The Making of a Bureacratic Elite. The Colonial Transformation of Javanese Priyayi 0708118143, 0708118151

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ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA Southeast Asia Publications Series

No. 2 THE MAKING OF A BUREAUCRATIC ELITE THE COLONIAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE JAVANESE PRIYAYI

I.

ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA Southeast Asia Publications Series

1.

John Ingieson, Road to Exile: The Indonesian Nationalist Movement, 1927-Z934

2.

Heather Sutherland, The Making ofa Bureaucratic Halites The ColoMa! Wansforfnation of the

Javanese Priyayi 3.

}.C. Jackson and Martin Rudner(Eds), Issues in

Malayszkm Dev elopment 4.

Anthony Reid and David Marr (Eds), Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Aszkz

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Swami Anand Haridas (Harry Aveling) James C. Jackson John D. Ledge Anthony Reid Wang Gungwu

Murdoch University Griffith University

Monash University Australian National University

Australian National University

Cf- Department of Pacific and S.E. Asian History Australian National University, CANBERRA, A. C. T.

THE MAKING OF A BUREAUCRATIC ELITE

The Colonial TransformatioN of the Javanese Priyayi

I

HBATHER S UTHERLAND

1.

Published for the Asian Studies Association of Australia

by §_1l.I.lll¢

H-EB

Singapore HEINEMANN EDUCATIONAL BOOKS (ASIA) LTD.

Kuala Lumpur

Hong Kong

HEINEMANN EDUCATIONAL BOOKS (ASIA) LTD.

41 Jalap Pemimpin, Singapore 20 No 2, Jalan 201'16A, Paramount Garden, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

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LONDON EDINBURGH MELBOURNE AUCKLAND .IOHANNESBURG LUSAKA NAIROBI IBADAN

NEW DELHI KINGSTON

AH rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or ;';ransmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwzSe, without the prior permission of Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd.

ISBN (Cloth) 0 7081 1814 3 ISBN (Paper)0 7081 1815 1 © Heather Sutherland 1979 First published 1979 This book was prepared and composer.-typed with the assistance of the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.

Distributed in Australia and New Zealand by the Australian National University Press.

Published by Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd. printed in the Republic of Singapore by Chong Moh Offset Printing Pty. Ltd.

.

CONTENTS Preface

vii

Map of Administrative Divisions in Java, 1937

xiii

List of Illustrations

:Liv

List of Abbreviations

xv

Glossary

xiii

Chapter 1

Political and Administrative Patterns

Chapter 2

Government Priyayf: Life-Style and Social Setting

19

Chapter 3

Pangrek Praia and BB

31

Chapter 4

Patrons, Clients and Priyayf Education

45

Chapter 5

Social Mobility and Political Innovation

56

Chapter 6

Colonial Reforms and Pangreh Praia Response

67

Chapter 7

Colonial Strategy: Officials against Nationalists,

1

I I

ii

86

1918-1927 Chapter 8

Volksraad and Councils: Controlled Political Outlets

100

Chapter 9

Colonial Conservatism and Pangreh Praia Organizations

113

Chapter 10

Traditional' Authority and 'Model'n' Officials

130

Chapter 11

The Colonial Legacy and Java's Rural Civil

144

Service, 1942»1975 Bibliography

164

it

Index

*I

v

44

176

PREFACE The original impulse behind this book was a desire to study the colonial career of .lava's local administrative dynasties, the great priyayi families. It was soon apparent that such a study demanded not only detailed research into the specifics of bureaucratic development in the Dutch East indies, but also an awareness of wider theoretical issues. For the minutiae of biographical detail and government regulations provide data for the consideration of much larger questions concerning the nature of traditional polities, the effects of colonial rule, and the patterns underlying political institutions in newly independent nations. The ideological framework for European evaluation of Asian states evolved gradually, formed by the 18th century ideas of Montesquieu and Adam Smith, by early 19th century English studies of India, by Hegel and Marx, as well as by romantics and imperialist apologists! The Dutch in .lava shared contemporary ideas about 'Oriental Despotism', and about autonomous, egalitarian village communities. They also had their own pragmatic heritage, born of the Netherlands East India Company's first contact with a Malayo-Polynesian society in 1'1th century Formosa. There they developed several key notions: that as conquerors they had a 'feudal' right to the land, and hence to taxation, and that the best and cheapest solution to problems of political and economic control was to use specialist middle-men - higher native chiefs and Chinese tax~farmers.2 In this context of belief Java was seen as a corrupt feudal society whose highly wrought culture and complex semi-bureaucratic courts required animation by European dynamism before the land could be rendered truly productive. The static Oriental state could be made to generate the goods and services demanded by the Netherlands, but there should be no endangering its essential - and useful passivity. So no innovation, no creative political response to social and economic change could be tolerated by colonial dogma. The effects of this enforced stagnation were later to feed new images of exotic lava, in which a priyayi elite was seen to be, by nature, more concerned with mysticism and the enactment of ritual than with the hard exercise of power. After World War It, .

