I recently started reading the famous Indonesian novel Never the Twain (Saluh Asuhan) by Abdoel Moeis. Written in 1928, it is about a young Minangkabau man, Hanafi, who has become very Westernized, so much so that he rejects the “traditional” Minangkabau world where he comes from.
He lives in a town, Solok, with his mother in a Western-style house. This is how their house is described in the novel:
Everything about the house was European, from the front veranda to the kitchen and the bathroom. Hanafi’s mother could not feel at home in such a house. Like most village women, she preferred sitting on the floor; her betel-nut case, spittoon, and cooking utensils in the kitchen were the only objects in the house she felt comfortable with. They were her world.
But Hanafi hated his mother’s world. . .
Hanafi said every time his mother spread her mat on the back veranda to wait for the visits of her friends: her village friends, “Mother, in the longhouse in Koto Anau you can spread your mat on the floor. . . wherever you like, but this is Solok. All my friends are Dutch.”
Hanafi’s mother then says, “But my back hurts when I sit on a chair, my feet too.”
And Hanafi replies, “That’s what’s wrong. That’s what’s wrong with our people; they’re backward, out of touch with the modern world, sitting on the ground like water buffalo. And that betel-nut chewing; it’s too much.”
This conflict between Hanafi and his mother is meant to represent the larger changes that were taking place in the Netherlands East Indies in the early twentieth century. There were people like Hanafi who were changing through their contact with the Dutch, but more than that, these people were also rejecting the world that they had come from.
This combination of adopting something “foreign” and rejecting what is “local” led to massive changes; the way people dressed, sat, ate, thought, the language they spoke, etc.
When people change this much, they cease to be the same as their ancestors. They become a new people.
This process began in the early twentieth century in the Dutch East Indies and it is continuing today. “Indonesians” are being created out of various ethnic groups, and over time some of those ethnic groups will decrease in size and importance and become socially marginalized.
If we go to the Red River delta, I think that we would find that the same thing started to happen there roughly 1,000 years ago. At that time there were foreigners that some local people interacted with and a foreign culture that some local people adopted. As they did so, they also rejected the world of their ancestors.
In previous posts on this blog I talked about how the Đông Sơn bronze drums and a musical instrument depicted on them, the khene, were never important to the Việt. And what is more, that the Việt referred to people who used bronze drums as “savages” (man 蠻).
This is because the Việt are like Hanafi. The category of being “Việt” emerged when some people adopted foreign cultural practices and rejected local cultural practices. Also like Hanafi, at first it was just a small number of people who did this, but because they were the elite, over time their ideas and cultural practices spread, slowly creating a “new people” in the process.
Hanafi still had the same blood in him as Minangkabau people, but through his adoption of foreign ways and his rejection of local ways, he was becoming something else – Indonesian.
People like Đinh Bộ Lĩnh and Ngô Quyền probably still had some of the same blood in their veins as Đông Sơn peoples, but through their adoption of foreign ways and their rejection of local ways (including bronze drums and the khene), they were becoming something else – Việt.
Hello, thank you for this entry.
Not that my response has much to do with the point you are making through the paradigmatic shift explored in this Indonesian novel, but just to share that it reminds me of a Burmese one titled “Not Out of Hate” (1955) by Ma Ma Lay, which you might already know. Instead of the clash of two worlds embodied in the mother-son relationship, it focuses on the marriage between a “traditional” Burmese girl and a much older Burmese agent for a British company, who like Hanafi, aspired to all things “modern”.
I don’t know if much has been done on the negotiations ensuing similar “clashes” and *how* they subsequently shape tastes, habits and much that we subsequently package as “culture” or even “identity”, but it should be interesting.
Thanks for looking at history from an angle other than that of the usual narrative privileging the opinions and lives of the usual suspects. It’s so much more fun and full of common sense.
That books been sitting on my bookshelf for years, and I’ve never gotten around to reading it. I thought it had something to do with a Japanese? No?
Yea, you know it’s interesting that there were all of these debates (for the most part in the 1920s and 30s) about “tradition” and “Westernization,” and then WW II came, and then independence, and so. . . how did those debates end?
Well, they ended with things being the way they are today. But what are things like today? It just dawned on me that I don’t think people have followed those debates to see how they were resolved. Instead, we just kind of take for granted the way things are now.
Does that make any sense?
I don’t recall anyone Japanese playing a major role in “Not Out of Hate”, but I don’t always trust my memory either. You’ll find out when you read it I guess.
I’m not sure why it’s often presented as a love story because I didn’t understand it as one. Maybe for marketing purposes.
On debates on “tradition” and “westernization”, from what you see, was it equal across this region known as “Southeast Asia” in the 20s and 30s? I only know how to read pictures, and in relation, I have the impression that that didn’t necessarily happen at the same time in the same way, or particularly in the 20s and 30s for all artists from this region. For example, I have the impression that the Indonesian artists were more engaged in these debates from the political angle than their peers elsewhere. Then in Vietnam, I thought it was a relatively smooth transition with painters who seemed to have assimilated the new approach to seeing and picturing the world quite well (maybe because they had rather good people at the École des beaux-arts de Hanoi). Then again, I have not looked into this topic enough to say for sure. But in Burmese literature, yes, from what I gather, exciting things happened at this time in the 20s and 30s in terms of modernization (not just westernization) of both the form and content of classical literature.
The point is, to take things further, I wonder about the extent and the speed at which these debates spread through various spheres of activities that make up “history”, how consciousness was affected bit by bit. In Burma at least, I don’t think it was homogeneous if we consider how most artists were indifferent to these questions of “us” and the “other”, the “old” and the “new”, unlike the poets and writers; the Western pictorial model was just accepted as a natural progression, along with the imported notion of “art”. So how was the tussle between “tradition” and “modernization” or “westernization” like in the overall history of modern Burma then? I don’t know. Or maybe these are not useful questions in the first place.
