The Politics of Heritage in Indonesia

This study offers a new approach to the history of sites, archaeology, and heritage formation in Asia, at both the local and the trans-regional levels. Starting at Hindu-Buddhist, Chinese, Islamic, colonial, and prehistoric heritage sites in Indonesia, the focus is on people’s encounters and the knowledge exchange taking place across colonial and post-colonial regimes. Objects are followed as they move from their site of origin to other locations, such as the Buddhist statues from Borobudur temple, that were gifted to King Chulalongkorn of Siam. The ways in which the meaning of these objects transformed as they moved away to other sites reveal their role in parallel processes of heritage formation outside Indonesia. Calling attention to the power of the material remains of the past, Marieke Bloembergen and Martijn Eickhoff explore questions of knowledge production, the relationship between heritage and violence, and the role of sites and objects in the creation of national histories.

Author Biography

Marieke Bloembergen is senior researcher at the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (KITLV), and Professor in Archival and Postcolonial Studies at Universiteit Leiden. She has published on the politics and mobility of knowledge in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia, through the lens of policing and violence, material culture, and heritage practices within inter-Asian and transnational contexts. Martijn Eickhoff is senior researcher at NIOD Instituut voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust- en Genocidestudies, and Professor in Archaeology and Heritage of War and Mass Violence at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands. He has published widely on the relation between archaeology, politics, heritage formation, and mass violence, in Asia and Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.