Lecture 3: Antiquities for sale. Sold!

Legacies of Pre-colonial SEA in the present

Slide 1:
-Current information about what the pre-colonial past mean today to current communities?

Slide 2:
-Emmerson readingquestions asked still resonate today
-What is the nature of that reality?
-Can we (SEA) be fine on our own?

Slide 3:
-part 2: farmers around SEA find in their fields a lot of artefacts, majority of these artefacts
are sold
-what does the pre-colonial SEA mean to the current poor or rich?
-Are museums the solutions?
-To a lot of students, museums are the “savior” of the past
-museums have a lot of problems, In their efforts to preserve the ancient artefacts
-How are these ancient artefacts arranged? Who bought them? How are they verified and
certified? (reflect on your own visit to the museums)

Slide 4:
-A lot of markets that sell “antiquities”
-What is the meaning of esoteric??
-Target audience of the markets= Tourists (thought to be authentic artefacts of the ancient
cultures)
-Bought in SEA, and then resold in western areas for tenfold the money (good revenue for
the middlemen as well)  BUT: When a lot of these antiquities are sold/labelled wrongly or
fabricated = The end of that statue, no way to trace the origin or civilization that it comes
from  That culture dies
-Popular by the rural people, a lot of artefacts found by the locals are sold to these markets
for profits

Slide 5:
-Sotheby’s returns looted 10th century statue to Cambodia
-Watch the documentary
-What is happening to SEA, in terms of cultural legacies
-Being exploited and plundered
-Getting worse in covid 19, undergoing extreme poverty  Resort to looting  Making the
situation worse
-Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia

Slide 6:
-Srivijaya= largely maritime, compared to land activity, sea power, present in the past was
so significant, Chinese records of Chinese travelers who go to Srivijaya to learn Buddhism
(learn Buddhism there, before going to Sri Lanka)
-Majapahit= Central Java, one of the major ancient kingdom, rich in cultural and
architectural achievements, great force back then
-Funan= Maritime power, located near Mekong delta
-Champa= The Cham once existed in Southern Vietnam, Wealth is reflected in the
architecture built (high quality temples, intricate statues)
-Angkor= Very powerful empire, radar(lada, ground penetrating radar) technology, Heavily
populated, Research shows that their successful was their undoing, Unable to sustain their
overpopulation, Led to its collapse
-Burma= Burmese are very aggressive, Agricultural, Unique architecture showing Buddhism
influence
-*Siam= Powerful political, military center in the past
-Dai Viet= Influenced by the Chinese culture, emerged to be one of the most powerful
ancient kingdoms, power to be reckoned with in term of political and military, only one to
use gun power technology against the Chinese (more powerful than Cham)

Slide 7:
-Where do we look at the achievements of civilizations that have left little behind?
-Literature, how other powerful civilization understand them? (China/ other kingdoms
surrounding it)
-Ancient Cambodians created systems to collect water, Cambodia experiences a lot of floods
-Ingenuity of SEA, adapt to problems in their environment, takes a lot of resources and
engineering, shows how sophisticated they were

Slide 8:
-The civilizations were not powerful, emphasis on raiding other kingdoms and communities
-Loot in the other kingdom’s villages and temples (valuable items and statues), take their
people Raiding (Not huge battles, engagement between countries)
-Slavery, getting slaves were important in some SEA economies
-Villages around coastal areas live in fear about possible raids
-Big family= very difficult to escape, Small family=very easy to escape  Lack of manpower,
Abundance of land
-Except for areas like Cambodia
-What do they eat?, Affects what they produce and this affects how their societies operate
-Salt and fish is important, serious hunger was never an issue in the past, everyone had
access to 625 grams of rice per day
-Picture in the slide, good depiction of the raiding in the past, Early Cambodian destroys the
Cham
-Use of dragon boats, the swift raiding (speedy)

Slide 9:
-Hard to get resource  “People”
-To get them to stay in your kingdoms, with loyalty
-Some rulers, make them say an oath
-Emphasis of using loyalty, Emphasis of using supernatural to make someone to stay in their
kingdom

Slide 10:
-The Charisma is not stable
-The centers contract and expand
-Violence, as raids
-Peacefulness, passing around of priests
-Due to lack of border

Slide 11:
-What do these kingdoms means to SEA today?
-Why was it not effective to increase belonging?
-Example: Sang Nila Utama
-Did he enhance nationalism in Singapore?

