This book is a daring exercise in historical anthropology. The author has accepted the challenge of confronting a series of daunting problems connected with the definition of ethnicity and specific ethnic groups and the construction of a framework for coping with changes in indigenous concepts of ethnicity over a period of almost 2,000 years. It is unlikely that all readers will agree with his solutions, but there is no obvious flaw in his reasoning if one accepts his postulations. If the main criterion for judging his typology is a functional one, then one must admire his enterprise, for it enables him to make a major contribution to his chosen topic—the history of the evolution of ethnic groups in the notoriously complicated mélange of cultural entities in the Straits of Melaka—and to identify the role of the general variable of exchange in shaping the course of this evolution. He sets a stiff challenge for other historians: to think much more cautiously about how they perceive ethnic difference as a source of conflict in Southeast Asia.
Historians can provide important data for social scientists who wish to understand the evolution of the modern concept of ethnicity. The two poles to avoid are the idea that ethnic identities and even the concept of the ethnic group in general have always existed in their present form, and the opposing view that the entire concept of ethnicity is a recent development. As Andaya notes, “there is every reason to believe that group identity based on shared beliefs, practices, and real and fictive ancestors would have been as significant in the past” (p. 3).
Andaya is not the first to broach this topic. He cites David Wyatt and Victor Liberman as precursors. This is, however, the first book to focus on the evolution of the concept of ethnicity as perceived by Southeast Asians themselves at the center of inquiry. Andaya's area of expertise, the Straits of Melaka, is a suitable laboratory for such an experiment. In a well-written and concise introductory chapter, he achieves a major feat by summarizing anthropological discourse on ethnicity in a plain and coherent fashion, and he concludes the theoretical summary by stating his intention to focus on the process of ethnic formation. After the first chapter, in which he lays out his theoretical framework, subsequent chapters focus on the formation of specific ethnic groups and categories. Chapter 2 deals with Malayu culture, followed by chapters on the Minangkabau, Acehnese, Batak, Orang Laut (sea nomads), and Orang Asli (aboriginal inhabitants) of the Malay Peninsula.
Chapter 2 places the homeland of Malayu culture in southeast Sumatra and dates it to the period of Srivijaya's eminence, the seventh through eleventh centuries. Archaeology provides some support for this idea in that types of pottery appear just before this time, which then spread over an area approximately congruent with that of the Straits of Melaka, but include western Java and western Borneo. It is unfortunate that we lack firm dates for the origin of what might be termed Malay-style pottery. Recently discovered sites in southeast Sumatra may help resolve this question.
Chapter 3 dates the emergence of Minangkabau as an ethnic identity equivalent to Malayu to the late fifteenth century. The “ethnicization” of the Minang accelerated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, stimulated by increasing trade and by economic competition with neighboring groups. Chapter 4 deals with the rise of Aceh after the fall of Melaka in 1511. For almost two centuries, Aceh adopted various aspects of Malayu culture, particularly its language, until Johor surpassed Aceh in economic stature. Thereafter, Aceh began to promote its own identity based on language, agriculture, and Islam. In a very interesting section, Andaya shows how at least a significant segment of Acehnese society came to emphasize agriculture as preferable to commerce. Andaya concludes that Aceh and the Minangkabau both pretended to the title of overlordship in the Straits of Melaka, but after a period of success, both areas were marked by a contrary effort to distinguish themselves from the Malayu.
Chapter 5 argues that the ethnicization of the Batak took place between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries (p. 170). We know nothing about the groups that may have preceded this reformation. It is possible that the important trade relations between the northern Sumatran highlands and both the east and west coasts, which Andaya demonstrates had already existed in the preceding centuries, stimulated this process, if it had not even begun earlier. This illustrates one important problem for this study: that historical methods can only probe those periods for which written documents are available. This research could be extended further in time through pottery analysis. The types of pottery identified with Malayo-Polynesians and specifically Malayu people began to be made around 1,500 years ago. It is distinctive from that of the Javanese and from that of the Batak. We cannot say anything at present about premodern Minangkabau pottery, although pottery making has until recently been an omnipresent village handicraft in the Minang highlands. Just as language is not perfectly correlated with genetic ancestry, neither is pottery. However, the degree of correlation is relatively high, and the pursuit of this approach is worthy of attention.
Was the formation of a Malayu identity the stimulus that caused (or was correlated with) the development of the other identities? This is not necessarily true. Such ethnicization may well have taken place much earlier, though expressed in different forms and intensities as a result of lower population mobility and density and therefore less frequent contact between people from different geographic origins. Archaeology should enable us to test Andaya's hypotheses using an alternative set of data.
In chapters 6 and 7, Andaya emphasizes a basic argument: that the ethnicization process “rests fundamentally on calculations of optimal economic advantage to be gained from the rich international trade flowing through the Straits of Melaka” (p. 172). That the concept of ethnicity was an important classificatory device for Southeast Asians throughout the last 1,500 years, the entire historical period, is not in doubt. On the other hand, anthropological research has shown that ethnic identities in Southeast Asia were particularly fluid and did not always imply genetic relationships. Edmund Leach's seminal work on highland Burma was one of the first studies to examine how ethnicity was contingent on ecological adaptation, and that individuals could exchange identities by explicit alterations to lifestyle. Andaya gives some examples of the same procedure in the Straits of Melaka. This gives the impression that ethnicity in Southeast Asia in some contexts was seen as an indicator of ecological orientation, and a recognition that different forms of social organization were more adaptive than others in certain habitats or environmental niches.
Throughout much of history, as long as population remained sparse, the relationship between ethnic groups was marked by a kind of complementary symbiosis rather than antagonism. Population growth has resulted in a basic redefinition of the relationship between ethnic groups and the disappearance or marginalization of some identities as their economic utility (e.g., forest gatherers) has declined. Pursuing the evolutionary analogy, one could argue that Aceh and Malayu possibly were economic competitors on more or less the same level for a brief period, trying to monopolize the same niche.
This review cannot do justice to the intellectual stimulation that this volume provides. It is to be hoped that it will initiate a debate in which historians and anthropologists can both participate.
