Education,
History, and Nationalism in Pramoedya
Toer’s Buru Quartet
“Education was the chief vehicle for the
[pre-1912] phase of the [Indonesian] nationalist movement.” George Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in
Introduction
Pramoedya’s Buru Quartet, a
tetralogy written between 1965 and 1979, has become increasingly popular in as
evidenced not only by the number of college course in which it is taught but
also by the sales on Amazon.com and the recent National Public Radio discussions
of the books. Many readers, however,
find that they lack the background knowledge of Indonesian history that makes
their reading richer. In our attempt to
help our own students in a 100 level introductory course come to terms with
some of the difficulties of the books, we searched in vain for introductory
essays that would give students the cultural and historical contexts they
needed to understand the novels without having to do a complete study of
Indonesian history and culture. And
although scholars of Southeast Asian studies have written about the books,
nowhere could we find a good, thorough essay that covered the introduction we
thought our students needed. The
This essay, then, covers much of the background information necessary to an understanding of Minke’s emerging national consciousness, from his early association with Dutch colonial rule to his participation in Indonesian nationalist groups and his development as a writer. It discusses first Minke’s association with Western culture and the education provided for him under the Dutch Ethical Policy. It explains the reasons for Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje’s Association Theory as it applies to Minke in the novels. It provides background about pan-Islamic and pan-Asian movements that profoundly influenced the failure of Association Theory and the development of Minke’s nationalist consciousness. And it discusses the failure of Association theory as Minke arrives at a new, nationalist consciousness in the novels. We have woven discussion of the history and culture into discussion of the novels so that students can more easily see Pramoedya’s rewriting of Indonesian history throughout the teratology.
Between the Pacific
and
Holland needed money to rebuild
itself after the wars, especially after its loss of Belgium in 1830. The Indies were, for the Netherlands, a
source of funds, exacted by high taxes. The Dutch response was the “Culture
System,” the compulsory cultivation of cash crops enforced by regional chiefs
and government agents which generated essential revenues to the Dutch
government as it cut its overhead by slicing expenditures in social services.
The result was a series of rebellions, lasting throughout the century, which
exacerbated the Netherlands’ cash-flow problems. The wars eventually forced a
reassessment of Dutch colonial policy.
Another catalyst for change was Max
Havelaar, an indictment of Dutch injustice and inhumanity written by Eduard
Douwes Dekker (Multatuli). Although
Multatuli’s cry for reform in 1860 sent a shock-wave through The Netherlands,
it did not in fact achieve any major change in the Indies until much
later. Colonial conditions remained the
same for the Natives through the end of the century.
This is the world Pramoedya Toer inherited and about which he writes in
his Buru Quartet. Understanding the
history of this world is necessary to understanding not only his tetralogy but
also the man himself and his difficult life in Indonesia. Jailed three times under three different
regimes in Indonesia, Pramoedya is that nation’s foremost novelist—at least in
western eyes. His Buru Quartet (This Earth of
Mankind (1975; 1990), Child of All
Nations (1975; 1990), Footsteps (1985;
1990 ), and House of Glass
(1988;1992), has, since its translation into English in the early 1990s, become
increasingly popular with readers in the West. The novels chronicle the life of
Pramoedya’s main character, Minke, from young adolescence through
adulthood. But this is not a simple Bildungsroman; in fact, his translator,
Max Lane, suggests that history itself, not Minke, is the real protagonist of
these novels.[4][4] Lane
argues that Minke “represented a new form of social being.”[5][5] Minke is an Indonesian revolutionary but
he is also representative of “other Asian revolutionaries of his period[;] his
confrontation with colonialism also placed him on the side of the impoverished
and oppressed masses of ordinary people. . . .[and his story] is history, the
inexorable march of history itself.”[6][6] In
tracing Minke’s development, especially his education, both formal and
informal, readers are brought to an awareness of the history of the Dutch East
Indies and its slow emergence as the independent state of Indonesia. Adrian
Vickers argues that “This Earth of
Mankind is as much an historian’s novel as it is a people’s history. It was exhaustively researched by Pramoedya,
. . . and while that makes it easy to set it as a reading for a history course,
it also makes it hard to read as a first encounter with Indonesian history.”[7][7] Reading the four books, one is immersed
in the world of southeast Asia as it is part of broader, global trends. Pramoedya’s tetralogy demonstrates the myopia
of Dutch colonial policy and the impact of diverse trends on the history of the
Indonesian independence movement.
