Lecture | COGLOSS Seminar
Diplomatic Developments between Royal Houses in Java and the Dutch Royal Family in the 19th Century
- Date
- Wednesday 14 May 2025
- Time
- Serie
- COGLOSS Seminars 2024-2025
- Address
-
Johan Huizinga
Doelensteeg 16
2311 VL Leiden - Room
- Conference room (2.60)
Abstract
The Royal Javanese House and the Dutch monarchy had been, albeit sporadically, engaged in diplomatic ties with one another. These relations between the two intercultural entities predated Dutch colonial domination in the nineteenth century, during which the Central Javanese kingdoms still retained some semblance of significant authority. The tables turned completely in 1830 against the Javanese side as a result of the Java War. Despite this imbalance of power, the connection between the Javanese rulers and the Dutch crown was not entirely severed. Instead, a different trend emerged from this new arrangement. For the first time in the history of Dutch-Indonesian relations, these two asymmetrical powers came into close contact. In 1837, the grandson of King William I undertook a journey to the Indonesian Archipelago, where he visited multiple royal courts and was received by local sultans and monarchs. He became then the first and ultimately the last member of the Dutch royal family to set foot in the Netherlands Indies while it remained under the rule of the House of Orange. Sixty years later, at the invitation of Queen Wilhelmina on the occasion of her coronation, representatives from the Central Javanese courts, along with envoys from Sumatra and Borneo, traveled to the Netherlands to formally convey their congratulations on her accession to the throne. Against the backdrop of nineteenth-century colonial Indonesia, this talk will trace the development of diplomatic connections between the Javanese and Dutch royal houses by centering on gift-giving and its ceremonial contexts.
About the speaker
Anisa Nuranisa is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History, Leiden University. Her research focuses on the cultural diplomacy practices of the Javanese courts in Central Java—Surakarta, Yogyakarta, Mangkunegaran, and Pakualaman—against the backdrop of colonial Indonesia between the 19th and the early 20th centuries. She examines the diplomatic maneuvers of Javanese kings and princes in response to growing colonial dominance following the Java War of 1830.