Dutch Colonial Rule Research Articles

Nationalism of Nani Wartabone: Nation Character Building Foundation of Indonesia

Nani Wartabone is one of the Indonesian nationalist leaders who came from Gorontalo. Nationalism of Nani Wartabone implemented in the form of various movements of resistance against Dutch colonial rule, the Japanese military occupation, revolution in defending independence, until the threat of national disintegration Indonesia after independence. Nani Wartabones’ nationalism is not nationalism that leads to chauvinism, but a nationalism that has come from an egalitarian view and leaning on humanitarian aspects. Thus, nationalism of Nani Wartabone is very important if it is implemented in the present life as a cornerstone of the nation character building of Indonesia. This writing will analyze how the concept of Nani Wartabones’ nationalism, and its implementation in the present.

Editor Sebagai Sutradara, Analisis Semiotika Pada “Buku Tanah Air Kita “

Editor in the publishing world has function to keep the consistency of story line and point of view. “Tanah Air Kita” is a book published by N.V. W. van Hoeve-Bandung that contain the work of local and foreign photographers since Dutch colonial rule until Indonesia’s independence. The research aims to discuss how the role of editor in producing a book that fits his vision about how Indonesia is supposed to be in a photo and how observers interpret.Using semiotic analysis based on the model spectator – operator–spectrum. Analysis is done by categorizing photo illustration in 4 parts, which are :nature beauty,technology-natural resources, how people work, political change, then cross-checked upon their stadium- punctum. Selected photos shows the vision of N.A. Douwes Dekker about his expectation towards Indonesia, as the new nation that wants to be reckoned in the world, according to the presences.

THE IMPACT OF TRANSLATION TECHNIQUES TOWARD THE QUALITY OF TRANSLATION: A Case Study on a Social Text

Quality of translation is one of the most important aspect in translation studies. This article aims at reporting the impact of translation techniques toward the quality of translation in term of accuracy, acceptability, and readibility. This descriptive qualitative research focused on single case. Objective data were taken from the “ Asal-usul Elite Minangkabau Modern: Respons terhadap Kolonial Belanda Abad XIX/XX ” and its source text “ The Minangkabau Respons to Dutch Colonial Rule in the Nineteenth Century ”. Then, affective data were taken from the informants. The four of the most frequent techniques which influence the quality of the translation are amplification, literal translation, establish equivalence and modulation. Moreover, the translation quality is categorized good as the score of accuracy is 3.33, acceptability 3.53, and readibility 3.55 in the range of 1-4.

Challenging the de‐industrialization thesis: gender and indigenous textile production in Java under Dutch colonial rule, c. 1830–1920

AbstractMany dependency theorists as well as economic historians have contended that nineteenth‐century imperial policies and economic globalization de‐industrialized the global ‘periphery’. European metropoles extracted raw materials and tropical commodities from their overseas territories, and in turn indigenous consumers bought their industrial products, textiles in particular. This article investigates three of the assumptions of Ricardian trade theory that are often behind the de‐industrialization narrative. In this article it is argued that, at least for colonial Java's textile industry, these assumptions should be reconsidered. Adverse trade policies imposed by the Dutch and a prolonged terms‐of‐trade boom in favour of primary commodities make colonial Java a unique case for exploring the merits of the de‐industrialization thesis. Here it is demonstrated that Javanese households resourcefully responded to changing market circumstances, in the first place by flexible allocation of female labour. Moreover, indigenous textile producers specialized in certain niches that catered for local demand. Because of these factors, local textile production in Java appears to have been much more resilient than most of the historical literature suggests. These findings not only shed new light on the social and economic history of colonial Indonesia, but also contribute to the recent literature on alternative, labour‐intensive paths of industrialization in the non‐western world.

Evolution and Empire: Alfred Russel Wallace and Dutch Colonial Rule in Southeast Asia in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

