22Jul 2023 by foggkwilliam No Comments
Woolgar on Ethnic Politics in West Java

Woolgar on Ethnic Politics in West Java

History
One of the great joys of teaching is when one's students begin to produce awesome work and expand the field in new ways. I worked with a range of awesome graduate students while at Oxford, but today I get to be particularly proud of Dr. Matthew Woolgar, who has recently published an awesome article pushing the boundaries of our understanding of how and why the Indonesian Chinese community has been targeted for violence in specific incidents and calling for a fresh attention to sub-national dynamics in Cold War history. Matt came back to Oxford for graduate work after a Master's at SOAS and time studying Bahasa Indonesia in Yogyakarta, which means he was very prepared for deep fieldwork--even on sensitive subjects. His thesis on communism in West Java from the…
Read More
02Feb 2023 by foggkwilliam No Comments
Frank Porter Graham in Indonesia

Frank Porter Graham in Indonesia

History
I recently created a small digital exhibit on the role of UNC President Dr. Frank Porter Graham on the UN Committee of Good Offices for Indonesia, leading up to the Renville Agreements of January 1948. Dr. Frank (as he was known) was an unusual choice to join the committee as the US representative, since he had no diplomatic experience per se. He had served in several mediator roles and on national committees for the US government, but this role with the United Nations was a big change. In many ways, his work with the UN on Indonesia was later overshadowed by his much longer service on a UN committee for India and Pakistan, which was less successful in achieving a concrete diplomatic outcome. In the course of creating the exhibit,…
Read More
06Feb 2022 by foggkwilliam No Comments
Old Post: Revisionist NU History

Old Post: Revisionist NU History

Contemporary Issues, History
This post was originally from May 22, 2018. In today’s Jakarta Post, K.H. Yahya Cholil Staquf (a leader in Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama and its outreach Bayt ar-Rahmah in North Carolina) has written another piece in his consistent call for the separation of Islam and politics and moderation in religion generally, this one generically titled “Islamist Politics in ‘Reformasi’ Indonesia.”The article is a fine statement of the NU leadership’s opposition to transnationally-oriented Islamism and commitment to the Indonesian state, but it also includes a highly revisionist (I would argue, unsustainably revisionist) interpretation of NU’s history vis-à-vis Islam and the state. In the passage that surprised me most as a historian of Indonesia, the kyai writes, “During the 1950s and ‘60s, [Abdul] Wahab [Hasbullah, then leader of NU] blocked Masyumi from restoring the Jakarta Charter and transforming…
Read More