-

when the colonial straitjacket was removed, the luxuriant 'irratiollality' of Javanese

culture flowered again in the political sphere, where old ideas of power and appropriate behaviour were subsequently identified as resurgent patrimonialism

and neo-traditionalism. 3 1 P. Anderson, Lineages

of the

Absolutfst State (London, c. 1974) pp. 462-495.

2 W.A. Ginseng, De Cereformeerde Kerk op Formosa of de Lolgevallen eerier Handelskerk order de Oosblndfsche-CompagvNe, 1672-1662 (Leiden, 1931). 3 A.R. Will fer, 'The neotraditional accommodation to political independence: the case of Indonesia' in L.W. Pye (ed.), Cases in Comparative Politics." Asia (Boston, 1970) pp.

247-306, B.R.O'G. Anderson, 'The languages of Indonesian politics', Indonesia, 1 (1966) pp. 95-101, Anderson, 'lapanz "The light of Asia" ' in J. Silverstein ($d.), Southeast AsiaN: World War II: Four Essays (New Haven, 1966] DD. 20-1, Anderson, 'The idea of power in

Javanese culture' in C- Holt (ed.), Culture and Politics in IttdonesM (Ithaca, 19T2) pp. 33-8.

vii

viii

MAKING OF A BUREAUCRATIC ELITE

These views of Java range from culturally bound myths to academic hypotheses. Their testing and further development require sharply focused

examinations of specific relationships and institutions, so that the sociological links and structural limitations shaping both continuity and change can be further defined. This book investigates the effects of administrative change upon the social and political role of the priyayi elite in an attempt to trace the complex reality behind such dichotomies as 'traditional' and 'modern', "rational' and 'patrimonial', even the apparently straightforward 'administrative' and 'political'. In the course of the narrative it becomes clear how Dutch beliefs about the Asian nature of the Javanese polity combined with their short term practical goals to distort the relationship between priyayi and peasantry. Independent chiefs and court officials were transformed into subordinate allies, compradors, and ultimately into political and bureaucratic instruments of an alien regime. In the process the pn'yayi lost their military functions and were restricted in their economic activity; they became dependent more upon the new power in Batavia than upon their ability to work with local forces. Bound by colonial

constraints, unable to respond vigorously to economic and related social change, the native officials of the late 19th century were an uprooted elite whose refined and over-elaborate cultural life was probably more a result of impotence than of specifically Javanese traits. During the following discussion of the often hypocritical relationship between European and indigenous civil servants, it emerges that in the East Indian colonial administration evasion, sycophancy and pretence were often the most rational modes of behaviour, while initiative and drive were dangerous. Awareness of such conditioning helps explain much of the malfunctioning of independent Indonesia's bureaucracy. Another legacy of Dutch domination was the ambiguity surrounding the boundary between the political and the administrative. Colonial use of the civil service as a teclmocratic oligarchy, overriding the popular will be virtue of its problem-solving competence and assumed impartia-

lity, created a climate in which political manipulation by government officials was natural and necessary. The economic rationalizations of the post-1965 New Order in Indonesia recall the narrow drive towards productivity of the colonial Beamrenstaar. Several more specific themes run though this study. There is the continuing weight given to personal relationships, to the patron~client ties which

shaped factions and family networks and were a decisive influence on professional behaviour. Another repeated motif is the use of ostensibly traditional customs by the colonial regime, Dutch perceptions and reinterpretations were often more rigid than Javanese reality. The theme of the symbolic and repressive use o f prfyayi also recurs. More narrowly, details are provided of administrative reform, with its growing stress on expertise, but this is linked to changing leadership patterns both within the native civil service and the wider society.

ix

Preface

This account of .lava's elite is limited to the professional administrative corps of the directly ruled areas. The four native states under indirect rule in south Central Java and the major municipalities are not considered, they demand specialist studies of their own. For similar reasons the intricate and little documented relationships between Chinese and officials, between aristocratic

priyayi and village society, receive only general attention. This book examines the indigenous colonial officials within a Java-wide, institutionally defined framework, and it is hoped that this will contribute both to an understanding of Indonesian history and of the colonial experience in general. The research for the book also demonstrated the need for more investigation of local and economic history, and more comparative studies between ex-colonial and developing states, so that while the present study may clarify aspects of Java's development and place them in a wider context, the conclusions and suggestions given here should be followed through in further work.

