UPM Academics Face Accusations Of Falsifying Malay Maritime History
A French historian has claimed that the UPM academics tried to pass off a Foochow pole junk as a Malay jong in one of their journal articles.
By Adrian Lai — 22 Jan 2024, 05:54 PM
A French historian has levied accusations against two academics affiliated with Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)
The allegations centre around the purported misrepresentation of historical facts concerning Malay maritime history.
The credibility of the academic journal in which these claims were published has also been brought into question, reported New Straits Times.
In a recent Facebook post, Serge Jardin identified Rozita Che Rodi and Hashim Musa, both academics affiliated with UPM, as the authors of a paper titled The Jongs and The Galleys: Traditional Ships of The Past Malay Maritime Civilization.
The paper was published in the International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, Volume 13, Issue 11, in 2023.
Jardin claimed that a visual used in their research paper to depict a model of Malay jong — a traditional sailing ship with roots in Java, Indonesia — was erroneously identified.
Jardin contends that the featured image is, in reality, that of a Foochow pole junk, a cargo vessel from China.
"Shame, shame, shame, shame! How low can academia go!" Jardin wrote in his post, raising questions about the peer-review process of the journal in which the paper was published
Jardin also included a photograph of the specific jong in question.
"The photo does not show a Malay jong but a Foochow pole junk from China," he wrote.
He also said the model of the jong referenced in the paper is not from the Maritime Museum of Jakarta but from the Royal Museums of Greenwich in England.
The academics' factual assertions on the Malays' use of galleys were also misrepresented, Jardin claimed.
Jardin said although galleys were mentioned six times in Sejarah Melayu, or the Malay Annals, they were all in connection with the arrival of the Portuguese in Melaka.
"[The] galley was never used by local mariners during the Melaka Sultanate period. Most Southeast Asian [navies] started adopting galleys in their fleets after the advent of Portuguese-Ottoman [influence in the region].
"The galley, Mendam Berahi, of Hikayat Hang Tuah (17th century) is an anachronism," he argued.
Jardin has an extensive bibliography, encompassing various works such as Rêver Malacca, an immersive exploration of Melaka through the perspectives of travellers. Another notable work is Malacca Style, a collaborative effort with Malaysian photographer Tham Ze Hoe.
Malaysian academic Professor James Chin says he is "completely dumbfounded"
"Two academics published in a fake academic journal claiming the Chinese junk to be Malay in origin.... from a top Malaysian research university. I am completely dumbfounded because you can check the facts so easily," he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
The political analyst from the University of Tasmania's Asia Institute also urged the public to share Jardin's Facebook post to see if UPM would take action or sweep the matter under the rug.
Meanwhile, Malaysian author Preeta Samarasan shared similar sentiments in a Facebook post of her own.
"This.... is unbelievable. I knew something of the audacity of our rewriters of history, but rewriting history for our local textbooks is one thing, and rewriting it for international academic journals that should be peer-reviewed is quite another," she wrote.
