Abstract
In spite of Bernhard Dahm’s recommendation of this book as “a first-rate scholarly work which enriches our knowledge about a crucial period in Indonesian history,” it displays some weaknesses.
One of them is the writer’s attitude toward the documents he utilized in writing about the “crucial period” of 1927-1934. He seems, naively, not to have considered the basic nature of the “secret reports,” which were collected and/or written by the Dutch colonial government. I do not intend to discuss here the veracity of “the facts” which his search through massive files of “secret reports’’ unearthed. The point is that any “verbaal” which contained a lot of “secret reports” on a particular issue was first of all collected, classified and edited by Batavia’s government within, and according to, the particular context of the government itself. This is the fundamental nature of any “verbaal,” which literally means “report on an issue.” The facts in “secret reports” are, thus, always implanted in the colonial context, having been unreported from the “authentic” context, that of the Indonesian nationalist movement at the time.
What is the context, then, within which the writer placed his “first-hand’’ facts? What kind of “lens” did he use through which to observe the crucial period? It appears to me that the writer has never considered these questions seriously. The result, therefore, is a “rather dry’’ studies, as was Blumberger’s pioneer work on the same period. But half a century has passed since Blumberger wrote, and during this half century several studies were appeared, including those of Pluvier, Van Niel, Dahm, Nagazumi, and Legge. It would have been better if the writer has grasped the problem(s) of the period, as was the case with these later studies, and not just considered the “facts.”
