Through the Ages
The first instance of the name ‘Indonesia’ being used to describe the South East Asian archipelago was in the essay ‘The Ethnology of The Indian Archipelago: Embracing Enquiries into the Continental Relations of the Indo-Pacific Islanders’ by British ethnologist James Richardson Logan. The essay featured in The Journal of The Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, published in Singapore in 1850 and comprising writings about life on the islands penned by a variety of writers, from travellers to ethnologists. They all shared a fascination with the region, and their essays and reports ranged from records of natural disasters to ancient tribal rituals.
This conception of Indonesia is pivotal when it comes to understanding the modern country and its architecture; the name used by Logan contributed to a decades-long debate about how best to create a singular identity for a diverse archipelago with centuries-long traditions across many fields. Of course,
