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Based on close reading of historical documents--poetry as much as statistics--and focused on the conceptualization of technology, this book is an unconventional evocation of late colonial Netherlands East Indies (today Indonesia). In considering technology and the ways that people use and think about things, Rudolf Mrázek invents an original way to talk about freedom, colonialism, nationalism, literature, revolution, and human nature.
The central chapters comprise vignettes and take up, in turn, transportation (from shoes to road-building to motorcycle clubs), architecture (from prison construction to home air-conditioning), optical technologies (from photography to fingerprinting), clothing and fashion, and the introduction of radio and radio stations. The text clusters around a group of fascinating recurring characters representing colonialism, nationalism, and the awkward, inevitable presence of the European cultural, intellectual, and political avant-garde: Tillema, the pharmacist-author of Kromoblanda; the explorer/engineer IJzerman; the "Javanese princess" Kartina; the Indonesia nationalist journalist Mas Marco; the Dutch novelist Couperus; the Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer; and Dutch left-wing liberal Wim Wertheim and his wife.
In colonial Indies, as elsewhere, people employed what Proust called "remembering" and what Heidegger called "thinging" to sense and make sense of the world. In using this observation to approach Indonesian society, Mrázek captures that society off balance, allowing us to see it in unfamiliar positions. The result is a singular work with surprises for readers throughout the social sciences, not least those interested in Southeast Asia or colonialism more broadly.
List of contents
List of Illustrations xi Acknowledgments xiii Preface xv ONE: Language as Asphalt 1 Bare Feet 1 Hard and Clean Roads 4 Struggle for the Roads 8 Language-game 18 Bahasa Indonesia, "Indonesian Language" 31 TWO: Towers 43 Homes on Wheels and Floating Homes 43 The Cities 52 The Camps 60 The Towers 73 THREE: From Darkness to Light 85 The City of Light 85 Dactyloscopy 97 The Floodlight 103 The Sublime 112 The Mirror 120 FOUR: Indonesian Dandy 129 The Dolls 129 The Modern Times 130 Nationalism and the Birth of the Dandy 143 The Death of the Dandy 147 The Parade 154 FIVE: Let Us Become Radio Mechanics 161 The Metaphor 161 The Thing 166 The Voice 174 The Closed Circuits 182 The Mechanics 189 EPILOGUE: Only the Deaf Can Hear Well 193 Sjahrir Recalled 193 Memories of Holland 197 Time in Three Dimensions 202 Bacteria 204 The Splendid Radio 207 The Mouth of Karundeng 210 Sportsmen-Dandies-Jokers-Engineers 215 Ear Culture 220 The Happy End 222 Notes 235 Sources 285 Index 303
About the author
Rudolf Mrázek is Professor of History at the University of Michigan and the author of
Tan Malaka: A Political Personality Structure of Experience, Bali: The Split Gate to Heaven, and
Sjahrir: Politics and Exile in Indonesia.
Summary
Based on close reading of historical documents--poetry as much as statistics--and focused on the conceptualization of technology, this book is an unconventional evocation of late colonial Netherlands East Indies (today Indonesia). In considering technology and the ways that people use and think about things, Rudolf Mrázek invents an original way to talk about freedom, colonialism, nationalism, literature, revolution, and human nature.
The central chapters comprise vignettes and take up, in turn, transportation (from shoes to road-building to motorcycle clubs), architecture (from prison construction to home air-conditioning), optical technologies (from photography to fingerprinting), clothing and fashion, and the introduction of radio and radio stations. The text clusters around a group of fascinating recurring characters representing colonialism, nationalism, and the awkward, inevitable presence of the European cultural, intellectual, and political avant-garde: Tillema, the pharmacist-author of Kromoblanda; the explorer/engineer IJzerman; the "Javanese princess" Kartina; the Indonesia nationalist journalist Mas Marco; the Dutch novelist Couperus; the Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer; and Dutch left-wing liberal Wim Wertheim and his wife.
In colonial Indies, as elsewhere, people employed what Proust called "remembering" and what Heidegger called "thinging" to sense and make sense of the world. In using this observation to approach Indonesian society, Mrázek captures that society off balance, allowing us to see it in unfamiliar positions. The result is a singular work with surprises for readers throughout the social sciences, not least those interested in Southeast Asia or colonialism more broadly.
Additional text
"Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony is a wonderfully moody book. Moody, because it aims at capturing the aura of the Dutch East Indies in the last seventy-five years of colonial rule almost as much as it attempts to tell a critical, historical story. Wonderful, because it succeeds at this project better than any other book that I have read about this particular time and place. One feels as if time travel has been accomplished by the time that the last page is reached. . . . We do not so much analyze the world of this Dutch colony from the nineteenth century into the early twentieth century as we live in it for three hundred pages. . . . It really should be read by anyone who cares about Indonesia."---Eric Tagliacozzo, Journal of Asian Studies
