Adrian Vickers
Biographic Data
| ID | 120275 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Adrian Vickers |
| GIVEN NAMES | Adrian |
| FAMILY NAME | Vickers |
| SIGNATURE | VICKERS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1215-6462 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 79 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
A Newly Identified Islamic Text from Sixteenth-Century Java: A Guide to Islamic Prayer and Belief
Indonesia is a major part of the Islamic world and today contains the largest population of Muslims in a single nation-state. However, we still have a very limited understanding of how Islam became the archipelago’s predominant religion in the early modern period, because of the extreme paucity of local sources that bear witness to this process. This article investigates, for the first time, a recently identified bark-paper manuscript from sixtee…
Hands Across Australia’s Land Border
Opening Australia’s Multilingual Archive
This special issue asks what difference language and translation make to Australian history-making
Solidarity for the Indonesian Revolution
During the Indonesian Revolution of 1945-49, Australian unions and activist groups organised black bans on Dutch shipping from Australian ports to hamper Dutch attempts at recolonisation. Indonesian and Dutch-language sources demonstrate the importance of unions and communist organisations in these actions. These sources show that links between left-wing groups in Australia and Indonesia were significant in building relationships between the coun…
Erasing and re-inscribing Chinese into Indonesian history
During the New Order period (1966–1998), Chinese Indonesians or Tionghoa were systematically excluded from Indonesian accounts of history. After the fall of the regime, there was a resurgence of writing by and about Chinese Indonesians. One element of this resurgence was the translation into Indonesian of books by Western writers on the topic, but more important has been the emergence of new publications in Indonesian in which Sino-Indonesians ar…
The Social Realist Stories of Putu Shanty as Historical Record: Balinese Culture and Indonesian National Politics in the 1950s
Putu Shanty was one of Bali's leading intellectuals in the middle of the twentieth century, but he has been effaced from official publications identifying cultural leaders of the island. His short stories, written in a social realist style, were intended as interventions that would influence the course of history but are also a valuable record of historical discourse. 'Anti-feudalism' was a central discursive concern of Shanty's, and while it was…
Visual methods and the study of Balinese art collections
Digital tools offer new possibilities for visual research, and such tools can provide methods for revitalising our understanding of the field of culture. Despite the importance of the visual as an element of culture, it is only in the last decade that the visual as a phenomenon of seeing has been a major feature of theoretical and methodological approaches to Southeast Asia. The long traditions of art history, anthropology and related fields in S…
Reconstructing the history of Panji performances in Southeast Asia
The circulation of Panji stories throughout Southeast Asia has been studied as a textual phenomenon. These same texts, however, provide evidence of how theatrical forms were important as a source for the dispersal of Panji stories. The textual evidence demonstrates that dance-dramas presenting Panji stories were performed in Majapahit times. These dance-dramas, known as raket are continued in the gambuh of Bali as well as in Javanese topeng. They…
Creating heritage in Ubud, Bali
In Bali, heritage is more-or-less synonymous with tradition. The popular view of what constitutes Bali’s heritage tends to focus on the village and wider district of Ubud. Through examing at the strategies employed by the lords of Ubud during the middle part of the twentieth century, we can better understand how the image of heritage sites is created. In the case of Ubud, the construction of centre of tradition was carried out through alliances w…
The pearl rush in Aru, 1916; A case study in writing commodity history in Southeast Asia
While the long history of “commerce” in Southeast Asia is well studied, less examination has been made of the histories of capitalism, particularly in terms of the encounters that took place around commodities. This article provides a translation and analysis of a description of Dobo on Aru in 1911. At the time it was a “Klondike”, on what Julia Martínez and I have termed “the pearl frontier”. The Aru islands were the site for an Australian-led p…
Scholarly Viewpoints
The Pearl Frontier: Indonesian Labor and Indigenous Encounters in Australia’s Northern Trading Network
Remarkable for its meticulous archival research and moving life stories, the Pearl Frontier offers a new way of imagining Australian historical connections with Indonesia. This compelling history of maritime mobility demonstrates how, in the colonial quest for the valuable pearl-shell, Australians came to rely on the skill and labor of Indonesian islanders, drawing them into a pearling trade network. From the 1860s onwards the pearl-shell industr…
On Mobilizing Labour for the Global Coffee Market: Profits from an Unfree Work Regime in Colonial Java
The Pearl Frontier: Indonesian Labor and Indigenous Encounters in Australia's Northern Trading Network
Based on careful archival research and intimate life stories, the Pearl Frontier offers a subaltern imagining of Australian historical connections with Indonesia through labor migration. This study of maritime mobility demonstrates how, in the colonial quest for valuable pearl-shell, Australians came to rely on the labor of Indonesian islanders, drawing them into their northern pearling empire. From the 1860s onwards the pearl-shell industry deve…
Producing Indonesia: The State of the Field in Indonesian Studies
Indonesians overseas – deep histories and the view from below