Although Pramoedya
foreshadows in This Earth of Mankind
Minke’s shift from fascination with the Dutch to appreciation and celebration
of his own culture, Minke, the young Javanese narrator, identifies himself as a
student of European “science and technology.”[8][8] Enthralled with everything Western, he is
even captivated by The Netherlands’s Queen Wilhelmina. He is fascinated by the
new telegraph, new developments in zincography, the European manners of Nyai
Ontosoroh, and his teacher of Dutch language and literature Magda Peters. He
learns in his Dutch school that the civilizing mission is one that will benefit
the Indies. As Proaedya’s narrator tells
us in the fourth novel,
According to
the colonial Europeans, everything that is done by the white race for the
colonized people is superior to that which the Native rulers had previously
done for them. Everything that is done
to the colonized people is motivated by the whites’ sacred duty to civilize
them. How great was this sacred
duty! At one moment it was the banner
under which any and all actions could be justified. [9][9]
Minke is proud to be an HBS
student and believes that this education is his ticket to success within the
Dutch-run government of the Netherlands East Indies. Early in the novel,
however, he finds that Annelies, the young “Indo” beauty, daughter to Hermann
Mellema and his nyai (concubine), far
outshines the Dutch Queen. But although
Minke’s love for Annelies is immediate and powerful, his love for his own
culture is something that takes him some time to develop.
“Study and copy how the Europeans
do things, admonished a Java doctor from the Surakarta Palace.”[10][10] This is what Minke, in the third novel, Footsteps, is encouraged to do by the Dutch in power in
Indonesia at the turn of the century. Much of the tetralogy focuses
specifically on Minke’s education, the formal education in the Netherlands East
Indies designed specifically to co-opt the best and brightest young
Indonesians. Minke was the select product of an HBS, the only Native in that
prestigious Dutch language high school to which he was accepted because of his
intelligence and his social standing.[11][11]
Son of a bupati,[12][12] a native Javanese official appointed
by the Dutch—usually of royal blood--Minke would, according to the Dutch powers
in Indonesia, make the perfect link between the Dutch and the Indonesian
population. As long as the Dutch could
educate him to believe that Europe was superior, Minke could be useful. Minke’s Dutch education in This Earth of Mankind is at first
“successful”:
Your teachers
have given you a very broad general knowledge, much broader than that received
by students of the same level in many of the European countries. Naturally this breast of mine swelled. I’d never been to Europe so I did not know if
the director was telling the truth or not.
But because it pleased me, I decided to believe it. And, further, all my teachers had been born
and educated in Europe. It didn’t feel
right to distrust my teachers.[13][13]
The HBS education works well for the Dutch in
this first volume of Pramoedya’s tetralogy.
Minke is convinced that Magda Peters, his teacher of Dutch language and
literature, is all-knowing and that the education he receives will raise him
above the other natives, putting him on
the same level as the “Pures,” those full-blooded, white Dutch rulers. As he develops his skills as a writer, Minke
writes, in Dutch, under the pseudonym of Max Tollenaar. Consciously emulating
Multatuli’s famous protagonist, Max Havelaar, Minke places himself squarely in
the Western tradition, writing in a Western language. In spite of the fact that his mother
reprimands him for writing in a language that his own people cannot understand,
Minke has so internalized the Dutch culture that he cannot write in Javanese or
even Malay. She warns him in Footsteps:
“the Dutch have taught you to forget who you are. You are not happy wearing Javanese clothes,
and you do not like your mother because she is not Dutch….You’ve become a black
Dutchman in Javanese clothes. If that’s
what you want, then so be it.” [14][14] When his friend, the Frenchman Jean
Marais, criticizes him for his turning his back on his own people, Minke comes
to realize, by the second novel, how much his very nature is determined by his
Dutch education:
My
individuality could not be separated from the Dutch language. To separate these would only make this person
named Minke nothing better than roadside rubbish. . . .
However then
he whispered harshly: “You’re an educated Native! While Native people are not
educated, it is you who must ensure they become educated. You must, must, must speak to them in a
language they understand.”[15][15]
Dutch Colonial Education: Ethical Policy
Minke’s “official” Dutch
education was selective in that it purposely ignored significant parts of
Dutch-Indonesian history. The Dutch, in attempting to control education,
believed it was one way of the growth of nationalism. Pramoedya tells us in his memoir The Mute’s Soliloquy that later during his own father’s tenure as
a teacher, “the only bastion left for leftist nationalists were their [own]
educational institutions which the government set out to destroy. . . . Using a
bludgeon known as the Unlicensed Schools Ordinance, all private schools that
were not using a government-established curriculum, even ones that received no
subsidy from the government such as my father’s, were to be closed.” [16][16] Even when radical ideas were slipped
into the curriculum, however, Minke tells us how blind he was to their importance.