While Alfred Russel Wallace is sometimes remembered for his sympathy for ‘savages’, it has also been observed that he was closely associated with European colonial regimes during his long stint of fieldwork in Southeast Asia (1854–62). Moreover, it has been argued that as one of the first scientists to extend natural selection to humans following his return to Britain he acquiesced in the extinction of primitive peoples. This article examines in detail for the first time the development of Wallace's admiration for the Dutch Cultivation System, which combined paternalistic administration with a government monopoly over the production of cash crops. While travelling through the archipelago Wallace encountered numerous examples of Indo-Dutch creole culture and he himself made significant lifestyle adaptations to local practices. When he first observed the Cultivation System in the Minahasa region of northern Sulawesi Wallace experienced an epiphany as he witnessed the rapid progress towards ‘civilization’ made by former ‘savages’. This, he attributed to the Dutch system, which he believed to be well adapted to the principles of human mental and moral development. In advocating the Dutch model as a preferable alternative to British free trade and neglect of its civilising mission in India, Australia, and elsewhere, Wallace hoped not only to arrest the decline of primitive societies but also to promote the ultimate uniting of humankind in a single race. In the context of debates over human evolution, slavery, race, and imperial policy in Britain in the 1860s, this was an unusual and radical stance, which challenges simplistic representations of Wallace as a supporter of empire around mid-century who moved towards anti-imperialism in the late Victorian period.

The legal status of widows and divorcees (janda) in colonial Bali

ABSTRACTThis article explores the legal status of widows and divorced women (janda) in Bali during the transition to Dutch colonial rule at the turn of the 20th century. It examines the Balinese law codes and their application in adat (traditional) courts to consider the ways in which widows and divorcees were able to claim recognition of their economic and social rights. At that time, the Dutch established the adat law system that provided separate civil laws and courts for each ethnic group in the Netherlands Indies. Balinese traditional law codes devote considerable attention to the regulation of female sexuality both within marriage and following separation or the death of a spouse, particularly in relation to rights to property and inheritance. However, they have little to say about the dissolution of marriage. Following the imposition of Dutch colonial rule, the pre-existing Balinese traditional law codes and legal norms continued to underpin the legal process administered through the colonial customary courts but were brought into alignment with modern legal practices. The colonial administration in Bali set out systematically to provide access to the legal process for women. A number of legal cases involving widows and divorcees based on adat law precedents were recorded in the Dutch compilations of adat law cases (Adatrechtbundels). These cases relate principally to disputes between widows and the families of their former partners and indicate that the legal status of Balinese widows and divorcees was formally recognised.

Freek Colombijn and Joost Cote, eds. Cars, Conduits, and Kampongs: The Modernization of the Indonesian City, 1920-1960. Leiden: Brill, 2015, 351p.

Cars, Conduits, and Kampongs: The of the Indonesian City, 1920-1960 Freek Colombijn and Joost Cote, eds. Leiden: Brill, 2015, 351p.Cars, Conduits, and Kampongs: The of the Indonesian City, 1920-1960 is a commendable collection of essays that present and the city not as ahistorical ideal-types but as dynamic concepts that changed as colonial cities became postcolonial urban nodes. The diachronic approach goes in tandem with the variations in the authors' chosen urban areas, revealing that even within a single nation-state differences in perceptions of exist. Nonetheless, comparability rather than divergence across space and continuity rather than rupture through time define this work.Freek Colombijn and Joost Cote's introductory essay, Modernization of the Indonesian City, 1920-1960, alerts readers to the book's fresh insights about the relationship between technological advancements and modernization, especially in the context of a colonial city. They point to the necessity of considering the degree of novelty of an innovation and the varying responses among the colonized toward them. Of course in early-twentieth-century Indonesia, novelty often refers to the Western character of innovation and the values usually attached to it, such as progress, rationality, and science. Easily juxtaposed against this notion of is the way of life of the colonized, best exemplified by the kampong, the obvious antithesis to modernity (p. 4). Colonizers almost always understood the kampong in terms of what it lacked-whether it was sanitation, order, housing-and consequently regarded Western technology as the necessary remedy. Previous studies on Western colonialism have already argued that such an understanding of technological diffusion provided the justification for social engineering projects that were ostensibly designed to uplift but eventually appropriated by the colonized. This book, however, takes this argument even further by extending the temporal scope so as to include Japanese colonialism, the Revolutionary period, and the early years of the Republic and showing that these drastic political changes were not enough to alter the urban landscape and process that Dutch colonialism set in motion. Not only had bureaucrats of the postcolonial state internalized the dream of modernization (p. 9), but more importantly the reality of social boundaries and inequalities produced by survived the end of colonialism.To understand the logic behind this continuity one has to analyze the responses of the colonized toward technological innovation. The responses varied, but the editors stress the selectivity, rather than passivity, of ordinary city dwellers toward modernity. For Colombijn and Cote, conscious consumption was crucial in how Western-derived persisted into the postcolonial period. The agency of the colonized enabled the counter-colonial process of defining an alternative modernity, one that the subaltern residents of the cities could own. This alternative did not reject the fundamental ingredients of . . . but challenged the assumption of exclusive ownership (p. 11). Save for the introduction, the chapters of the book are divided into three sections based on the type of responses from the colonized: 1) Impositions and Passive Acceptance; 2) Partial Accommodation; and, 3) Selective Appropriation.The three chapters in the first section take a big picture approach, stretching their view across the twentieth century (p. 16) to see how played out in both colonial and postcolonial contexts. Saki Murakami's Call for Doctors! Uneven Medical Provision and the of State Health Care during the Decolonization of Indonesia, 1930s-1950s looks at how the Sukarno administration, in its objective to present the republic as the total opposite of Dutch colonial rule, tried to support rural healthcare through more geographically dispersed assignments for doctors. …

