Bandung 1955: Non-alignment And Afro-asian Solidarity

by Jamie Mackie

Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

About the author

Jamie Mackie was born in Kandy, Sri Lanka. As the second son of an Australian manager of a tea plantation, Jamie was raised in a colonial society which placed him on the other side from those people who later became his particular concern.

After graduating from Geelong Grammar, Jamie took an Honours course at the School of History at the University of Melbourne. In 1943 he joined the Australian Navy for the Pacific War. After the war, Jamie resumed his history study where he graduated with First Class Honours. Thereafter, Jamie went to The University of Oxford where he extended his history training by studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics which gave him a broad-gauged training which provided a good basis for an interdisciplinary study of Southeast Asia.

Under the Volunteer Graduate Scheme formalised by an Australian-Indonesian intergovernmental agreement in 1953, Jamie worked as economist at the Indonesian National Planning Bureau for two years. He also got part-time position at Gadjah Mada University where he taught economic history and where he came in close contact with Indonesian students and colleagues teaching at the university.

The two years Jamie spent in the Planning Bureau and the subsequent two years at Cornell University, the then outstanding centre for Southeast Asian Studies, and particularly its Modern Indonesia Project under the headship of Professor George Kahin, and his friendship with Daniel Lev and Benedict Anderson, provided Jamie with an even better understanding of Indonesian society and politics.

Jamie’s own active and reformist tendencies were evident when he joined The Immigration Reform Group in Melbourne in 1960 which provided a forceful proposal to change in Australia’s racist immigration policy, that led Australia’s Labour government under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam to officially abandon ‘White Australia’ policy.

Jamie died in 2011, and now his name is commemorated in The J.A.C. Mackie Memorial Endowment, established within the ANU Endowment for Excellence. The Endowment intends to promote Jamie’s lifelong passions: Indonesia and Southeast Asia, Australian engagement in the region and racial respect and tolerance.