Racial Difference and the Colonial Wars of 19th Century Southeast Asia

by Farish A. Noor (Editor), Peter Carey (Editor)

The colonisation of Southeast Asia was a long and often violent process where numerous military campaigns were waged by the colonial powers across the region. The notion of racial difference was crucial in many of these wars, as native Southeast Asian societies were often framed in negative terms as 'savage' and 'backward' communities that needed to be subdued and 'civilised'. This collection of critical essays focuses on the colonial construction of race and looks at how the colonial wars in 19th-century Southeast Asia were rationalised via recourse to theories of racial difference, making race a significant factor in the wars of Empire. Looking at the colonial wars in Java, Borneo, Siam, the Philippines, the Malay Peninsula and other parts of Southeast Asia, the essays examine the manner in which the idea of racial difference was weaponised by the colonising powers and how forms of local resistance often worked through such colonial structures of identity politics.

Genres: History

288 pages, Hardcover

Published January 15, 2021

About the author

Dr. Farish Ahmad Noor (born 15 May 1967 in Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia) is a Malaysian political scientist and historian and is presently a Senior Fellow at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. At the NTU he is part of the research cluster on the contemporary development of trans-national religio-political networks across South and Southeast Asia, where he is studying the phenomenon of Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist religio-political mobilisation in the public domain.

He was formerly attached to Zentrum Moderner Orient (Centre for Modern Oriental Studies) in Berlin, Germany, Sciences-Po Paris, the Institute for the Study of Muslim Society (ISIMM, Ecole des haute etudes et sciences sociale, EHESS), Paris and the International Institute for the Study of the Muslim World (ISIM), Leiden, Netherlands. Dr. Noor's teaching credits include the Centre for Civilisational Dialogue, University of Malaya, the Institute for Islamic Studies, Free University Berlin, Sunan Kalijaga Islamic University (Jogjakarta), Muhamadiyah University Surakarta and Nanyang Technological University presently.
At NTU/RSIS he teaches two courses: (1) History, Society and Politics of Malaysia and (2) Introduction to Discourse Analysis. The first is part of the RSIS area studies curricula (which also covers Indonesia) while the second is a foundational course in Philosophy of Language, Linguistics and Semiotics with a heavy emphasis on Critical Theory as developed by the Essex School of Discourse Analysis.

He received his BA in Philosophy & Literature from the University of Sussex in 1989, before studying for an MA in Philosophy at the same University in 1990, an MA in South-East Asian Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, before completing his PhD at the University of Essex in 1997 in the field of governance and politics.

Dr Noor also runs a research site www.othermalaysia.org along with Dr Yusseri Yusoff, which looks at the history of Malaysia from an alternative, deconstructive angle and which attempts to demonstrate the constructiveness and contingency behind historical development, particularly of nation-states from the pre-colonial to post-colonial era.

Over the past ten years he has also been researching the phenomenon of transnational and translocal religio-political movements, including missionary movements such as the Tablighi Jama'at and its networks from South to Southeast Asia; as well as the development of religio-politics in South and Southeast Asia, looking at the rise of Muslim, Christian and Hindu political-religious revivalism in particular.

His other interests include antiques and material history, and he has written about the plastic arts of Southeast Asia, focusing on things such as the Indonesian-Malaysian keris to the development of woodcarving and architecture.
Farish has also appeared in the semi-documentary film The Big Durian (film), directed by Amir Muhammad.

Reviews

[Christopher Reinhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is indeed a mind-blowing read. The authors of this volume shed the light on the side of history that only some people gave attention to. I think the focus on racial perspective is the novelty of this book, it opens up an unusual but important side of the story of wars and colonialism in SE Asia.