The Djogdja Documenten: The Dutch-Indonesian Relationship Following Independence through an Archival Lens

Abstract This article is an overview of a story highlighting a collection of displaced archives caused by the decolonization process. In the midst of Indonesian revolution against Dutch colonial rule, the intelligence agency of the Dutch army seized official documents from Indonesian government offices that would become known as the Djogdja Documenten. Despite coming from various sources originally, these documents were transformed into a single collection through the act of Dutch seizure. By reviewing the documents in question, searching for references to them in literature, and doing research in the archive of the National Archives of the Netherlands, I follow the postindependence relationship between the two countries starting just after the transfer of sovereignty, through President Sukarno’s anticolonial “Guided Democracy” period, and ending with President Suharto’s New Order and the increase in diplomacy between the two countries.

LAY ATJIEN LIOK AND THE LIDAK WAR OF 1852

This article deals with the intersection of indigenous agency, colonial governance, and the political and economic influence shored up by individual Chinese migrants in eastern Indonesia in the 19th century. In the mid 19th century, Dutch and Portuguese colonial rule on Timor was still indirect and lacking in resources. This gave the opportunity for regional polities to be largely independent. The actions of a merchant called Lay Atjien Liok triggered a Dutch expedition to apprehend him in 1852. Although he was arrested, their action brought about a war with the small Lidak kingdom where the Dutch were initially defeated. Only with utmost difficulty did a renewed expedition manage a nominal victory five years later in 1857. Such acts prompt questions about the perception of the ‘colonial’ entities in the local mindset. The article discusses the factors conducive to the strong bonds developed between the Chinese and locals, and the agency of these vis-á-vis the colonial complex, which explains the eruption of violent conflicts in 1852 and 1857. It furthermore explores the possibilities for multiple readings of the conflict since memories of the Timorese resistance made a deep impact on local oral tradition.

“KOTA LAMA SEMARANG” SITUS SEJARAH YANG TERPINGGIRKAN

The existence of Semarang city as a trading town on the north coast of Java had been going on since the founding of Old Mataram Kingdom and continues to grow, until the period of Dutch colonial rule. The rapid development as a city of Semarang in the Dutch colonial period was marked by the establishment of the buildings at the site which is now called Semarang Old Town. Most of these buildings serve as offices and private VOC trade. Over time, Semarang became not only a trading center but it evolved into a gemeente (municipality), up to the present period. Nevertheless, there seems to be lack of interest in making the history of Semarang as a subject in teaching history at the local level, especially in educational circles, as the subject matter in teaching history. As a source of considerable historical importance, there is nothing wrong if a teacher of History, especially in the city of Semarang, making the Old City as a source of learning for students in the city of Semarang. Therefore the existence of sites as well as historical buildings in the city of Semarang is should no longer simply regarded as old buildings that have without meaning. And at least it will foster public awareness of Semarang city, especially among students to participate in regard to keep the existence of the Old Town and make it as an asset of History and Tourism in the city of Semarang.

The killing of Dutch and Eurasians in Indonesia's national revolution (1945–49): a ‘brief genocide’ reconsidered

