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E-book
Author Herriman, Nicholas.

Title The Cocos Malays : perspectives from anthropology and history / Nicholas Herriman
Published Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, 2022
©2022

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Description 1 online resource (xxi, 200 pages)
Contents Introduction: An Englishman in Southeast Asia (1801-1816) -- Across the Indian Ocean (1814-1826) -- Rule and Rebellion (1826-1871) -- Age of Empire (1875-WWI) -- World Connection and Conflict (WWI-1952) -- The Last Clunies-Ross Ruler (1952-1978) -- Integrated in Australia? (1984-2020s) -- Conclusion
Summary Looking at the past from an anthropological perspective, this book deploys and analyses a variety of anthropological concepts to understand the history of Cocos Malay society. Around 400 Cocos Malays reside on their remote Indian Ocean atoll, the Cocos Islands. Possessing a unique culture and dialect, they could be considered Australia's oldest Muslim and oldest Malay group. Yet their society only developed over the past two centuries. In the early 1800s, a European gathered about one hundred slaves from around Southeast Asia. After settling on Cocos, a dynasty of rulers tried to distinguish themselves as European kings. Under them, the Southeast Asians in the group toiled in the export of coconuts. But despite this, these Southeast Asians influenced and intermarried with the rulers. As a result, a Eurasian society developed. The Cocos Malays were initially implicated in Southeast Asian and wider Indian Ocean trade and communication networks. Later, this connectivity intensified through technologies such as telegraph cable and the Internet. This book uses the history of the Cocos Malays to explore questions of broader interest to anthropologists, such as how concepts from the overlap of history and anthropology unlock the history of societies; how we can usefully combine the Indigenous concepts like "kerajaan" with internationally accepted concepts like class; and what is obscured when we use the concepts from the anthropology-history crossover to understand the past. Nicholas Herriman is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at La Trobe University, Australia
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Malays (Asian people) -- Cocos (Keeling) Islands
Malays (Asian people) -- Cocos (Keeling) Islands -- Ethnic identity
Malays (Asian people)
Malays (Asian people) -- Ethnic identity
Cocos (Keeling) Islands
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9783031107474
3031107470