Slide 12:
-Vietnamese had a very military past
-Actual findings of the stake used in these battles
-A lot of Vietnamese today as well are very proud of these
-Mongols nearly conquered for all of Europe, but Vietnamese managed to defeat them
-Intense nationalism

Slide 13:
-Ruler of Mactan, Visaya
-Intense Nationalism to the Philippines

Slide 14:
-Indonesian and Indian relations are not only natural, but also historical
-Basis for further co-operations between both countries, as Indonesia has a lot of influence
from India
-Past of SEA can be used by SEA countries in ways not imagined
-Is it going to work?
-India has been left out of SEA, due to cold war
-Read the article by Sonu Trivedi
-Are these connections real or imagined?
-Gain a foothold in the revitalized relationships

Slide 15:
-China was very important in pre-colonial relationships
-Role of Chinese researchers with a lot of resources in restoration projects  Involved with
Indonesians, to restore ancient temples
-What is their agenda?
-Is research really neutral?
-To restore, need to study the site, qualified people, a lot of people and effort needed
-Why are the Chinese suddenly interested in SEA?
-China’s link to SEA, Admiral Cheng Ho

Slide 16:
-To China, a symbol of a peaceful rise of the economy
-Major debate ensues
-Very popular in the past
Slide 17:
-His voyages (a lot)
-Travelled a lot of places, brought along a lot of soldiers
-To spread china’s cultures, powers
-peaceful cooperation exchange

Slide 18:
-But a lot of that has changed
-Repercussions of these places  project military power, air power
-Beginning to be a source of concern to SEA, India, America
-Analyze this data carefully

*What is the agenda of these countries to use the pre-colonial past?

Slide 19:
-Budget airlines, made travel cheaper, with more development they included travel
packages to more places  These popular sites like ancient temples  Need to ask: “Who
really profits?”
-Admission fees to ancient sites, Cham temples/ Angkor wat temples  Locals get in for free
or little sum/American tourists to pay in American sites
-Who does the money go to? Locals to renovate the local sites? More education facilities for
the locals?  Who really profits?
-Money goes to the companies?
-A lot of tourists who like to destroy the statues
-What is being done to protect these statues?
-A lot of places in Ang Kor Wat are being destroyed
-These sites were never meant for mass tourism
-In order to use tourism to enhance the nature of your economy, how do you ensure that
ancient sites are not destroyed?
-Commodification of culture?
-Powerful way to revitalise economies

Slide 20:
-Sacred being made profane?
-Performed in front of uncaring, misinformed tourists  is this the way to go about it?
-However, the source of income is needed for the dancers
-Abuse of the dancers
-Double-edged swords? What about the sacredness?
-Debate by abuse of culture, tourism in SEA

Slide 21:
-Sacred food
-Used for scared festivities in the past
-But now: very widely available

Slide 22:
-Tourists behaving unruly in ancient sites
-No respect
-Gentrification
-With developments of the area to benefit the tourists, how does this affect the locals?
-Environmental degradation, increase in living costs for the tourists
-Possible solution: To educate the tourists, but difficult to achieve this

Slide 23:
-Conflicts led to looting to occur
-Looting and sale of antiques  used to fund them
-Pre-colonial past are used by the locals today, for money

Slide 24:
-How locals view pre-colonial past
-Highly exploitable
-Locals are smart enough to create fakes of the statues
-The fakes go for a lot of money

Slide 25:
-Covid 19 intensifying the looting problems
-Can any solutions ever be found to this?
-Local economies around this area are worsening
-Circumventing this problem  a lot of people are coming forward as they understand the
value of these areas

Slide 26:
-In Singapore  A lot of funding goes into this
-BUT Singapore is an exception!

Slide 27:
-But not all museums are equal
-Fears of corruption
-Fear that the museums might sell it off
-Worsens with the factor of impoverishment in these areas

Slide 28:
-Currently: seen as a way to use and exploit
-How different countries understand SEA
-Nationalism
-How India and China are using the pre-colonial past to fit their agenda
-Are museums the solution in SEA?
-Impetus in development in Europe, to give back the looted pieces to SEA (looted pieces
during the colonial periods)
Meaning of “Looting”
-Some European colonial administrations in e.g. Cambodia and Java saw themselves as
discovering and safeguarding or restoring a degenerated civilization that the contemporary
people were unable to protect
-As they could not believe the people they had themselves turned into a subjugated people
were capable of building those giant monumentsthe same thing happened to Dutch navy
wrecks in the Coral Sea after they were found they were declared war graves not long after
they were all looted
-As that kind of steel is very valuable because it sunk under water before the first nuclear
bomb tests so they have no radiation and can be used for medical and scientific purposes
that cannot have any background noise
-Now it has become a diplomatic incident between Indonesia and the Netherlands
-Local journalists even managed to track down where the ship parts were likely processed
and the body parts still among them dumped

Articles:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
236826053_Xylophones_in_Thailand_and_Java_A_Comparative_Phenomenology_of_Music
al_Instruments
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n02/benedict-anderson/frameworks-of-comparison
https://luminus.nus.edu.sg/module-search/20a69317-f1d7-40b5-8973-8d47092b3b6d/
overview
https://gsp.yale.edu/literacy-and-education-under-khmer-rouge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av_3tGceTvs
https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/preserving-
cultural-tradition-ten-years-after-khmer-rouge