The Malay Archipelago Through Travellers' Eyes: 1800–1900

Forthcoming 

Judith E. Bosnak & Rick Honings

What did 19th-century travellers actually see when they journeyed through the Malay Archipelago—and what did they miss? The travelogues penned by British and Dutch explorers reached a wide readership; they have shaped how we imagine this region with their accounts of island kingdoms, volcanic landscapes, and maritime crossroads. Other voices—Javanese nobles venturing beyond their courts, Eurasian tourists navigating between worlds, French administrators, Scandinavian adventurers, Italian naturalists—remained in the shadows. 
 
The Malay Archipelago Through Travellers’ Eyes recovers these overlooked perspectives alongside fresh readings of celebrated figures like James Brooke, the “White Rajah” of Sarawak, and the intrepid Isabella Bird. Here we encounter Purwalelana, whose groundbreaking Javanese travelogue in modern prose abandoned centuries of poetic tradition; Kartini, whose letters became a means of traversing boundaries she could not physically cross; and Dé-Lilah, whose Eurasian heritage gave her writing an unsettling double vision. The naturalist Junghuhn scaling Java’s volcanoes, Raffles burnishing British reputation against Dutch rivals, Italian explorers charting New Guinea's coasts—each constructed not only the lands they described but also themselves. 
 
Travel writing has often claimed to offer transparent windows onto foreign worlds. This collection reveals it as something far more interesting: a literature of encounter where imperial ambition, personal identity, and genuine curiosity intertwine. For anyone captivated by the arts of travel and observation, these essays open new ways of reading a genre we thought we knew.

“Judith Bosnak and Rick Honings’ The Malay Archipelago Through Travellers’ Eyes: 1800–1900 brings 19th-century Insular Southeast Asia to vivid life. Blending European and indigenous perspectives, this insightful collection brilliantly uncovers the complex cross-cultural dynamics, gender roles, and power structures of colonial-era travel writing.” – Jeroen Dewulf, University of California, Berkeley

“This book represents an exciting new approach to travel literature. Its unique combination of voices brings important multi-lingual perspectives to a subject that is usually only covered via British colonial views. Here sources in Javanese, Malay, Dutch, Italian and Scandinavian languages combine to give a complex picture of what is now Indonesia and Malaysia.” – Adrian Vickers, University of Sydney

Judith E. Bosnak, a scholar of Southeast Asian Studies with a PhD from Leiden University (2006), is Director of the SAKA Museum, dedicated to the living culture of Bali.

Rick Honings, a scholar of 19th-century Dutch and Dutch East Indies Literature, is Scaliger Professor at Leiden University.

Publication Year: 2026
328pp / 229 x 152mm
56 b/w images
Paperback
ISBN: 978-981-325-333-9