Sunday 31 October 2010

Indonesia's First English Newspaper


The Java Government Gazette

Originally published in the Jakarta Globe, 25/10/10

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/entertainment/indonesias-first-english-newspaper/403206

The Jakarta Globe might be Indonesia’s newest English language newspaper, but which was its first? Many people will assume that it was the Jakarta Post (founded in 1983); those with longer memories might recall the now defunct Indonesian Times (launched in 1974), or the Indonesian Observer (founded in 1955). Fans of historic trivia might even suggest the short-lived Independent, a weekly newssheet printed in Jakarta at the end of World War II during the Allied reoccupation of Indonesia. But in truth the inky ancestor of all those publications and more first rolled off the presses almost 200 years ago. Its name was the Java Government Gazette.

In 1811 Britain occupied Java and ousted Dutch colonial forces from the East Indies. The invasion was a far-flung sideshow of the Napoleonic Wars then wracking Europe: France had annexed Holland, making Dutch overseas possessions de facto enemy territory in British eyes. For five years Java and a scattering of other archipelago outposts were under a British administration based in Jakarta, then known as Batavia.
Under the energetic Lieutenant-Governor, Thomas Stamford Raffles (who later went on to found Singapore) there were all sorts of changes – Indonesian traffic today travels on the British-style left thanks to laws laid down in this period, for example. One of the first innovations was the launch of a weekly newspaper.
An entire printing press was shipped in from Calcutta, but before the first edition hit the newsstands the chief printer, Dr Hunter, succumbed to Batavia’s notoriously insalubrious climate, and it was his young assistant Amos H. Hubbard who oversaw the launch of the Gazette.
Hubbard came from a family of venerable American newsmen. His father was the proprietor of the Norwich Courier in Connecticut, and his older brother, Thomas, had worked as a government printer for the British in Calcutta. Hubbard was printer and acting editor of the Gazette for its entire run.
The first edition of the Java Government Gazette was delivered to subscribers on 29 February 1812, and for the next four years it appeared without fail every Saturday. It was a broadsheet, more or less the same size as your modern Globe, though it usually ran to only four pages, and needless to say, full coloration was a distant dream.

The paper’s principal role was as a government mouthpiece. The first column of its front page was usually taken up by the latest pronouncements from the Lieutenant-Governor on issues as diverse as the official prices of opium and arak, slave laws and the value of the official paper currency. A strap-line under the imposing masthead declared that all such notifications were to “be considered official, and duly attended to accordingly by the parties concerned”. Many Dutch citizens remained in Java during the British interregnum and these notices usually also appeared translated into Dutch.
But there was more to the Gazette than mere pronouncements and propaganda. Its pages were usually scattered with intriguing advertisements for everything from “handsome second-hand carriages” to pickled herrings, from “Superior French Claret” for 18 Spanish dollars per dozen bottles to “valuable men and women slaves”.
There were also lively correspondence columns featuring haughty discussions of moral issues such as slavery and dueling, flowery poems from contributors – and the occasional bout of literary bickering.
There was also plenty of local news. Dramatic reports appeared of bloody British victories over local rulers in Palembang and Yogyakarta, while descriptions of more peaceful encounters – usually penned by Amos Hubbard himself – were full of intriguing color. In March 1812 the Gazette reported a picnic hosted for the Sultans of Cirebon in Batavia. The entertainment consisted of a “Malay dance” which did not go down well with the European observers: “Their uncouth attitude and gestures surprised the English spectators, whilst they evidently delighted the Javanese nobility”. Afterwards the guests were ferried to a specially constructed bamboo bungalow on stilts in the middle of the Ciliwung River to engage in a spot of fishing.
Later the same year the Gazette carried its first sports report, covering the results of the first annual Salatiga Horse Races, held in the hills of Central Java. The $100 Kraton Stakes was won by Lieutenant Hunter, while Lieutenant Black’s mare Skinflint bolted, and a pony named Sultan threw its rider.
There were also unintentionally hilarious editorials passing judgment on the standards of dress amongst Batavia’s resident Dutchwomen, and ethnographic reports on Balinese princes and Kalimantan tribes from intrepid English travelers.
The second half of the paper was filled with international news, which came second-hand, and very late indeed. The copy was usually lifted wholesale from any Calcutta and London papers that arrived with passengers disembarking from sailing ships at Batavia’s teeming harbor. News of the wars in Europe was often six months out-of-date.
From time to time, when a particularly exciting batch of overseas newspapers arrived in town a “Special Edition” of the Gazette was hurried out midweek. Editor Hubbard also oversaw the publication of the “Java Annual Directory”, which included full listings of government officials, laws, services, and private businesses, and was available to Gazette subscribers for eight Java rupees (non-subscribers had to pay the full 12 rupees).

