Between tourist and traveller; The Reverend Marius Buys in the Preanger (1887-1890)

This article presents a post-colonial analysis of the travel account and guidebook of Marius Buys (1837-1906). As a minister of religion, Buys travelled in several parts of the Netherlands East Indies, including Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi, in the years 1878-1885. His health forced him to return Netherlands in 1885, but he went back to the Indies in 1886. He was posted to Kalimantan, Sumatra, and Java. In May 1887 was he posted in Bandung, West Java (the Preanger regencies), where he remained until his definitive return to the Netherlands in 1890. As a result of his service in the Preanger regencies (1878-1890), Buys published Batavia, Buitenzorg en de Preanger; Gids voor bezoekers en toeristen (1891, Batavia, Buitenzorg and the Preanger; Guide for visitors and travellers). His experiences in the Preanger were also recorded in his travel account In het hart der Preanger (1900, In the Heart of the Preanger). As a tourist and traveller, his clerical perspective on the indigenous peoples and colony are analysed by referring to the concepts of Esme Cleall (2012) about European missionaries’ thinking in the British empire in Asia and Africa in the nineteenth century.