Feudal colonialism: Racial authority, aristocratic brokers, and the subjugation of the body in Pangeran dari Timur

Abstract

This article examines how colonialism is represented not as a simple opposition between European colonizers and Indigenous subjects in Pangeran dari Timur, a novel by Iksaka Banu and Kurnia Effendi. Employing qualitative content analysis, the study examines 52 purposively selected textual excerpts, validated through close reading and coded into two analytical domains: feudal colonialism and its effects, and racialized status hierarchy. The findings indicate that elite collaboration, discrimination, and colonial privilege are the most prominent patterns in the corpus. Colonialism emerges as a layered political and cultural formation, particularly in Java. Dutch and British colonial power becomes effective because it is translated through kings, regents, priyayi, landlords, court protocols, land relations, and ritualized forms of deference. Everyday objects and gestures, including shoes, clothing, seating arrangements, language, kneeling, and artistic patronage, transform hierarchy into embodied habit. Raden Saleh appears as an ambivalent figure who reveals both the possibilities and the limits of colonial inclusion. The article proposes feudal colonialism as a literary-analytical model for reading colonial formations in which foreign racial authority and Indigenous aristocratic mediation operate simultaneously.