In 1815 in far away Europe the Napoleonic Wars came to an end; Dutch sovereignty was re-established, and Britain agreed to hand back the Indonesian territories it had seized four years earlier. Raffles left for England in early 1816, and later in the year Dutchman Godert van der Capellen arrived to oversee the return of Dutch control.
The Java Government Gazette limped on for a few months, but its front pages were peppered with adverts for passages to England and for auctions of English homes and household goods. Its readership was vanishing, and the number of columns filled with Dutch text rose.
The last ever edition went out to the dwindling body of subscribers on 10 August 1816, almost exactly five years after the British first arrived in Java. The paper was replaced shortly afterwards by the Dutch-language Bataviasche Courant.
Today the role of the Java Government Gazette as the forerunner of modern Indonesia’s entire English language print media is largely forgotten, and back copies are few and far between (though there are collections in the British Library and in the Dutch National Archives).
As for what happened to the erstwhile editor, Amos Hubbard – he did not join the initial English exodus in 1816. What he did after the Gazette folded is not clear, but a rather sad little “situation wanted” advert near the bottom of Page One of the last edition offers a clue: “A YOUNG MAN, who understands the Dutch Language, would have no objections to engage himself in any of the Merchant Houses – for particulars enquire at the Printing Office”.
Hubbard evidently did find a position – and a lucrative one too. The following year he chartered a ship, filled its hold with his own purchases, and headed home to America. It was probably the best decision he could have made – he would have had rather a long wait for the next editorial position on an English language publication in Indonesia to become available...
***

News from the pages of the Java Government Gazette

Sacred Cows and Burning Widows
29 February 1812
A Gazette correspondent offers readers a tantalizing glimpse of life in Bali:

The Bali people pay divine honours to the Cow; they do not make use of its hide, nor will they sit upon it from reverential respect. The wife burns herself with the body of her deceased husband, she ascends the funeral pile, adorned with flowers, and holding in her hand a dove, which she liberates. On the bird’s flying off she leaps voluntarily into the fire.

Toothless and Clueless Thieves Flee
25 April 1812
A pair of Indians go on the run from Surabaya:

On Saturday morning, the 25th April, 1812, deserted from Sourabaya, two Bengal servants, both named Peerbuccus, after robbing their employers to a considerable amount. One of them is a robust looking man, about 35 years of age, and has lost many of his front teeth; he speaks the Malay language tolerable fluently, and has rather an effeminate voice. The other is a very tall, thin, black, miserable looking creature, has no one good quality to recommend him and may be easily known from his great stupidity which approaches nearly to idiotism. Any person giving information so as they may be apprehended, shall be handsomely rewarded...

New Fashion Hits Batavia
2 May 1812
An editorial praises the latest trend amongst Batavian ladies:

At the entertainment recently given at Batavia it was remarked how great an improvement has been introduced in respect to the attire of the Dutch Ladies since British authority has been established. The Cabaya appears now generally disused and the more elegant English costume adopted. We congratulate our friends on the amelioration of the public taste, because we see in it the dawn of still greater and more important improvements...

Poison Pen Writer Says Sorry
12 December 1813
A court-sanctioned apology from a foul-mouthed tax dodger, who “neglected to pay certain duties at Batavia”:

I JOHN WILLIAMS WELSH, formerly known by the name of John Williams, commanding the ship Claudine, do this eleventh day of December 1813, before the Supreme Court of Judicature in Batavia, declare that on the ninth day of April 1812, I did at Sourabaya write a most false, malicious, abusive and threatening letter, addressed to Messrs WALLIS and Co. Prize Agents for the Captors of Java, and I do acknowledge that I wrote this letter under the impulse of passion, for had I at the time been capable of reflection, I must have been sensible that I had no reason whatever for using such gross and improper language...

