On Southeast Asian Terms. Tracing the Ideas of Local Sultans in the Paper Archives of Colonial Empires.

ended

This project in global diplomatic and colonial history aims to explain how Southeast Asian Sultans’ ideas and perspectives influenced colonial relations in c. 1750-1920. The project’s comparative method focuses on three courts in maritime Southeast Asia (Sulu, Johor, and Mataram) that offer compelling parallels and divergences in their interaction with European colonial powers. The project analyses specific key terms and phrases in manuscripts written and collected at the courts, that reflect on crucial aspects of rulers’ political priorities, ideas and motivations. Building on the applicant’s prior research experience, the research innovatively then uses recent advancements in archival digitization and automatic handwritten text recognition technology, which is applied to trace variations and translations of the key terms and phrases in colonial archival records, primarily the rulers’ correspondence and treaties with colonial powers. By automatically identifying and comparing how Southeast Asian terminology reverberated in the archives and knowledge production of the British, Dutch and Spanish colonial empires in Southeast Asia, the project uncovers the potential influences of local ideas on processes and practices of diplomatic interaction, treaty-making and, thus, on the vocabulary and legal frameworks of European colonial empires. In doing so, the project challenges established paradigms that prioritize European colonial frameworks as the sources of political organization in colonial and postcolonial Southeast Asia. It contributes to growing strands of global history that reveal the influence of non-European actors, practices and knowledge within global frameworks. This encourages more polyvocal and less Eurocentric perspectives in public debate and history writing to clarify the long-term consequences of colonialism and its impact on international relations and current socio-political fabrics, identities and conflicts in and beyond Southeast Asia.