, 1958), 252–7;Google ScholarMoquette, J. P., “De Eerste Vorsten van Samoedra-Pase,” Rapport van den Oudheidkundigen Dienst (Batavia, 1913);Google ScholarHill, A.H., “Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai,” Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 33:2 (1960), 1–215.Google Scholar

25 A ruler named Johan Syah is said to have brought Islam from the west to Aceh. Ed. Dulaurier, , “Chronique du Royaume d'Atcheh, dans l'ile de Sumatra, traduite du malay,” Journal Asiatique (serie 3), no. 35 (1839), 47–86.Google Scholar

26 Typical of the Indonesian resentment of Orientalists' late dates for Islamization is Hamka, “Mengkaji Kembali Sejarah Islam di Indonesia” [Restudying the History of Islam in Indonesia], Panji Masyarakat, no. 291 (1980).Google Scholar

27 Djamil, M. Junus, Tawarich Radja2 Keradjaan Atjeh [Chronicle of the Kings of the Achenese Kingdom] (Banda Aceh, 1968).Google Scholar In 1959 Djamil published a catalogue to the fair that was a prototype for his later history: Gadjah Putih [White Elephant] (Kutaradja, 1959).Google Scholar

28 Ali Hasymy, personal communication 1981. Other Indonesian historians have maintained a skeptical attitude toward these “discoveries.” Abubakar Atjeh reports that some historians did ask to see this and other of the purported “documents” but Djamil refused to produce them. Prof. Dr. Atjeh, H. Abubakar, Sekitar masuknya Islam ke Indonesia [On the entry of Islam to Indonesia] (Bandung, 1971), 39.Google Scholar

29 Johns, A. H., “The Turning Image: Myth & Reality in Malay Perceptions of the Past,” in Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia, Reid, Anthony and Marr, David, eds. (Singapore, 1979), 64;Google ScholarLombard, , Le Sultana, d' Atjeh, 19–20;Google Scholar Rad. Dr. Djajadiningrat, H., “Critisch overzicht van de in Maleische werken vervatte gegevens over de geschiedenis van het Soeltanaat van Atjeh,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 67 (1911), 135–265. Al-Raniry has since become a provincial hero as a champion of orthodox Islam in the glorious sultanate of Iskandar Muda, lending his name to the State Islamic Institute (IAIN) in Banda Aceh.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Reid, “The Nationalist Quest;” Khoo Kay Kim, “Local Historians and the Writing of Malaysian History in the Tweltieth Century,” in Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia, Reid, Anthony and Marr, David, eds. (Singapore, 1979), 299–311.Google Scholar

31 Djamil always gives the Islamic year (indicated by “H” meaning “A.H.”) followed by the Western one (“M,” meaning “c.E.”); after this first example I mention only the latter.

32 Djamil, , Tawarich, 3. This marriage and those at Aceh Darussalam follow the Malay paradigm for the establishment of a dynasty in that a foreign ruler marries the daughter of a local ruler.Google Scholar

33 The map is redrawn from an illustration in a school atlas Dahlan, Sayed, ed.; Ilmu Pengetahuan dan Pengetahuan Sejarah Perjuangan Bangsa [The Science and Historical Knowledge of the People's Struggle] (Lhokseumawe, 1987). (I have retained the idiosyncratic spellings and symbols from the original.) The aura around Perlak on the map is intended to signify its status as the birthplace of Acehnese Islam (rather than Pasai). I have tried to limit the detail of this article to events relevant to understanding the Gayo case and thus omitted mention of the other kingdoms (Daya, Poli, and Beunua), which are included on the map and mentioned in Djamil but not here.Google Scholar

34 Djamil, , Tawarich, 29–30.Google Scholar

35 Hill, A. H., “Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai,” Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 33:2 (1960), 52.Google Scholar

36 Djamil, , Tawarich, 28–30,Google Scholar 12–14. David Edwards pointed out the similarity of this device to the fusion of names in certain Arabic genealogies; see Peters, Emyrs, “The Proliferation of Segments in the Lineage of the Bedouin of Cyrenaica,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 90 (1960), 29–53.Google Scholar

37 The Johan of the chronicles, however, is described as a stranger from the West (in the tradition of Iskandar Dzul-Karnain), not the East, who brings Islam to Aceh for the first time and marries a female spirit. The definitive study of the period (Lombard, Le Sultanas) places the origins of Aceh Darussalam in the early sixteenth century. The first ruler to whom Lombard attaches a definite date is 'Ali Mughayat Syah, who died in 936 A. H. (1530 C.E.) and who appears in Djamil's chronicle as the eleventh ruler of Aceh Darussalam.

38 Djamil, , Tawarich, 3.Google Scholar

39 Djamil, , Tawarich, 36.Google Scholar

40 Bakhtin, Mikhail M., “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination, Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, trns. (Austin, 1981), 84–258. Bakhtin saw the chronotope as an organizing center for the ideas of a narrative. The chronotopes of novels include the road and the encounters that occur along it, the castle and its mysterious past, or the threshold and the consequences of its crossing.Google Scholar

41 Ali Hasjmy has carried the sociology of these kingdoms much farther. In his Kebudayaan Aceh dalam Sejarah [Acehnese Culture in History] (Jakarta, 1983), he provides detailed descriptions of the various ministeries and functions that made up the Islamic Kingdom. One should remember that some of these “kingdoms” were small villages with a single headman.

