KOLEKSI RAFFLES DARI JAWA: BUKTI DARI EROPA TENTANG SEBUAH PERADABAN

Green, Alexandra

KOLEKSI RAFFLES DARI JAWA: BUKTI DARI EROPA TENTANG SEBUAH PERADABAN

Resource type

Journal article

Creator (person)

Green, Alexandra

Date published

2020

Abstract

Stamford Raffles was promoted to Lieutenant Governor of Java when the island was captured from the Dutch by the British East India Company in 1811 as part of the Napoleonic wars in Europe. During Raffles’ years on Java, he collected substantial cultural materials, including theatrical objects, musical instruments, coins and amulets, metal sculpture, and drawings of Hindu- Buddhist buildings and sculpture. European interest in antiquities explains the ancient Hindu- Buddhist material in Raffles’ collection, but the theatrical objects are less easily understood. This essay explores Raffles’ collecting practices, addressing the key questions of what he collected and why, as well as what the shape of the collection can tell us about him, his ideas and beliefs, his contemporaries, and Java, including interactions between colonizers and locals. I compared the types of objects in the collections with Raffles’ writings, as well as the writings of his contemporaries on Java and Sumatra in the British Library and the Royal Asiatic Society. Raffles was one of the first people to apply the Enlightenment notion of systematic collecting to cultural material, but his collections were not systematic by Javanese standards, indicating his incomplete understanding of local culture. The objects instead demonstrate that Raffles chose items considered indicative of civilization according to European ideas, assembling objects to support his argument in favor of Java remaining a British colony, as well as to promote his own image as a learned scholar-official.