Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013. xviii, 340 pp., [16 pp.] of plates (Figures.) US$59.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-3631-3.
Southeast Asian governments have become increasingly eager to have sites, cities, landscapes and other cultural attainments inscribed on the World Heritage List. It would be salutary if this attention was due to awakening concern on the part of politicians to preserve their heritage for psychological and aesthetic reasons; however, one may be forgiven for suspecting that political and financial considerations have also become involved. It is now appreciated that inscription on the list is a great way to increase tourism, and thereby revenue.
William Chapman has compiled a very valuable synthesis of the history of human involvement with remains of ancient architecture in Southeast Asia. As a summary of a vast and complicated subject, with relevance to a number of fields, from the abstract such as archaeology and history to the applied such as tourism studies, this work is significant. A brief introduction which deals with general concepts such as “heritage” and the evolution of related controversies regarding what should be done with ruins is followed by the heart of the volume: five chapters, each of which deals with one or more countries, exploring case studies. There are two concluding parts: a final chapter on “The future of Southeast Asia’s ancient sites,” and a thirteen-page section entitled “Conclusions.”
The author’s objective is to provide a comprehensive overview of the important architectural sites of premodern Southeast Asia with respect to their current physical condition, the measures taken to preserve them from further deterioration, to repair damage to their materials, and to restore them to something resembling their appearance at some point in the past. None of these objectives is easy to define in practice nor is implementation of policies to maintain and protect them uncomplicated. Political, philosophical, technical and economic considerations usually require choices to be made among alternatives, none of which is optimal from every point of view. Choices among alternatives involve trade-offs, and are influenced by a number of factors, including those of self-interest on the part of entrepreneurs and politicians, and desires by segments of populations to recreate something which may in fact never have existed and is based on illusory notions about the past.
This work explores the socio-political factors which influence the means and policies chosen to deal with Southeast Asia’s ruins on the part of the national authorities who hold jurisdiction over them. Many people approaching Southeast Asia for the first time are surprised to discover that the region contains a high density of historic structures, some of which have been granted world heritage status by UNESCO, others which are of national or international importance from the points of view of tourism, education, research and contemporary religious belief. It is difficult to do justice to the complexities of the local cross-currents of conflicting interests among stakeholders found among the ten (or eleven, if one counts Timor Leste) nations of Southeast Asia. It is difficult for example to assess the extent to which corruption and other negative factors have played roles in the policies of conservation of heritage buildings in Southeast Asia.
It is easier and less controversial to point out the technical and economic factors which have resulted in the current status of heritage building conservation in Southeast Asia, and this is in general the approach which has been followed in this book. No such overview has been attempted in the past, and this book will be useful both for students in various social sciences and humanities, and for scholars and policy makers, including those in international funding agencies.
The subject is indeed vast, and the author has in general coped very well with the challenge of achieving both breadth and depth of discussion. The author’s copious footnotes and 38-page bibliography provide citations to quite a comprehensive swath of the literature, from books to internet sites.
The problem of educating local tourists to treat the monuments with respect is ongoing. In most cases tourists, even local ones, have only the vaguest notion of the history of the site or the meanings of the art symbols. The vision of two million Indonesian Muslims per year visiting the Buddhist monument of Borobudur is one of the interesting cases where the perceptions of local visitors regarding the relevance of their own ancestors’ achievements to their contemporary existence (and identity) can be explored in more depth (and an Indonesian doctoral student at the National University of Singapore is in 2014 about to complete his dissertation on precisely this subject). The volume under review here provides numerous other cases which could be investigated from a similar perspective.
Heritage conservation theory and practice are rapidly evolving throughout the world. New voices, new political developments, are producing continuous change. As the author notes (229), the impact of new tourists from China and India on heritage sites, their preservation and interpretation, has yet to be felt, but will definitely change the equation. Since 2011, basic changes in Myanmar’s government and economy have engendered many new threats and opportunities for heritage preservation, development and interpretation.
This book is a comprehensive snapshot of a swiftly flowing stream, and some of the variables described here will be superceded within a few years. Nevertheless, as a guide to the current state of the art in Southeast Asia, this ambitious book is likely to remain a basic source for years to come. It distils basic information and policy considerations of great interest to decision makers in government and private industry, scholars and students from a wide range of disciplines.
John N. Miksic
National University of Singapore, Singapore
pp. 890-892