The (myth of the) lazy Javanese: The colonial ideas of a father and his son (about Sytze and Philippus Pieter Roorda van Eysinga)

Abstract

In 1818, Sytze Roorda van Eysinga travelled to the Dutch East Indies together with his wife and three daughters. After his arrival, he was appointed as church minister in Batavia by the governor-general. A short time later, his son Philippus Pieter Roorda van Eysinga, who stayed in the Netherlands after his parents’ departure, followed his family to the colony. In the following years, father and son both travelled through the Indonesian archipelago. After his return to the Netherlands, Philippus would become a prominent linguist in Javanese and Malay. After the death of Sytze in 1829, Philippus published his fathers’ and his own travel experiences in four volumes under the title: Verschillende reizen en lotgevallen van S. Roorda van Eysinga (1830–1832). Their texts provide a fascinating insight into colonial ideas in the first decades of the 19th century. How did Sytze and Philippus represent the indigenous people of the colony and what similarities and differences can be found in their accounts?