Book Reviews 99

Transcending Borders: Arabs, Politics, Trade,
and Islam in Southeast Asia

Huub de Jonge and Nico Kaptein, eds.
Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002. 246 pages.

This collection of essays is a spin-off of a workshop held in December
1997, which was jointly organized by the venerable Koninklijk Instituut
voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (the Royal Institute of Linguistics and
Anthropology) and the more recently established International Institute of
Asian Studies in Leiden, the Netherlands. Both are important resource cen-
ters for the study of Islam in Southeast Asia and are closely connected with
Leiden University, which has a formidable reputation as a centuries-old
center of learning in Islamic and Asian studies. Publications like the present
one show that academic institutions with roots in the colonial past and
which were once part of the now much-criticized scholarly tradition of
“Orientalism” can reinvent themselves and continue to make valuable con-
tributions to the study of non-western cultures.

Transcending Borders focuses on the phenomenon of Arab settlement
in Southeast Asia. Although the role of these migrants in the Islamization
of the Malay–Indonesian archipelago has long been acknowledged, ques-
tions pertaining to their integration into Southeast Asian society and the
resulting impact on their ethnic identity have received far less attention. In
fact, the upsurge in research into these aspects is barely a decade old.
However, the most recent developments in Muslim Southeast Asia will cer-
tainly keep that interest alive, because some of the more militant key play-
ers in Southeast Asian Islamic revivalism are themselves of Hadrami or
southern Arabian descent.

The book’s 10 articles approach the study of Arab migration and set-
tlement from historical, sociological, anthropological, and Islamological
perspectives. However, the editors have taken care to ensure that these dif-
ferent approaches provide intersecting images of the Arab presence in



100 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 22:1

Southeast Asia. In their introductory survey, de Jonge and Kaptein draw
attention to a few key aspects, such as the significance of the migrants’ eco-
nomic success and knowledge of Islam for establishing close (marital) rela-
tions with local dynasties, the marked drop in migration following Europe’s
expansion in Southeast Asia, and a shift from onward migration via earlier
settlement in the Indian subcontinent to a direct movement (almost exclu-
sively of men) from contemporary Yemen’s Hadramaut region to maritime
Southeast Asia after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.

Some of the contributing scholars have themselves produced important
publications in the same field. William Clarence-Smith and Ulrike Freitag’s
Hadrami Traders, Scholars, and Statesmen in the Indian Ocean, 1750s-
1960s (1997) and Sumit Kumar Mandal’s 1994 dissertation, Finding Their
Place: A History of Arabs in Java and under Dutch Rule, 1800-1924 are
landmark contributions to the study of Arabs in Southeast Asia. These
recent publications come out after a century-long lull since L.W.C. van den
Berg’s Le Hadramout et les colonies arabes dans l’archipel indien (1886)
and Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje’s reports and studies during his stint as
the senior government adviser on Islamic affairs in the Dutch East Indies
(1889-1906) and his tenure as a professor of Arabic and Islam at Leiden
University (1906-36). 

Hurgronje’s significance for shaping Dutch perceptions of Islam is
illustrated by de Jonge’s own essay, which focuses on the scholar’s writings
about the Hadrami communities and their connections with pan-Islamism.
De Jonge draws attention to a strange ambiguity in Snouck’s writings: His
objective and empathetic reports on the resident Hadrami communities, as
well as his criticism of their repression by the Dutch authorities, contrast
strangely with his virulent advisories to stamp out any sign of pan-Islamist
activism.

Several articles address the connection between the Hadramis and the
introduction of pan-Islamism into Southeast Asia. Although Engseng
Ho’s essay “Before Parochialization: Diasporic Arabs Cast in Creole
Waters” is primarily concerned with the impact of the diaspora experience
on ethnicity, it provides the necessary historical backdrop for other essays
on political Islam, such as Mohammad Redzuan Othman’s case study of the
political loyalties of Arabs in pre-World War I Malaya and C. van Dijk’s
important article, “Colonial Fears, 1890-1918: Pan-Islamism and the
Germano–Indian Plot.” The main foci of Othman’s article are the complex
interrelations between loyalty toward the British, a vivid interest in the
caliphate question, and internal rivalries between Arabs of sayyid and non-



Book Reviews 101

sayyid descent. But it is van Dijk who best articulates the colonial admin-
istration’s often alarmist views of politicized Islam.

Van Dijk pays ample attention to Ottoman propaganda and interventions
by Turkish diplomats in response to the restrictive measures taken against
Arabs by the European authorities in the Dutch East Indies, such as limiting
the freedom of movement and their objections to seeking an (Islamic) edu-
cation abroad. During World War I, things became further complicated by
fears of a Germano–Turkish infiltration of the British and Dutch colonies in
the Far East. This relationship between Constantinople (Istanbul) and Arab
Muslims is also explored in Ulrike Freitag’s collective biography of
Singapore’s Arab merchants. Although they had penetrated into the top ech-
elons of British colonial society, the merchants’ role as honorary consuls for
the Ottoman Empire was regarded with a fair dose of suspicion.

Freitag has also studied the contacts and interests that these migrants
maintained in the affairs of their homeland. There was a continuous traffic
between the Hadramaut and Southeast Asia as people moved back and forth
to seek a traditional Islamic education in the Middle East and help run the
family’s Asian business, only to return again to play a role in the domestic
politics of the Hadramaut. Proper education for the future generations was
a matter of constant concern, and this theme, along with the closely con-
nected phenomenon of Arabic printing and publishing in Asia, is closely
examined in Sumit Mandal’s contribution.

Although Transcending Borders may not be qualified as being in the
realm of Islamic studies per se, many of the themes have an “Islamic”
angle to them. Thus, the book is a valuable resource for scholars of Islam
with interests in Islamic history during the colonial era, the critique of
Orientalism, subaltern studies, or the comparative study of expatriate Muslim
communities.

Carool Kersten, Arabist and Islamologist  
Thai and Southeast Asian Studies Program

Payap University Chiang Mai, Thailand