We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2009
When Thomas Stamford Raffles published his seminal text The History of Java in 1817, ruins were a favourite leitmotif in British art, forming an important element within the visual vocabulary of the picturesque. Given the fascination in this period for the ruin, fuelled by a tradition of antiquarian enquiry, the newly developing science of archaeology, and the increased possibilities for travel in the wake of imperial expansion, it is not surprising that Raffles chose to devote a whole a chapter of his publication to Java's ruined candis. The plates and vignettes which illustrate the chapter, created according to pictorial conventions that were ordinarily applied to the crumbling remains of Europe's classical past, are amongst the most beautiful portrayals of South-East Asia's architectural remains. This paper examines how these images elicited set emotional responses associated with the idea of ruins and ruination and confirmed key stereotypes associated with the region, linking the candis, and by implication the Javanese themselves, with a vanished past rather than with a dynamic and forward-looking present.
1 Raffles, Thomas Stamford, “A discourse delivered to the literary and scientific society at Java, on the 10th of September, 1815, by the Hon. Thomas Stamford Raffles, President”, The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and Its Dependencies 1, no. IV (April 1816), 351Google Scholar. See also Raffles, Sophia, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (London: John Murray, 1830), 159Google Scholar; and Raffles, Thomas Stamford, The History of Java, 2 vols (London: Black, Parbury and Allen, and John Murray, 1817) vol. 2, 15Google Scholar. For slightly different wording see Baker MS Java Antiquities/2 [Captain Godfrey P. Baker]. [Descriptions of Javanese temples] (Royal Asiatic Society), 2. All quotes in this paper use the original spelling and punctuation as they appear in the editions cited.
2 As Milton Osborne has observed of John Barrow's publication detailing his voyage through South-East Asia while a member of the Macartney embassy, it “was very much a product of its age, an age that did not disdain the accumulation of miscellaneous knowledge and was comfortable in an author's citation of Horace and Pliny” (Milton Osborne, “Introduction”, A Voyage to Cochin China, by John Barrow, Oxford in Asia Historical Reprints (London: Oxford University Press), xvi).
3 Letter to Rousseau dated 11 May 1765. Boswell, James, Boswell on the Grand Tour: Italy, Corsica, and France 1765–1766 (ed. Brady, Frank and Pottle, Fredrick A.) (London: William Heinemann, 1955), 85Google Scholar.
4 Feifer, Maxine, Tourism in History from Imperial Rome to the Present (New York: Stein and Day, 1986), 99Google Scholar.
5 For an overview of the development of archaeology at this time, see Schnapp, Alain, The Discovery of the Past: The Origins of Archaeology (London: British Museum Press, 1996)Google Scholar, especially chapters 4 and 5. For information on the development of archaeology in India, see Guha-Thakurta, Tapati, “Tales of the Bharhut Stupa: archaeology in the colonial and nationalist imaginations”, in Tillotson, G. H. R. (ed.), Paradigms of Indian Architecture: Space and Time in Representation and Design (London: Curzon Press, 1998), 26–58Google Scholar and Guha-Thakurta, Tapati, Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Schnapp, Discovery of the Past, 237.
7 Guha-Thakurta, “Tales of the Bharhut Stupa”, 37 and Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories, 4, regarding a similar situation on the subcontinent.
8 “On the pleasure arising from the sight of ruins or ancient structures”, European Magazine (1795), cited in Lowenthal, David, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 173Google Scholar.
9 Raffles, The History of Java, vol. 1, 5. Thomas Horsfield similarly noted that the candis moved an “intelligent observer” to “astonishment” (cited in Raffles, The History of Java, vol. 2, 40), while Baker described Borobudur as filling visitors with “astonishment and delight” (Baker MS Java Antiquities/4, Extract from the private journals of Captain G.P. Baker 19th Regt Bengal Infantry, of all memories made on the spot relative to the collection of antiquarian drawings and made by him in a tour thro' the interior of Java in the years 1815/16 (Royal Asiatic Society),118).