* The native civil service was the effective link between the mass of the people and the Netherlands regime, and the functioning of this link is of primary importance in understanding the relationship between colonial government and rural population. Moreover, the corps was the sustainer and guardian of indigenous aristocratic traditions, it was a continuation of the old governing class and a major source of Java's modern elite. As such, it played an important part in Indonesian social and political history, but despite this self-evident fact it has received very little attention. Several articles have been written surveying the relationship between the Dutch and the nag o c t a l s , particularly the hg_h-raxiking Regents. .I-S. Furnivall, Rupert Emerson and Clive Day include some discussion of the indigenous corps in their classic books; Harry Benda has analyzed the administration in the closing years of Dutch rule, B.J.O. Schrieke and Leslie Palmier have traced fluctuations in officials' statu while Clifford Geertz's work on contemporary Java has elaborated the concept of the prfyayi, the

sophisticated administrative elite.4 But very little has been written about the institutional evolution of the native civil service, or about its changing role in

Javanese society. The sources used in this book reflect the need to consider both traditional and colonial elements in the corps' development. The main documentary basis comes from the former Netherlands Colonial Ministry's archives, now kept in The Hague, while other Dutch libraries and collections also provided a wealth of information. A less obvious but also invaluable source was a series of interviews 4 ].S. FurnivaLl,NerherIands India." A Study o.f PIuraI Economy (Cambridge, I944); C. Day, The Dutch in Java (reprint Kuala Lumpur, 1966); R. Emerson, Malaysia: a Study in Direct and Indirect Rule (reprint Kuala Lumpur, 1964), HJ. Banda, 'The pattern of

administrative reforms in the closing years of Dutch rule in Indonesia', Journal Of Asian

Studies, 25, iv (1966) pp. 589-605, CJ. Geertz, The Relzgfon of Java (Glencoe, l 960).

x

MAKING OF A BUREAUCRATIC ELITE

conducted in Java from October 1969 until June 1970. These discussions with former officials and their families were important not so much for the factual information they provided, as for the perspectives they offered on the role of the native officials. The interviews, like the contemporary Indonesian publications consulted, help balance the biases in the colonial documents and periodicals. I am indebted to many individuals who showed great patience andldndness in helping me with my research. In Amsterdam, Mr A. van Maule and Dr G.F. Pijper generously made some of their own material on Indonesia available to me, as did R. Abdulkadir Widjojoatrnodjo of Rijswijk. In Jakarta, so many people gave so much of dieir time to helping me that it is impossible to do justice to them all, but particular mention must be made of Paramita Abdurrachman, Professor Prajudi Atrnosoedirdjo, Dr Soetardjo Kaxtohadikoesoemo, Abdul Wahab

Surjodiningrat SH, Rachmat Suronegoro and Zainal A. Widjojoatmodjo. Similar gratitude should also be expressed to those who helped me elsewhere in Java: in Bandung, lbu Soediman, RM Abdoelmoetalip and his wife, and RAA Ahas Siberia Nata Atmadja, in Malang, Soemarsaid Moertono and the Suleirnanhadis, in Salatiga, RMAA Tjondronegoro, and in Surabaya, Bapak Samadikoen and Mr Abdul Gafar Pringgodigdo. I must also record my appreciation of the Tarekat family's warm hospitality, which made my stay with them in Jakarta so relaxed and pleasant. I am also very grateful to Lance Castes and Onghokham for commenting on early drafts of much of this study, and to Bernhard Dahm for proving a most helpful supervisor of the later stages of my dissertation work. I owe a very special debt to the late Harry J. Benda, who taught me at Yale and supervised the early phase of my research. His knowledge, intellectual energy and honesty were a source of enlighterunent and challenge, his death was a very great loss. This book could not have been written without much appreciated financial aid from Yale University, the American Association of University Women and Yayasan Siswa Lokantara. I must also record my gratitude for the assistance given me by the Indonesian Academic Institute (LIPI), the Indonesian Internal Affairs Ministry in Jakarta, and by the staffs of the Colonial Archives and the

Dutch State Archives in The Hague, the KITLV (Royal Institute for Linguistics, Geography and Ethnology) at Leiden, The Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam, the Royal State Library in The Hague, the National Museum Library in Jakarta, and the Yale and Cornell libraries in New Haven and Ithaca. Finally I wish to thank those at the Australian National University who prepared this text for publication Carrie Steffen and Jennifer Brewster who

-

shepherded the book through final editing and proofing, and Leona Whitteker who typed the manuscript on the Composer.

Heather Sutherland June 1978

Amsterdam

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