42 Hasjmy, Ali, Kebudayaan Aceh; Meurah Johan: Sultan Aceh Pertama [Meurah Johan: The First Sultan of Aceh] (Jakarta, 1976).Google Scholar The two syntheses of Acehnese history best known in Indonesia both incorporate the Djamil-Hasymy line: Said, H. Mohammad, Aceh Sepanjang Abad [Aceh over the centuries], vol. 1, 2d. ed. (Medan, 1983);Google ScholarZainuddin, H. M., Tarich Atjeh dan Nusantara [Chronicle of Aceh and the Archipelago] (Medan, 1961). The atlas is Sayed Dahlan, Ilmu Pengetahuan.Google Scholar

43 Hamka, “Mengkaji Kembali."

44 The first such conference on the topic, “The Coming of Islam to Indonesia,” was held in March, 1963, in Medan. Four further province-wide conferences have ratified the Aceh history position: in Banda Aceh in 1978, near Perlak in 1980, in Takengen in 1986, and in Banda Aceh in 1988.

45 Teungku Hasan Basri, “Sejarah Masuknya Islam ke Aceh” [The History of the Entrance of Islam to Aceh] (Takèngën, 1978).

46 Basri, , “Sejarah,” 2, 4.Google Scholar

47 See Detienne, Marcel, The Creation of Mythology (Chicago, 1981).Google Scholar

48 The kingdom in exile is led by Malik Ishaq Sahir Nawi, a composite name formed from Djamil's figure Machdum Malik Ishaq Jauhan Berdaulat, the founder of Isak, and the Syahir Nuwi or Nawi, who in Djamil's chronicle is sent from Siam to found Perlak before the arrival of Islam. The name thus wonderfully spans the spatial and temporal range of the Aceh history.

49 I also obtained a sketch-genealogy drawn by Ilyas Leubé, the Gayo leader of the Darul Islam, shortly before he returned to the hills to continue his combat against the government. In this genealogy, Ilyas Leubé placed the Djamil-Hasymy history within the context of the Lingë story by identifying the “Johanysah” of the latter with the “Meurah Johan” of the former. In a renaming typical of the entire process, Genali becomes “Teungku Abdurrahman Genali.” Ilyas Leube was killed by govemment forces several years later.

50 On the respective blind spots of the two disciplines, see Bernard, S. Cohn, “Anthropology and History in the 1980s,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 12:2 (1981), 227–52.Google Scholar For insightful studies of historiographic traditions, see Detienne, Marcel, The Creation of Mythology (Chicago, 1981);Google ScholarWaldman, Marilyn Robinson, Toward a Theory of Historical Narrative: A Case Study in Person-Islamicate Historiography (Columbus, 1980).Google Scholar

51 The idea of the nation as an imagined community was formulated by Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities (London, 1983).Google Scholar

52 Lee Patterson, , Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature (Madison, 1987);Google ScholarSchama, Simon, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York, 1987).Google Scholar

53 Clifford, Geertz, “Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power,” in Culture and its Creators, Ben-David, Joseph and Clark, Terry Nichols, eds. (Chicago, 1977), 157. See also the description by Irene Silverblatt (“Imperial Dilemmas,” 93) of the Inca cosmology, peopled with founding ancestors of local, incorporated societies.Google Scholar

54 “[A]lnd the nature of a thing is its end,” Politics, 1252:32.

55 Butterfield, Herbert, The Whig Interpretation of History (London, 1931), 34–63.Google Scholar The trope of Islamization makes Aceh unity a particularly open one within Indonesia-that is, not defined in terms of descent but rather through participation in a collective mission. Aceh leaders are represented as a foreign relative to the displaced “Hindu” natives. Note the contrast of such an explicitly open history with the relatively closed historical discourse of Japan as expressed in kokugaku; see Harootunian, H. D., Things Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology in Tokugawa Nativism (Chicago, 1988).Google Scholar A relatively open historical discourse functions in ways analogous to language in that both make entry into a national or provincial community possible (Anderson, , Imagined Communities, 104–28); a relatively closed historical discourse functions more like physical appearance in making such entry difficult.Google Scholar

56 Reid, “Nationalist Quest”; Nichterlein, Sue, “Historicism and Historiography in Indonesia,” History and Theory, 13 (1974), 253–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Anderson, , Imagined Communities, 104–28.Google Scholar

58 A contrasting strategy involves Western historians rewriting colonial history as nation-state history. The controversy over Tanzania historiography is a case in point. See Donald Denoon and Adam Kuper, “Nationalist Historians”; Ranger, Terence, “The ‘New Historiography’ in Dar Es Salaam: An Answer,” African Affairs, 70 (1971), 50–349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 Java presents a more internally diverse case, where Islamization receives strong negative and positive valuations; see Kumar, Ann, “Javanese Historiography in and of the ‘Colonial Period’: A Case Study,” in Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia, Reid, Anthony and Marr, David, eds. (Singapore, 1979), 187–206. The ultimately implausible trope is perhaps nos ancêtres les Gaulois as recited by Senegalese schoolchildren.Google Scholar

60 White, Hayden, “The Value of Narrativity,” 13.Google Scholar