Submerged Histories: Remembering Histories of the Spice Trade and the Banda Massacres in Indonesia 

The event examined renewed Chinese attention to the history of the Silk Road and how, beginning in 2021, the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Research and Technology initiated efforts to research and promote new maritime histories of Indonesia. These initiatives included long histories of Indonesian trade in spices that sought to challenge Western narratives surrounding the discovery and trade of spices.

A central focus of the presentation was the large-scale project Jalur Rempah (the Spice Route), which promoted Indonesian transnational connections and regional histories of cultivating and trading specific spices, with particular attention to Indonesia’s Eastern Islands as key sites of origin. The project resulted in new museum displays, a television series, an active Instagram presence promoting tourism and the health benefits of spices, and a sea voyage recreating aspects of the spice route involving young Indonesians. While the initiative was well funded and broad in scope, it also attracted criticism.

The presentation also highlighted that 2021 marked the 400-year anniversary of the Banda Island massacres, carried out by the Dutch army against leaders of the Banda Islands who resisted a Dutch monopoly on the nutmeg trade. This anniversary prompted new forms of remembrance, including the independent photographic project Banda Journal, which drew attention to the diverse legacies of the massacres and the resulting nutmeg monopoly.

While the Spice Route project emphasized renewed pride in Indonesian maritime history and less Javanese-centric narratives, Banda Journal focused on the ongoing reproduction of coloniality through patterns of economic and environmental exploitation in Indonesia up to the present. The talk analyzed these two projects as examples of emerging forms of engagement with colonial history in Indonesia, particularly assessing the extent to which they reflected shifts in collective remembrance. It also examined the roles and motivations of the “memory activists” behind these initiatives.

 

 

Katharine McGregor is Professor of Southeast Asian History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. Kate has researched many topics related to Indonesian history and struggles with memory and violence from the colonial period through to the present. Her most recent book Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia (Critical Human Rights Series, University of Wisconsin Press, 2023) which focuses on memory activism in relation to Indonesian survivors of the system of the Japanese army’s “comfort women” system (1942-1945) won the 2024 NSW Premier's General History Prize. Kate is currently working on the research project Submerged Histories: Collaborative Memory Activism Indonesia and the Netherlands. She is also a research co- lead for the University of Melbourne's History, Memory and Decolonial Futures Research Collective and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences.

 

Nhung Tuyet Tran is Associate Professor in History at the University of Toronto. Her research interests lie at the intersection of gender, religion, and the law in eary modern Southeast Asia.