Although his progressive teacher, Madga Peters, had introduced him to the
writings of Multatuli, Minke did not at first pay attention to the troubled
history of his own country. But Indonesia was on the verge of
government-initiated social change—events that would awaken latent feelings of
nationalism and ultimately challenge Dutch rule. Between 1870 and 1917, the
Dutch government monopolies were abolished, creating new opportunities for
increasing numbers of Dutch colonists given greater access to the Indies with
the opening of the Suez Canal. [17][17] Land reform and peasant proprietorship
became a government priority, but the result was heavy taxes, increased
population pressures, and limited industrialization, a result that did nothing
to increase Native prosperity. Chinese
and Arab competition squeezed out the Native bourgeoisie and few Indonesians
won admission to the civil service or to professions. This disgruntled middle class became a
frustrated intelligentsia.[18][18]
The pronouncement of Queen Wilhelmina’s “Ethical Policy”[19][19] in 1901, designed to win over the
Natives, began the period which ironically saw the dawn of organized Indonesian
nationalism. [20][20] The architect of government policy to deflect these sentiments from
Independence to loyalty was Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje,[21][21] who believed that education was the
appropriate vehicle for co-opting Native leadership. The opposite held true: once educated, the
Indonesian elites found limited opportunities, this disappointment feeding
anti-Dutch sentiment: Louis Fischer says, “The positive became negative. . .
.Most of the Indonesian nationalists were Dutch educated, either in Holland or
in Dutch schools in Indonesia.”[22][22]
Christian
Snouck Hurgronje’s Association Theory and Minke’s World
Right from the start in This Earth of Mankind Pramoedya shows the ways which Hurgronje’s policy is reflected in the everyday lives of his characters. “Association theory,” basically a system of co-optation, is discussed in the first novel by the de la Croix sisters, daughters of the Resident of Bojonegoro:
Association means
direct cooperation, based on European ways, between European officials and
educated natives. Those of you who have
advanced would be invited to join together with us in governing the
Indies. So the responsibility would no
longer be the burden of the white race alone. . . .The bupatis could cooperate directly with the white government.[23][23]
Miriam and Sarah de la Croix believe in
association. They, like Hurgronje
himself, assume that the best and the brightest natives, when confronted with
the “obviously superior” Western culture, would naturally gravitate toward all
things Western. Unlike Madga Peters, Minke’s
Dutch teacher who is later dismissed for being too progressive in her thinking,
the de la Croix sisters, are excited in this first novel about Hurgronje’s
ideas:
The important
thing is that he has undertaken a valuable experiment with three Native
youths. The purpose: to find out if Natives
are able truly to understand and bring to life within themselves European
learning and science. The three students
are going to a European school. He
interviews them every week to try to find out if there is any change in their
inner character and whether their scientific knowledge and learning from school
is only a thin, dry, easily shattered coating on the surface, or something that
has really taken root. [24][24]
The obvious superiority complex built into
such a scheme is one that is lost on these Dutch women. In fact, the de la
Croix sisters see themselves as followers of Hurgronje, wanting to “make Minke
their experiment.”[25][25] And, for a time, Minke, wrapped up in
the very system they are describing, does not even recognize its dangers. Later
in the tetralogy, in Footsteps, Minke
remembers:
The Bupati of Serang was well known in educated circles as a student of
Dr. Snouck Hurgronje. He was the student
Mir [Miriam de la Croix] had told me about long ago, the boy Snouck Hurgronje
had used as a guinea pig. Guinea pig or
not, he was well respected by both
educated Natives and Europeans. . . . I believed this Western-educated bupati
would be a modern man. He would
certainly be different from Bupati Lepak Kartawidjaja of the time of Controller
Eduard Douwes Dekker, as told in Max Havelaar.
He was the first Javanese to use a surname. He would be someone with whom you could have
an open and frank discussion.”[26][26]
Minke learns immediately upon meeting this bupati, however, that the Dutch had
indeed succeeded in co-opting him: he finds that the bupati wants only to hold his power and is not interested in the
reforms Minke suggests.
Hurgronje is an “offstage” but
vital character throughout these four novels. His influence was especially
important to Dutch colonial policy because it determined van Heutsz’s[27][27] approach to the festering sore of the
Aceh[28][28] rebellion at the turn of the
century. Because the Dutch, at that
time, were especially concerned about rising pan-Islamic movements[29][29] epitomized by the Mahdi uprisings in the
Sudan as well as the Moros in the
Philippines, and the Wahabbiya in Northern Africa, Hurgronje’s “inside”
understanding was considered crucial in developing colonial policy in
Indonesia.
