Farish A. Noor | Short Monographs on Southeast Asia

Farish A. Noor — professor of Politics and Political History at UIII Indonesia, and Fellow Professor at ISTAC-IIUM — has just released three slim, razor-focused monographs

→ Mea Culpa, which argues that 19th-century colonial writings on Southeast Asia should be read not just as biased history, but as confessional texts — the colonizers unintentionally revealing their own anxieties and ambitions.

→ The Woman with the Bayonet, unpacking America's 1832 attack on Kuala Batu, Sumatra, and the forgotten debate over whether a Sumatran woman involved was a victim or a combatant.

→ Dekolonisasi Kartografi Kolonial, which makes the case that maps aren't just images to look at — they're documents to be read, the same way you'd "read a room" or "read the situation," and that colonial maps carry confessions of their own.