The Islamic kingdom of Aceh was ruled by queens for half of the 17th century. Was female rule an aberration? Unnatural? A violation of nature, comparable to hens instead of roosters crowing at dawn? Indigenous texts and European sources offer different evaluations. Drawing on both sets of sources, this book shows that female rule was legitimised both by Islam and adat (indigenous customary laws), and provides original insights on the Sultanah's leadership, their relations with male elites, and their encounters with European envoys who visited their court. The book challenges received views on kingship in the Malay world and the response of indigenous polities to east-west encounters in Southeast Asia's Age of Commerce.

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami caused immense destruction and over 170,000 deaths in the Indonesian province of Aceh. The disaster spurred large-scale social and political changes in Aceh, including the intensified implementation of shari‘a law and an end to the long separatist conflict. After the Tsunami explores Acehnese survivors’ experiences of the deadly waves and the subsequent reconstruction process through the stories they tell about the disaster. Narratives, author Annemarie Samuels argues, are both a window onto the process of remaking everyday life and an essential component of it. Building on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, Samuels shows how the everyday work of recovery is indispensable for any large-scale reconstruction effort to succeed. Recovery is an ambiguous process in which grief remains as life goes on, where optimism and disappointment, remembering and forgetting, structural poverty and the rhetoric of success are often intertwined in individual and social worlds. Such paradoxes are key and form a thread through the five chapters of the book. Addressing post-disaster reconstruction from the survivors’ perspectives opens up space for criticism of post-disaster governance without reducing the discussion of recovery to top-down interventions. Individual histories, emotions, creativity, and ways of being in the world, the author argues, inform the remaking of worlds as much as social, political, and cultural transformations do. After the Tsunami is a provocative and highly significant contribution to studies of humanitarian aid and disaster, psychological anthropology, narrative studies, and scholarly studies of Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Its elegant style, pointed theorizing, and moving ethnographic descriptions will draw readers into Acehnese lifeworlds and politics. Its narratives attest to Acehnese ways of living with loss, within and across a history of colonial and postcolonial violence and suffering and a present of political uncertainty and hope.

The process of post-tsunami recovery and reconstruction in Aceh will take considerable time and is not easy. This book is an attempt at providing helpful background information on Acehnese history, politics and culture, which would benefit expatriate aid workers as well as foreign and domestic scholars in their dealings with the people of Aceh. It is written by specialists of Indonesian and Acehnese studies from a number of countries, together with Acehnese scholars. As the region was not accessible for decades, this book represents in many aspects a new, pioneering endeavour in Acehnese studies. The chapters cover many important aspects of history, such as the female Sultanahs of Aceh, Acehs Turkish connection and the Dutch Colonial War in Aceh. The main emphasis of the book is on relevant contemporary developments in the economy, politics, Islam, and the media, as well as painting, music, and literature.

Islam and Nation presents a fascinating study of the genesis, growth and decline of nationalism in the Indonesian province of Aceh.

On Sunday 26 December 2004, a tsunami of up to 30 metres high hit the northern tip of Sumatera in Indonesia, causing immediate destruction and the deaths of at least 130,000 in Indonesia alone. The scale of the devastation and ensuing human suffering prompted the biggest response endeavour to any natural disaster in history.Post-Disaster Reconstruction will be the first major book that analyses the different perspectives and experiences of the enormous post-tsunami reconstruction effort. It looks specifically at the reconstruction efforts in Aceh, one of the regions most heavily-hit by the tsunami and a province that has until recently suffered nearly three decades of armed conflict. Positioning the reconstruction efforts within Aceh's multi-layered historical, cultural, socio-political and religious contexts, the authors explore diverse experiences and assessments of the reconstruction. It considers the importance of the political and religious settings of the reconstruction, the roles of communities and local non-government organisations and the challenges faced by Indonesian and international agencies. From the in-depth examination of this important case study of disaster reconstruction - significant not only because of the huge scale of the natural disaster and response but also the post-conflict issues - the editors draw together the lessons learned for the future of Aceh and make general recommendations for post-disaster and post-conflict reconstruction-making.

