How Not to Write a History of Encounters
Résumé
For both brevity and clarity’s sake, and because
the sophisticated questions raised by my reviewers
call forth as detailed answers as possible,
I will start by restating whatmy purpose was in
attempting to write a “History in equal parts” of
the first Dutch-Javanese “encounters”. Contrary
to what its first chapters may suggest, the book
was by no means meant to be solely another
contribution to the growing body of literature
that, running contrary to decades of heroic colonial
and postcolonial European self-celebration,
provides us with more “complicated” stories
of the so-called “European expansion” process...