10 Mss.Eur.F.148/47 Colonel Mackenzie's Account of the Antiquities of Java with Drawings; Colonel Mackenzie's Military Report and Journal in Java; Colonel Mackenzie's General Statistical Tables of Java, 1811–1813. Narrative of a Journey to Examine the Remains of an Ancient City and Temples at Prambana in Java. Extracted from the Journal of Lieutenant Colonel Mackenzie 1812 (British Library), 7, f. 22. See also Mackenzie, Colin, “Narrative of a journey to examine the remains of an ancient city and temples at Brambana, in the island of Java”, The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies 2, no. VII (July 1816), 12Google Scholar.
11 Cited in Ashfield, Andrew and de Bolla, Peter, The Sublime: A Reader in British Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 276CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Burke, Edmund, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1759), 95–6Google Scholar.
13 Addison, Joseph, The Spectator 414, 25 June 1712Google Scholar.
14 Gilpin, William, Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; On Picturesque Travel; and On Sketching Landscape: To Which is Added a Poem, on Landscape Painting (London: R. Blamire, 1792), 42Google Scholar.
15 Ibid., 53.
16 Ibid., 67.
17 Cited in Feifer, Tourism in History, 145.
18 Gilpin, William, A Dialogue upon the Gardens of the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Cobham at Stow in Buckinghamshire, The Augustan Reprint Society, no. 176 (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, 1976), 5Google Scholar.
19 William Gilpin, Three Essays, 46.
20 Raffles, The History of Java, vol. 2, 9.
21 Andrews, Malcolm, The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain, 1760–1800 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 42Google Scholar.
22 Cited in Starobinski, Jean, The Invention of Liberty (New York: Rizzoli, 1987), 183Google Scholar.
23 Ibid., 180.
24 Cited in Haskell, Francis, History and Its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), 430Google Scholar. Grimm was referring to the highly regarded painter of ruins, Hubert Robert (1733–1808).
25 Hazlitt, William, “Why distant objects please”, in The Selected Writings of William Hazlitt (ed. Wu, Duncan), vol. 6 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1998), 229 [220]Google Scholar. See also Junod, Phillipe, “Future in the past”, Oppositions 26 (Spring 1984), 54Google Scholar.
26 Hazlitt, 228 [219].
27 Cited in Hawes, Louis, Presences of Nature: British Landscape 1780–1830 (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1982), 36Google Scholar.
28 George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. A Romaunt (1812–18), canto 4, CVII, 955–963.
29 Raffles, The History of Java, vol. 2, 11, regarding Candi Siva in the Lara Jonggrang complex.
30 Gilpin, William, Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, Made in the Year 1772, on Several Parts of England; Particularly the Mountains, and Lakes of Cumberland, and Westmoreland, vol. 2 (London: R. Blamire, 1786), 188Google Scholar.
31 Zucker, Paul, “Ruins – an aesthetic hybrid”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 20/2, Winter 1961, 119CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
32 Patrik, Linda E., “The aesthetic experience of ruins”, Husserl Studies 3/1, 1986, 32–3Google Scholar.
33 Mackenzie, “Narrative of a journey”, (August 1816), 133.
34 Leschenault de la Tour, “Memoir on the Strychno-tieute, Antiaris-toxicaria, and Andira Harsfieldii, of the Island of Java”, Annales du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, chs XI and XII, 457 ff. cited in Stockdale, J. J., Sketches, Civil and Military, of the Island of Java and its Immediate Dependencies: Comprising Some Interesting Details of Batavia, and Authentic Particulars of the Celebrated Poison-tree, London, 1811, 323Google Scholar. See also Hooker, W. J., “On the Upas Antiar, or ‘Poison tree of Java’ from the Island of Timor”, Companion to the Botanical Magazine; Being a Journal, Containing Such Interesting Botanical Information as Does Not Come Within the Prescribed Limits of the Magazine; with Occasional Figures 1 (1835), 311Google Scholar for another translation of this passage.
