Merle Calvin Ricklefs (17 July 1943 – 29 December 2019) was an American-born Australian scholar of the history and current affairs of

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

.Anthony Reid, 'Merle Calvin Ricklefs, AM July 17, 1943 - December 29, 2019',
Emeritus
' (The Australian National University Emeritus Faculty e-magazine), 11 (8), September 2020. Ricklefs was born in

Fort Dodge, Iowa Fort Dodge is a city in, and the county seat of, Webster County, Iowa, United States, along the Des Moines River. The population was 24,871 in the 2020 census, a decrease from 25,136 in 2000. Fort Dodge is a major commercial center for North C ...

, on 17 July 1943 and died on 29 December 2019, aged 76. Ricklefs received his Ph.D. with his dissertation titled "Jogjakarta under Sultan Mangkubumi (1749-1792)" from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to ...

in 1973, under the supervision of

O. W. Wolters Oliver William Wolters (8 June 1915 – 5 December 2000) was a British academic, historian and author. He was also a Malayan civil servant and administrator. At his death, he was the Goldwin Smith Professor of Southeast Asian History Emeritus ...

. He held positions at the

School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury are ...

All Souls College All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full members of t ...

Monash University Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university h ...

, the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and ...

and the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb n ...

. He retired from the professorship of Southeast Asian history at the

National University of Singapore The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a national public research university in Singapore. Founded in 1905 as the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States Government Medical School, NUS is the oldest autonomous university in th ...

. He was emeritus professor of history at both the Australian National University and Monash University.

Academic career

Ricklef's publications focused on the history of Mataram, Kartasura, Yogyakarta, Surakarta (locations in

Central Java Central Java ( id, Jawa Tengah) is a province of Indonesia, located in the middle of the island of Java. Its administrative capital is Semarang. It is bordered by West Java in the west, the Indian Ocean and the Special Region of Yogyakarta ...

). He also regularly updated his history of Indonesia, ''A History of Modern Indonesia, ca. 1300 to the present''.

Honours and awards

In 1989, Ricklefs was elected a fellow of the

Australian Academy of the Humanities The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by Royal Charter in 1969 to advance scholarship and public interest in the humanities in Australia. It operates as an independent not-for-profit organisation partly funded by the Austra ...

. The Government of Australia awarded him in 2001 the Centenary Medal for "service to Australian society and the humanities in the study of Indonesia". In June 2017, Ricklefs was made a member of the Order of Australia.

Civil and human rights activity

In the early 1980s Ricklefs became deeply involved in education for indigenous Australians, acting as the driving force behind and co-founding the Monash Orientation Scheme for Aborigines, the first bridging program for Aboriginal people in an Australian university. This aimed to prepare Aboriginal students, who suffered from great educational disadvantage, for university study. The scheme was a runaway success and by the time Ricklefs left Monash in 1993 it had been responsible for roughly doubling the number of Aboriginal university graduates. Ricklefs was also involved in the 1980s ‘immigration debate’ in Australia, which was sparked when his counterpart at the University of Melbourne,

Geoffrey Blainey Geoffrey Norman Blainey (born 11 March 1930) is an Australian historian, academic, best selling author and commentator. He is noted for having written authoritative texts on the economic and social history of Australia, including '' The Tyranny ...

, argued that Australia should limit Asian immigration.

Publications

;Major publications ;Sole-authored books * ''Jogjakarta under Sultan Mangkubumi, 1749–1792: A history of the division of Java''. New York:

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

, 1974. ** ''Yogyakarta di bawah Sultan Mangkubumi, 1749-1792'': Sejarah pembagian Jawa. Transl. Hartono Hadikusumo & E. Setiyawati Alkhatab. Ed. Revianto Budi Santosa. (Revised Indonesian edition of Jogjakarta under Sultan Mangkubumi.) * ''Modern Javanese historical tradition: A study of an original Kartasura chronicle and related materials''. London:

, 1978. * ''A history of modern Indonesia, ca. 1300 to the present''. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1993. * ''War, culture and economy in Java, 1677–1726: Asian and European imperialism in the early Kartasura period''. Sydney: Asian Studies Association of Australia in association with Allen & Unwin, 1993. * ''The seen and unseen worlds in Java, 1726–49'': History, literature and Islam in the court of Pakubuwana II. New South Wales: Asian Studies Association of Australia in association with Allen & Unwin and

University of Hawaii Press A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...

, 1998. ;Co-authored book * ''Indonesian manuscripts in Great Britain: A catalogue of manuscripts in Indonesian languages in British public collections'' by M. C. Ricklefs and P. Voorhoeve. London Oriental Bibliographies, vol. 5. * ''Indonesian manuscripts in Great Britain: A catalogue of manuscripts in Indonesian languages in British public collections; New edition with addenda et corrigenda'' by M.C. Ricklefs, P. Voorhoeve† and Annabel Teh Gallop. Jakarta: ;Co-authored and edited books ;Edited and translated book * ''Pantheism and monism in Javanese suluk literature: Islamic and Indian mysticism in an Indonesian setting''

References

External links

Homepage at National University of SingaporeBiography at Australian Academy of HumanitiesBiography at University of Melbourne Law School
* Cornell University notable alumni
Professor Gareth Evans speech launching Islamisation and its OpponentsAustralian Academy of Humanities Vale Merle Calvin Ricklefs AM FAHA 1943-2019KITLV In Memoriam Professor Merle C. Ricklefs (1943-2019)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ricklefs, M. C. 1943 births 2019 deaths Historians of Southeast Asia Cornell University alumni National University of Singapore faculty Javanists Academics of SOAS University of London Monash University faculty Australian National University faculty University of Melbourne faculty Australian historians Indonesianists Members of the Order of Australia Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities History Today people American emigrants to Australia People from Fort Dodge, Iowa Writers from Iowa 20th-century American male writers 21st-century Australian male writers 20th-century Australian male writers Historians of Indonesia