Rumble in the Jungle
14 December 1814
A gruesome report of a fight between a tiger and a buffalo, a traditional entertainment laid on for guests by the sultan of Yogyakarta:

A Royal Tyger, one of the largest and most ferocious of the species, was enclosed together with a very fine Buffaloe of the true fighting breed, within a strong circular fence of about thirty yards in circumference. For some moments they stood on the defensive, each seeming unwilling to begin the fight; the appearance of the Tyger during this interval was highly characteristic of his nature; he seemed perfectly aware of the prowess of his adversary, and would fain have avoided the impending contest – his furious eyes which glared like fireballs, darted in wistful glances around him, apparently in search of the means of escape or of a less powerful antagonist on whom to wreak his vengeance. Mean time the Buffaloe stood as if conscious of superiority, steadily awaiting the attack of his formidable adversary. This state of inaction might have lasted for some time had not the Buffaloe been aroused to furious pitch of irritation by the application of bunches of nettles attached to long bamboos, which with the assistance of chilly water which was poured on him from above seemed at once to exhaust his caution and forbearance; he roared with pain and indignation, spurned the ground he trod on, and then darted with inconceivable velocity on his wary antagonist , who avoided his horns and fastened on his neck, which tore in a dreadful manner. As soon as the Buffaloe disengaged himself he charged again but with equal ill success, the Tyger still avoided the fury of his onset, yet seldom failed to inflict some terrible wound upon his opponent. In this manner the battle raged for nearly an hour, when the Buffaloe, contrary to the usual result, was completely defeated, and was obliged to be withdrawn from the scene of action...

© Tim Hannigan 2010

Tuesday 19 October 2010

Across the Roof of the World



A Journey in Ladakh

Originally Published in The Epoch Times, 08/09/10


http://epoch-archive.com/a1/en/uk/nnn/2010/09-Sep/08/012_Travel.pdf

The wheels of the truck were inches from the edge of the road. Stark rust-coloured cliffs rose on either side, and far below an angry grey stream churned between tumbled boulders. I swallowed hard and looked up at the clear blue sky as we edged around the hairpin bend, shifted gear, and began to roll towards the valley floor.

I was riding into the heartlands of Ladakh, India’s wildest mountain fastness, in fine style – installed in the luridly decorated cab of a Kashmiri cargo truck. Thirty minutes earlier the driver, Hussein, and his assistant Altaf, had taken pity on me, waiting for a bus at a desolate roadside, and had stopped to give me a lift. By accepting their offer, I now realised, I had put my life in their hands – this road was little more than an overgrown goat path, edging along cliffs above bloodcurdling chasms.

My nerves were on edge and my eyes were fixed firmly on that narrowing strip of sky all the way down to the bottom of the gorge. We crossed the murky Indus River on a rattling suspension bridge and the road to Leh opened ahead, a strip of smooth blue tarmac cutting through a landscape the colour of wild horses. I breathed easy at last; Altaf smiled and patted me on the shoulder, reached under a pile of blankets at the back of the cab and took out a ripe melon. As we bowled eastwards with the mountain breeze coming in at the window he passed me slice after dripping slice.

***

Ladakh lies hard on the Chinese border northeast of Kashmir. The whole region is more than 3,000 metres above sea level, and the two tenuous roads that link it to the rest of India are blocked by snow for eight months of the year. This is a world apart.

Geographically and culturally Ladakh belongs not to the Indian Subcontinent, but to the Tibetan Plateau. Here there are stark, iron-coloured mountains, villages huddled in stands of willows and poplars, and bone-white Buddhist monasteries. The 270,000-strong population are Tibetan Buddhists, and their language is a Tibetan dialect. Indeed, until the turmoil of the 20th century saw old trading routes across high passes abruptly severed, the region had closer links to Lhasa than to Delhi. Today, however, it remains one of the most open and accessible places for visitors keen to see the ancient Buddhist cultures and the striking scenery of High Asia.
Many visitors arrive in Ladakh by air, but I had made my own entry from the west, taking a Jeep across the Zoji La from Kashmir, and making my first stop in the world of Tibetan Buddhism at the lonely outpost of Lamayuru. It was a spectacular place to start my journey through Ladakh.

The monastery here is the oldest in Ladakh, built in the 10th century by the great Buddhist missionary Rinchen Zangpo when Ladakh was ruled as part of Western Tibet. Its whitewashed prayer halls and weathered stupas are slotted among the crags of a rocky outcrop. Mud-walled houses nestle against the lower slopes; faded prayer flags snap in the sharp breeze, and the whole place is adrift in a vast, empty landscape.

I was shown around the monastery – and offered my first cup of salty butter tea (a Ladakhi speciality and an acquired taste to say the least) – by a young monk named Tashi. I spent the night in a simple guesthouse in the village, and the next morning I hitched that hair-raising lift with the truck drivers.

