Frontiers of Fear: Tigers and People in the Malay World, 1600-1950 (Yale Agrarian Studies)

321 Pages·2009·1.34 MB·English

by  Peter Boomgaard

Yale Agrarian Studies Series
James C. Scott, Series Editor

Frontiers of Fear
Tigers and People in the Malay World, 1600–1950
Peter Boomgaard
Yale University Press
New Haven & London
Copyright © 2001 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations,
in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108
of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press),
without written permission from the publishers.
Designed by Mary Valencia
Set in Meridien Roman type by The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc.,
Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books,
Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Boomgaard, P., 1946–
Frontiers of fear : tigers and people in the Malay world, 1600–1950 / Peter Boomgaard.
p. cm. — (Yale agrarian studies series)
(Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-300-08539–7 (alk. paper)
1. Tigers—Asia, Southeastern—History. 2. Human-animal relationships—Asia,
Southeastern—History. I. Title. II. Yale agrarian studies.
QL737.C23 B658 2001
599.756(cid:2)0959—dc21 2001026536
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
(cid:2)(cid:3)The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council on Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the memory of my father

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
1.Introduction 1
2.Meeting the Tiger and the Other Big Cats 10
3.The Tiger: Friend or Foe? 39
4.Man-Eating Tigers 61
5.Ancestors for Sale: Bounties for the Big Cats 87
6.Hunting and Trapping 107
7.Tiger and Leopard Rituals at the Javanese Courts, 1605–1906 145
8.The Ancestral Tiger: From Protection to Punishment 167
9.Devouring the Hearts of the People: The Weretiger 186
10.The Rise, Decline, and Fall of the Tiger 207
11.Living Apart Together 224
Notes 239
References 265
Index 293

Preface
It took me more than ten years to do the research for this book and to write it
all down. Research started in September 1988, when I was invited to spend
some time at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities
and Social Sciences (NIAS), at Wassenaar. My plan was to write an article on
people being killed by tigers in comparison with tigers being killed by people in
Java between the 1850s and 1900. Annual numerical data were available on
the number of people killed by tigers from the late 1860s up to 1905, and there
were occasional figures for the number of tigers captured or killed by people.
I had barely started my research when I discovered that there was also quite
some information about tigers for the period between 1600 and 1850, even if
most of it was more qualitative than quantitative. It was the fortuitous discov-
ery of H. J. V. Sody’s study on the Javan rhinoceros in historical perspective
(Sody 1959) that pointed me in the right direction. Following in Sody’s tracks,
I found so much material on tigers prior to 1850 that I decided to expand the
period to be covered.
Another expansion occurred after I had read Robert Wessing’s booklet on
tiger beliefs in Indonesia (Wessing 1986). As an economic and social historian,
I was not familiar with the anthropological literature on tigers. Having read
Wessing’s monograph, I decided to include the rituals and beliefs and added
the study of the supernatural tiger to that of the natural one.
By then, I had come across so many references to real and imagined tigers in
Sumatra that I felt obliged to include Sumatra. Not much later I decided if I was
going to write about Javan and Sumatran tigers, I might as well include the
ones from Bali and the Malayan Peninsula. Thus I would cover all the tigers of
ix