| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

M. C. Ricklefs. The Seen and Unseen Worlds in Java, 1726–1749: History, Literature, and Islam in the Court of Pakubuwana II. (Asian Studies Association of Australia Southeast Asia Publication Series.) Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, in association with the Asian Studies Association of Australia. 1998. Pp. xxiv, 391. $35.00.

This is a book about evidence. It uses the troublesome reign of a troubling king in troubled mid-eighteenth century Java as a kind of test case for historical methods and interweaves a narrative and a historiographical exegesis of the known documentary sources, principally Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) reports and correspondence on the one hand and Javanese historical and religious literature on the other. It seeks to explore the connections between ideas and actions, but on the strict basis of existing records rather than on speculation or postmodernist appraisal. It seeks to stake out the limits of what we can and cannot know about Javanese thought and political life during this crucial period, when the Mataram court faced Dutch power. Some will find the approach as well as the goal rather old-fashioned; my own view is that they constitute both a powerful warning and a first-class guide for future scholarship. . . .

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