Lecture 'Fenneke Sysling - Plague outbreaks, postmortems and resistance in colonial Indonesia'

From the 1910s to the early 1940s, plague spread through the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies. Perhaps more than for any other disease, the plague prompted colonial intervention in people’s private lives, with measures such as home improvement schemes and the introduction of compulsory postmortems for all deceased individuals in plague affected areas. This specific measure led to repeated bouts of resistance, most notably in the early 1930s.

The richness of the historical record on this period of unrest allows us to go beyond simply noting that resistance existed, enabling a deeper exploration of how it was shaped.

This lecture will show how the treatment of the dead body became central to a broader negotiation over religion and colonial governance.

Fenneke Sysling is an assistant professor at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands.