[Dunia Book Club] Review of Jean Taylor’s Indonesia: Peoples and Histories (translated by Yeo Woon-kyung) We Should All Read Indonesian History

By Goeun Jo (Translator, Administrative Specialist)

Jean Taylor’s Indonesia: Peoples and Histories is a substantial historical work of more than 500 pages that traces the history of Indonesia from the emergence of human communities on the islands of Borneo, Java, and Sumatra around 2000 BCE to the rise of Sukarno and Suharto’s regimes in the Republic of Indonesia during the late twentieth century. At the book club meeting held on April 28, Professor Yeo Woon-kyung of the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations at Seoul National University, who translated the book into Korean, kindly provided an overview lecture and participated in a Q&A session, which made the book far more accessible and easier to understand.

When one is told to read a massive tome covering the entirety of Indonesian history — from antiquity to the modern era — despite having had little prior exposure to the subject and no professional obligation to do so, an unavoidable question arises before even opening the book: Do I really need to read Indonesian history in such depth? How might one persuade oneself that it is worth the effort?

Among the humanities, history is an especially useful discipline because we write history constantly in our everyday lives. Even beyond the major events that dominate the news — disasters, wars, martial law — we continually narrate and evaluate processes in our own ways: “How did my mother raise my brother and me differently?” “How did I end up leaving a company I worked at for five years?” “How did T1, the esports team of the professional gamer Faker, achieve ten LCK titles and three consecutive World Championship victories?” In doing so, we choose what we believe to be the most legitimate framework through which to construct a “better” history. Sometimes this means painstakingly uncovering and proving incidents our mother insists never happened. At other times, it means recognizing the dynamic intersection between the broader political-economic currents of society and the micro-level power relations within a specific company. Or it may mean celebrating the rise and fall of dynasties and neighboring states through the deeds of exceptional heroes and the great events they accomplished.

We are able to construct our own histories according to our needs and preferences precisely because we have encountered many different forms of history through a variety of experiences. Above all, we already know very well that there is never only one history of a given subject. That is why we can take pleasure in films that reconstruct famous historical events from the perspective of marginalized figures, television programs that rewrite history by exposing truths concealed by dominant narratives, or science-fiction novels that move between past and present to explore how the legacies of history continue to shape contemporary life. Such works enrich and complicate the histories we thought we already knew.

In that sense, Jean Taylor’s history of Indonesia introduces readers to an entirely unfamiliar way of understanding history. For those educated in Korean historical traditions, history often begins with dynastic chronologies such as “Taejeongtaese Mun-dan-se,” or with the sequence of Gojoseon–Three Kingdoms–Unified Silla–Goryeo–Joseon–Japanese colonial rule. In other words, history is understood as the story of dynasties and peoples inhabiting a fixed territory, establishing a nation-state, and defending and advancing it against foreign powers beyond its borders. Within those borders, dynasties control the populace, the populace demands security from the dynasty, and external powers threaten the nation’s sovereignty either through military invasion or through the overwhelming force of their civilizations.

Indonesian history, however, is fundamentally different from the outset. Situated at the crossroads of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the Indonesian archipelago composed of countless islands developed through maritime life, constant movement, and the natural mingling of diverse communities. India, China, the Middle East, and Europe interacted frequently with the archipelago, mutually influencing one another in the process of historical formation. For example, as large prehistoric communities in the Indonesian rainforests developed their civilizations through the use of forest products such as resin and bark for adhesives, perfumes, and medicine, this did not lead to the establishment of isolated sovereign states. Rather, it intensified exchanges with India and China, which were drawn to these flourishing civilizations, resulting in even greater cultural mixing and increasingly fluid boundaries. Although rulers possessing wealth and power certainly existed within the archipelago, they too actively absorbed knowledge, religions, and systems of governance from India and China by making full use of foreign experts brought through maritime trade networks.

The same pattern persisted after various kingdoms emerged throughout the archipelago around the fifth century. Even after establishing their own states, rulers remained deeply interested in foreign knowledge and technologies that could further advance the maritime civilization created by merchants, adventurers, and other mobile peoples. From the tenth century onward, they enthusiastically embraced Islamic culture, which excelled in all aspects of maritime industry, from shipbuilding and navigation to trade, and expanded their activities through Muslim maritime networks. As Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam intersected and flourished across the archipelago, Indonesian society became even more complex in the sixteenth century, when Portuguese Christians entered the region in pursuit of valuable resources such as pepper and nutmeg. At the same time, local rulers increasingly sought ways to strengthen their authority through the expertise of outsiders from Islamic societies, China, and Portugal.

This history of Indonesia marked by diversity and mobility is rendered even more dynamic through Taylor’s autonomous historical perspective, which emphasizes sociocultural flows such as ordinary people, material culture, and everyday life. The cast of characters in Taylor’s history extends far beyond rulers, subjects, foreign merchants, and religious figures. She vividly portrays how seasonal wind patterns shaped the routes of merchants and transformed the Indonesian villages where they stayed; how pepper cultivation influenced local industries and women’s lives; and how the various writing systems carved into regional inscriptions reveal histories of interregional exchange, the knowledge of professional writers, and the craftsmanship of metalworkers. Geography, vegetation, agricultural products, and cultural elements all emerge as active agents in the making of Indonesian history.

These “characters” appear not only within the main text but also in boxed inserts scattered throughout the book. This editorial structure brilliantly reflects the defining qualities of Taylor’s historiography: its polycentric and polyphonic nature, in which multiple centers gather and disperse, and numerous voices overlap and resonate together. The composition where short episodes about objects or events interrupt the chronological narrative at irregular intervals visually and formally demonstrates Taylor’s ambition to weave together not a single biography centered solely on Java or indigenous Indonesians, but rather a tapestry of intertwined regions, objects, and “peoples” creating multiple “histories.”

The title of this essay, “We Should All Read Indonesian History,” is an explicit reference to Nigerian feminist novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists. Adichie argues that both men and women must recognize the problems embedded in contemporary gender systems in order to think freely beyond rigid gender roles. Likewise, Indonesia: Peoples and Histories offers us another kind of liberation in the way we think about history itself. Through Jean Taylor’s autonomous historical perspective, through the fluid social conditions of a region where oceans and continents intersect and where people of countless nationalities and civilizations constantly move and mingle, and through the accumulated capacities of people who have long lived by adapting to diverse religions, languages, and communities, the book frees our understanding of history from the constraints of nation-state boundaries.

Goeun Jo has translated numerous works on feminism and queer theory and currently works as a certified translation and administrative specialist.