Early Local Administration through the Dutch Colonial Bureaucracy

Abstract

In this paper the author discusses the historical character of the local administration of the Dutch residents in the Priangan area around the year 1820. It is an initial step in her study of the administration of Dutch local officials throughout all of Java during the mid-nineteenth century.In the latter half of the eighteenth century, the Dutch East India Company ruled over the Priangan area through the Commissioner of Native Affairs, a Company employee, who resided at Batavia. His main tasks were purchasing coffee at low prices from native chiefs, and supervising them. He could treat the chiefs rather arbitrarily. He could appoint and dismiss them freely, while he transacted with them and advanced money to them. However, as for the administration, he left the chiefs to control the Priangan area according to traditional custom.Between 1807 and 1816, the system of local rule in Priangan was reorganized by Daendels and Raffles. They introduced into Java the administrative divisions delineated by clear boundaries, which was a peculiar new concept in Indonesia. Priangan became one of these divisions. Moreover, a European administrator was appointed as the new ruler. Nevertheless in practice, the new system was still at a stage of uncertainty during this period.In 1816 the Dutch colonial government regained Java from England, and 3 years after promulgated regulations of local administration, which replaced the system and policy of predecessors. According to the official diary of Priangan residents in 1819-1821, the main feature of control over the Priangan area under these regulations can be described as follows:The Priangan area became a residency delineated by an clear boundery, and was supervised by a resident, who was a Dutch administrative official. Under the tight supervision of the Dutch colonial government, he directly controlled almost all the phases of administration of his residency, the most important of which was the maintenance of public order.He received instructions and orders directly from the colonial government, the director of finance, the high court, and the other superior offices and officials at Batavia, and reported them respectively. In his residency, he was the chief police officer, as well as the prosecutor and judge in the native criminal court of the residency. At the same time, he supervised finance, personnel changes, traveler's affairs, public enterprises, native welfare, and coffee production. In these affairs, he instructed directly not only Dutch subordinates such as an assistant resident, coffee inspectors, warehouse keepers, but also native functionaries such as the chiefs, native prosecutors, and the native police force.Moreover, in order to maintain the coffee production monopoly, which was the staple plant of Priangan, the resident depended upon all of the aforesaid powers. He excluded Europeans and Chinese merchants from his residency, surveyed the residency with native police forces, and arrested coffee smugglers. He also encouraged such public enterprises as construction of roads and bridges to make the government's transportation of coffee more convenient.Thus, the character of the new rule of this resident was quite different from that of the Company's Commissioner before 1807. The new rule had a character similar to the regulation of 1819, which was the framework of the colonial administration in Java in the mid-nineteenth century [Furnivall 1944: 91-2]. Therefore. the resident administration about 1820 can be considered as the earier type of local administration through the Dutch colonial bureaucracy in this area. And since then, it seems to have been taken up by Dutch local officials, who were positively dependent upon their administrative powers to maintain the colonial exploitation.