Trans-Regional Indonesia over One Thousand years: The Art of the Long View

Abstract

Tagliacozzo argues in his contribution that Indonesia can usefully be studied over a one thousand year arc, starting with shipwrecks in archipelago waters in the tenth century and ending with the flow of avian flu pathogens in the early twenty-first century. The trans-regional dimension of Indonesian history is a fascinating and provocative one; what do we learn by skipping over the centuries to look at Indonesia as part of larger geographies? What shift in focus does this zoom effect imply? How utilitarian is it to think of Indonesia as part of much larger, often global stories?