Yes, I think in “art” too, things are now often just taken for granted. No follow-up, no more questions; just go “international” asap to succeed for the artists. No idea when and how that change happened. No idea why it hasn’t been of sufficient interest to art historians either (or maybe I just don’t know enough).
Thank you for the stimulating thoughts and a good day to you.
Excellent points!!!
Yea, I think what happens is that after a period of time goes by, someone writes the first narrative of it, and that becomes the “official” version. Then over time people look more closely at the past and say, “Wait, it was more complex than that.” In the case of Southeast Asia, I think the 20th century history of a lot of places is still more or less in the “first version” phase. Well, that’s not entirely true, but strong comprehensive “second version” histories have yet to fully emerge, although a lot of scholarship that leads to that has been done.
So in the case of Thailand, for instance, the “first version” is that the royal family basically “saved” Siam from being colonized by figuring out how to “represent” Siam as “civilized” so that the foreign powers would not colonize it. A lot of scholarship has been done by now which deconstructs this (simplistic) view and presents a much more complex picture. However, that scholarship has not yet been synthecized into a “second version” narrative.
I might be getting off track, but yes, I’m agreeing with you, things were not experienced uniformly, and “mapping out” who things were experienced and presenting a narrative of that is something that still needs to be done.
Thanks for the example of Thailand.
Very interesting. Your analogy reminds me of the case between Chinese mainlanders and Hongkongers. I have lived in Hong Kong for more than one year and through many conversations with local people I have found that Hong Kong people claim themselves to be an “elitist” category of so-called Chinese. Some of them think that what makes them different from mainland Chinese is the British “refined” culture ingrained in their behaviors, and manners. For the majority, they reject the idea of identifying themselves as “Chinese,” which means loud-voice speakers in public, street spitters, or rude people. It is self-evident that posters bearing the phrase “Jujue daluhoa.” (Totally Reject Mainlandization) can be found at every corner. That motto seems to be the catchphrase for politicians to get elected.
One note is that Hong Kong businessman love to do business with mainland China, and boutique owners earn big profits from Chinese visitors. The average people do not share the same feeling. They perfer to be called Hoeng Gwong Yan, rather than Jung Gwok Yan.
Thanks for the comments!! And yes, I think this is a good example too.
But are you serious that “the phrase “Jujue daluhoa.” (Totally Reject Mainlandization) can be found at every corner”?? I’ve heard how much people in Hong Kong dislike the mainland Chinese who come there, but that’s still amazing if they show it like that. 🙂
It’s a bit of exaggeration, but you can see the posters in some busy crossroads or in downtown. What befuddles me is Hong Kong people do not hide their antagonistic feelings towards their compatriots. It is ironic that Hong Kong people are actually offspring of those who fled mainland one or two generations ago. I can take some photos, but do not know how to attach them here.
Yea, it’s interesting, isn’t it? On Taiwan people were supposedly happy to become part of China again after WW II, but then all of the mainlanders came over in 1949, and that led to bad relations, and this led some Taiwanese to see themselves as different, and the experience of having been a Japanese colony was seen as something that made them superior.
Agree. Another story to share. Two months ago I had the chance to listen to a presentation by Prof. Bruce Jacobs of Monash University about Taiwan’s identity. His argument is that Taiwan was a separate entity from mainland China until the Dutch came. Since then, Taiwan underwent 6 periods of colonization, according to his own taxonomy and tabulation, with the last one being Jiang Qing Guo’s rule. The purpose of his argument is clear: Taiwan deserves being an independent country. Bruce looks at the historical cultural perspective to define a sovereign state, which seems unconvincing to me, but it is very interesting. Bruce said his presentation is popular in Taiwan. Easy to understand why.
I wonder where the indigenous people on Taiwan fit in that picture.
http://leminhkhai.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/formosan-savages-and-southeast-asia/
As usual, an elegant discussion. I really appreciate your striking illustrations of identity formation in early (independent) Vietnam. One small question–are Sinitic influences the “foreign” influences in this analogy? If so, I wonder if, maybe by Ngo Quyen’s time, it wouldn’t be more appropriate to consider at least Annamese Sinitic culture as thoroughly native to the region as bronze drums and khene had been a millennium earlier. Thanks as always for your great posts.
Thanks for your comment. Yea, terminology here is a problem. It’s not really “foreign,” but if we use a term like “elite” then that doesn’t capture the fact that the elite upholds cultural practice which they see as powerful because in part they are connected to a “foreign” place/people. So I’m not sure what the best way to describe it is.
One can use the term “Annamese Sinitic” to point out something factual (that there were Sinitic elements in the language and culture), but I think that the “power” of things Sinitic, even when they are in many ways already “native,” was still still perceived by the elite. And I think it is that sense that led the elite to reject people who didn’t recognize/follow the power of those cultural practices.
The other point I would want to make is that you had the sudden emergence of the type of people that Hanafi represents in the early 20th century because of the establishment of modern schools. In the case of the Red River delta, there is nothing in medieval times that would have brought about such quick and dramatic change.
So the analogy isn’t perfect, because yes I would agree with you that “Annamese Sinitic” culture was “native” by that point among the elite, but at the same time, I still think that the elite saw themselves as different because of their adherence to cultural practices which ultimately came from somewhere else. Even if they just saw them as coming from “the ancient sages,” the ancient sages were not from Phu Tho or Bac Ninh. And because the elite had access to those practices, this made them different.
But yea, it must have been slow and gradual in the case of the Red River delta.
Thanks again for the comment!!