Foreword by Peter Carey For Ong Hok Ham, Madiun dalam Kemelut Sejarah: Priayi dan Petani di Keresidenan Madioun Abad XIX [Madiun in the Crucible of History – Priayi and Peasants in the 19th Century], Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia (KPG), November 2018 [Third revised edition August 2025] The book in your hands is the thesis of the renowned Indonesian historian, Ong Hok Ham (1933-2007) (hereafter Ong). This thesis was completed in early 1975 when Ong obtained his PhD from the History Department of Yale University, in New Haven, USA. During his time at Yale (1968-1975), Ong was supervised by Professor Harry J. Benda (1919-1971) until his death (September 1971); and subsequently by Professor Bernhard Dahm (1932- 2023), Professor Tony Reid (1939-2025) and Dr Milton Osborne (born 1934), a series of ‘greats’ in the field of Southeast Asian history. One of Ong’s good friends at Yale in 1968-69 was Professor Heather Sutherland (Reeve et al. 2007:149-50), who would later publish her research on the 19th-century Javanese priyayi (pangreh praja/indigenous bureaucratic) families in two articles and a very important monograph (Sutherland 1973, 1974, 1979). Throughout Ong’s life, the PhD thesis he completed at Yale was used as a historical source for many of the 360 articles which he published in national journals and magazines such as Kompas, Prisma and Tempo. The two decades plus between Ong’s return from Yale (1975) and the fall of the New Order in May 1998 were the most productive years for this scion of the Han Kik Ko (1776-1813) family. In this period, Ong became a well-known public intellectual and popular historian in Indonesia. So, the question arises: if Ong’s thesis was so important as an historical source for his writings in the mass media, why was it not published much earlier? Why did it not appear in print immediately after Ong returned from the United States and resumed his career as a permanent lecturer in the History Department of Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya (Humanities Faculty) of the Universitas Indonesia (FIB-UI) (1968-1988)? Financial and institutional support was available: ISEAS (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies) in Singapore, founded in 1968 by Ong’s tragically short-lived supervisor, Harry J. Benda, had offered Ong a position as a research fellow in 1978-1979. And this fellowship was specifically intended to enable Ong to publish his 400-page thesis. If the manuscript had been ready, world-class university presses like the National University of Singapore (NUS) Press or Oxford in Asia from Oxford University Press (OUP) – especially the Oxford in Asia series – would certainly have published it. Had it been published as an English-language monograph by a renowned publisher, we can imagine that Ong’s book could have rivalled Professor Sartono