|
Indonesia The Ethical Policy
The priorities of both the VOC and the Netherlands
Indies state
after 1816 were overwhelmingly commercial. Not even in
British
India was the ledger book such a weighty consideration.
But opinion
in the Netherlands was changing. In 1899 a liberal lawyer
named
Conrad Théodoor van Deventer published a polemical essay,
"A Debt
of Honor," the Dutch journal De Gids. Van Deventer,
who had
long experience in the Indies, argued that the Netherlands
had a
moral responsibility to return to the colony all the
profits that
had been made from the sale of cash crops following the
Dutch
Staten-Generaal's assumption of fiscal responsibility for
the
islands in 1867. He estimated that this amount totaled
almost 200
million guilders, which should be invested in welfare and
educational facilities. When a liberal government was
elected in
the Netherlands in 1901, these ideas became the basis for
what was
known as the Ethical Policy. Its scope included expansion
of
educational opportunities for the population as a whole,
improvements in agriculture, especially irrigation, and
the
settlement of villagers from overpopulated Java onto some
of the
Outer Islands.
Filled with good intentions, the proponents of the
Ethical
Policy, like Daendels and Raffles before them, generally
ignored
the "feudal" political traditions that had bound together
Dutch
officials and Indonesian subordinates since the early days
of the
VOC. The rationalization and bureaucratization of the
colonial
government that occurred in the wake of new welfare
policies
alienated many members of the priyayi elite without
necessarily improving the lot of the common people.
Whereas Sumatra
and the eastern archipelago were thinly inhabited, Java at
the
beginning of the twentieth century had serious population
and
health problems. In 1902 the government began a
resettlement
program to relieve population pressures by encouraging
settlement
on other islands; the program was the beginning of the
Transmigration Program
(transmigrasi--see Glossary)
that the
Republic of Indonesia would pursue more aggressively after
1950.
One Ethical Policy goal was improvement of education.
In
contrast to British (or pre-British) Burma and the
Philippines
under both the Spanish and Americans, the islands were
poorly
endowed with schools, and literacy rates were low. In 1900
there
were only 1,500 elementary schools in the entire
archipelago for a
population of more than 36 million. In Christian areas
such as
Ambon, some Batak communities in Sumatra, and Manado in
Sulawesi,
conditions were better than average because missionaries
established their own schools. In Sumatra there were a
large number
of village-level Islamic schools. But public education was
virtually nonexistent until the government established a
system of
village schools in 1906. By 1913 these schools numbered
3,500 and
by 1940, 18,000. Many local people, however, resented
having to pay
teacher salaries and other school expenses.
Even members of the Javanese elite, the priyayi,
had
limited educational opportunities at the beginning of the
century.
A school for the training of indigenous medical assistants
had been
established at Batavia as early as 1851, and there were
three
"chiefs' schools" for the education of the higher
priyayi
after 1880. A handful of the elite, some 1,545 in 1900,
studied
alongside Dutch students in modern schools. But government
policy
maintained an essentially segregated system on all school
levels.
Dutch-Language Native Schools (Hollandsche Inlandsche
Scholen),
with 20,000 students in 1915 and 45,000 on the eve of
World War II,
have been described by the historian John R.W. Smail as
"perhaps
the most important single institution in twentieth century
Indies
history." Through the medium of Dutch, graduates were
introduced to
the modern world; being "natives," however, their
subsequent
careers were limited by racial bars, an injustice that
stoked
future nationalism.
In 1900 the old medical school became the School for
Training
Native Doctors, whose students also played a major role in
emergent
nationalism. A technical college was established at
Bandung in
1920, and four years later a law faculty was set up at
Batavia. A
very small but highly influential group of graduates
matriculated
at universities in the Netherlands, especially the
University of
Leiden and the economics faculty at Rotterdam.
Raden Ajeng Kartini (1879-1905), daughter of the regent
of
Jepara on Java, was one of the first women to receive a
Dutchlanguage education. In letters written to Dutch friends,
published
in 1911 as Door duisternis tot licht: gedachten over en
voor het
Javanese volk (From Darkness to Light: Thoughts About
and on
Behalf of the Javanese People) and later translated into
English as
Letters of a Javanese Princess, Kartini called for
the
modern education of Indonesian women and their
emancipation from
the oppressive weight of tradition. These letters were
published
for the purpose of gaining friends for the Ethical Policy,
which
was losing popularity. As a result, a number of Kartini
schools for
girls were established on Java in 1913 from private
contributions.
The Ethical Policy was at best modestly reformist and
tinged
with an often condescending paternalism. Few Dutch
liberals
imagined that the islands would ever be independent. Most
assumed
a permanent, and subordinate, relationship with the
Netherlands
which was in striking contrast to American "Philippines
for the
Filipinos" policies after 1900. Thus the Indies' political
evolution was extremely tardy. The Decentralization Law of
1903
created residency councils with advisory capacities, which
were
composed of Europeans, Indonesians, and Chinese; in 1925
such
councils were also established on the regency level. In
1918 the
People's Council (Volksraad), a largely advisory body to
the
governor general consisting of elected and appointed
European and
Indonesian members, met for the first time. Although it
approved
the colonial budget and could propose legislation, the
People's
Council lacked effective political power and remained a
stronghold
of the colonial establishment.
Data as of November 1992
|