Hurgronje recommended that
colonial authorities see Islam as a two-part movement: religious and
political. He urged religious
toleration, something the Dutch administrators were guilty of neglecting. For example, at the end of This Earth of Mankind, one of Minke’s first shocks of recognition is
the Dutch refusal to acknowledge his Islamic-law marriage to Annelies. Nyai Ontosoroh reminds him: “Your marriage is
legitimate according to Islamic law. To
nullify it is to insult Islamic law, to besmirch the laws honored by the
Islamic community. . . . my child has married legitimately, more honorably than
me. And it is not acknowledged.”[30][30] This lack of respect for the customs
of the country does not go unnoticed by the Islamic scholars. They go “to the European court at Surabaya to
protest the decision of the Amsterdam District Court and its execution by the
Surabaya Court. . . . Kommer [The editor of one of the Dutch-language papers]
warned that it would be wise for those in power to act more tactfully in
dealing with the Islamic scholars who were held in respect, honored, exalted,
and listened to by the followers of Islam in this region.”[31][31] Hurgronje himself was well aware that
the religious powers in the Islamic community must be respected, and he warned
that a close eye be kept on Islamic political movements in the colony. Minke notes later in Footsteps, when the Boedi
Oetoemo (BO)[32][32]was organizing, that van Heutsz kept
abreast of all developments and attempted to maintain control from within: “My
hands shook as I read the paper he had given me—a secret document from the
governor-general’s office. Van Heutsz
was instructing that efforts be made to see that the Bupati of Karanganyar was
chosen as the president of BO, since he would ensure that BO would remain in
reliable hands.”[33][33] Van Heutsz took Hurgronje’s advice,
recognizing the importance of keeping tight control on internal, political
matters. But Hurgronje, in his
development of “association theory” as it applied to colonial policy,
underestimated the power of the Islamic modernist movement; and Western
education had the opposite of its intended effect. He saw Pan-Islam as powerful
and potentially dangerous to the colonial power. But he believed his association theory would
fend off this danger, blind to the fact that Islamic modernism was a more
insidious threat.
The influence of Pan-Islamic movements in Indonesia
Islamic movements worldwide, as
well as other Asian nationalist movements, are an all-important backdrop to
Pramoedya’s novels. Without a firm
understanding of this backdrop, much of the action of the novels seems
perfunctory. Hurgronje argued that as long as Indonesians remained Muslim, the
colonial relationship could not give way to lasting bonds between the two
cultures. And that although the adat[34][34] institutions might appear to be the
natural allies of the colonial government against Islam, they could not be
expected to stem the rising tide of Islam.
Hurgronje saw the enemy not as Islam the religion but as Islam the
political force. He saw this political
force on two levels: the local level driven by fanatical santri[35][35] and
the broader, global level of pan-Islamic movements. Hurgronje recognized
the fact this Islamic movement towards religious reform, if carried to its
logical conclusions, had implications for radical social change, perceived by
the Dutch as political revolution. So although Hurgronje advised van Heutsz to
suppress the Achenese rebellion with whatever force necessary, the point was,
according to Harry Benda, “to lay the
groundwork for religious peace for a viable modus
vivendi between the colonial rulers and Indonesian Islam.”[36][36] This pacification, however, had to
appear to be right and useful. Pramoedya
describes a conversation in Footsteps between
van Heutsz and Marie van Zeggelen,[37][37] the Dutch writer sympathetic to the
Native cause:
“No one
should misunderstand,” van Heutsz went on. “The unification of the Indies does
not mean expansionism. There are pockets of power, different political
enclaves, a score or so, still left in these Indies, which are destabilizing
surrounding regions—regions that have acknowledged the sovereignty of Her
Majesty.”
“They are independent states,” said Marie van Zeggelen, “just like Aceh
before it was conquered.”
“They are not states, they are stateless regions. They have no economy or monetary system. They have no foreign relations.”[38][38]
Hurgronje’s policy of tolerance and vigilance
would support traditional elements of Indonesian society, the adat chiefs and the santris, and undercut the support for Pan-Islamic rebellion. The
Dutch would have to supercede both the priyayi,[39][39]
and the santri; and both of
these traditions were fundamentally conservative. Hurgronje further argued that given the
proper amount of “association” with Dutch/Western culture, language, and scientific discovery, educated elites would
naturally turn to the West as models, rather than to Islam which he believed
offered not progress but a kind of
religious medievalism. [40][40]
Even though it appears at first
that cooptation has worked with both Minke and the bupati of Serang, ultimately Hurgronje was wrong. In fact, Islamic modernism became both a
political and social force, not of confrontation originally, but of
organization and education. The development of the Boedi Oetomo (1908-1935)and Sarekat
Islam(1912)[41][41], although originally not revolutionary,
but cultural and economic, ultimately became a powerful force for questioning
the prevailing colonial paradigm and for rebellion against Dutch colonial rule.
Even though Hurgronje had lived among Indonesians in Mecca and purportedly knew
them from the inside, part of the problem with the colonial leadership was that
they did not, or could not, recognize their subjects as fully “human.” So although Dutch colonial administrators
took Hurgronje’s advice and kept close connections to the Natives and their
political movements, they tried to co-opt the leadership potential of the
Natives, further alienating them from the Dutch administration. Pramoedya shows a poignant scene where
Governor-General Idenburg[42][42] has an “audience” with Boedi Oetomo members, supposedly to
praise the association and keep control of it from the inside. But the Governor-General, as depicted in House of Glass, does not know how to maintain ties with his
subjects because he does not take them seriously—a mistake that will later
prove fatal in Indonesian history:
Closing the
audience, Governor-General Idenburg told them that he hoped that there would
always be mutual understanding between Boedi Oetomo and the government and that
this meeting would be a beginning of something that would benefit the people
they represented. He hoped that this
good beginning would be continued by those who followed in their footsteps.
