Adapting to Political and Economic Change: Palembang in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract

Over fifty years ago the young Dutch scholar, J.C. Van Leur, bemoaned the lack of attention accorded the eighteenth century in Indonesia. A primary reason for this neglect, Van Leur contended, was the tendency to equate indigenous historical patterns with those of Europe, and to view this period as `merely a sequel' to the seventeenth century, the Golden Age of Dutch power. The problem was compounded because the Dutch East India Company (VOC) records, which supplied the bulk of historical data, were generally less informative for the eighteenth century than for earlier times. However, the lack of academic research was most pronounced in regard to `outlying posts', with significant Indonesian states like Palembang, Siak, Aceh and Johor commonly dismissed as decaying, despotic, piratical and `economically undermined'.1