The Pattern of Administrative Reforms in the Closing Years of Dutch Rule in Indonesia

Abstract

The history of Indonesia in the last two or three decades of Dutch colonial rule still has to be written, and it can only be written when the abundant archival materials for this period, both in Indonesia and in the Netherlands, come to be opened up for scholarly investigation. Scholars who, since the Second World War, have turned their attention to modern Indonesian history have tended to focus on the development of Indonesian nationalism, and for understandable reasons. The Indonesian Revolution, crowned by the attainment of Indonesian independence in 1949, rendered an understanding of the Indonesian nationalist movement in colonial times imperative not only to Indonesian historians attempting to come to grips with their country's recent past but also to an ever-increasing number of foreign students. Welcome as this ongoing re-examination of Indonesian nationalism is, it, too, must remain incomplete until documentary evidence, whether archival or (auto)-biographical, can substantially enrich it.

Renegotiating boundaries; Access, agency and identity in post-Soeharto Indonesia

“…When after 1966 the New Order gradually took shape, the focus of research shifted away from society and its primordial attachments and concentrated almost exclusively on the nature of the state. In an influential essay, Harry Benda characterized the late colonial state as a beambtenstaat (Benda 1966). Framed in a Weberian model, this state was seen as a classic example of an apolitical administrative polity that was staffed by Dutch and 'native' officials -but with the Dutch firmly in control -for whom sound and centralized administration mattered most.…”

“…The army has therefore been characterized not as a hierarchically integrated organization, but, instead, as an archipelago of semi-independent 'warlords'. In terms of violence there are 5 This would also involve a sophisticated continuation of the exchange between Benda (1982) and Feith (1982) in the mid 1960s on the possibilities of constitutional democracy in Indonesia. also continuities that predate the colonial period, although the impact of the colonial and postcolonial state in terms of increase of scale should not be underestimated (Schulte Nordholt 2002).…”

Genocide in Indonesia, 1965–1966

“…During the first four decades of the twentieth century, the Dutch both introduced varying degrees of local democracy in "advanced" regions under their control and formally boosted the power of indigenous rulers in other regions under a so-called "detutelization" programme. 11 The Dutch also maintained a complex and changing system of ethnic classification which in turn determined both the civil law under which people lived and the criminal procedure under which they could be prosecuted in the early twentieth century. The law distinguished primarily between Europeans, "Natives" and "Foreign Orientals," mainly Chinese and Arabs, though the latter category came under great pressure as first the Japanese and later the Siamese and Turks were reclassified as legal Europeans.…”

Some reflections on new directions in Dutch colonial historiography

“…An example of this is the short study of the Indonesian nationalist movement (Schoffer, 1978) which takes up an issue which had until recently received very little attention from other scholars -although Benda (1966) refers to it -the relatively small size of the nationalist movements and its insignificance for the majority of the population.…”