In the exhibition, several books grabbed my attention in particular: Bilder Aus Mekka by Snouck Hurgronje (Brill, 1889), Hugo Grotius (Hugo de Groot), ; Mare Liberum (The Freedom of the Seas) (Elsevier, 1609); Hoesein Djajadiningrat, Kritische Beschouwing van de Sadjarah Bantĕn (Critical Consideration of the Banten History, Joh, 1913); Anton de Kom’s Wij Slaven van Suriname (We Slaves of Suriname) (1934, a stencilled reprint was first published in Leiden in 1963). Each in their own way, these books connect to my previous questions about the relations between the definition of knowledge and power balances.

Take Hurgronje’s book, for example. The book contains twenty photographic prints showing various scenes during hajj pilgrim in Mecca. Hurgronje was a notable Dutch scholar and a professor of Arabic at Leiden University, whose area of expertise was the Islam. Although the caption in the exhibition accurately explained what the book was about, it did not describe the historical implications that came with the gathering and cataloguing of the information inside it. During the Dutch colonisation, Hurgronje served as an advisor to the Netherlands East Indies’ government, offering consultations to general J.B. Van Heutsz. Hurgronje used his knowledge on Islam and moslem cultural traditions to guide and assist the colonial government in conquering the Aceh people in the Aceh War (1873-1910). Hurgronje’s house at Rapenburg 61 was inherited by Leiden University and is now used as the office for the Leiden University Fund. Ironically, the house is located next to the building that today houses the International Institute for Asian Studies.

Another example is the caption of Mare Liberum by Hugo Grotius, which describes this book as follows: ‘the jurist Hugo Grotius argues that the seas, like the skies, cannot be anyone’s (or any nation’s) property. The book was commissioned by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), founded in 1602, which advanced this argument to circumvent the trade monopolies of Spain and Portugal that had received the Pope’s approval. The principles are still very much alive today, as is clear from contemporary debates about issues such as fishing rights and drilling for oil at sea.’ Although the caption explained the connection between Grotius and the VOC, it did not make explicit how his role as an intellectual paved the way for free trade and colonialism.  It seems like a missed opportunity not to connect these books with contemporary power structures and decolonial thinking, an approach that would involve ethical action to problematize wealth and to engage in discussions regarding power imbalances and restitution.

II Access, abundance, dispersion

To some extent, I admit that I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by abundance. I have completed parts of my education at various education institutions in the Netherlands and have started building a career here. It might sound weird to clarify this but this position has drastically shaped my perspectives on the politics of knowledge and access. This trajectory of education and employment has granted me access to university libraries where I could consult numerous journal articles, e-books, and printed materials, which I would not be able to access otherwise.

The functions of libraries and museums as a means of education have been made possible through the abundance of their resources. They evolve to be the machines that authorise knowledge and that categorise certain matters as knowledge, and others as ‘different’ or non-knowledge. Needless to say, the books shown in the exhibition are all part of the collection of the library of Leiden University. Abundance is not a matter to be taken for granted. To amass abundance and to have total control over it, is one of the prerequisites to maintain institutional knowledge power. Therefore to live surrounded by abundance means to always be ready to connect the wealth with the existing gaps.

I was born and raised in a context where one often has to illegally pirate and copy certain reading materials in order to access them. Admittedly, I was used to these acts, or shall we say, I have nurtured a more nuanced view of these practices. I would not dismiss piracy as a mere copyright infringement. What should one do if pirated or copied materials emerged as the only options available to obtain knowledge? It is too convenient to think of downloading a book, which is in most cases dedicated to writing, reading, and expanding the imagination, as stealing.

It is also important to realise that (colonial) museums, the kinds of museums which still surround the universities of Europe, are founded on colonial objects derived from long-term and organised extraction. The resourcefulness of the university is often implicated in colonial histories. We should not turn a blind eye to these matters. The Bushuis, or the Oost Indisch Huis, in Amsterdam was the headquarters of the Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie. In this building, there is a VOC Zaal, the room which was used as a meeting place of the Heren Zeventien, the board members of the VOC. Today, the building functions as an important site of the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam. My postdoc employment was affiliated with the faculty and I used to have a shared office there. When I was a masters student of Contemporary Asian Studies at the UvA, the Bushuis was where the library and the study centre were located.

How to take a decolonising perspective on intellectual property? The introduction of the decolonial perspective in museums and their collections has resulted in the plea for restitution as the most plausible scenario to fix the problem. However, as much of the discussion around restitution is focused on objects and artefacts, it rarely touches on books and other conventional printed matter. In order to start thinking about this, I start with the exhibition and propose to divide the books presented there in two categories:‘friends to think together with’ and ‘figures to be held accountable.’ For example, Anton de Kom’s Wij Slaven van Suriname (We Slaves of Surinam) would fall under the first category. This is the kind of book which is in tune with the pressing matters, both at the time of writing and today. The exhibited book by Snouck Hurgronje, Bilder Aus Mekka (Brill, 1889), would fall under the second category. All books which fall under the second category need re-reading and reinterpretation. While Hurgronje’s intellectual works are made visible in the exhibition and the library, the public should also be introduced to the stories of Cut Nya Dien, Cut Nya Meutia, Teuku Umar, Panglima Polim, and the Aceh people themselves, who fought tirelessly until they were forced to surrender to Hurgronje’s intellectual trick. Their independent stories were preceded by the story of Laksamana Malahayati (also spelled Keumalahayati), the admiral who had fought against the Dutch along with her Inong Balee troop of widows. In 1859, Malahayati defeated and killed Cornelis de Houtman, the Dutch merchant seaman who led the Dutch East Indies’ first expedition to the East Indies.

Restitution is a state project, with a massive bureaucracy. Just like any other state-to-state cooperation, it always takes a long time to materialise it into real action. In the meantime, museums and other art and cultural institutions will keep organising exhibitions in accordance with their own perspectives and mindset. Many Indonesian researchers, writers, and thinkers are dreaming of travelling to the Netherlands to be able to access various materials about Indonesia: artefacts, photographs, books, pamphlets, maps and all sorts of intellectual collectibles. In 2011, when I started my PhD in Leiden University, I met a large group of Indonesians (most of them were lecturers working for various universities) who came for a short fellowship in KITLV and Leiden University. The aims of their fellowships were to write research proposals based on the abundance of the institutions. To write comprehensive Indonesian histories, Indonesians need to be travellers. And in this context, we are always positioned as borrowers, or visiting fellows at best. To take ownership of what is lost is crucial. Along with this thinking is the development of innovative mechanisms to open up the resources of knowledge and bridging formal and informal institutions.  The general public, of which the Indonesian researchers I met are merely an example, will have access to these resources without having to comply with various application requirements set by the host institutions which own the resources. If this would be the case in the future, many researchers won’t have to obtain the means to travel to the Netherlands, and would not be hindered in furthering their research. It would be a first step towards penetrating the wealth of the university and to make it porous.

DEZE TEKST IS EERDER GEPUBLICEERD IN METROPOLIS M NUMMER 1 2023 NAVIGATIE. STEUN METROPOLIS M, NEEM EEN ABONNEMENT. ALS JE NU EEN JAARABONNEMENT AFSLUIT STUREN WE JE NIEUWSTE NUMMER GRATIS TOE