How do ordinary Muslims deal with and influence the increasingly pervasive Islamic norms set by institutions of the state and religion? Becoming Better Muslims offers an innovative account of the dynamic interactions between individual Muslims, religious authorities, and the state in Aceh, Indonesia. Relying on extensive historical and ethnographic research, David Kloos offers a detailed analysis of religious life in Aceh and an investigation into today’s personal processes of ethical formation. Aceh is known for its history of rebellion and its recent implementation of Islamic law. Debunking the stereotypical image of the Acehnese as inherently pious or fanatical, Kloos shows how Acehnese Muslims reflect consciously on their faith and often frame their religious lives in terms of gradual ethical improvement. Revealing that most Muslims view their lives through the prism of uncertainty, doubt, and imperfection, he argues that these senses of failure contribute strongly to how individuals try to become better Muslims. He also demonstrates that while religious authorities have encroached on believers and local communities, constraining them in their beliefs and practices, the same process has enabled ordinary Muslims to reflect on moral choices and dilemmas, and to shape the ways religious norms are enforced. Arguing that Islamic norms are carried out through daily negotiations and contestations rather than blind conformity, Becoming Better Muslims examines how ordinary people develop and exercise their religious agency.

This book examines the complex relationships between the state state implementation of Shariʿa and diverse lived realities of everyday Islam in contemporary Aceh, Indonesia.

Following nearly three decades of conflict and a series of failed ceasefire agreements, on 15 August 2005, the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the Government of Indonesia reached an historic peace agreement to end the fighting and to give Aceh a high degree of genuine autonomy. The catalyst for the talks that produced this agreement was the devastating tsunami of 26 December 2004, which left almost 170,000 dead or missing in Aceh and destroyed most of the populated low-lying areas. Despite the massive destruction, the peace talks were conducted under an intensified military campaign. GAM made a major concession to the talks by announcing early that it was prepared to negotiate an outcome other than complete independence. The Indonesian side, however, under pressure from the military and "nationalists" in Jakarta, pressed for GAM to accept a minor reworking of the status quo. The international community, meanwhile, just pressed for a settlement. In the end, the Indonesian government also compromised, and the two parties reached an agreement that was intended to end the fighting and to address many, if not all, of GAM's outstanding claims. Despite opposition to the talks process, and to compromise, the outcome was increasingly seen both in Jakarta and in Aceh as a "win-win" situation, and as a further significant step in Indonesia's continuing process of reform and democratization. Peace in Aceh offers an insider's personal account of that peace process and is required reading for anyone wishing to understand this troubled province. DR. DAMIEN KINGSBURY is Associate Professor in the School of International and Political Studies and Director of International and Community Development at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. He was political adviser to GAM for the peace talks and assisted in drafting and negotiating key elements of the peace agreement. Dr. Kingsbury has published extensively on Indonesian politics, the military and regional security issues, including The Politics of Indonesia (3rd edition 2005), Violence in Between: Conflict and Security in Archipelagic Southeast Asia (2005), and Power Politics and the Indonesian Military (2003).

In 1998, Indonesia exploded with both euphoria and violence after the fall of its longtime authoritarian ruler, Soeharto, and his New Order regime. Hope centered on establishing the rule of law, securing civilian control over the military, and ending corruption. Indonesia under Soeharto was a fundamentally insecure state. Shadowy organizations, masterminds, provocateurs, puppet masters, and other mysterious figures recalled the regime's inaugural massive anticommunist violence in 1965 and threatened to recreate those traumas in the present. Threats metamorphosed into deadly violence in a seemingly endless spiral. In Aceh province, the cycle spun out of control, and an imagined enemy came to life as armed separatist rebels. Even as state violence and systematic human rights violations were publicly exposed after Soeharto's fall, a lack of judicial accountability has perpetuated pervasive mistrust that undermines civil society. Elizabeth F. Drexler analyzes how the Indonesian state has sustained itself amid anxieties and insecurities generated by historical and human rights accounts of earlier episodes of violence. In her examination of the Aceh conflict, Drexler demonstrates the falsity of the reigning assumption of international human rights organizations that the exposure of past violence promotes accountability and reconciliation rather than the repetition of abuses. She stresses that failed human rights interventions can be more dangerous than unexamined past conflicts, since the international stage amplifies grievances and provides access for combatants to resources from outside the region. Violent conflict itself, as well as historical narratives of past violence, become critical economic and political capital, deepening the problem. The book concludes with a consideration of the improved prospects for peace in Aceh following the devastating 2004 tsunami.

There are many excellent published collections of the indispensable Dutch documents for the History of Indonesia in the seventeenth century. However all of these have a Batavia-centred VOC view of the Archipelago and beyond, and show the relations of the Company with states which eventually fell within its orbit. Aceh, however, was the one state of the Archipelago that never fell within this orbit and maintained a defiant independence until 1873. It is therefore the most interesting state, but the least well known. Historians of Indonesia and of Islamic Asia in particular will need to consult this collection, but it will be of interest also to historians of Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian History more broadly in the early modern period.