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About the Author

Ian Burnet has spent more than twenty years, living, working and travelling in the Indonesian archipelago in his professional career as a geologist/geophysicist. Fascinated by the history of the archipelago, he thought the story of the tiny islands of Ternate and Tidore and their effect on world mostrar mais history had to be told. Ian lives with his family in Sydney. mostrar menos

Obras por Ian Burnet

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male
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Australia
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Australia

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Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) is perhaps the most famous example of a multicultural writer in the history of British literature. His novels have been translated, serialized, made into movies, and taught at numerous schools and universities throughout the English-speaking world and beyond. His multicultural credentials are impressive: he was born Józef Teodor Nalęcz (Ian Burnet misses this one in his recent study: it was the name of the Polish noble family to which Conrad belonged) Konrad Korzeniowski in Berdychev, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire and formerly a town in the Kingdom of Poland. His father Apollo was a Polish poet, translator of Shakespeare and a dedicated Polish patriot. Conrad’s first language was Polish, of course, and he learned Latin at school, but he added German, French and finally English to the list. He also knew some Russian but avoided using it for patriotic reasons.

A good half of Conrad’s published books, including the better-known ones such as Lord Jim (1900) and An Outcast of the Islands (1896) were set in Asian lands, notably in what are now Malaysia and Indonesia, with Heart of Darkness (1899), perhaps his most famous work, being set in the Congo and Nostromo (1904) in South America. His very first novel in English, Almayer’s Folly, appeared in 1895, and is set in Borneo with a Java-born Dutch protagonist. Other places featured in his novels include London, Geneva, Marseilles, and St. Petersburg. Conrad also wrote “Prince Roman”, a story based on Polish history, but Poland itself does not play a part in his novels, which, together with his identification as an “English” writer, caused a certain amount of anxiety amongst his fellow-writers in Poland, who questioned his patriotism. In the end, as he himself put it, Conrad wrote in English because



it was I who was adopted by the genius of the language … which made me its own so completely that its very idioms, I truly believe, had a direct action on my temperament.


All his works have now been translated into Polish and a stamp issued bearing his image.



Joseph Conrad’s Eastern Voyages: Tales of Singapore and an East Borneo River, Ian Burnet (Alfred Street Press, April 2021)
Joseph Conrad’s Eastern Voyages: Tales of Singapore and an East Borneo River, Ian Burnet (Alfred Street Press, April 2021)
Ian Burnet, an Australia-based traveler, writer and historian who is well-acquainted with the former Dutch East Indies, sets out in this handsomely-produced book to show how Conrad “was able to convert actual events of his own experience into enduring fiction,” referring to Conrad’s own statement that he had written his books “in retrospect of what I saw and learnt during the first thirty-five years of my life.” This being said, though, Burnet is aware that not all Conrad’s output is autobiographical, and he finds most of his material in the earlier works like Almayer’s Folly, An Outcast of the Islands, Lord Jim and The Rescue (1920, but begun over twenty years earlier). These four novels, all based in Borneo, had characters based on people Conrad had met or known in his eastern voyages; Burnet works backwards with the material, reordering the narrative sequence and focusing on background material to definitively link Conrad’s life with the events of the novels, effectively building on Conrad’s own retrospective memory and quoting liberally from the novels to connect the fictional and non-fictional worlds.

The result is interesting—Burnet is not a literary scholar, but an enthusiastic and intelligent reader of Conrad, which makes this book ideal to read if one is curious about Conrad but not that well-acquainted with his books; it is not much use for scholars of Conrad. He attempts to describe a world with which the creator of the fiction (Conrad) interacts with his own past through his writings, and has unearthed illustrations to enhance his narrative. He traces the ships mentioned by Conrad to their real-world counterparts and gives biographical information on the actual people on whom Conrad modeled his characters.

Most of this information may be found elsewhere, but Burnet is quite good at describing people and scenes, especially the latter, as he has been there himself, smelt the air, felt the heat and eaten the food. Prefacing Chapter 7, “East Borneo”, is a quote from Lord Jim in which Conrad writes about the Dutch and English traders’ “passion for pepper”, which “seemed to burn like a flame of love” within them and which made them “defy death in a thousand shapes; the unknown seas, the loathsome and strange diseases; wounds, captivity, hunger, pestilence, and despair.” For Burnet himself as a boy, though, the name Borneo suggested “Malay Sultans, White Rajahs, fierce pirates and, wild beautiful princesses. Wild rivers and steamy jungles filled with tattooed head-hunters armed with poisoned blowpipes” [sic]. Well, Conrad serves up all of these and more, which lets us understand how the adult Burnet became absorbed with his books.

