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Indonesia Colonial Economy and Society, 1870-1940
The dismantling of the Cultivation System on Java,
Dutch
subjugation of Sumatra and the eastern archipelago, and
the opening
of the Suez Canal in 1869 stimulated the rapid development
of a
cash-crop, export economy. Another factor was
technological change,
especially the rise of the automotive industry, which
created
unforeseen markets for tropical products in Europe and
North
America. Although palm oil, sugar, cinchona (the source of
quinine,
used in treating malaria), cocoa, tea, coffee, and tobacco
were
major revenue earners, they were eclipsed during the early
twentieth century by rubber and, especially, petroleum.
Sumatra and
the eastern archipelago surpassed Java as a source of
tropical
exports, although sugarcane remained important in East
Java.
Rubber plantations were established on a large scale in
the
early twentieth century, particularly around Medan,
Palembang, and
Jambi on Sumatra, with British, American, French, and
other foreign
investment playing a major role. A high-yield variety of
rubber
tree, discovered in Brazil and proven very profitable in
Malaya,
was utilized. It was during this period that the emergence
of
small-holder rubber cultivation, which was to play a major
role in
the Indonesian economy, took place.
Tin had long been a major mineral product of the
archipelago,
especially on the islands of Bangka and Billiton, off the
southeast
coast of Sumatra. But petroleum was, and remained,
Indonesia's most
important mineral resource
(see
Petroleum, Liquefied Natural Gas, and Coal
, ch. 3). Oil, extracted from Sumatra after 1884,
was first
used to light lamps. In 1890, the Royal Dutch Company for
Exploration of Petroleum Sources in the Netherlands Indies
(Koninklijke Nederlandsche Maatschappij tot Exploitatie
van
Petroleum-bronnen in Nederlandsche-Indië) was established,
and in
1907 it merged with Shell Transport and Trading Company, a
British
concern, to become Royal Dutch Shell, which controlled
around 85
percent of oil production in the islands before World War
II. Oil
was pumped from wells in Sumatra, Java, and eastern
Kalimantan.
Rapid economic development during the late nineteenth
and early
twentieth centuries profoundly changed the lives of both
European
residents and indigenous peoples. By 1930 Batavia had a
population
of more than 500,000 people. Surabaya had nearly 300,000
people and
other large cities--Semarang, Bandung, Yogyakarta, and
Surakarta--
had populations between 100,000 and 300,000.
Always conscious of its ethnic and cultural diversity,
Indonesian society grew more so as the number of Dutch and
other
Western residents--especially white women--increased and
chose to
live European-style lives in special urban areas with wide
streets
or on plantations. There also were increasing numbers of
Indonesians who lived in these Western-style urban areas.
Nevertheless, the European trekkers, as they were
known in
Dutch, were often not much different from their British
counterparts described by George Orwell in Burmese
Days,
longing for the home country and looking on the native
world around
them with suspicion and hostility. An early twentieth
century work
described Batavia's European quarter as "well planned, it
is kept
scrupulously clean, and while the natives in their bright
colored
clothes, quietly making their way hither and thither, give
the
required picturesque touch to the life in the streets, the
absence
of the crowded native dwelling houses prevents the
occurrence of
those objectionable features which so often destroy the
charm of
the towns in the Orient."
The trekkers contrasted with an earlier
generation of
Dutch colonists, the blijvers (sojourners), who
lived most
or all of their lives in the islands and adopted a special
Indisch
(Indies) style of life blending Indonesian and European
elements.
The rijsttafel (rice table), a meal of rice with
spicy side
dishes, is one of the best-known aspects of this mixed
IndonesianEuropean culture. Eurasians, usually the children of
European
fathers and Indonesian mothers, were legally classified as
European
under Netherlands Indies law and played an important role
in
colonial society; but as trekkers outnumbered
blijvers, the Eurasians found themselves
increasingly
discriminated against and marginalized. It is significant
that a
strand of Indonesian nationalism first emerged among
Eurasians who
argued that "the Indies [were] for those who make their
home
there."
The Chinese minority in Indonesia had long played a
major
economic role in the archipelago as merchants, artisans,
and
indispensable middlemen in the collection of crops and
taxes from
native populations. They encountered considerable
hostility from
both Indonesians and Europeans, largely because of the
economic
threat they seemed to pose. In 1740, for example, as many
as 10,000
Chinese were massacred in Batavia, apparently with the
complicity
of the Dutch governor general. In the late nineteenth
century,
emigration from China's southern provinces to Indonesia
increased
apace with economic development. Between 1870 and 1930,
the Chinese
population expanded from around 250,000 to 1,250,000, the
latter
being about 2 percent of the archipelago's total
population.
Chinese were divided into totok, first-generation,
fullblooded emigrants, and peranakan, native-born
Chinese with
some Indonesian ancestry who, like blijvers and
Eurasians,
had a distinct Indies life-style. Overseas Chinese lived
for the
most part in segregated communities
(see Ethnic Minorities
, ch. 2).
During the early twentieth century, the identity of
overseas
Chinese was deeply influenced by revolutionary
developments in
their homeland.
Data as of November 1992
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