Indonesian mobility is often regarded as a present-day fact. In 2007 the number of Indonesians reported working abroad had reached 4.3 million, bringing in an income of US$6 billion in remittances (Widodo et al. 2009). By 2010 the numbers working abroad would have well passed 5 million, especially considering the numbers ‘smuggled’ across the Indonesian-Malaysian maritime borders
Bali rebuilds its tourist industry
The 1950s is a gap in the usual studies of tourism in Bali, but this was a crucial decade for rebuilding the tourist industry after World War II and the Indonesian Revolution, and for establishing a post-colonial industry. The reconstruction of the tourist industry drew on Dutch attempts to rebuild tourism during the 1940s. The process of reconstruction required the creation of a souvenir industry, in which Balinese women entrepreneurs played a k…
Where Are the Bodies: The Haunting of Indonesia
Controversies about the 1965-66 killings of communists in Indonesia have revolved around questions of "how many?" and "who was responsible?" While there is general agreement that at least 500,000 people were killed, public discourse in Indonesia plays down the significance of tile killings by placing the burden of responsibility on the victims. Attempts to create a national reconciliation process have been stalled. By examining the social and cul…
When did legong start? A reply to Stephen Davies
Stephen Davies has recently opened up new ways of looking at the history of Bali’s premier dance form, legong. He has argued that legong started in the late nineteenth century, more specifically after 1887, probably in 1889, and that it is primarily derived from a form which Balinese presently call andir. Davies’ article involves a substantial reconsideration of the canonical nature of certain dance forms in Bali. The evidence Davies used is larg…
A History of Modern Indonesia
Although Indonesia has the fourth largest population in the world, its history is still relatively unfamiliar and understudied. Guided by the life and writings of the country's most famous author, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Adrian Vickers takes the reader on a journey across the social and political landscape of twentieth-century Indonesia in this innovative and timely account. He begins by explaining the country's origins under the Dutch in the earl…
The country and the cities
Labour migration between countries such as Indonesia and Hong Kong needs to be contextualised within the general patterns of movement throughout the Asian region. These patterns are long term, but accelerated in the late colonial period. As well as physical mobility, such patterns of movement involve cultural and even social forms of mobility. They should be seen as continuous with processes of urbanisation, particularly the formation of “urban c…
Asian Values in Indonesia? National and Regional Identities
Being Modern in Bali: Image and Change
Reopening Old Wounds: Bali and the Indonesian Killings—A Review Article
Being Modern in Bali: Image and Change
Hinduism and Islam in Indonesia: Bali and the Pasisir World
Western scholarship has come to regard Bali as somewhat apart from the rest of Indonesia, a Hindu island in a sea of Islam. Between the early sixteenth century, when Hindu kingdoms ceased to have any influence in Java, and the Dutch conquest of Bali from 1846 to 1908, relations between Balinese and Muslims were anything but straightforward. Wars between Balinese and Islamic kingdoms were matched by degrees of accommodation and synthesis with Isla…
Balinese Texts and Historiography
There is for one thing a historiographical inequality between Europe and the rest of the world. Europe invented historians and then made good use of them. Her own history is well-lit, and can be called as evidence or used as a claim. The history of non-Europe is still being written. And until the balance of knowledge and interpretation has been restored, the historian will be reluctant to cut the Gordian knot of world history-that is the origin o…
Being Modern in Bali: Image and Change
Reopening Old Wounds: Bali and the Indonesian Killings—A Review Article
Producing Indonesia: The State of the Field in Indonesian Studies
The country and the cities
Labour migration between countries such as Indonesia and Hong Kong needs to be contextualised within the general patterns of movement throughout the Asian region. These patterns are long term, but accelerated in the late colonial period. As well as physical mobility, such patterns of movement involve cultural and even social forms of mobility. They should be seen as continuous with processes of urbanisation, particularly the formation of “urban c…
Asian Values in Indonesia? National and Regional Identities
From Bali to Lampung on the Pasisir
L'A.essaie de definir un des aspects de la nature de l'identite culturelle qui reliait la majorite des Royaumes Indonesiens et des tribus avant que l'Indonesie n'existe en tant qu'etat moderne. L'A. etudie la representation symbolique du bateau dans la peinture de Bali et le textile de Lampung comme representative d'un sens de la civilisation dont le referent clef n'etait pas Java, mais ou les differences culturelles etaient reconnues et mises en…
A Balinese illustrated manuscript of the Siwaratrikalpa
Where Are the Bodies: The Haunting of Indonesia
Controversies about the 1965-66 killings of communists in Indonesia have revolved around questions of "how many?" and "who was responsible?" While there is general agreement that at least 500,000 people were killed, public discourse in Indonesia plays down the significance of tile killings by placing the burden of responsibility on the victims. Attempts to create a national reconciliation process have been stalled. By examining the social and cul…
Australian perceptions of Asia: Australian cultural history conference
The writing of kakawin and kidung on Bali
Creating heritage in Ubud, Bali
In Bali, heritage is more-or-less synonymous with tradition. The popular view of what constitutes Bali’s heritage tends to focus on the village and wider district of Ubud. Through examing at the strategies employed by the lords of Ubud during the middle part of the twentieth century, we can better understand how the image of heritage sites is created. In the case of Ubud, the construction of centre of tradition was carried out through alliances w…
