Citizenship develops in relation to the specific way in which the colonial state and local societies reshaped each other. This article traces the history of that relationship in Indonesia over the last two hundred years. At first, a central colonial state with insufficient resources to enforce its will negotiated halfway accords with a host of local rulers. Villagers 'belonged' to their patrimonial ruler, with the choice to submit or run away. By the early twentieth century, the state began to develop its technical means to bring about major economic and social changes, but only in densely populated areas with agrarian potential. Capitalism there began to disrupt village life and loosen clientelistic bonds. An indigenous constituency emerged for relatively autonomous citizenship. After independence in 1945, state politics there were (left-)populist rather than liberal. Where the state had fewer interests, however, the central state presence remained thin. The nineteenth century halfway house was reinvented and stabilized. Local leaders more easily gained monopolistic control over economic resources, allowing them to enforce clientelistic forms of citizenship. Central state elites were happy to grant local autonomy there, since it also relieved them from direct citizen pressure on their own prerogatives.