Events

Jointly organized by the Asian Urbanisms Cluster and Indonesia Study Group of Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Sana Jaffrey, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

In 2015-2016, the Indonesian government officially delivered a nomination dossier for inscription of its old Dutch colonial neighborhood Kota Tua on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The nomination of this contested historical site was driven by the private sector and prepared by a consortium of multiple wealthy businessmen in the city of Jakarta, with the Jakarta Old Town Revitalization Corporation (JOTRC) being the main operative organization for both the writing of the nomination dossier and the ‘revitalization’ of the old heritage buildings and the heritage site at large. Regarding the involvement of the private sector as adding another layer of interests in the future of this heritage site, this paper aims to lay bare the many conflicting institutions, actors, and interests that eventually defined the nomination dossier written for UNESCO in 2015-2016. Using a multi-scalar approach, this presentation takes under consideration the various levels of actors involved in both the historical representation as well as the management of Dutch colonial heritage in the oldest part of the city. From below we see an enthusiastic appropriation of the city’s colonial past by local tourism and the city’s population. This contrasts the reluctance of the Indonesian state, at a variety of institutional levels, in coming to terms with a complicated colonial history in a strong nationalist historical discourse. Furthermore, the inscription of Kota Tua as World Heritage may stand in the way of the economic development of Indonesia’s capital. Finally, at the international level we encounter the criteria for inscription put forward by UNESCO, which forces the historical representation of a complicated colonial past to be rewritten as universal, multi-cultural, and cosmopolitan.

In this presentation I will argue that the writing of the nomination dossier was an attempt of the consortium to combine these many conflicting interests on different levels, while the involvement of the private sector created another layer of interests. Based on both personal experiences of the author, who was involved in the writing process of the nomination dossier in 2015-2016, as well as on the nomination dossier as a source itself, this presentation will trace these many conflicting interests and make a multi-scalar analysis of the wide variety of actors involved in the historical representation, the writing of the dossier, and the management of heritage in Kota Tua. It will conclude that it is of great importance to include these actors operating at the city level, while also arguing that the Indonesian ‘state’ should not be seen as a cohesive unity in cultural policy-making. Together, these different levels of the local, the national, and the international created a multi-sided interpretation of the city’s colonial history that was not easily narrated in one single nomination dossier and which complicates both the management and conservation of the city’s colonial heritage.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Bastiaan Nugteren is a third year PhD-researcher at the Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute (EUI). His current research project deals with Chinese migration and colonial immigration policies in the British Straits Settlements and the Netherlands East Indies in the period 1870-1930. During his Bachelor in History at Utrecht University and his Master Colonial and Global History at Leiden University, he became interested in the fields of imperial history, migration history and global history. In 2015-2016 he did an research internship at the Cultural Affairs Department of the Netherlands Embassy in Jakarta and worked at the Jakarta Old Town Revitalization Corporation (JOTRC) where he was involved in the nomination dossier writing process for inscription of the Old Town of Jakarta on the World Heritage List. From October to December 2019, Bastiaan is a visiting PhD-researcher at the history department of the National University of Singapore (NUS).

REGISTRATION

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