Like the previous volume of this two-part set, this volume brings together detailed historical research as well as archival documents (pp. 445–537) to provide the reader with a fascinating account of the further expansion – from 53,000 in 1903 to 636,766 in June 1941 – and consolidation of Catholic communities in Indonesia in the late colonial period. As such, it will prove to be essential reading for those interested in the history of Christianity in Indonesia and South-East Asia generally. I do, however, have some reservations about the work, though before discussing these I will outline the ground covered.
Like the first volume, the chapters are organized by region, covering Flores (pp. 76–152), Timor and Sumba (pp. 153–93), Kai and Tanimbar (pp. 195–229), West Papua (pp. 231–57), Sulawesi (pp. 259–84), Kalimantan (pp. 285–324), Sumatra (pp. 325–354) and Java (pp. 355–419). However, whereas in the first volume Steenbrink framed his material largely in terms of conversion and the formation of “complex religious identities”, in this volume the purpose is perhaps more (theoretically) modest: to document the growth and consolidation of Catholic communities in Indonesia.
Steenbrink is quick to recognize that “the spread and revival of Catholicism was a top-down movement” (p. 2) and that the process of growth and consolidation was intimately related to the “pacification” (p. 5) of the archipelago. As such, Steenbrink covers a variety of issues salient to the political economy and cultural politics of Catholic mission in Indonesia, including the role of schools and educational institutions as vehicles for evangelization and consolidation; the consolidation of Malay as the lingua franca – at the expense of numerous minority languages; the efforts to eradicate head-hunting; the demolition of “longhouses” and the creation of villages and homes for “nuclear” families; the attempt to reconfigure local marriage rules particularly in relation to polygamy; the establishing of plantations by missionaries that not only provided financial support to Catholic communities but also further facilitated Indonesia's incorporation into the global economy via the demand for commodities such as coffee and sugar; the role of hospitals and medicines in facilitating the further expansion and consolidation of Catholicism as well as the role of Catholic media, trades unions and political parties in Indonesia's political and economic development and the growth of Indonesian nationalism. He also deals extensively with the internal politics of mission, including regional differences in the strategies and success of efforts to expand and embed Catholicism; competition between Protestants and Catholics for access to new territories and the question of “double mission”; issues of race and ethnicity with some interesting material on Chinese Catholics as well as providing much information about many of the key personalities pertinent to the study.
Certainly, this work, together with the previous volume, provides a much needed overview of dispersed materials, giving those materials a narrative shape. However, sustained analysis tends to play second fiddle to detail, and passages such as the following are typical: “Until the early 1920s the Catholics of Sumatra were about 80% Europeans and Eurasians. Their main centre was Padang. The parish was established in 1838. In 1883 the Tilburg sisters came to Padang to run the schools. They never learned proper Malay and did all their teaching in Dutch. Their schools were divided according to social class” (p. 330). Among the welter of facts – typically one per sentence – there is almost no space left for unpacking the issues and engaging in critical analysis.
Detail is, of course, important. Furthermore, Steenbrink is well aware of the violence with which Christianity was brought to Indonesia, and is no apologist. On the other hand, there is surely a great deal more work to be done to highlight the voices and experiences of the men, women and children caught within the maelstrom of colonial pacification, mission and the confrontation of modernity with remote localities without even any word for “religion” (p. 423). In other words, Steenbrink's history covers much less than its title might suggest, as Steenbrink's principal interlocutors are all too infrequently Dayaks, Javanese or Timorese and all too often well-educated Europeans, some of whom took an extremely dim view of the peoples they sought to convert.
My central problem with the volume is Steenbrink's tendency to situate Christianity always as an outside factor – sometimes perfidious, sometimes beneficent – to an unsuspecting “Indonesia” or locale thereof. The central problem here is that this manner of presentation sets up Christianity as a monolith that shapes and moulds everything it touches, into its own image. But the meaning of Christianity is always negotiated contextually, culturally and historically, and Steenbrink pays too little attention to the creative and agentive forces unintentionally unleashed by mission, and the complex processes through which other Christianities emerged at the local level.
