1I congratulate l’équipe Archipel on having stayed the course so heroically and creatively. Few journals are worth subscribing to for a lifetime, but Archipel is one. Its half-century is roughly the same period as my active life as a Southeast Asianist. I was there at the beginning as a subscriber and distant admirer, and I am happy to note that we are both still standing, though only Archipel with as much vigour as ever. It has retained over the half-century a remarkable mix of the deeply learned and the lightly entertaining, the relevant and the obscure. In insisting on the importance, even primacy, of culture over l’événementiel, it has given courage to us all in challenging times.

2While the KITLV’s Bijdragen struggled to survive in and adapt to the post-colonial world, partly by shedding much of its textual focus, three new specialist journals of quality on Indonesia emerged from the 1965 crisis and the beginnings of Soeharto’s Orde Baru. Cornell’s Indonesia was overtly political – in part a protest against the military takeover and all that ensued. ANU’s Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies might be seen as its opposite, hoping that its pragmatic economic emphasis would support Soeharto’s technocrats and contribute to making the Orde Baru an economic success.

3Archipel was the third response, the most unexpected of the three since France had been seen as the centre for all things indochinoises but with no special interest in Indonesia. Perhaps that was its strength. Archipel appeared to have no political axe to grind or debts to pay, save to emphasise the splendid continuities of Indonesian culture despite the political upheavals and reversals of the mid-20^th century. While the other two new journals and the earlier Bijdragen were sustained by committed specialist institutions, Archipel arose from the inspiration, optimism and hard work of a few dedicated individuals scattered among Paris’s notoriously fragmented academic scene. Indeed it seemed to be the journal itself that persuaded people in EFEO, EHESS, CNRS, Langues O’ and the universities to work together and achieve miracles of coherence and longevity.

4I tried to visit Paris and the Archipel office whenever in Europe, even though it was the archives of London and The Hague that drew me across the world. I must have first met Denys Lombard during my 1968 sabbatical, as one of the handful of fellow-reseearchers on Aceh, so I may have been on the list of potential subscribers even before the birth. I picked up Le Sultanat d’Atjeh in time to publish a description in 1971 of three books on Aceh that appeared in 1969 after a long hiatus – his, mine, and Jim Siegel’s Rope of God. But things warmed up when I was able to spend a few weeks in Paris in 1978, when Denys invited me to talk to his seminar about Indonesian Studies in Australia. That paper appeared in Archipel 21 (1981) as “‘Alterity’ and ‘Reformism’” – a polarity of motivation that still continues to intrigue me.

5That visit began a period when we tried to build real bridges across the Anglophone-Francophone divide. In 1979 I was able to invite Denys and Claudine for a period in Canberra, which Denys described as a kind of trial as to whether he could overcome his resentment of Anglophone arrogance with this lesser Australian surrogate before tackling America. Denys reviewed a couple of my books, in Archipel and elsewhere, and translated an article of mine on Southeast Asian cities ; I reviewed a few books of the Archipel group in English, beginning with a review of Archipel 17 & 18 in the new Australian journal I was editing, then called ASAA Review (1980). We shared an interest in the two under-appreciated French accounts of 17^th century Aceh, by François Martin and Augustin de Beaulieu, and I was delighted that we were both able to remedy this to some extent by my English translations (1994) and his new edition of Beaulieu (1996) and Archipel article on Martin (over-generously dedicated to me, 1997).

6I should also acknowledge here my debt to Christian Pelras and his very dedicated wife, for all they did both for Archipel and for South Sulawesi Studies. In 1980 I succeeded Christian in his pioneering role as Tenaga Ahli Utama in the PLPIIS (Social Science Research Training Centre) in Ujung Pandang (now rightly again Makassar). No only was his advice and example indispensable for me in negotiating a complex and unfamiliar territory, but the special issue he organized and partly wrote on South Sulawesi, Archipel 10, was my constant companion in exploring the region.

7In these terribly difficult times for journals everywhere, Archipel continues to inspire hope that interdisciplinary comprehensiveness, cultural finesse and imaginative flair can still find a place. I wish it another 50 years of vigour – vive Archipel.