Peter Carey (historian)

Peter Carey (born 30 April 1948 in Rangoon) is a British historian and author who specialises in the modern history of Indonesia, Java in particular, and has also written on East Timor and Myanmar. He was the Laithwaite fellow of Modern History at Trinity College, Oxford, from 1979 to 2008. His major early work concentrated on the history of Diponegoro, the British in Java, 1811–16 and the Java War (1825–30), on which he has published extensively. His biography of Diponegoro, The Power of Prophecy, appeared in 2007, and a succinct version, Destiny; The Life of Prince Diponegoro of Yogyakarta, 1785–1855, was published in 2014. He has conducted research in Lisbon and the United Kingdom amongst the exile East Timorese student community for an oral history of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, 1975–99, part of which was published in the Cornell University journal Indonesia (no. 76 [October 2003], pp. 23–67).

Before moving to Indonesia, Carey regularly commented on the history and politics of Southeast Asia to the British media. He was Adjunct Professor at the Department of Humanities of the University of Indonesia in Jakarta (2013-2023), and earlier served as Indonesia country director of the Cambodia Trust (2008–2012), a UK disability charity that he co-founded in November 1989 to address the needs of mine victims in Cambodia.

Biography
Carey was born to British businessman Thomas Brian Carey and his wife Wendy in Rangoon, Burma — now known as Yangon — on 30 April 1948. At the age of seven he and his family moved to the United Kingdom.

In 1969, Carey passed his BA degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, with First Class Honors. He continued on an English Speaking Union scholarship to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, studying there from 1969 to 1970.

While at Cornell, Carey found out about the Javanese prince Diponegoro, who led a five-year war against the Dutch colonial government in the East Indies from 1825 to 1830. He later recalled that his interest in the prince was sparked by Diponegoro's closeness to the common people, despite his noble background.

Between 1971 and 1973 he stayed in Indonesia, completing research into Diponegoro for his doctoral thesis. He graduated in 1976, with a thesis entitled "Dipanagara and the Making of the Java War: Yogyakarta History, 1785-1825".

Carey taught at Oxford, first being elected to a Prize Fellowship at Magdalen College in 1974. He served there until 1979, when he became the Laithwaite fellow and tutor in modern history at Trinity College. In 2006, he was made a grand officer in the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator by the government of Portugal. Carey took early retirement in 2008 and moved to Indonesia.

Carey appeared in a film, Prabowo: Sang Patriot (Prabowo: The Patriot), promoting Prabowo Subianto, a candidate in the 2014 Indonesian presidential election. In the film, Prabowo is presented as having an illustrious family with at least two family members having assisted Diponegoro during the Java War, and Carey praises the self-sacrifice of these two ancestors. However, Carey later stated that the footage of his interview on Prabowo's ancestry had been taken from an entirely separate interview on the Java War without his permission. He then requested that Gerindra both remove his scenes, which was done, and withdraw the film, which was not. This attracted criticism. One critic claimed that Carey was "selling his soul", and another scholar asserted that Carey has a longstanding and close relationship with Prabowo, that Carey had not asked to be removed from the movie and that Carey had been vague and obfuscating and introduced irrelevancies in defending his appearance in the film. Carey responded, maintaining that his words had been taken out of context and pointing out that his original interview had not been done as a piece of political propaganda, but as an historical reflection on the impact of the Java War on Indonesian society. At no point in the original interview was any question asked about Prabowo, whom Carey only met six years later in 2020.

Carey is married to Lina Surjanti and lives in Tangerang, Banten. Aside from his continued studies into Javanese culture, Including a project to transliterate and translate the Javanese-language texts looted by the British from Yogyakarta in June 1812 under the auspices of the British Academy. He once owned a wallpaper shop which is now under new management. He is currently involved in heritage issues, and co-curated the "Diponegoro Room," a permanent exhibit in the Jakarta History Museum (Museum Sejarah Jakarta, Taman Fatahillah), which was opened by the Governor of Jakarta, Anies Baswedan, on 1 April 2019, and is now (2023-25) undergoing extensive renovation.

Academic career
Carey has published on Javanese culture and history, as well as on the histories of Burma and East Timor. His "fascination" is with the 19th-century prince Diponegoro, and by 1983 he was established as "an authority on the Java War (1825-30)". He has written several books on the prince, including a translation and analysis of the Babad Dipanegara (Diponegoro Chronicles) titled Babad Dipanagara: An Account of the Outbreak of the Java War and a biography of the prince, The Power of Prophecy: Prince Dipanagara and the End of an Old Order in Java, 1785–1855. In a 2014 interview, Carey said that, "In every journey and trial Diponegoro faced, he did not lose his spirit. He still maintained his creativity and his humanity by becoming a writer, a leader, a statesman, a mystic, a clean administrator who was scrupulous in his financial dealings and benefitted the tenants and farming communities under his authority."

Babad Dipanagara: An Account of the Outbreak of the Java War, published in 1981, is based in part on Carey's doctoral thesis. It presents a romanised transcription of the Surakarta court version of the Babad Diponegoro, faced with an English-language translation; an Indonesian translation is included after the transcription and English text. The book opens with a 60-page introduction that discusses the manuscript and text, including a review of contemporary literature related to the Java War, and closes with 30 pages of notes, glossaries, bibliography, index and maps. Reviewing for the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Heather Sutherland described the book as "a pleasure to read" and a tribute to its publisher. The English used, she found, was "clear and smooth, if not poetic", and the interspersing of "valuable, scattered information" in the notes led readers to become "impatient" for a social history of Java. She concluded that the book was "exemplary", and its usefulness and origin as a "by-product of a major research effort" became "a tribute to Carey's careful scholarship and historical imagination".

The 2007 publication The Power of Prophecy: Prince Dipanagara and the End of an Old Order in Java, 1785–1855 is an almost thousand-page biography of Diponegoro, including his rarely discussed exile in Manado and Makassar. There is also extensive discussion of related topics, which both presents Carey's analysis and provides sufficient references to let readers draw their own conclusions. Amrit Gomperts, reviewing for the Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, described it as "impressive", an "outstanding and authoritative study on the background of the Java War and Diponegoro's life" written in a style which "will hold the reader's attention until the last page". Gomperts differed only on the discussion of Diponegoro's adopted title Sultan Erucakra, writing that "By taking up ... the epithet of Erucakra (literally, 'arrows and discus'), Diponegoro may have intended to underline the belligerent nature of his proclaimed kingship", and emphasising that the prince had used arrows and a shield as his coat of arms.

Documentary appearances

 * 2010   Aung San Suu Kyi: Lady of No Fear  (Anne Gyrithe Bonne)
 * 2014   Sang Patriot: Prabowo Subianto (Prabowo Subianto: The Patriot)