Tomo,[43][43] one of the most important founders of
the Boedi Oetomo, and now a doctor in a Mission Hospital in Blora, was never
mentioned in all these discussions.
Neither were any of the founders.[44][44]
As happened in the case of Sutomo, this
blunder pushed Native leaders further to the left in their political ideology.
These
nationalist movements presented a real challenge to the official Dutch
education Minke received. Much of the
education that takes place in the novels happens outside these official
channels. It will be years before Minke realizes in Child of All Naitons that there are “lesson[s] [he] had never
learned at school” [45][45] and
that “Taking someone’s property without permission is theft. It is not right; it must be opposed. . . . it
is our very freedom they have robbed us of .” [46][46] Minke’s marriage to Mei, the Chinese
nationalist[47][47] who is working underground in the Indies
for China, opens his eyes to the ways in which the Dutch have controlled his
education as well as the flow of information to the people in the Indies. Minke realizes that much information has been
held back from him in his “superior Dutch education,” that “It was not only from Europe that so
much could be learned! . . . I realized I am a child of all nations, of all
ages, past and present. Place and time
of birth, parents, all are coincidences: such things are not sacred.”[48][48] He must seek outside the limits of his
Dutch education for knowledge. The Dutch have restricted Native access to those
ideas or those world events that might make them restless and eager for
freedom. But Mei tells him that Western superiority is by no means accepted by
other Asians. She tells him how the
Japanese are beginning to make a name for themselves in the sciences as well as
in Asian politics. And Minke comes
slowly to the realization that he “felt far below them [the Japanese[49][49]].
[He] was a child of a conquered race.
The European teaching that [he] had received had not equipped [him] to
understand Japan, let alone the greatness of Europe.”[50][50] Mei shows him first-hand how the Asian
peoples are working among themselves to throw off foreign domination. She completes his knowledge of European
history in Footsteps, giving him the
parts that do not glorify the civilizing mission as portrayed by the Dutch:
But we can now
count the days that Europe will reign over the colored peoples.
That was the first time in my life that I
had ever heard such an idea.
“There have been so many Europeans who have
caused so much suffering in the world.” She told me about Sir John Hawkins,[51][51] the Englishman who pioneered the slave
trade between Africa and America, so that forty million Africans ended up dead
or condemned to a life of slavery.
And I had never come across this story
before. I had never heard it from anyone
or read it anywhere, in school or outside.” [52][52]
In volumes two and three, Minke uses his formal HBS education to access Europeans like Ter Haar and Marais critical of the colonial system. Both his own cultural awakening and his connections to liberal foreign nationals in the Indies cause his sense of identity and history to coalesce:
The voices of
the old Java doctor, of Mei, of Ter Haar, echoed within my mind, of the rise of
Japan until its victory, of the time we first met until the time we separated
forever. In the end, I concluded, a
progressive people can look after their own welfare, no matter how few they are
or how small their country. The
Netherlands Indies government has an interest in limiting the Native people’s
access to modern knowledge and science.
The Natives must look after themselves.[53][53]
Mei represents two things in these novels:
the growing number of overseas Chinese[54][54] in Indonesia and the increasing
agitation for revolution in China. Because of its large Chinese population,
Indonesia was fertile ground for the activities of Chinese nationals who “give
ideas” to the native population about throwing off the shackles of
colonialism. This happened to Minke as
he worked with Mei and assimilated the their arguments. In House
of Glass, the narrator, police inspector Pangemanann, explains
Governor-General Idenburg’s attempt to “dam up this torrent of Asian
nationalism”[55][55] that was rising as Sun Yat-Sen overthrew
the Ching Dynasty and all of Southeast Asia looked to China as a model for
power:
He [Idenburg]
established the HCS, the Hollandsch Chineesche Schul, a Dutch-language primary
school at the same level as the ELS Dutch-language primary schools for
Europeans. He hoped that these schools
would eventually create a core of people in the Chinese community who would
look up to Europe instead of China. . . .The HCS schools were established in an
attempt to divide the Chinese. They had
earlier been divided by the Tong.[56][56]
Now they were to be divided by new orientation to Europe, and by loyalty
to the Netherlands Indies. [57][57]
The colonial powers
realized that education was a powerful tool in determining a country’s fate.
This divide and conquer policy is the same one used by the Dutch among the
Indonesian population. Pramoedya shows the parallel in Footsteps between education and civil administration: “Meanwhile
the Javanese are sent to Aceh, to Bali, all over the Indies, to fight the other
peoples of the Indies. The Ambonese, the
Menadonese, the Timorese, and others from the eastern islands are brought here
to fight the Javanese. And in Betawi
there are Javanese concerned only with putting their little house in order.” [58][58] If information about other peoples in
the archipelago is not dispersed, the colonial powers can play one group
against another and maintain control. And the colonial powers did not want the
Natives to know what was going on all over Asia. But the attempt to isolate and
control ideas is fruitless: information inevitably seeps through via unofficial
channels. This seepage is a vital part
of Minke’s unofficial education and a recurrent theme in Pramoedya’s tetralogy.
