Introductionhighlands are so deeply entrenched in the historiography that they can-
not be resolved here. A number of the contributions in this volume, for
example, examine warfare in the outer islands as opposed to Java which
reflects a long-standing orientation of scholarship on warfare in the
region; an orientation which, incidentally, reverses the general tendency
in Indonesian studies to accord more attention to Java and Bali and less
to regions further east.^28
We hope that pushing individual analyses of warfare in the region
closer to local contexts, in communication with overall regional histori-
cal change, is a step in the right direction and encourages future work
in a similar vein. In this respect, the disparate findings are welcome.
For example, Hans Hägerdal’s chapter in this volume contends that the
use of modern weaponry may have intensified endemic unrest in Bali
whereas Kathryn Wellen’s chapter suggests that, at least in Wajoq, the
presence of weapons may have facilitated political centralization. We
also benefit from existing historiography within the region, particularly
that focused on the highland societies of the mainland and the outer
islands of the Indonesian Archipelago, which have left useful case stud-
ies of small population groups in small-scale polities that have reflected
upon the nature of local culture, society, and warfare. Such work sought
to use warfare to gain a deeper understanding of local societies, although
the scholars who produced it were less concerned about how this work
changed overall perspectives on warfare in the region per se. Perhaps be-
cause they were not driven by the latter agenda, their work is indirectly
pioneering for our approach here.^29
Our first chapter, Puangthong R. Pawakapan’s “Warfare and De pop ula-
tion of the Trans-Mekong Basin and the Revival of Siam’s Economy”,
focuses on the resource motivations of one of the major lowland king-
doms of the region in response to economic changes that threatened to
destabilize the relationship between the court and local political elites.
Warfare in this case was directed at expanding the labour system and
intensifying royal control over populations in the central mainland and
- A notable exception to this tendency is Leonard Y. Andaya’s The Heritage of Arung
Palakka: A History of South Sulawesi (Celebes) in the Seventeenth Century (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981). - For example, Barbara Watson Andaya, “History, Headhunting and Gender in
Monsoon Asia: Comparative and Longitudinal Views”, South East Asia Research
12, 1 (2003): 13–52.