Religious movements of Java in the 19th and 20th centuries

Abstract

Perhaps no historical phenomena have been so thoroughly neglected in Indonesian historiography as religious movements. Their history remains outside the file of systematic exploration and historical writing. It constitutes a sector which is still dark, although such movements loomed large in Java of the 19th and 20th centuries and archival documents related to them would permit their being illuminated. This lacuna can easily be explained since within, the framework of colonial historiography, which bears the stamp of conventional historical writing, religious movements have not been considered a subject fit to be studied by historians.