This having been said, there are some things about this book that are problematic. Burnet keeps formal analysis to a minimum, simply matching events and places to the novels and providing background information. He does, however, offer some opinions and quote contemporary reviews. He observes, for example, that Conrad’s protagonist Willems in An Outcast of the Islands is “a victim of his own illusions, of his search for material gratification, and finally his obsession with the beautiful and erotic Aissa.” He suggests that Almayer was “a failure, an anti-hero”, and that “for that time” (1899) Almayer’s Folly “had a very un-English perspective.” For a Conrad scholar or someone who is well-acquainted with the novels, these observations are commonplaces, but it has to be remembered that this isn’t a work of literary criticism, however frustrating it is to readers who want a bit more.

There’s also a bit of an information overload; Heart of Darkness, the subject of Chapter 11, has nothing to do with Borneo, and Conrad’s Congo adventure had no connection with any of his “eastern”voyages. The illustrations and photographs raise another point; they are well-chosen, but most of them are uncredited, and in some instances Burnet uses reproductions of book covers (also uncredited), an odd practice, though it’s great publicity for Oxford University Press, whose covers are used here. The bibliography is adequate, but it was strange to see that Zdzisław Najder’s seminal Joseph Conrad: A Life (2007) was omitted. It’s an indispensable work for anyone interested in Conrad. There were also quite a few sentence-fragments (s see previous paragraph), something which an editor should have caught.

These reservations aside, I would nonetheless recommend this book to readers who are not familiar with Conrad, but are seeking an informative introduction to this difficult writer’s life and works.
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Assinalado
Alhickey1 | Dec 11, 2022 |
This is a great introduction to the history of the Spice Islands. The chapters which chronicle, among other things, the journeys of those trying to find these near mythical islands, are accompanied by old maps, paintings and photos of various artifacts. It's attractive enough to be a coffee table book, and the shortish texts are very well researched and structured.

The Spice Islands are part of the Maluku Archipelago, these days divided into two Indonesian provinces. Within this huge area there were two focal points: the Banda Islands, the source of nutmeg, whose inhabitants were just about wiped out by the Dutch, and Ternate and Tidore, the centre of the clove trade. Burnet concentrates on the clove islands.

Ternate and Tidore are beautiful volcanic cones poking out of the water to the East of Sulawesi, their sultans were rivals and held sway over most of Maluku. The spices were traded with Chinese, Arab and Javanese - in Medieval times Europe didn't know the location of these islands, so spices were very expensive due to all the middle men who took a cut. Eventually the Portuguese found the islands in the early sixteenth century after first rounding Africa, making a base and Goa in India and then Malacca in modern day Malaysia.

The chapter about the twice shipwrecked Francisco Serrão, the first European in Maluku, who went on to became an advisor to the Sultan of Ternate is a highlight. Serrão was a cousin of Magellan, the Portuguese leader of the Spanish expedition which circumnavigated the globe. Magellan was killed in the Philippines, but his expedition later got to the Spice Islands and so the Spanish got a foothold in the region - not a happy event for their Portuguese enemies; these two powers established forts on Ternate and Tidore, the ruins of which can still be seen today.

Burnet moves onto the Dutch becoming the dominant power in the region in the 17th century. They cut down all the clove trees on all but one small island to create a monopoly - finally broken by the French smuggling cuttings out in the late 18th century. The region then fell into decline as cloves and nutmeg could be grown in other tropical areas.

The Spice Islands have a fascinating history and are well worth a visit, but are not that easily accessible being a longish flight away from Jakarta and Bali. I went there before reading this book and Burnet helped round out the picture for me and I published an article about the region: https://www.remotelands.com/travelogues/ternate-and-tidore-a-short-history-of-th...

