Cempaka Culture and Tourism: New sources on Indonesia's regional history discussed

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

“… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …”

Sunday, September 30, 2007

New sources on Indonesia's regional history discussed

Hendrik E. Niemeijer, Contributor The Jakarta Post, Denpasar, Bali

One of the crucial orientation points in the search for Indonesia's (future) identity is history.

Local identity, regional autonomy, the rise of Islam and Christianity, centralization of government, environmental changes, natural disasters, corruption, the encounter with the West -- all hot topics have their own history.

The problem is that national history hardly deals with them, and that the collective memory does not recall much.

Bali conference on collective memory

The functioning of national collective memory was debated among archivists and historians at a conference in Bali held Sept. 3 through 5.

The organizer, Arsip Nasional Republic Indonesia (ANRI), invited several heads of national archives from Sri Lanka, India, Portugal, the UK, Australia, Singapore, South Africa and Surname. These countries keep interesting records on their past contacts with Indonesia. Archivists from these countries presented their collections.

New finding aid of VOC records

Special emphasis was given to the cooperation with the Netherlands.

State Minister of Administrative Reforms Taufiq Effendi received the first copy of a 571-page book Arsip-arsip Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie dan lembaga-lembaga pemerintahan kota Batavia.

On this occasion, the Minister of Home Affairs of Suriname, Mr. Maurtis Hassankhan, also received the book. The Director General of ANRI, Mr. Djoko Utomo, explained how the book contains the final inventories of hundreds of meters of records of the former VOC (1602-1795).

The fact that ministers from both Indonesia and Suriname paid full attention to VOC-records and colonial archives is not only a sign of the much improved political relations between the Netherlands and its former colonies, but also demonstrates a growing political awareness of the importance of an objective re-evaluation of historical relations.

In his speech last year at the opening of the academic year of Leiden University, Taufiq rightly analyzed Indonesia's history from a global perspective.

Regional and 'autonomous' history

VOC-records offer many insights concerning the so-called "Age of Reconnaissance" or "Age of Partnership". Thousands of records witness the first personal encounters between Asians and Europeans.

These encounters offer many surprises. When the Dutch arrived on Java around 1600, they discovered that the Javanese were of their own size and "physically well-shaped".

For Indonesia, VOC-records are absolutely invaluable to study local and regional 17th- and 18th-Century history. At the Bali conference, several Indonesian archivists from the different kabupaten (regencies) and provinces were present.

The regions suffer from an almost complete lack of historical documentation when they aim to establish their own museums and libraries. The VOC-records offer a rich documentation from the times that most of the regions of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago were still independent sultanates and principalities.

Historians have already started a reevaluation of regional Indonesian history in the 1970s, after colonial history writing had been declared dead.

While Indonesia's historians were completely occupied by constructing national history, U.S. and Australian historians such as M.C. Ricklefs, L.Y. Andaya and A. Reid did something completely different.

They started to focus on regional "autonomous" Southeast Asian history. Much research was done in the 1.5 kilometers of VOC records being kept in the National Archives of the Netherlands in The Hague. The VOC records also constitute important data on Japan, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Iran and Yemen.

In 2004 UNESCO rightly included the VOC records in its Memory of the World Register.

New partnerships on mutual heritage

With the new Indonesian inventory, some of the two kilometers of VOC archives kept in the ANRI depots are now accessible to the public. The finding aid is the outcome of seven years of cooperation between Indonesian and Dutch archivist in the program "Towards a New Age of Partnership" (www.tanap.net).

Recently Leiden University launched a new program called "Encountering a Common Past" (Encompass) to train Indonesian historian and archivists.

Hopefully, these initiatives will be followed by more projects including also the period up to 1942. ANRI also keeps some 10 kilometers of 19th- and 20th-Century Dutch archives. ANRI keeps the fourth-largest collection of Dutch archives anywhere in the world.

Since Indonesia's independence, the Indonesian government has had the wisdom to finance the preservation of these Dutch collections and not in vain. An increasing number of well-trained Indonesian historians make use of them for a modern rediscovery of the rich history of the different regions of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago.

Hendrik E. Niemeijer is a historian at Leiden University, The Netherlands.