In the histories of decolonizations after World War II, the targeting of European and, particularly, mixed-blood populations by indigenous peoples has been neglected or avoided altogether. A case in point is Indonesia's struggle for independence from Dutch rule (1945–49). In a rare treatment of this topic, Robert Cribb recently described the killings of Dutch and Eurasians in the last months of 1945 as constituting a genocide, albeit a ‘brief’ one, the first time that term had been used with reference to what Dutch sources spoke of as the bersiaptijd (loosely, a time of danger) and Indonesian sources rarely mentioned at all. Cribb's approach generalized broadly about the killings. It concentrated instead on offering a general explanation, which he found not in colonial policy or Indonesian nationalism but, on the whole, in a ‘constructed’ racial tension and an explosive, bottom-up mobism. Detailed information from East Java's experience, however, suggests rather different and far more complex causes, among them various effects of both Dutch and Japanese colonial rule, and racial tensions inherent in Indonesian nationalism. The East Javanese case highlights the extended and often extreme nature of the violence against Dutch and Eurasians, and emphasizes that it must also be seen in the complicating context of violence against Chinese and other Indonesians (not covered here in extenso). A reconsideration of Cribb's treatment suggests that use of the term ‘genocide’ for the killing of Dutch and Eurasians in revolutionary Indonesia may not be thought warranted from a ‘scientific’ or legal perspective, and that efforts to encompass this sort of decolonization violence with terms such as ‘subaltern genocide’ are still fraught with difficulties. Still, ‘genocide’ used in a generic, common-sense fashion draws attention to a hidden episode of horrific violence, and further study may be of use to scholars of decolonization and genocide in general, as well as Indonesia specialists and Indonesians themselves.

NEGOTIATING PRINCELY STATUS THROUGH THE PHOTOGRAPHIC GIFT

In 1937 Prince Pakualam VII of Yogyakarta sent a family album to Crown Princess Juliana of the Netherlands as a wedding gift. It contained drawings and photographs of all the dynasty's leading members since the early 19th century. This article examines the album, firstly, as a diplomatic gift given by a Javanese aristocrat living under Dutch colonial rule to a future queen of the Netherlands, and secondly, as a mode of self-representation that Javanese and Dutch monarchs embraced in different ways. While the portraits in the album contained general concessions to European mores, there was limited recognition of the Dutch royal occasion that it was meant to celebrate. Indeed, the gift represented an assertion of Pakualam VII's own dynasty. Thus, while Pakualam VII was technically a subject of the Dutch monarchy, his album gift to Juliana was ambiguous on the relations of sovereignty and subordination between the two families.

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa (review)

Reviewed by: Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa Joyce M. Chadya Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa. By Wayne Dooling. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008. 256 pp. $26.95 (paper). Wayne Dooling examines the impact of the constantly shifting relationships between the colonial state, landowners, and labor and how they affected the fortunes of landowners in the Cape Colony of South Africa from the inception of Dutch colonial rule in the mid seventeenth century through the incorporation of the colony into the British empire in 1795 and more permanently in 1806, ending with the Anglo-Boer (South African) War of 1899. Dooling contends that it "was a complex web of shifting alliances, shot through with contradictions and punctured by crises" (p. 3). The main transformation in productive relations, Dooling argues, was brought about by the emancipation of slaves and the introduction of English merchant capital. He also argues that the experiences of the Cape landed class were analogous to those encountered by landowners in Europe and in European overseas colonies. Dooling begins his analysis by exploring the cultural values of the slave-owning society of the eighteenth century as well as the nature of the Cape gentry's rule. He shows us, for example, that like other colonial economies elsewhere, one of the major problems the colony faced from its inception was labor. While VOC soldiers were too expensive to employ, the indigenous labor of the Khoisan (Khoi Khoi and San) was highly unreliable "as long as they retained access to their independent means of subsistence" by having access to land (p. 21). Consequently, like plantation owners in the Americas, Cape agricultural production was hinged, to a large extent, on imported slave labor. The Cape's slave labor was imported from Angola, Mozambique, Madagascar, India, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka. But, to a smaller extent the landowners, especially poor Boers, depended on the forced and "free" labor of the Khoisan. While many Khoisan, like other indigenous people in the Americas who came into contact with Europeans, were killed by smallpox, many more were killed during frontier wars. This was largely because extermination of the San, derogatively called Bushmen, became official company policy. San war captives were also forced to work on farms. Meanwhile the Khoi Khoi were forced into servitude by loss of their land, livestock, hunting grounds, and above all their independence. In legal matters, Dooling states that at the Cape "matters of honor and individual reputation were more important than actual deeds" among the Cape gentry (p. 17). For example, slave owner Dirk Gysbert [End Page 196] Verwey was exonerated after murdering one of his slaves because his neighbors had told the court that he was a man of good standing who treated his slaves well. But, of course, it also helped that landowners dominated organs of the local judicial power. In as far as inheritance was concerned, partible inheritance meant that farms were continually subdivided between the surviving spouse and sons, thus many farmers ended up with small holdings. In chapter 2, Dooling examined the "bitter-sweet" effects of British rule in the colony. Initially the Dutch benefited from British rule. It was the British, for example, who subdued the indigenous people in the northern frontier. They also benefited from the war spoils as captives were illegally enslaved or forced to work on the pretext that they were San orphans. When Khoi Khoi servants rebelled against their masters, it was the British who quelled the revolt followed by the 1809 Hottentot labor codes, which were in favor of the masters. Finally, the British did not disrupt the ruling system at the Cape as they continued to use the services of the old Dutch ruling class. Yet Dooling also identifies British rule as a factor in the challenges that Dutch farmers began facing in the nineteenth century. For instance, the British closed the Bushmen frontier, effectively curtailing any further expansion beyond the set boundaries. In 1808 the British abolished the slave trade, while Ordinance 50 of 1828 introduced labor relations certainly tilted in favor of the slaves, and the emancipation in 1838 witnessed large numbers of slaves and servants taking advantage of the new labor...