35 Letter from Raffles to the Duchess of Somerset dated 11 July 1818, cited in Sophia Raffles, Memoir, 317.
36 Mss.Eur.F.148 / 47, 20, f. 28.
37 Jago, Richard, Edge-Hill, or, the Rural Prospect Delineated and Moralised (1767), bk 2, 285Google Scholar, cited in Hawes, 35.
38 William Gilpin, Three Essays, 70.
39 Gilpin, William, Two Essays: One, On the Author's Mode of Executing Rough Sketches; the Other, on the Principles on Which They are Composed (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1804), 20Google Scholar.
40 George Farington's Diary, V, 136, 139, cited in Archer, Mildred and Bastin, John, The Raffles Drawings in the India Office Library, London (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1978), 94Google Scholar, n.7.
41 Review of The History of Java, by Raffles, Thomas Stamford. The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies IV, no. 24 (December 1817), 574Google Scholar [incorrectly numbered 590].
42 Archer, Mildred and Lightbown, Ronald, India Observed: India as Viewed by British Artists 1760–1860 (London: Victoria and Albert Museum and Trefoil Books, 1982), 81Google Scholar.
43 Forge, Anthony, “Raffles and Daniell: making the image fit”, in Gerstle, Andrew and Milner, Anthony (eds), Recovering the Orient: Artists, Scholars, Appropriations (Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994), 113Google Scholar.
44 Ibid., 115.
45 From Baker's report in Raffles, The History of Java, vol. 2, 11.
46 Raffles, “A discourse delivered”, no. IV (April 1816), 350–51. See also Raffles, The History of Java, vol. 2, 11.
47 Gilpin, Observations, 187.
48 Review of The History of Java, The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register …, no. 24 (December 1817), 573 [incorrectly numbered 589] and [574] [incorrectly numbered 590].
49 See also another drawing by Baker in the British Museum: Captain Godfrey P. Baker, Southern Front of the Temple at Jabong (from an album of 58 drawings: No. 10 Original Drawings for the Engravings in The History of Java vol. 2: 55 sketches and plans of subjects in Java, several published in 1817, of which 15 are by me, G. P. Baker, taking out the 5 of Plaoosan for vol. 1) c. 1814, pen and ink and wash, British Museum (1939.3–11.05, 35).
50 Burke, Philosophical Enquiry, 100 and 147.
51 Gilpin, Observation, 162–3.
52 Marryat, F. S., Borneo and the Indian Archipelago (1848)Google Scholar, cited in Forge, “Raffles and Daniell”, 113.
53 The Smaller Temple at Jabung near Probolingo (vignette from Raffles, Thomas Stamford' The History of Java (London: 1817), vol. 2, p. 51)Google Scholar, line engraving.
54 Kinney, Ann R. et al., Worshipping Siva and Buddha: The Temple Art of East Java (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2003), 221Google Scholar. See also Girard-Geslan, Maud et al., Art of Southeast Asia, trans. Underwood, J. A. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998), 355–6Google Scholar.
55 Chardin, John, The Travels of Sir John Chardin into Persia and the East Indies, vol. 1 (London: Moses Pitt, 1686)Google Scholar.
56 Ibid., opp. 246.
57 Raffles, The History of Java, vol. 2, 19–20.
58 Ibid., 47.
59 Baker quotes from “Note on the Sūkū remains” by Major D. H. Dalton: “[t]he Carthaginians were great navigators – What reason then have we peremptorily to decide that the monument at Soocoo has not been erected by that people?” (Add. 30353/2, Account of Suku by Major Johnson [Annotated with comments by Captain G. P. Baker] (British Library), 10).
60 Colin Mackenzie or Member of Mackenzie's party (South Face of the Temple at Jabung, East Java) (from an unbound portfolio of 66 drawings) 1812, pen and ink and pencil, British Library (Oriental and India Office Collections: Mackenzie collection WD914, Portfolio no. 7).
