Frans Hüsken, born in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in 1945. Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam. Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Radboud University Nijmegen. († 2010)
Fellow (1 September 2008 – 30 June 2009)
JAVANESE COMMUNISM: A LOCAL HISTORY
During my year at NIAS, I was able to complete five of the six chapters of my monograph on the local history of communism in Java. I had collected archival data on the development of rural radicalism in North Central Java during the 1920s; on the communist uprising of 1926; and interview transcripts on the history of the Indonesian Communist party after 1945. While at NIAS, I collected data from the National Archives in The Hague; on radical rural movements in the late 19th and 20th centuries; on colonial security and repression policy; and on the lives of the communists who, following the failed 1926 uprising, were exiled to Boven Digoel (Papua New Guinea). Finally, I was fortunate to get access to Australian sources on the vicissitudes of those exiles who in 1943 were transported to Australia. These proved to be extremely helpful in complementing the information gained through interviews and family archives.