PENGARUH POLITIK PINTU TERBUKA TERHADAP MASYARAKAT PEDESAAN DI JAWA

The second half of the nineteenth century Dutch colonial government has issued the Law relating to economical politics in the Netherlands Indies, whose development was accompanied by a variety of social phenomena, especially among native communities. The influence of the open door politics has given impact on the rural population, because they are directly confronted with colonial interests in the arena of international commerce. Exploitation on various aspects of the lives of the rural population cannot be avoided. Therefore, entering the twentieth century. deterioration of living conditions that lead to poverty cannot be avoided. Socio-economic structure in rural indigenous communities are basically unbalanced and uneven. During Dutch colonial rule, foreign private interest was strong enough related to the international market. International markets have tended to act as an edge where the Indonesian economy is hung. Independence of the community and the rural economy in the colonial period almost did not indicate any changes.  Key words : Colonial exploitation, Bumiputra Population, Poverty Â

The Ottoman Press and the Dutch East Indies at the beginning of the twentieth century

AbstractAround the start of the twentieth century articles which were critical of Dutch colonial rule and its treatment of Muslim subjects in the East Indies appeared in certain Ottoman newspapers. For the Dutch, who had not yet been able to fully establish control within the borders of their colony, such inflammatory material was not desirable, especially given the fact that these newspapers had a readership among the colonized Muslims. The Dutch tried to prevent these publications, regarding them as the product of the pan-Islamist attitude of the Porte, a suspicion encouraged by Abdülhamid II's apparent behind-the-scenes support for such Ottoman newspapers.

Naming the Subject: Recovering "Euro-Asian" History

Naming the Subject:Recovering "Euro-Asian" History Emma J. Teng (bio) The historic election of Barack Obama as America's first biracial president has drawn attention once again to a phenomenon that has been gathering momentum since the 1990s: that is, the movement among so-called "multiracial" or "mixed-race" people for recognition, both political and cultural. Although the American media has mostly focused on the multiracial movement in the US, this push for recognition actually has global dimensions. Kumari Jayawardena's Erasure of the Euro-Asian: Recovering Early Radicalism and Feminism in South Asia is among the latest in a spate of books published in Asia that seeks to restore those of Asian/European ancestry to the historical record, including Michael Roberts, et al., People Inbetween: The Burghers and the Middle Class in the Transformation within Sri Lanka (1989), Myrna Braga-Blake's Singapore Eurasians -- Memories and Hopes (1992), and Vicki Lee's Being Eurasian: Memories across Racial Divides (2004).1 In fact, if Paul Spickard identified a "biracial biography boom" in the US during the 1990s, we seem to be currently in the midst of a "Eurasian publishing boom" that spans the globe from Asia, to Australia, Europe, and the US.2 This publishing trend includes not only academic books like Jayawardena's, but also memoirs, family biographies/genealogies, dictionaries, musical CDs, and even cookbooks.3 It further includes projects such as the Anglo Indian Heritage Books series, which reprints classic works such as H.A. Stark's Hostages to India (1926) and Cedric Dover's Cimmerii?: or Eurasians and Their Future (1929).4 What does Jayawardena's book add to the mix? Although South Asian studies is beyond my own field, I can say that I found much in this richly documented monograph to inspire my current work on Chinese and Chinese American representations of Eurasian interracialism. The book certainly speaks to a wider audience, to those who are interested in multiracial identity, and in women's history more generally. The main aim of the book is to counter the erasure of so-called "Euro-Asians" (the author's own term) from the historical record, and to demonstrate their contributions to social movements in South Asia during the colonial era. The book is divided into three main sections: the first provides background on the historical formation of "mixed-race" communities in South Asia under Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonial rule; the second discusses Euro-Asian radicals and modernism; the third, the role of women and gender. Jayawardena argues that Euro-Asians were not "marginalmen" [End Page 257] in colonial society, but actually played central roles in the struggles for worker and peasant rights, women's rights, democracy, secularism, and protonationalism. Focusing on public intellectuals, she crafts a portrait of what she calls "the utopian vision of Euro-Asians," a vision that extended beyond their own communal group to the nation. The book highlights the important contributions of figures like John Ricketts, Henry Derozio, Charles Lorenz, Frederick Nell, A.E. Buultjens, Eleanor Lorenz, Winifred Nell, and Agnes de Silva. Much of this ground has been covered elsewhere, but Jayawardena makes a significant contribution in her discussion of pioneering women, as well as in her intersectional analysis of gender and ethnicity. She demonstrates that in contrast to their stereotypical image as "exotic creoles," Euro-Asian women were often highly educated, and were among the earliest women professionals in South Asia, especially in the fields of education and medicine. The Euro-Asian "new woman" broke new ground on numerous fronts, and served in the vanguard of feminist and other radical movements. The fascinating stories of many women are collected here, some rescued from the dustbin of history. As such, Jayawardena goes far beyond the writers of earlier generations, who often rendered the Euro-Asian woman doubly invisible. A second important contribution of the book is seemingly simpler, but potentially more far-reaching: that lies in the name that Jayawardena invents to describe the subjects of her study. "What's in a Name?" As early as the 1920s, Eurasian "race man" Cedric Dover urged "mixedrace" populations throughout Asia to give serious consideration to this issue. The question of nomenclature had plagued...