The
novels show that the failure of association theory is due at least in part to
the fact that many people in the Indies were “associating” with other Asians,
not only with the Dutch. Mei teaches Minke about China, the history of which
during the 19th century was one of demoralization and decline, the
result of a combination of Western pressures and internal rebellions. [59][59] Unlike Japan, its leaders clung to
outmoded concepts and institutions that had preserved China for 2000 years, but
its slow response to contemporary problems brought the end of dynastic rule and
a repudiation of Confucian traditions.
The Chinese national Mei shows Minke in Child of All Nations how important it is to realize that Asian
countries, not just Western ones, can be modern:
[Minke says,]
“But the Chinese older generation is famed for its wisdom, the great heritage
it has left China, books and cultural artifacts, a high civilization . . . .”
“True, but
that was the Older Generation when it was the Young Generation. [replies
Mei] This is the modern age. Any nation and people that cannot absorb the
power of Europe, and then arise and utilize it, will be swallowed up by
Europe. We have to make our China equal
with Europe without becoming Europe, as Japan is doing.”[60][60]
Affairs in China had a profound impact in
Asia, as Minke tells us in the third volume of the tetralogy:
A new
development took place. A truly major
event, huge, earth-shattering, its impact spreading everywhere, something that
had a great influence on developments in the Indies.
On October 10, 1911, rebellion broke out in
China, in the town of Wu Chang, Hu Pei province, led by the Young Generation. .
. . The Revolution spread throughout almost all of China. The Manchu (Ching) dynasty was overthrown and
a republic was established. [61][61]
The
novels are indeed novels about Indonesia; but they are also textbooks about
world history. The importance of events,
particularly their Asian and Islamic connections worldwide, cannot be
underestimated.
An
even more ominous note from the Dutch perspective was in its neighboring
archipelago where Islamic influences were also apparent. The situation in the Philippines had a
profound impact on the people[62][62]s of Indonesia. One of Minke’s “informal
teachers,” Nijman, introduced, in Child
of All Nations, the Filipino
situation to Minke, who had no knowledge of what had happened in that country:
“The Philippines cannot be forgotten. . . .It is inevitable that other
conquered peoples will follow in their footsteps. Yes, even the Indies. If not now, then later, when people know how
to handle their teachers.”[63][63]
Nicholas
Roosevelt compares the Dutch and American experiences in Southeast Asia: “The Moros are the bearers of the torch of
Islam. The Arab influence is strong
among them and they show the effects of long contact with the Malay tribes of
the Dutch islands.” [64][64] The comparisons to the Dutch experience
are important, says Roosevelt, since
“the problem which the Dutch have had in the Indies is almost the same as ours
in the Philippines, and that their experience covers a period of time of three
hundred years. . . . Much can be gained from studying what they have done.”[65][65] In terms of nationalist agitation in the
Indies, Roosevelt’s comments are worth noting.
Stating that Natives were content with Dutch rule until after World War
One, he explains that “anti-Dutch agitation is carried on for the most part by
a small group of upper class Natives who wish to get more power for themselves. It is directed . . . against the mere
presence of foreigners in positions of authority. In this respect it resembles the independence
movement in the Philippines. . . .The Dutch have never encouraged the
propagation of ideas of self-determination and never permitted Natives to
exercise much power.” [66][66] Pramoedya’s Dutch characters in House of Glass are concerned about
events in the Philippines: “You must pay
more attention, gentlemen. If not. . .
we could have a second Philippines here in this pearl of a colony of ours. We could be kicked out. Another one of the
Western countries will come in, perhaps America, perhaps Germany, or perhaps
even England. Or perhaps none of them. .
. . Colonial affairs in Asia are all interconnected, like links in a chain.” [67][67]
The
Dutch feared contamination of their colonies by events in the Philippines
archipelago which could encourage Islamic resistance to Europeans and threaten
profits. This factor nurtured reluctance
to accede to nationalist demands. Pramoedya foregrounds this undercurrent of
resistance to imperialism against the writings of Hurgronje to show how closely
Pan-Asian nationalism and Pan-Islamic movements were connected to Dutch colonial policy.
These Islamic movements unleashed an appeal
for reform that permeated both rural and urban elements of society. Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, and the Philippines,
showed how religious reform could have political repercussions. All cases
demonstrate the undercurrent of social change in Islamic modernism. Even the Mahdist state was not one of
unbridled barbarism but a well-governed administration under military
commanders who served as agents for the central administration. Although autocratic, the state brought a
sense of unity and order to a previously chaotic land. This Islamic-based uprising made all European
colonial powers sit up and take notice.
In Saudi Arabia, the creation of a modern, stable, relatively prosperous
state affirmed the idea that modernism, secularism and Islam were not
irreconcilable. With its rejection of
blind adherence to medieval scholars, it gave the state significant flexibility
in adjusting to changes of the 20th century. This modernist, forward-looking secularism
was something Hurgronje did not acknowledge in Islam.
