ABSTRACT
It was Sir Stamford Raffles who first introduced the art of batik to the Englishspeaking world, through his account of the process in The History of Java (1817). Since then, interest in Indonesian batik has focused largely on the batiks produced in the courts of central Java. The batiks of Jambi in Sumatra are much less well-known, and although Jambi produced, and still produces, fine and distinctive cloths with their own unmistakable character, many writers have doubted that J ambi ever produced batik. 1 This ignorance of the existence of batik in Jambi reflects Jambi's historical position as something of a backwater in Indonesia, and in particular the fact that Jambi resisted Dutch rule until as late as 1904. Jambi's staunch resistance meant that Dutch officials had little opportunity to collect textiles from the region and even less to observe production methods. The result has been a distortion in the representation of Jambi textiles, including batik, songket and a range of other cloths traditionally produced there, both in literature about Indonesian textiles and in museum collections. Misapprehensions have been compounded, since scholars consulting the standard sources for information about Jambi textiles found nothing there and concluded that Jambi did not produce its own textiles. Later, doubtful opinions based on very sketchy information have been repeated and come to be regarded as accurate. This chapter is intended as a start in setting the record straight.