Altaf and Hussein – who were carrying a load of electrical goods all the way from Delhi – took me to Leh, the Ladakhi capital. In the 16th and 17th centuries the town was the seat of the Nyamgal Dynasty who ruled over an independent Ladakh, allied to their Tibetan neighbours. It was only when it was captured by the expansionist Hindu ruler of Jammu – later to become the first Maharaja of Kashmir – in 1834 that the region found itself more closely tied to the Indian scene. Ladakh remains administratively a part of the troubled state of Kashmir today, though many Ladakhis would rather see their homeland ruled directly from Delhi as a Union Territory.

For centuries Leh was a caravan town, a crossroads on a feeder branch of the fabled Silk Road. Yak trains from Tibet arrived to trade pashmina shawl wool with Indian merchants, and long strings of Bactrian camels lumbered down over the passes from the desert outposts of Xinjiang with jade and silks.

Today those old roads are closed, but Leh still has an international buzz. This is the hub of the tourist trade that has grown in the three decades since the Indian government threw Ladakh open to foreign visitors. There are trekkers, culture-vultures, spiritual tourists and mountain lovers in town, and 300 miles from the closest urban centre, it is an outpost of outlandish sophistication marooned in the wilderness, home to the best cappuccinos in the Himalayas.

But despite all this, a hint of the old Silk Road romance remains. A spectacular mud-walled fortress looms over the town; in the narrow alleys the descendants of Turkic traders from Kashgar and Yarkand still do business; and rising across the Indus Valley the white ridge of the Stok Kangri range still flares brightly in the afternoon sunshine.

***

The final stage of my journey through Ladakh would take me east through a stepping-stone string of monasteries, and across a skyscraping pass towards the forbidden Tibetan frontier. In the hilltop monastery at Thikse, some 20 kilometres from Leh, I shivered in the dawn as the maroon-clad monks lined up for their morning puja ceremonies – a welter of clashing cymbals, booming gongs and rhythmic chanting. There were more stops at more monasteries – Stakna, standing sentinel between the flanking ridges of the Indus plain; Chemrey rising from a nail-bed of poplar trees; and Takthog, slotted against the back wall of a narrowing side valley – and then, riding in the back seat of a hired Jeep, I crossed the dizzying saddle of the 5,289-metre Chang La, claimed to be the third highest drivable pass in the world.

It was downhill all the way on the other side through broken, fractured landscapes where chubby marmots watched the passing Jeep from the stony roadsides. And then my final destination appeared ahead – a long lozenge of bright water under a vast sky.

Pangong Lake, a 130-kilometre stretch of clear, salty water, lies 4,250 metres above sea level. Once it was a junction on ancient trade routes – north towards Yarkand, east towards Lhasa. Today, it is the ends of the earth and a suitably stunning place for the culmination of a Ladakhi adventure.

The Jeep stopped at a cluster of seasonal cafés at the windswept head of the lake and I scrambled alone up the hillside to take in the view. The waters were a vivid turquoise in the shallows, deepening to the colour of lapis lazuli further out. Flocks of delicate, red-legged seagulls – incongruous here in the high mountains – fluttered on the near shore, and across the water a great bank of ribbed brown hills rose. To the east the lake narrowed between rugged buttresses, and in the furthest distance a conspiratorial cluster of snowy peaks huddled. A sensitive international border straddles the lake; those mountains lay deep inside Chinese-ruled Tibet. Sitting, shivering on that windy hillside, I felt deeply grateful for the window into the Buddhist heritage and the wild landscapes of the wider Himalayan world that my journey through Ladakh had given me.

© Tim Hannigan 2010

Sunday 3 October 2010

Britain's Atlantic Edge


Walking the Southwest Coast Path in Cornwall

Originally published in Maximillian Magazine, August 2010


From the high outcrop a sweeping panorama opens. Behind me a deep bay is backed by sheer cliffs, rising to a patchwork of tiny stone-walled fields and heather-clad hills. Ahead an expanse of coastline stretches west beneath granite buttresses. White seabirds twist and turn in the breeze, and 100 meters below the Atlantic Ocean surges against jagged black rocks.
I catch my breath, squinting in the bright summer sunlight. In the far distance I can see the spot I am aiming for – a jutting headland marked by a bone-white lighthouse. I still have a long way to go.
This is the wild coastline of Cornwall, Britain’s most westerly county, and I am making my way along the most dramatic and challenging section of the walking trail known as the Southwest Coast Path.

