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Lecture: Comparing Different Colonial and Imperial Policies in Southeast Asia

The Department of Historical Sociology, Faculty of Humanities, CU is pleased to invite you to the guest lecture "Why Was Indonesia Not a White Settler Colony? Comparing Different Colonial and Imperial Policies in Southeast Asia" which will be delivered by prof. J. I. Hans Bakker (University of Guelph, Canada). The lecture will take place in Jinonice on Tuesday, October 8.

The lecture is part of the lecture series "Historical Sociology Confrontations".

Abstract of the lecture:

The Republic of Indonesia as it exists today is a secular nation-state. It is not a "white" country in the same sense as many of the so-called former "white settler colonies" (WSCs). Australia or Canada are WSCs even though of course there are many "aboriginal" or indigenous people in these countries. But the Republic of Indonesia has no specifically "white" European population. Instead, there are hundreds (N = 400+ ) of ethnic groups and even more languages ( N = 900+). So why did the archipelago of 7,400 islands not become a WST when it is claimed the "Dutch" were there since at least 1815? The basic answer is that the Netherlands East Indies actively discouraged settlement by people from Europe. Many Europeans came, but almost all of them were forced to leave. However, even if they had to leave (often at age 55) many ALSO left children. Those offspring eventually blended into the so-called Indo-European population and are now fully Indonesian citizens. The situation in Indonesia is very different from the United States of America where the "one drop rule" applies even today. Indonesia is an interesting case and there are few examples elsewhere. In Vietnam, for example, the French colonial policy encouraged the notion that all people in their colonies were to become really French.

Prof. J.I. Hans Bakker taught Sociology and Anthropology at four different universities early in his career but became a Full Professor at the University of Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. His work has focused on Comparative Historical Sociology with an empirical emphasis on Indic Civilization. He has written about Gandhi and about colonialism in the Indonesian archipelago before independence. He has also done consulting work for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in Sulawesi, Indonesia, some of which involved studying the Bajo (Bajau, Sea Nomad) people. His recent edited books are entitled: The Methodology of Political Economy: Studying the Global Rural-Urban Matrix (Lexington, 2015) and Rural Sociologists at Work: Candid Accounts of Theory, Method, and Practice (Routledge, 2016). He guest edited a special issue of the journal Sociological Focus on Grounded Theory (2019). In addition to his academic activities he is also very interested in religious institutions and spiritual paths, having studied Tibetan Buddhism and the history of Judaism and Christianity in depth. His philosophical orientation is based on the work of Wilhelm Dilthey and his sociological theory is Neo-Weberian but also includes aspects of Neo-Marxian World Systems Theory (WST) (e.g. Wallerstein).

Website: http://jihansbakker.com/

Visit and guest lectures of prof. Hans Bakker were supported by the PROGRES Q20 "Kultura a společnost".