Download or read book Mapping the Acehnese Past written by R. Michael Feener and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aceh has become best known in our times for its twin disasters—the worst earthquake and tsunami of modern times in December 2004, and a long-running separatist conflict that rent Indonesia for most of its independent history. Although this book emerged from the process of recovery from those traumas, it turns the spotlight on a more positive and neglected claim Aceh has on our attention, as the Southeast Asian maritime state that most successfully and creatively maintained its independent place in the world until 1874. Like Burma, Siam and Vietnam, all better protected by geography, Aceh has its own story to tell of a unique culture struggling for survival through the European colonial era.