In the Tradition or Outside? Reflections on Teachers and Influences

In this autobiographical essay, Martin van Bruinessen looks back at the diverse intellectual influences that contributed to his formation as a scholar of Indonesian Islam. He was never trained as an Indonesianist or a scholar of Islam, and came to the subject through a series of unplanned changes in his life trajectory. His first acquaintance with Indonesia was through late colonial and post-colonial Dutch literature. It was followed in his student days by critical reporting on the massacres of 1965-66 and a re-reading of Indonesian history from an anti-imperialist viewpoint. His formal academ... Mehr ...