The reform efforts of the Wahabi movement were
brought to Indonesia by scholars returning from Arabia in 1803, the Padri
movement[68][68] in Sumatra. Similar movements occurred
during the late 19th century by hajis
and students at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. The number of pilgrims
increased seven-fold from 7000 in 1894 to 52,000 by 1926.[69][69]
The Dutch had worried about the numbers of Indonesians making the haj, afraid that Pan-Islamic influence
would create trouble for them in the colony.
They restricted the number of people who could go to Mecca, increased
the price of the trip, and quarantined returning pilgrims to debrief them,
cooling the ardor of their alleged pan-Islamic sentiment. At the same time,
Indonesians began publishing periodicals in 1889-1916, first in Arabic, later
in Malay.[70][70]
These articles gave vent to Muslim grievances against Dutch rule. The movement had a strong educational
dimension, emphasizing the teaching of religious and secular subjects. The number of such schools multiplied during
the first decade of the 20th century. Some schools jealously guarded
their independence, even refusing offers of financial support from the Dutch
government. One of the most famous socio-religious reformist movements was the
Muhammadyah, established in 1912 by Kiai Dahlan (1868-1923). Divorcing himself from the Boedi Oetomo, his goal was in the Wahabi
tradition of puritan reformism, but its central role was in education,
instituting a separate system from Kindergarten to teacher-training colleges,
establishing them throughout the archipelago.[71][71]
The Sarekat Islam, unlike the Boedi Oetomo, soon became a nation-wide
political organization numbering almost 360,000 by 1916. [72][72] But it was not Pan-Islamicism that was
the root of discontent among the leaders of Indonesian nationalism; it was a
movement of Islamic modernism, Asian nationalism and Marxian revolution which
combined to pose the major threat to Dutch colonial rule. The Sarekat Islam split in the mid-1920s
between anti-religious Communists and Muslim anti-Communists. On the surface, the marriage between Islam
and Marxism seems bizarre. But the two
were united in a proto-nationalist, anti-foreign sentiment. The Indonesians were both anti-Dutch and
anti-Chinese; Marxists were anti-capitalist. And capitalists were Dutch and
Chinese. [73][73] The proponent of Marxian revolutionary
methods was Hendrik Sneevliet,[74][74]
who worked within the Sarekat
Islam to encourage support for revolution as opposed to gradual, moderate
reform. The breach between Sarekat Islam and Boedi Oetomo widened even further with an abortive communist coup
in 1926. Moderates joined the Muslim
welfare and cultural organization, the Mohammedyia. Others formed
the Nationalist Party of Indonesia (PNI) [75][75], later banned under Sukarno’s
leadership.
Fortunately
for Minke and the other fortunate few Natives, Dutch colonial education could
be a vehicle for power. Dutch spending
on Native education increased from 25,000 florins in 1864 to 999,000 florins by
1887 with a concomitant increase in attendance at Western-type primary
schools--from 2987 in 1904 to 61,425 in 1925 to 74,697 in 1928. Yet by 1940,
only 1786 Natives were attending schools beyond the ninth grade compared with
5688 Europeans; by that same time only 37 Indonesians were graduated from
college.[76][76] With such limited access to education,
the colonial power became its own gravedigger.
Although Minke is at first attracted to the Dutch, his education
provides him with the very tool to take power from the Dutch. He learns a number of important lessons. He comes, in Child of All Nations, to see
that “the ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity of the French Revolution”
have been betrayed by his European colonizers. [77][77] And
in the final volume, Police Inspector Pangemanann, commissioned by the colonial
powers to study the ways that political insurrection in the Indies can best be
avoided, comes to the conclusions that educated Natives are understanding
European concepts: they understood “the
French Revolution [as a time] when the feudal class was removed by the
bourgeoisie. They called on people to side with the progressive march of
history. And meanwhile I was sinking in
the colonial mud.” [78][78] These ideals, learned by the best and
the brightest, like Minke, in venues outside the Dutch establishment, were used
against the very people who had forgotten their own heritage of revolution. As
Pangemanann says in House of Glass, “I defended with all my soul my view that
what they had written was quite to be expected from people with a European
education. If you don’t want these sorts
of statements, I said, then it is best that Natives stop being given a Western
education.” [79][79]
In any case, Western education was limited to a select few, and the void
was filled by growing numbers of Muslim schools, influenced by Islamic
reformism. Coupled with these developments was the educational system already
established by the Muhammadiyah. [80][80] The curriculum, dress, pedagogy,
examinations were viable alternatives to Dutch models. Pramoedya had seen these various educational
models in action as he was growing up.
His father was a teacher , one who refused to use any government-authorized
books, to celebrate the Dutch holidays, or to teach his students Dutch songs.
Originally working within the system of schooling supported by the Boedi Oetomo, Pramoedya’s father, broke
away from this system and established his won schools. He “dropped the government-established school
curriculum and replaced it with one that had a nationalistic orientation, one
that he himself developed.”[81][81] These renegade teachers provided young
Indonesians with perspectives not taught in either the Dutch or the Boedi Oetomo schools.
