World War I had just broken out, but colonial authorities in the Netherlands Indies heaved a sigh of relief: The colonial export sector had not collapsed and war offered new economic prospects; representatives from the Islamic nationalist movement had prayed for God to bless the Netherlands but had not seized upon the occasion to incite unrest. Furthermore, the colonial government, impressed by…
After violent protests all over the country had forced President Suharto to step down in 1998, Indonesia successfully made the transition from an authoritarian state to a democracy. In this book Indonesian scholars attached to Islamic universities and Dutch researchers investigate what happened since and what the consequences are of the growing influence of orthodoxy and radicalism, which alrea…
Recent years have shown an increase in interest in the study of cleanliness from a historical and sociological perspective. Many of such studies on bathing and washing, on keeping the body and the streets clean, and on filth and the combat of dirt, focus on Europe. In Cleanliness and culture attention shifts to the tropics, to Indonesia, in colonial times as well as in the present. Subjects ran…