The Kraton

Book excerpt: This volume contains English translations of a number of Dutch-language articles selected for their relevance to the institution of the Kraton, the Javanese palace complex, as it was towards the end of the colonial period, in the 1930s. The majority of the articles, originally published in the period from 1921 to 1941, relate especially to the Sultanate of Yogyakarta, rather than the Kraton of Surakarta. The reason for this is probably that they are taken mostly from the journal Djåwå, published by the Java Instituut (Java Institute), which was located in Yogyakarta. The aim of republishing these articles in translation is to make them accessible to a wider audience of scholars interested in Indonesia, in the belief that they contain information of lasting value for the study of the history, in particular the social and cultural history, of Java.