In this essay I argue that the global perspective, established in the era of modern European imperialism, is given institutional expression as a way of seeing that is engaged—both by ruler and ruled—as the frame of adequate representation. Briefly outlining how this frame operates in historical and cultural studies today, I examine its deployment in mid-nineteenth-century Melaka and Singapore through a reading of the Hikayat Abdullah, a seminal Malay-language text composed by Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir. Although Abdullah self-consciously sets about reproducing the global perspective, I show how this mode of thematization is interrupted and displaced as it brings about an encounter between the diverse and uneven contexts of the native and European worlds.
University of California Press