Adrian Vickers' Indonesia blog

With the death of leading historian Onghokham on 30th August, one of the important voices of Indonesian history has been silenced. Many of us knew Ong as much for his eccentricity as his work, and within the Indonesian history profession his contribution was often overlooked for those of the other greats of his generation, Sartono and Taufik Abdullah. Sartono's contribution to peasant history and his leadership of the Gadjah Mada school of historians made him important, but his health and age have meant that he has been less of a presence in the last decade. Taufik Abdullah remains the leader of the history profession in Indonesia, and the best commentator on national history.

However Ong's role, and this may be why he was not fully appreciated in his own country, was as the maverick voice, always standing slightly askew of the mainstream. He was the first—Indonesian or Western—to write real cultural history, with his incorporation of Javanese spiritualism, food history and the understanding of power in operation into his analysis of the lived nature of history in Indonesia. We await with great excitement David Reeve's biography of Ong.