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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS,
ERKENNINGEN, TERIMA KASIH
To try to write an account of a long-ago explosion in a faraway place – far away, that is, when the volcano is to the west of Java and I live 9,944 miles from it, in the west of Massachusetts –requires a mule-train of helpers to bridge the distance, and a congress of libraries and librarians to compress the years. To meet both requirements I was exceptionally fortunate in finding the most congenial and knowledgeable legion of able and interested helpmeets, some of them old friends, many more of them brand new, without whose enthusiasm, skills and wisdom this story would have been much more difficult to relate. As I list them here, with gratitude and pleasure, I must none the less reassure each and every one that though all did their very best to guide, advise and warn me, such errors and misjudgements as may appear in the book – and I would like to think there are few – are my fault alone and should not, to any degree, be laid at their door.
In the early stages of my research I was lucky enough to be directed, by courtesy of Atlas, my Dutch publishers, to the delightful Alicia Schrikker, a graduate student of Dutch colonial history at the University of Leiden. Alicia, whose professional area of interest encompasses the Dutch possessions in the East Indies, Ceylon and Japan, leapt at the chance of working on the story of Krakatoa, and in short order led me to sheaves of long-forgotten papers and archives and introduced me to battalions of long-overlooked and little-known players in the drama, fast making herself my most indispensable ally in the entire endeavour. While I owe much to many, my debt to Alicia is singular and incalculable; I wish also to thank her partner, Job Westrate, for his forbearance during the many days she worked with me, and for his later practical help when Alicia took off for her own studies in Colombo, Galle and southern Sri Lanka. Dr Wim van den Doel, a distinguished historian at Leiden, also readily gave of his advice. And I must record my personal gratitude to Hessel Stamhuis, a wise and kindly academic at the same university who came to stay with me in America: his death some months later was a sad shock.
In Indonesia, where I travelled several times, my old friend Toni Tack, whom I had met some years before when we were exploring little-known Hindu temples in central Java, was enormously kind and helpful, and accompanied me to Jakarta on several occasions, as well as to those coastal communities of west Java that were worst affected by the calamity of 1883. Toni is a game and courageous lady – and, unhappily, she needs to be even more so nowadays, since the island of Bali, her chosen home for the past many years, is no longer so peaceful a place as once we all supposed – but she wisely elected not to come with me to climb the scorchingly hot slopes of Anak Krakatoa on those occasions when I felt so moved. Instead it was left to the redoubtable and engagingly named Boing, a guide from Anjer, to haul me up the ever growing mountain – a duty he performed with agility and eternally good spirits.
Also in Indonesia I was given much help and hospitality by the British Ambassador, Richard Gozney; by Professor Sartono Kartodirdjo, the renowned historian at Jogj Gajah Mada University (who, in addition to offering his advice on the nature and meaning of the Banten Rebellion of 1888, also kindly gave me a pot of his wife's homemade Balinese nutmeg jam in return for the jar of TeaTogether's incomparable Lemon with Earl Grey Tea marmalade; which I sometimes use – as when turning up at teatime at Professor Kartodirdjo's house – as my calling-card); by Father Adolf Heuken, Jakarta's kindly (and Jesuit) urban historian; by George Benney and the staff of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Jakarta; by Trina Ebert and the staff at the Amanjiwo resort, close by the temple of Borobudur; by the Jakarta-based writers Scott Merrillees and Mark Hanusz; by the Indonesian bookstore owner and Krakatoa enthusiast Richard Oh; by my long-time friend Hannah Postgate, whose fondness of, and enthusiasm for, all things Javanese is inextinguishable and wonderfully infectious; and by Robert Hall of the University of London's Southeast Asia Research Group, whose expertise in the arena of the tectonic evolution of the region that includes Java and Sumatra – and thus Krakatoa – is well-nigh unrivalled.
