The Blood of the People: Revolution and the End of Traditional Rule in Northern Sumatra

In northern Sumatra, as in Malaya, colonial rule embraced an extravagant array of sultans, rajas, datuks and ulèëbalangs. In Malaya the traditional Malay elite served as a barrier to revolutionary change and survived the transition to independence, but in Sumatra a wave of violence and killing wiped out the traditional elite in 1945?46. Anthony Reid’s The Blood of the People, now available in a new edition, explores the circumstances of Sumatra’s sharp break with the past during what has been labelled its “social revolution”.         The events in northern Sumatra were among the most dramatic episodes of Indonesia’s national revolution, and brought about more profound changes even than in Java, from where the revolution is normally viewed. Some ethnic groups saw the revolution as a popular, peasant-supported movement that liberated them from foreign rule. Others, though, felt victimised by a radical, levelling agenda imposed by outsiders. Java, with a relatively homogeneous population, passed through the revolution without significant social change. The ethnic complexity of Sumatra, in contrast, meant that the revolution demanded an altogether new “Indonesian” identity to override the competing ethnic categories of the past.

The blood of the people: Revolution and the end of traditional rule in northern Sumatra

Reid, Anthony

Oxford University Press

Tropic Fever: The Adventures of a Planter in Sumatra (Oxford in Asia Paperbacks)

History

Szikely, Ladislao

Saunders, Marion

Asia

Pp. xvi, 275; 47 black-and-white text-figures (mostly halftones). Publisher's original tan cloth, lettered in green, in original pictorial dust jacket, 8vo. During the period, 1450-1680, Southeast Asia experienced an increase in international trade and monetization, the rise of great cities with the formation of new states and cultures around them. Volume 1, offered here, documents the origin of these trends (from the jacket flap). No ownership marks and no signs of use.

Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680: The Lands Below the Winds

Yale Univ Pr

Between the fifteenth and the mid-seventeenth centuries, when the Renaissance and early capitalism were transforming Europe, changes no less dramatic were occurring in Southeast Asia. This diverse tropical region was integrated into a global trade system, while trade-based cities came to dominate its affairs. Its states became more centralized and absolutist, and its people adopted scriptural faiths of personal morality. The pace of these changes finds parallels only in our own era. Anthony Reid has analyzed and vividly portrayed this Southeast Asian Age of Commerce in two volumes. The first volume, published in 1988 to great acclaim, explored the physical, material, cultural, and social structures of the region. The concluding volume focuses on the profound changes that defined the Age of Commerce as a period. The spice trade that animated the global boom of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries made possible revolutionary changes in urbanization, commercialization, state structure, and belief. Islam, Christianity, and Theravada Buddhism made rapid gains in alliance with the new states. Reid discerns common ground between these developments and the forces transforming Europe and Japan but identifies particular limitations on the growth of private capital and the stability of states in Southeast Asia. A final chapter explores the crisis in the mid-seventeenth century that disengaged Southeast Asians from the world economy for the next three centuries. Anthony Reid is professor of Southeast Asian history, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.

Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680: Volume One: The Lands below the Winds

Americas

Yale University Press

From 1450 to 1680 when the Renaissance and early capitalism were transforming Europe, changes were occuring in Southeast Asia. Volume one explored the physical, material, cultural and social structures of the region, this volume focuses on the changes that defined the Age of Commerce as a period.

Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680: Volume 2, Expansion and Crisis

Between the fifteenth and the mid-seventeenth centuries, when the Renaissance and early capitalism were transforming Europe, changes no less dramatic were occurring in Southeast Asia. This diverse tropical region was integrated into a global trade system, while trade-based cities came to dominate its affairs. Its states became more centralized and absolutist, and its people adopted scriptural faiths of personal morality. The pace of these changes finds parallels only in our own era. Anthony Reid has analyzed and vividly portrayed this Southeast Asian Age of Commerce in two volumes. The first volume, published in 1988 to great acclaim, explored the physical, material, cultural, and social structures of the region. The concluding volume focuses on the profound changes that defined the Age of Commerce as a period. The spice trade that animated the global boom of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries made possible revolutionary changes in urbanization, commercialization, state structure, and belief. Islam, Christianity, and Theravada Buddhism made rapid gains in alliance with the new states. Reid discerns common ground between these developments and the forces transforming Europe and Japan but identifies particular limitations on the growth of private capital and the stability of states in Southeast Asia. A final chapter explores the crisis in the mid-seventeenth century that disengaged Southeast Asians from the world economy for the next three centuries.

Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Political Identity in Southeast Asia

Cambridge University Press

The mid-twentieth century marked one of the greatest watersheds of Asian history, when a range of imperial constructs were declared to be nation-states, either by revolution or decolonisation. Nationalism was the great alchemist, turning the base metal of empire into the gold of nations. To achieve such a transformation from the immense diversity of these Asian empires required a different set of forces from those that Europeans had needed in their transitions from multi-ethnic empires to culturally homogeneous nations. In this book Anthony Reid explores the mysterious alchemy by which new political identities have been formed. Taking Southeast Asia as his example, Reid tests contemporary theory about the relation between modernity, nationalism, and ethnic identity. Grappling with concepts emanating from a very different European experience of nationalism, Reid develops his own typology to better fit the formation of political identities such as the Indonesian, Malay, Chinese, Acehnese, Batak and Kadazan.

The Indonesian revolution demands attention as a revolution, and as an important chapter in the collapse of Western colonialism. In the first place, however, it is the watershed of modern Indonesian history, and must be understood in terms of that history.

The Indonesian National Revolution, 1945-1950 (Studies in Contemporary Southeast Asia)

Prentice-Hall Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Reid, Anthony. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Reid, Anthony

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Reid, Anthony. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The blood of the people: Revolution and the end of traditional rule in northern Sumatra

Tropic Fever: The Adventures of a Planter in Sumatra (Oxford in Asia Paperbacks)

Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680: The Lands Below the Winds

Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680: Volume One: The Lands below the Winds

Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680: Volume 2, Expansion and Crisis

Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680: Volume 2, Expansion and Crisis

Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Political Identity in Southeast Asia

Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Political Identity in Southeast Asia

Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Political Identity in Southeast Asia

The Indonesian National Revolution, 1945-1950 (Studies in Contemporary Southeast Asia)