Windswept, storm-lashed, and wading knee-deep in the Atlantic at the tapering southwest extremity of the United Kingdom, Cornwall is a place of raw, rugged beauty. Villages of whitewashed stone cottages huddle at the mouths of narrow valleys, and brightly painted fishing boats work from tiny harbors and cobbled slipways. Inland, scattered farming hamlets give way to rolling moorland studded here and there by mysterious megalithic monuments dating back to the Iron and Bronze Ages. Most Cornish people once made their livelihoods from fishing, farming and mining, but today this is one of Europe’s most popular travel destinations.
The water may be a little cold for tropical tastes, but Cornwall has beaches to rival anything in Southeast Asia, with fine shell sand and clear turquoise waters. This shoreline is open to the full brunt of the Atlantic and offers the UK’s best surfing, and there is excellent seafood.
But I am not here to lounge on a beach or stuff myself with fresh mackerel and mussels – I’m here in search of a more healthy activity. Cornwall is prime hiking territory. The biggest prize is the Southwest Coast path, and I am tackling its most westerly section, the 67 rugged kilometers between the seaside towns of St Ives and Penzance.

Cornwall has been a tourist destination for more than a century, but in the last decade – as surf culture went mainstream, gastro-tourism rose in popularity and the local arts scene gained an international profile – this has become one of Europe’s coolest destinations. There are boutique hotels and Michelin Star restaurants where once there were only fish and chip shops and old fashioned guesthouses.
St Ives – as famous for its art galleries as its beaches – is high on the hip list. A jumble of white-walled buildings and narrow alleyways clustered around a sandy harbor, this is a place where the light and the colors seem more Mediterranean than British.
But head out along the coast path west of St Ives and boutique galleries and Beautiful People are soon forgotten; Cornwall’s most enduring attraction is its landscape, and this coastline is some of its most dramatic. My first day’s walking is exhilarating but exhausting, with steep descents to hidden coves, and sharp climbs through fields of jumbled boulders, always with the Atlantic roaring on my right.

There are many ways to tackle the Southwest Coast path, although only those with time to spare and iron limbs attempt the full 1014 kilometers from Minehead to Poole. The hardiest hikers carry their own gear and camp out. But these days there is an easier option. Several local companies organize self-guided walking holidays. You can get help planning your itineraries if you need it; your accommodation – usually in family-run guesthouses – is booked for you, and each morning your heavy baggage is transferred on to your next destination. All you have to do is set out walking.

After the rugged wilderness of the first day, my own second day on the trail leads through the industrial ruins around Pendeen, once the heartland of the Cornish tin mining industry. Tin was mined along Britain’s Atlantic edge from the earliest days – Cornwall’s flag, a white cross on a black background, represents the pale tin emerging from the dark ore. The 18th and 19th Centuries were the industry’s heyday, but with the discovery of more accessible deposits in South America and Southeast Asia mining disappeared from this coast, and today only ruined engine houses remain.

The key turning point – quite literally – of the coast path is Land’s End, Britain’s most westerly point. Besides a few offshore islands there is nothing between these honey-colored granite cliffs and America.
My final day of walking leads me beyond Land’s End along softer southern shores, passing hidden coves with intriguing names – Porthcurno, Penberth, Porthchapel. Cornwall, like Scotland and Wales, is part of Britain’s Celtic Fringe, a region less influenced by the successive waves of invasion and immigration that swept into England. Until the 18th century people here spoke their own language – still preserved today in these place names.
All along this coastline I see fishing boats – from large trawlers heading for the offshore grounds to tiny open boats hunting mackerel, lobsters and crabs close to the cliffs. Cornwall has some of Europe’s best seafood, and these days it also has the restaurants to match this raw material. At the forefront of the growth of the Cornish food scene was celebrity chef Rick Stein, based in the north coast village of Padstow. Other famous chefs, like Jamie Oliver, have now opened restaurants in the county, and there are fine dining options and inviting gastro-pubs in villages and fishing ports everywhere.
It is the thought of a fine fish dinner that keeps me going through the last stages of my own walk, through the picturesque village of Mousehole with its boat-filled harbor to the genteel Georgian town of Penzance. I am tired and sunburnt, but three days breathing clean sea air, and hiking up and down those steep cliffs has left me invigorated – and once the aches and blisters have healed, I know that there are still 947 kilometers of coast path to be explored...
© Tim Hannigan 2010