Others whose gave generously of their particular knowledge of the geology and geophysics of the region include Professor John Dewey, now at the University of California, Davis, and formerly Professor of Geology at Oxford; Rob McCaffrey and David Wark at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York; Charles Mandeville; Stephen Self; Vicky Bruce. John Rucklidge, who led the 1965 Oxford University Expedition to east Greenland, of which I was the most junior member, and who is now at the University of Toronto, was most helpful in reminding me of the scientific purpose and value of that remarkable adventure. Richard Fiske, of Washington's Smithsonian Institution and of the Global Volcanism Program – and with Tom Simkin author of the incomparable and near-definitive 1983 Smithsonian Press study of Krakatoa – was also generous with his time and insights.
My friend Andrea Hsu, in Washington, DC, was as helpful with answering the more arcane research questions for this project as she has been in connection with similarly obscure queries for the last three of my books, and I cannot fully express in print my deepest gratitude to her. At rather longer distance, Penny van Oosterzee, Robert Cribb and Nicholas Pounder (in Australia), Eloise Van Niel (in Hawaii), Rob Whittaker and Professor Ceri Peach (in Oxford) all gave valuable advice on matters that ranged from the dietary preferences of nineteenth-century Batavians to the story of the botanical repopulation of the ruined islands around Krakatoa. I would like also to acknowledge the help of Adrian Beeby of Lloyd's, of Gina Douglas of the Linnean Society, Stephen Gillies, Amanda Green of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Library, Ann Kumar, Laila Miletic-Vejzovic, Zyg Nilski, Margaret O'Clair, Vanessa E. Raizberg and Paula Szuch-man. The newly formed Gieben-Wulf Cultural Research Centre in London answered a single question that had long been nagging me, and they did so accurately, efficiently and very, very quickly – a trinity of attributes that I think all would agree augurs well for their success: I do wish Emma and Andrea well. My son Rupert Winchester performed yeoman service on
my behalf at the London Library (whose staff were unfailingly helpful) and at the Public Record Office, and in his dealings with Cable & Wireless.
Norah O'Donnell, a wonderful old friend at the Humanities Division of the University of Chicago, helped me by borrowing on her staff card, and for two full years, a pair of extremely rare and crucial books from the university's Joseph Regenstein Library. I owe the very tolerant librarians there a great deal for not asking for the volumes to be returned (though both are now quite safely back on their shelves).
Sophie Purdy kindly read and made most useful comments on the early drafts of the book: she deserves the very warmest of thanks.
In London I wish once again to record my deep gratitude to my agent and friend Bill Hamilton. My new editor at Viking, Mary Mount, handled my rather less than elegant first telling of this complicated story with consummate brilliance, managing first to spot, with an uncanny and instinctive ability, all of the inconsistencies and structural flaws and infelicities that littered the submitted script, and then to iron them out and so save me, at the very least, from the critical mauling I am certain I at first deserved. Mary would not be surprised to learn that I truly cannot find words adequate to describe my pleasure in working with and for her: I hope that we may team up for many more fascinating projects like this in the years to come.
Mary Mount's assistant, Julie Duffy, also made major contributions, most notably when it came time to find the pictures and other illustrations with which to leaven the text: I am most grateful to her. Soun Vannithone drew the line illustrations once again, and, as with the last book, he did so perfectly and exactly on time. Natacha du Pont du Bois coordinated with an almost terrifying efficiency what was the complicated and linguistically challenging task (since Soun is from Laos, and many of the pictures are from sources in Holland) of seeing that all the illustrated material was prepared properly and to a very demanding schedule.
Once again Donna Poppy, surely the ablest of the world's copy editors, took on with an unstinting good cheer the monumental business of keeping the devil away from the details in a book that ranged through unfamiliar complexities of science and history, religion and sociology, where there were litanies of names in Dutch and Javanese that all needed checking, checking, checking. To Donna and to her colleague in New York, Sue Llewellyn: a thousand thanks and stet! to all you do.