Islamic Revivalism in a Changing Peasant Economy

Book excerpt: This title, first published in 1983, is a significant study of one of the many revivalist movements which flowered in numerous Islamic societies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and attempts to provide one particular assessment of the place of revivalism in the evolution of Islamic societies. The subject of this title is the Padri movement, and the community involved is that of the Minangkabau of Central Sumatra, one of the major communities inhabiting the Indonesian archipelago. In the process of considering the reconstruction of a society in the throes of an agricultural transformation, the historical development of the Indonesian village became the object of attention, encompassing the economic and social histories of individual villages. This title will be of interest to students of history and Islamic Studies.