Being Modern in Bali: Image and Change
Writing the Past, Inscribing the Future: History as Prophecy in Colonial Java
Writing the Past, Inscribing the Future: History as Prophecy in Colonial Java. Nancy K. Florida. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995. 449 pp
Extended character in the Balinese courtly romance
The writing of kakawin and kidung on Bali
A Balinese illustrated manuscript of the Siwaratrikalpa
Writing Indonesian history: Poststructuralism and perception
Hinduism and Islam in Indonesia: Bali and the Pasisir World
Western scholarship has come to regard Bali as somewhat apart from the rest of Indonesia, a Hindu island in a sea of Islam. Between the early sixteenth century, when Hindu kingdoms ceased to have any influence in Java, and the Dutch conquest of Bali from 1846 to 1908, relations between Balinese and Muslims were anything but straightforward. Wars between Balinese and Islamic kingdoms were matched by degrees of accommodation and synthesis with Isla…
Racism and colonialism in early Australian novels about Southeast Asia
Australian perceptions of Asia: Australian cultural history conference
Post‐coloniality: Australia and Asia
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post–Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989
Balinese Texts and Historiography
There is for one thing a historiographical inequality between Europe and the rest of the world. Europe invented historians and then made good use of them. Her own history is well-lit, and can be called as evidence or used as a claim. The history of non-Europe is still being written. And until the balance of knowledge and interpretation has been restored, the historian will be reluctant to cut the Gordian knot of world history-that is the origin o…
Cultural studies: Practical men and theorists
Artistic representation in social action: The case of Bali: 8–13 July 1991
From Bali to Lampung on the Pasisir
L'A.essaie de definir un des aspects de la nature de l'identite culturelle qui reliait la majorite des Royaumes Indonesiens et des tribus avant que l'Indonesie n'existe en tant qu'etat moderne. L'A. etudie la representation symbolique du bateau dans la peinture de Bali et le textile de Lampung comme representative d'un sens de la civilisation dont le referent clef n'etait pas Java, mais ou les differences culturelles etaient reconnues et mises en…
The eighteenth century in Southeast Asian history
Being Modern in Bali: Image and Change
Being Modern in Bali: Image and Change
Writing the Past, Inscribing the Future: History as Prophecy in Colonial Java
Writing the Past, Inscribing the Future: History as Prophecy in Colonial Java. Nancy K. Florida. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995. 449 pp
Reopening Old Wounds: Bali and the Indonesian Killings—A Review Article
Asian Values in Indonesia? National and Regional Identities
Being Modern in Bali: Image and Change
The country and the cities
Labour migration between countries such as Indonesia and Hong Kong needs to be contextualised within the general patterns of movement throughout the Asian region. These patterns are long term, but accelerated in the late colonial period. As well as physical mobility, such patterns of movement involve cultural and even social forms of mobility. They should be seen as continuous with processes of urbanisation, particularly the formation of “urban c…
A History of Modern Indonesia
Although Indonesia has the fourth largest population in the world, its history is still relatively unfamiliar and understudied. Guided by the life and writings of the country's most famous author, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Adrian Vickers takes the reader on a journey across the social and political landscape of twentieth-century Indonesia in this innovative and timely account. He begins by explaining the country's origins under the Dutch in the earl…
When did legong start? A reply to Stephen Davies
Stephen Davies has recently opened up new ways of looking at the history of Bali’s premier dance form, legong. He has argued that legong started in the late nineteenth century, more specifically after 1887, probably in 1889, and that it is primarily derived from a form which Balinese presently call andir. Davies’ article involves a substantial reconsideration of the canonical nature of certain dance forms in Bali. The evidence Davies used is larg…
Where Are the Bodies: The Haunting of Indonesia
Controversies about the 1965-66 killings of communists in Indonesia have revolved around questions of "how many?" and "who was responsible?" While there is general agreement that at least 500,000 people were killed, public discourse in Indonesia plays down the significance of tile killings by placing the burden of responsibility on the victims. Attempts to create a national reconciliation process have been stalled. By examining the social and cul…
Bali rebuilds its tourist industry
The 1950s is a gap in the usual studies of tourism in Bali, but this was a crucial decade for rebuilding the tourist industry after World War II and the Indonesian Revolution, and for establishing a post-colonial industry. The reconstruction of the tourist industry drew on Dutch attempts to rebuild tourism during the 1940s. The process of reconstruction required the creation of a souvenir industry, in which Balinese women entrepreneurs played a k…
Indonesians overseas – deep histories and the view from below
Indonesian mobility is often regarded as a present-day fact. In 2007 the number of Indonesians reported working abroad had reached 4.3 million, bringing in an income of US$6 billion in remittances (Widodo et al. 2009). By 2010 the numbers working abroad would have well passed 5 million, especially considering the numbers ‘smuggled’ across the Indonesian-Malaysian maritime borders
Asian Studies and History (30 works) · History (23 works) · Geography (17 works) · Political science (17 works) · History (16 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Archaeology (10 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Indonesian (7 works)