61 Gilpin, Observations, 43–4. Similarly, elsewhere he observed of picturesque appreciation: “[i]t is not it's business to consider matters of utility. It has nothing to do with affairs of the plough, and the spade; but merely examines the face of nature as a beautiful object” (Gilpin, William, Remarks on Forest Scenery, and Other Woodland Views, (Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty) Illustrated by the Scenes of New-Forest in Hampshire, vol. 1 (London: R. Blamire, 1791), 298Google Scholar.
62 William Daniell after H. C. Cornelius, One of the Temples on the Mountain Dieng or Prahu (plate from Raffles', Thomas StamfordThe History of Java, London: 1817, vol. 2, opp. p. 32Google Scholar), aquatint and etching; and William Daniell after H. C. Cornelius, One of the Smaller Temples at Brambánan in Its Present State (plate from Raffles', Thomas StamfordThe History of Java, London: 1817, vol. 2, opp. p. 16Google Scholar), aquatint and etching.
63 Gilpin, Observations, 45.
64 Ibid., 45–6.
65 Ellis, Henry, Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy to China; Comprising a Correct Narrative of the Public Transactions of the Embassy, of the Voyage To and From China, and of the Journey From the Mouth of the Pei-Ho to the Return to Canton. Interspersed with Observations Upon the Face of the Country, the Polity, Moral Character, and Manners of the Chinese Nation (London: J. Murray, 1817), 29Google Scholar.
66 Raffles, The History of Java, vol. 1, 252. On the whole, however, Raffles was complimentary in his opinion of the Javanese, noting that they were “strangers to unrelenting hatred and blood-thirsty revenge”, “[a]trocious crimes” were rarely perpetrated and when they did occur were “principally owing to misgovernment” (ibid., 249–50).
67 Antiquarian, Architectural, and Landscape Illustrations of the History of Java by the Late Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. (London: Henry G. Bohn), 1844. Raffles had intended to produce a second publication in 1817 titled An Account of the Antiquities of Java, illustrated by Drawings of the Principal Architectural and Sculptural Remains, etc as Surveyed by Capt R. Baker, of the Bengal Military Establishment, in the Years 1815 and 1816. It was to have included plates not published in The History of Java, but was never realized. The additional plates, including the image of Borobudur, were eventually released first in 1830 by John Murray (selling very few copies) and again, more widely, in 1844.
68 Captain Godfrey P. Baker, Northeast View of Borobudur in the Cadoo, Half a Mile Distant (from an album of 58 drawings: No. 10 Original Drawings for the Engravings in The History of Java vol. 2: 55 Sketches and Plans of Subjects in Java, Several Published in 1817, of which 15 are by me, G. P. Baker, taking out the 5 of Plaoosan for Vol. 1) 1815, pencil, British Museum (1939.3–11.05, 12). The pendopos are mentioned by Baker in his journal as “fit for the accommodation of Travellers” (Baker MSS Java Antiquities 4, 117).
69 Captain Godfrey P. Baker?, North Northeast View of the Great Pyramidal Temple of Buru Budur in the Cadu District, Java in 1815 (from an album of 58 drawings: No. 10 Original Drawings for the Engravings in The History of Java vol. 2: 55 Sketches and Plans of Subjects in Java, Several Published in 1817, of which 15 are by me, G. P. Baker, taking out the 5 of Plaoosan for Vol. 1) 1815, pen and ink and wash, British Museum (1939.3–11.04, 20). Another version of this drawing in the collection of the Royal Asiatic Society also has the pendopo at the apex of the monument scored out (Captain Godfrey P. Baker, The Temple of Borobudur from the NNE, c.1815, pencil, Royal Asiatic Society (Baker Collection 08.013)).
70 This image was also reproduced in Crawfurd, John, “On the ruins of Boro Budor in Java”, Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay 2, 1820Google Scholar, as plate I between pages 154 and 155.
71 Ibid., 155.
72 Baker MS Java Antiquities 4, 129–30.
73 Ibid.
74 Raffles, The History of Java, vol. 2, 6.
75 Baker MS Java Antiquities 4, 142.
76 Forge, Raffles and Daniell, 119 and Mildred Archer, Early Views of India: The Picturesque Journeys of Thomas and William Daniell 1786–1794 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980), 226. The Liber Veritatis was assembled by Claude from drawings of his own major paintings as a record to authenticate his work. Over 200 of the images were reproduced as sepia mezzotints by Richard Earlom in a book of the same title published by John Boydell in 1777. It became highly popular with artists of the period for whom Claude served as an exemplar.