A total extinction confidently hoped for: the destruction of Cape San society under Dutch colonial rule, 1700–1795

San (Bushman) society in the Cape Colony was almost completely annihilated during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a result of land confiscation, massacre, forced labour and cultural suppression that accompanied colonial rule. Whereas similar obliterations of indigenous peoples in other parts of the world have resulted in major public controversies and heated debate amongst academics about the genocidal nature of these episodes, in South Africa the issue has effectively been ignored aside from passing, often polemical, references to it as genocide. Even recent studies that have approached the mass killing of the Cape San with sensitivity and insight do not address it as a case of genocide. This article sets out to redress this imbalance in part by analysing the dynamic of frontier conflict between San and settler under Dutch colonial rule as genocide. It demonstrates both the exterminatory intent underlying settler violence as well as the complicity of a weak colonial state in these depredations, including its sanctioning of the root-and-branch eradication of the San.

Rumours and Realities of Marriage Practices in Contemporary Samin Society

From the mid-19th century the Samin people have made a contribution to resistance to Dutch colonial rule in rural Java by their non-violence movement and passive resistance (lijdelijk verset). History also notes that they have a unique culture and system of values which reflect their own local wisdom. However, many negative rumours have become widespread regarding this community. This article explores the marriage practices in Samin society and finds out how Samin society gives meaning to these marriage practices. It examines whether the practice of ‘virginity tests’ and ‘stray marriages’ exist in contemporary Samin society.

Rumours and Realities of Marriage Practices in Contemporary Samin Society

Since the mid - 19th century the Samin people have made a contribution to resisting the Dutch colonial rule in rural Java through their non-violence movement and passive resistance (lijdelijk verset). History also notes that they have a unique culture and system of values which reflect their own local wisdom. However, many negative rumours have become widespread regarding this community. This article explores the marriage practices in Samin society and investigates how this society gives meaning to these marriage practices. It also examines whether the practice of 'virginity tests' and 'stray marriages' exist in contemporary Samin society.

The Politics of Bondage in the Recruitment, Training and Placement of Indonesian Migrant Domestic Workers

Summary Indonesia is one of the major labour sending countries in contemporary Asia. While Indonesians, and especially the Javanese, have a long tradition of mobility, what has been called the “institutionalisation” of labour exporting started in the 1870's, under Dutch colonial rule. At that time, migrant workers originating from Java were mostly male “coolies” sent to work as indentured labourers on mines and plantations on the Indonesian Outer Islands. Nowadays, women represent the overwhelming majority of migrant workers departing from Indonesia, and most of them are sent abroad as domestic workers. Interestingly, even though indentured labour has officially been abolished in Indonesia in 1932, the contemporary system of contract labour migration is in many ways very similar to nineteenth and twentieth century indentured labour. By looking in particular at the practices of state and non-state actors involved in the “export” of Indonesian maids to Malaysia, this paper seeks to analyse the processes tha...