For more about the local Malukan culture The World of Maluku by Leonard Y. Andaya is fantastic:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3169490-the-world-of-maluku

A Treatise on the Moluccas by Portuguese Governer Antonio Galvão is a great contemporary account from the 16th century:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39328994-hist-ria-das-molucas-a-treatise-on-...
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Assinalado
FEBeyer | Oct 25, 2021 |
Archipelago is a colourful hardback travelogue by Ian Burnet. It tells his story of a travel across parts of Indonesia and Timor-Leste including a bit of history in each spot as well as some flavour from his own travelling experience. It looks really good with a front cover including an old map and a picture of Borobudur with Mount Merapi in the distance, a spellbinding part of the world. Unfortunately Burnet seems to be quite a boring man and his own tales are really quite uninspiring considering what great material he has to work with in Indonesia.

An excellent travelogue on Indonesia with plenty of local flavour and description does exist in the form of Indonesia etc which is a vastly superior read to this effort. Burnet's story is dull by comparison and in most places not especially enlightening. The travel element of Archipelago is fairly weak. Burnet describes conversations which seem utterly mundane such as "do you have a room?" with the answer being "yes". The conversations Burnet had with people on his journey must have been tedious if that kind of material is the best he could come up with. It is no surprise that he sometimes finds it hard to join up with fellow travellers who probably did not want to hang around with him.

Burnet uses his knowledge and language skills to describe some of the responses he receives from locals. Any western visitor to Indonesia would be surprised to find they were called Orang Belanda as Burnet insists is the case. Considering the real term used is Bule it is a surprise to find a more archaic use of language described when Bule is a word a westerner will hear frequently. This suggests Burnet is not as up-do-date in his understanding of the country as he may think.

The journey through Indonesia is also utterly incomplete. Three of the largest islands in the world are simply not part of the route. Why Burnet felt it appropriate to write a travelogue on Indonesia and fail to include Borneo, Sumatra, and Papua is hard to understand. There was no attempt to get anywhere near Sulawesi, Maluku, or Sumba. This is a remarkably limited journey through the country and not really one that could be considered a true depiction of the scope of Indonesia.

Burnet begins his travel in Jakarta. It is not the real Jakarta though but the tiny old town that once formed the heart of Dutch Batavia. This is designed to tell the particular story Burnet wants to describe but it is an utterly unrealistic depiction of the city.

Burnet's story includes quite a bit of history. For a history book there is a much better option in the form of Brief History of Indonesia. Anyone who has absorbed a richer version of the history will not learn all that much in most cases but it is nevertheless an interesting introduction to the history of parts of the country. There are parts of the history that are absolutely fascinating, in particular Burnet's detailed description of Larantuka and the somewhat independent role played in that part of the world even in the face of colonial domination elsewhere.

Equally, it has to be said Burnet does go to some of the world famous parts of Indonesia and so showing them off is always a winner. Borobudur of course is legendary as are the Komodo drgons so referencing them during the journey makes a lot of sense.

For some reason Archipelago has three chapters on Timor-Leste including one on the exclave Oecusse and two on Dili. That does feel like overkill even for fans of Timor. There is quite a lot of description of the Indonesian atrocities in Timor-Leste but again this is not the main source for that kind of information. East Timor: A Nation's Bitter Dawn is a far better and much more insightful first-hand account. Burnet labours over his analysis of the Indonesian occupation of Timor and it is not an especially interesting report of events which happened still fairly recently.

While Archipelago is not an especially impressive travelogue, anthropological study, or history, what it does do well is colour. Each of the chapters contains colour images and they are a vivid exposition of the places Burnet passes through. This is a good book to just pick up and enjoy the pictures without deliving too deeply into the story itself. A useful coffee table book even if it is a bit short at just 175 pages.

Ultimately this is a disappointing effort. In his summary, Burnet describes his journey across Indonesia as being exhausting. Nowhere really does it feel like this was something fun, the exploration, or the people involved never really a joyful experience. It is a somewhat strange thing to plan out an adventure and not really enjoy it but write about it anyway. Indonesia is an endlessly fascinating place with all manner of interesting customs, cultures, and linguistic forms but it seems Ian Burnet is just too boring to have absorbed those amazing features..
… (mais)
½
1 vote
Assinalado
Malarchy | Jun 21, 2017 |
 
Assinalado
Alhickey1 | Mar 8, 2018 |

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6
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46
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ISBN
18