When Disease Defines a Place: Batavia in British Diplomatic and Military Narratives, 1775-1850

ABSTRACT

The full impact of COVID-19 has yet to be felt while it may not define the new decade, it is clear that its immediate significance was to test many of the basic operating assumptions and procedures of global civilization. Even as vaccines are developed and utilized and even as it is possible to see the beginning of the end of COVID-19 as a discrete historical event, it remains unclear as to its ultimate importance. That said, it is evident that the academic exploration of Southeast Asia will also be affected by both the global and regional experiences of the pandemic. “Breakthroughs of Area Studies and ASEAN in the Era of Homo Untact” promises to help reconceptualize the study of the region by highlighting the importance of redefined spatial relationships and new potentially depersonalized modes of communication. This paper acknowledges these issues by suggesting that the transformations caused by the pandemic should motivate scholars to raise new questions about how to understand humanity—particularly as it is defined by societies, nations and regions. Given that COVID-19 (and the response to it) has altered many of the fundamental rhythms of globalized regions, there is sufficient warrant for re-examining both the ways in which disease, health and their related spaces affect the perceptions of Southeast Asia. To achieve “breakthroughs” into the investigation of the region, it makes sense to have another glance at the ways in which the discourses about diseases and health may have helped to inscribe definitions of Southeast Asia—or, at the very least, the nations, societies and peoples who live within it. In order to at least consider these larger issues, the discussion will concentrate on a formative moment in the conceptualization of Southeast Asia-British engagement with the region in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. To that end three themes will be highlighted (1) the role that British diplomatic and military narratives played in establishing the information priorities required for the construction of colonial knowledge;(2) the importance not only of “colonial knowledge” but information making in its own right;(3) in anticipation of the use of big data, the manner in which manufactured information (related to space and disease) could function in shaping early British perceptions of Southeast Asia—particularly in Batavia and Java. This discussion will suggest that rather than see social distancing or increased communication as the greatest outcome of COVID-19, instead it will be the use of data— that is, big, aggregated biometric data which have not only shaped responses to the pandemic, but remain likely to produce the reconceptualization of both information and knowledge about the region in a way that will be at least as great as that which took place to meet the needs of the “New Imperialism.” Furthermore, the definition and articulation of Southeast Asia has often reflected political and security considerations. Yet, the experience of COVID-19 could prove that data and security are now fused into a set of interests critical to policy-makers. Given that the pandemic should accelerate many existing trends, it might be foreseen these developments will herald the triumph of homo indicina an epistemic condition whereby the human subject has become a kind of index for its harvestable data. If so, the “breakthroughs” for those who study Southeast Asia will follow in due course. © 2022, Busan University of Foreign Studies. All rights reserved.