The Problem of the Hindu Colonisation of Indonesia

Abstract

Few spectacles on the stage of history, played out many centuries ago or in a nearer past, are so fascinating and instructive to an onlooker of our times as the interplay of two peoples differing in origin and level of civilisation. The spectator observes how the politically strongest, moved by the necessity of expansion, by internal pressure, or by some other cause, invades the territory of the less powerful one and by bringing it under its domination calls into being some form of colonial relationship. No less interesting is it then to observe in what way the culture of the conquered people reacts to this foreign rule. Is it weakened, pushed back and annihilated little by little, just as, for instance, the pre-columbian civilisations were eradicated under the dominion of the Spanish conquistadores? Or does the culture of the invaders prove the weaker in the long run, being absorbed by the deeply rooted culture of the subject people, as for instance the tribes which successively invaded the Chinese empire in the course of history were absorbed in the great autochthonous mass and finally disappeared without leaving a trace?