SUVANNABHUMI (수완나부미)

Korea Institute for ASEAN Studies (부산외대 아세안연구원)
권호 표지
DOI QR코드

DOI QR Code

When Disease Defines a Place: Batavia in British Diplomatic and Military Narratives, 1775-1850

  • Received : 2021.09.17
  • Accepted : 2022.06.30
  • Published : 2022.07.31
Download PDF
⟨ Previous Next ⟩

Abstract

The full impact of COVID-19 has yet to be felt: while it may not define the new decade, it is clear that its immediate significance was to test many of the basic operating assumptions and procedures of global civilization. Even as vaccines are developed and utilized and even as it is possible to see the beginning of the end of COVID-19 as a discrete historical event, it remains unclear as to its ultimate importance. That said, it is evident that the academic exploration of Southeast Asia will also be affected by both the global and regional experiences of the pandemic. "Breakthroughs of Area Studies and ASEAN in the Era of Homo Untact" promises to help reconceptualize the study of the region by highlighting the importance of redefined spatial relationships and new potentially depersonalized modes of communication. This paper acknowledges these issues by suggesting that the transformations caused by the pandemic should motivate scholars to raise new questions about how to understand humanity-particularly as it is defined by societies, nations and regions. Given that COVID-19 (and the response to it) has altered many of the fundamental rhythms of globalized regions, there is sufficient warrant for re-examining both the ways in which disease, health and their related spaces affect the perceptions of Southeast Asia. To achieve "breakthroughs" into the investigation of the region, it makes sense to have another glance at the ways in which the discourses about diseases and health may have helped to inscribe definitions of Southeast Asia-or, at the very least, the nations, societies and peoples who live within it. In order to at least consider these larger issues, the discussion will concentrate on a formative moment in the conceptualization of Southeast Asia-British engagement with the region in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. To that end three themes will be highlighted: (1) the role that British diplomatic and military narratives played in establishing the information priorities required for the construction of colonial knowledge; (2) the importance not only of "colonial knowledge" but information making in its own right; (3) in anticipation of the use of big data, the manner in which manufactured information (related to space and disease) could function in shaping early British perceptions of Southeast Asia-particularly in Batavia and Java. This discussion will suggest that rather than see social distancing or increased communication as the greatest outcome of COVID-19, instead it will be the use of data-that is, big, aggregated biometric data which have not only shaped responses to the pandemic, but remain likely to produce the reconceptualization of both information and knowledge about the region in a way that will be at least as great as that which took place to meet the needs of the "New Imperialism." Furthermore, the definition and articulation of Southeast Asia has often reflected political and security considerations. Yet, the experience of COVID-19 could prove that data and security are now fused into a set of interests critical to policy-makers. Given that the pandemic should accelerate many existing trends, it might be foreseen these developments will herald the triumph of homo indicina: an epistemic condition whereby the human subject has become a kind of index for its harvestable data. If so, the "breakthroughs" for those who study Southeast Asia will follow in due course.

Keywords

References

  1. Andersen, Finn et al. 2011. Trends in Malaria Research in 11 Asian Pacific Countries: An Analysis of Peer-reviewed Publications of Two Decades. Malaria Journal, 1010, no. 131.
  2. Baird, J. Kevin. 2015. Malaria in the Asia Pacific Region. The Asia Pacific Journal, 13 (45): 1-9.
  3. Baird, J. Kevin. 2017. Asia-Pacific Malaria is Singular, Pervasive, Diverse and Invisible. International Journal for Parasitology, 47 (7): 371-377. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpara.2016.06.006
  4. Blusse, Leonard. 2008. Visible Cities Canton, Nagasaki, and Batavia and the Coming of the Americans. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  5. Bosma, Ulbe. 2013. The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia Industrial Production, 1770-2010. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  6. Bruijn, Iris Diane Rosemary. 2009. Ship's Surgeons of the Dutch East India Company: Commerce and the Progress of Medicine in the Eighteenth Century. Leiden: Amsterdam University Press.
  7. Elyazar, Iqbal R.F., Hay, Simon L., and Baird, J. Kevin. 2011. Malaria Distribution, Prevalence, Drug Resistance and Control in Indonesia. Public Health Resources, 342. Digital Commons University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
  8. Glendinning, Victoria. 2012. Raffles and the Golden Opportunity. Profile Books.
  9. King, Victor T. 1987. Hendrik Tillema and Borneo. Borneo Research Bulletin, 19 (1): 3-15.
  10. McCandless, Peter. 2011. Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry. Cambridge University Press.
  11. McNeill, William H. 1976. Plagues and Peoples. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
  12. Noor, Farish A. 2020. Data Gathering in Southeast Asia 1800-1900: Framing the Other. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
  13. Porter, Roy. 1997. The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity. New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company.
  14. Raffles, Sir Thomas Stamford. 1830. The History of Java, 2 vols. Second Edition. London: John Murray.
  15. Ricklefs, Merle C. 2008. A History of Modern Indonesia Since C.1200. 4th Edition. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
  16. Snodgrass, Major. 1827. Narrative of the Burmese War, Detailing the Operations of Major General Archibald Campbell's Army from Its Landing at Rangoon in May 1824, To the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty at Yandaboo, in February 1826. London: John Murray.
  17. Snowden, Frank M. 2019. Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
  18. Sontag, Susan. 1977. Illness as Metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  19. Stockdale, John Joseph. 1811. Sketches, Civil and Military, of the Island of Java and Its Immediate Dependencies: Comprising Interesting Details of Batavia and Authentic Particulars of the Celebrated Poison-Tree. Reprinted with introduction by John Bastin. 1995. Singapore: Periplus.
  20. Thorn, Major William. 1815. The Conquest of Java. Reprinted with introduction by John Bastin.1995 Singapore: Periplus.
  21. Tsao, Tiffany. 2013. Environmentalism and Civilizational Development in the Colonial British Histories of the Indian Archipelago (1783-1820). Journal of the History of Ideas, 74 (3): 449-471. https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2013.0027
  22. Van der Brug, P.H. 1997. Malaria in Batavia in the 18th Century. Tropical Medicine and International Health, 2(9): 892-902. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-3156.1997.d01-408.x