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Research Program Brown Bag Seminar - Dr. Robert Pringle
Indonesia is the world's most
populous Muslim majority country and its third largest democracy, after India and the United States. It is beginning to
be perceived as a winner, a successful and important regional power.But most foreigners have little or no
knowledge of Indonesia's
complex history, and many are perplexed and disturbed by its Islam. Is it the
real thing, or some kind of tropical morph, corrupted by too many years of heat and humidity?And even if Indonesian Islam differs
significantly from the familiar, Arab, desert-tempered norm, could its
extremist minority still be the virus that kills Indonesia's new and radically
decentralized democracy?
To
answer this question Dr. Pringle argues that it is essential to understand
certain aspects of Indonesian history – why, for example, Indonesian Islam has long
been the religion of most Indonesians, and yet it is the political choice of
only a minority. The persistence of this phenomenon suggests a degree of
consistency, even stability, in the Indonesian state, which is often obscured
by the turbulent details of Indonesia's
recent past.
Robert
Pringle is a retired US Foreign Service Officer, historian and
author. He was born in New York City.He earned a BA in American History from
Harvard and a PhD in Southeast Asian History from Cornell. His thirty-seven
year Foreign Service career included postings in Indonesia,
the Philippines, Upper Volta (now Burkina
Faso), Papua New Guinea,
Mali (where he was
Ambassador) and South Africa.
Dr. Pringle spent much of his Foreign
Service career analyzing the politics of Islam in highly varied settings, including
the Philippines and Mali, as well as Indonesia. Since his retirement in
2000, he has been a freelance author, specializing in countries where he once
served. Understanding Islam in Indonesia:
Politics and Diversity is his second book on Indonesia
since retirement; in 2004 he published A
Short History of Bali: Indonesia's Hindu Realm, a brief but comprehensive
history of the Island of the Gods. He and his
wife Barbara, a teacher with a graduate degree in European history, live in Alexandria, Virginia.
