Professor James T. Siegel

War versus Holy War: The Literature of a Sumatran Jihad

Event details

Date: Thursday 14 May 2015, 5.15pm - 6.30pm

Venue: Meadows Lecture Theatre, William Robertson Wing, Old Medical School, Doorway 4, Teviot Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9AG

Biography

Image

James T. Siegel is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Asian Studies at Cornell University. He has published several books including Shadow and Sound: The Historical Thought of a Sumatran People (1978), Solo in the New Order: Language and Hierarchy in an Indonesian City (1993), Fetish, Recognition, Revolution (1997), A New Criminal Type in Jakarta: Counter-Revolution Today (1998), The Rope of God (2000), Naming the Witch (Cultural Memory in the Present) (2005) and Objects and Objections of Ethnography (2010).

Lecture abstract

In 1873 Dutch forces invaded the Sultanate of Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra. This set off fierce opposition that some historians claim lasted until the Japanese drove out the Dutch.

Most historians however say that the war was over by 1914. By that date the sultan had been deposed and died, his heir was banished, the local chiefs who had taken over the war had been killed or put down, the religious scholars who succeeded them were killed or put down.

The end of organized opposition did not end the holy war, however. Individuals continued to attack infidels. The transmission of the holy war no longer depended on its leadership since there was none. In its place was an 'epic' of the war, blamed by the Dutch for the continuing attacks against them.

The lecture will examine the formal characteristics of this long verse to show how it sustained a further 25 years of lethal aggression by those defeated in war as we understand it.