The atlas is divided into an introduction
(ten maps) and five chapters dealing with: landscape and environment
(thirty-five maps); peoples (seventy-seven maps); states and polities
until 1800 (fifty-nine maps); the Netherlands Indies, 1800-1942 (seventy-eight
maps); war, revolution, and political transformation, 1942 to the present
(sixty-eight maps). Information about Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and
East Timor is included, when appropriate. The maps speak for themselves,
but an accompanying text provides background information that places
the maps in historical context. The atlas also contains a list of maps,
a select bibliography, and an index. The years for which the maps are
valid are mentioned in the upper right corner of each.
In the introduction, the author argues that nicely coloured
maps suggest more precision and stability than is real, and that maps
are political vehicles: 'Can a map record structures of power without
also embodying and legitimizing them?' (p. 5). The next two chapters
sketch the natural and human environment, going from prehistoric times
to the present. The chapter about the natural environment contains subsections
on issues such as continental drift, volcanic activity, climate, forest
cover, and dams in Java. The chapter on people displays maps about the
Austronesian migrations, language fluency in Indonesian, literacy rate,
religious denomination, migration (from sixteenth-century slaving to
recent transmigration), the rate of urbanization, and demographic figures.
National
heroes by region. Since 1959, the Indonesian government has sought
to encourage patriotism by identifying 94 'heroes' (85 men and 9 women)
who contributed in some way to Indonesian nationhood. Although an
effort has been made to ensure that all regions of Indonesia are represented
amongst the designated heroes, not all provinces have a hero, and
Java is most heavily represented.
FIGURE 5.53 TAKEN FROM THE PUBLICATION UNDER REVIEW..
The three chapters about pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial
Indonesia present maps about: the size of various polities; the places
and year of occupation of Portuguese, English, and Dutch VOC outposts;
battle sites of the wars of colonial subjugation and the War of Independence;
changing administrative divisions; adatrechtskringen;
road, railway, shipping, and telegraph networks; the distribution
of votes in various elections; and income distribution. Other maps
are perhaps not directly of general significance, but still intriguing.
Examples are maps with sites and names of private estates around Batavia
in 1750; new towns in the Jabotabek region in 1990; the location of
Chinese and other ethnic officers; a village before and after the
Cultivation System came in force; a map with the total number of days
of detention at each prison in Java in 1935; the site of detention
camps after the G30S; and the number of national heroes by region.
This list is far from comprehensive but merely seeks to show the richness
of the atlas.
Cribb provides maps of historical events in several places.
For instance, five maps are devoted to the Krakatau eruption of 1883,
showing the progress of the tsunami with ten-minute intervals, the depth
of ash rains, and the outer limit where the noise of the eruption was
heard. There are also maps of Jakarta on the night of the coup of 1
October 1965, Dili on the day of the Santa Cruz massacre in 1991, and
Jakarta in May 1998 around the fall of Suharto.
The forty-seven-page index is a precious part of the atlas
that will facilitate the task of the reader digging up all the gold
hidden in this volume. It contains geographical names, personal names,
and subjects. Each geographical name is followed by a list of subjects,
but entries for subjects do not have similar cross-references to geographical
names. The decision about which toponym should be used in the index
must have been mind boggling for the author. Indonesian, Dutch, and
English names are used (but not names in regional languages), and entries
are split for strictly geographical names, administrative units (at
different levels and periods), and names that have become a concept
of their own. For instance, there are entries for: Soerabaia [sic],
city (See Surabaya); Soerabaja (Surabaya), gewest;
Soerabaja, karesidenan;
Surabaya, fourteenth- to seventeenth-century polity; Surabaya, Battle
of, 1945; Surabaya, gewest
(with different references than the above 'Soerabaja (Surabaya), gewest');
Surabaya, kabupaten;
and Surabaya (Soerabaia), town/city. Solo, Aceh, Jambi, et cetera, provide
equally confusing entries. I trust there is logic behind this system,
although it escapes me sometimes. In any case, the risk that readers
might miss something would have been reduced if all entries (with the
necessary subheadings) had been placed together under 'Surabaya', with
one general reference: 'Soerabaja, see Surabaya'.
No doubt, specialists will find flaws in details. The map of major
destructive earthquakes, for instance, shows three earthquakes on
Sumatra with in total 847 deaths; here I missed Padang (300 people
killed in 1797), Nias and the Batu Islands (respectively 50 and 778
people killed in 1861), and again the poor Batu Islands (675 people
killed later in the same year, 1861). Other people may have more quibbles
about the index, the choice of topics, and so on. This sort of criticism
should not detract from the fact that this is truly a magnificent
book and an outstanding piece of scholarship. The only thing I really
regret is that the price will be prohibitive for many prospective
buyers in Krismon Indonesia. *
Note
1. Islamic religious scholars; singular:
'alim.
Cribb, Robert, Historical
Atlas of Indonesia, Richmond: Curzon (2000), x+256 pp.,
isbn 0-7007-0985-1
