Papers

• Forest Governance and Bureaucratic Knowledge Production in American Colonial Philippines Angelo Carlo Reyes Galindo Wageningen University

  This study traces how colonial environmental governance in the American era Philippines operated through the everyday administration of land and forests. Drawing from early twentieth-century reports, including those from the Bureau of Forestry, this study traces how forest-related land-use practices, including shifting cultivation, were rendered visible, measurable, and governable through bureaucratic knowledge. These forest-related reports functioned as technologies of surveillance that enabled the management of populations and their relations to land, translating local land-use activities into standardized and administratively legible forms. By examining the routine workings of forestry administration, the study shows how empire was sustained through mundane techniques of documentation and oversight that structured the terms under which land could be used, regulated, and, at times, selectively permitted or constrained. Forest governance thus emerges as a political and epistemic process through which land use was categorized, differentiated, and brought under administrative control.

• Compulsion or Choice? Physician-Patient Encounters in American Colonial Philippines Bianca Angelien Claveria Leiden University

  By engaging with the histories of biomedical experiments involving tuberculous and leprous patients in American colonial Philippines (early 20th century), this paper attempts to critically re-appraise the dynamics of physician-patient relationships, particularly in how physicians made their decisions, and how patients participated in the decision-making process. This research has identified notable sources (e.g. patient case histories) on tuberculosis and leprosy which, when critically read against the grain and through the lens of medical ethics, depicted how a physician’s judgment was not the only resounding voice in a medical encounter. Physicians benefitted from the exchanges of knowledge and experiences from their colleagues in the medical field, and gave ample opportunities for their patients to either question, resist, or even completely abandon their treatments. It is important to emphasize this, considering that these adaptable aspects of the physician-patient relationship existed at a time of rigid, disciplinary, and at times exclusionary colonial policies on the prevention of infectious diseases in the country.

• Gift-Giving Practice in the 19th Century Colonial Indonesia Nuranisa Nuranisa Leiden University

  Diplomatic connections between the Javanese court and the Dutch colonial government, and to an extent the Dutch monarchy, during colonial Indonesia was displayed, among other ways, through the practice of gift- exchange. Such a practice was already apparent from their initial relations in the early seventeenth century. Despite the shifting balance of power that became prominent following the Java War (1825-30), during which deep-seated colonial interference increasingly penetrated into the Javanese courts, this practice of exchanging gifts continued to exist. One could expect, for example, the presentation of krises (stabbing knives), from Javanese kings and princes as a customary gift on occasions such as life-cycle rituals and court visits. During the voyage of Prince Hendry, the grandson of King William I, to the Archipelago in 1837, he was presented with four krises, among other luxurious objects,by the Sultan of Yogyakarta. Fast forward six decade later, at the investiture of Queen Wilhelmina in 1898, Prince Ario Mataram, on behalf of the Sunan of Surakarta, personally presented to the Dutch queen two beautifully crafted krises alongside the life-size portraits of the Susuhunan and his queen consort. The gifting of portraits became apparent only towards the end of the nineteenth century, with the advent of photography innovations. It is evident that the selections of objects as gifts conveys to us not only the value of the gifts themselves but, more importantly, the symbolic meanings embedded in those objects. This presentation centers around gift-giving and objects used as gifts against the backdrop of Javanese-Dutch relations in the nineteenth century. This also focuses on the very aspect of gifting itself, from the procurement of the gifts to their denouement.

• Eating scenes and the value of food in the early 19th century Java Yuanita Wahyu Pratiwi Wageningen University

  This presentation is an early part of a larger attempt to understand how food security in Java evolved under the solidification of colonial regime throughout the 19th century. In this research, food security is conceptualized as a condition where the function of “food as ends” (as nutritional and caloric input), and “food as means” (socio-cultural and environmental values achieved through food) are met. Tracing the level of food security throughout the nineteenth century responds to a tendency in existing scholarship to address similar question quantitatively. Such approach overlooked how changes in food availability and accessibility affected other dimensions of well-being once sustained through food in a world without a Weberian bureaucracy. To understand how “food as means” and “food as ends” looked like in Java—especially to understand the extent of “food as means”— before the heyday of Dutch colonialism, this presentation shows findings on food scenes in the early 19th century compiled from Javanese and European sources.

Abstract

Keywords

• Javanese-Dutch relation
• biomedical experiments
• bureaucratic practice
• colonial Indonesia
• forest governance
• gift-giving
• knowledge production
• leprosy
• medical ethics
• symbolic meaning
• tuberculosis