77 Reynolds, Joshua, Discourses on Art, ed. Wark, Robert R. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975), 237Google Scholar.
78 Canto 4, CVIII, 964–7.
79 Raffles, “A discourse delivered to the literary”, no. IV (April 1816), 349 and 353. See also Sophia Raffles, Memoir, 156 and 162. For a fuller discussion of the impact that the depictions and descriptions of the candis in The History of Java had on British perceptions of Javanese civilization and its relative state of development in comparison with European, South Asian and South-East Asian cultures, see Tiffin, Sarah, “Raffles and the barometer of civilisation: images and descriptions of ruined candis in ‘The History of Java’ ”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3, 18, 3, 2008, 341–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
80 Raffles, “A discourse delivered to the literary”, no. IV, April 1816, 351. Raffles is here quoting Baker. See also Raffles, The History of Java, vol. 1, 11 and Sophia Raffles, Memoir, 158.
81 Raffles, “A discourse delivered to the literary”, no. IV, April 1816, 350.
82 Raffles, The History of Java, vol. 2, 6. Similarly, a reviewer of The History of Java, suggested that the ruins:
may serve to shew the early excellence of the artists who have left such specimens of their genius to a people who seem so utterly inimitative. Except among absolute barbarians, we shall rarely find so few respectable edifices, public or private, as among the four or five millions of modern Javans (Review of The History of Java, … The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register …, no. 24, December 1817, 584).
83 Raffles, The History of Java, vol. 2, 6.
84 Crawfurd, John, “The ruins of Prambanan in Java”, Asiatick Researches; or, Transactions of the Society Instituted in Bengal, for Enquiring into the History and Antiquities, the Arts, Sciences, and Literature of Asia 13, 1820, 366–7Google Scholar. As Ricklefs observes, however, with the fall of Hindu power on Java, “… it was not barbarians who now took centre stage. Nor was it the beginning of a Javanese ‘Dark Age’ ” (Ricklefs, M. C., Jogjakarta under Sultan Mangkubumi, 1749–1792: A History of the Division of Java (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 1Google Scholar).
85 Justinian Gantz after Captain P. J. Begbie, Mosque on the Kubu Road, Malacca (vignette from Captain Begbie's, P. J.The Malayan Peninsula, Madras: 1834, opp. p. 370Google Scholar), aquatint.
86 Raffles, The History of Java, vol. 1, 473.
87 William Daniell, A Javan in the Court Dress (plate from Raffles', Thomas StamfordThe History of Java (London: 1817), vol. 1, opp. p. 92Google Scholar), coloured aquatint and etching; and William Daniell, A Javan in the War Dress (plate from Raffles', Thomas StamfordThe History of Java (London: 1817), vol. 1, opp. p. 90Google Scholar), coloured aquatint and etching.
88 Major Thorn, William, Memoir of the Conquest of Java; with the Subsequent Operations of the British Forces in the Oriental Archipelago. To Which is Subjoined, a Statistical and Historical Sketch of Java; Being the Result of Observations Made in a Tour Through the Country; with an Account of its Dependencies (London: T. Egerton, 1815Google Scholar).
89 Joseph Jeakes, possibly after William Thorn, or after Johannes Rach or School of Johannes Rach, Fort, Palace, and Line of Defence at Palimbang (plate XVIII from Thorn's, WilliamMemoir of the Conquest of Java. London: 1815, opp. p. 143Google Scholar), aquatint and etching; and Joseph Jeakes, possibly after William Thorn, or after School of Johannes Rach, possibly A. de Nelly, Water Palace at Djoejo Carta (plate XXV from Thorn's, WilliamMemoir of the Conquest of Java. London: 1815, opp. p. 292Google Scholar), aquatint and etching.