Looking
at world events, studying the history of his own country as well as his
religion, allowed Minke to challenge the assumptions of white supremacy and
Western superiority. His non-formal
“teachers” also opened his eyes to major events happening all over Asia. In Child
of All Nations, Minke tells us in 1899 that “Japan had become increasingly
more interesting. These people, who
arouse such admiration, are achieving more and more amazing things. . . . One
by one the European nations have come to look upon Japan as an Asian people
different from the others, exceptional. . . . Japan had left the Arabs, the
Chinese, and the Turks behind—flying by themselves up into the heavens to join
the ranks of the Europeans, and not just on paper, but in the treatment they
received.” [82][82]
The work of Kitazato[83][83] in bacteriology revealed a genius in
science that hitherto had been denied.[84][84] Mei reminds Minke, in Footsteps that “All of the educated
Natives of Asia have a responsibility to help awaken their peoples. If we don’t, Europe will run riot throughout
Asia.”[85][85] The lessons of history, whether learned
through the formal education of the Dutch system or through informal contact
with European liberals and other Asian nationals living in the Indies, provide
Minke with the tools he needs, in House
of Glass, to write powerfully about
colonial conditions: “Until several years ago the Native peoples of the Indies
still resisted the power of the government with arms, with patriotism, with
religion. And they were defeated every
time. But these last few years, not a
single drop of blood had been spilt upon the rice paddies or the fields, the
valleys or the tundra, upon land or water. . . . Today their weapons were
nothing else but speech and pen.” [86][86]
Finally,
the novels show the ways in which education is subverted to be used against the
colonial powers. The education Pramoedya
focuses on, however, is both formal and informal. The formal, western education that Minke
receives teaches him two kinds of lessons.
First, he is exposed to Western ideas of revolution and human
rights. More importantly, he learns
along the way that no matter how well-educated he is in the Western system, he
will remain a Native and continue to be second class. While some opportunities will be opened to
him because of his education, most will continue to be denied. He must tow the line and behave like a
“proper little Native” or he will be (and he is) expelled from the Western
schools. But his education also opens to
him contact with “subversive,” liberal, progressive Europeans who show him
ideas that the formal part of his education tried to hide from him. Ter Haar, Magda Peters, the de la Croix
sisters, as well as the “real” characters in the novels such as Hurgronje, van
Heutsz, Idenburg, Sneevliet, Dekker and others—blur the distinctions between
literature and history. These characters engage him in discussions about the
nature of colonial policy, forcing him to confront its inherent evils.
But
the education of Minke also takes place in ways the colonial government cannot
control. It is his exposure to Asian
nationalists, both real and fictive,—Mei, Nyai Ontosoroh, Kartini,[87][87] the Muslim members of BO and SI, and
others, who educate him about nationalist movements throughout Asia and the
Middle East, empowering him both as a writer and as a force for rebellion. They
expose him to the ideas that these nationalist trends are both global and
local. He learns he is not isolated but
rather part of a larger movement, one that marks the beginning of a global
repudiation of colonialism. Seeds planted by colonial educational systems were
designed to serve the needs of the colonial power; but ideas once planted
cannot be controlled and can have a force beyond the manifest intent of their
progenitors.
There
is, however, a second underlying theme about education. Pramoedya wants to educate his reading
public. In this way he is very much like his character Minke. Even though he “wrote” while imprisoned on
Buru from 1965-79, the final volume ends in the 1920s with the death of his
protagonist. According to Ricklefs,
Pramoedya’s hero symbolizes the efflorescence and decline of nationalism in its
variant forms in the “First Steps Towards [A] National Revival.”[88][88] In the wake of the abortive PKI coup,
Europeans and Indos moved away from leftist movements, establishing instead
“Fatherland Clubs.” Dutch colonial policy hardened and became more oppressive
under de Graeff [89][89] and his successors with increased
attempts to limit the activities of non-government schools and teachers.[90][90] The efforts were too little and too
late. The formal and informal curricula
created an awareness of a similar exploited history for all Indonesian people.
The persistent resistance to Dutch rule from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries,
the rising tides of Asian nationalism, Islamic modernism, and Marxian
socialism, and the growth of a national language were use by future generations
of leaders to build the foundation of a stronger, more cohesive nationalist
movement. The irony is that the very
weapon enlisted to drain away support for nationalism—Western education—was
used instead to bolster it.
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[1][1] The name Indonesia, meaning “islands of India,” was invented by a German ethnologist in 1884 and was meant to include the Philippines. The alternative term, Nusantara, was preferred in the 20th century by E.F. Douwes Dekker, to be used as a name for the East Indies. The nationalists adopted the former term for the new republic in 1945. (Bernard H. M. Vlekke. Nusantara: A History of Indonesia (The Hague: W. van Hoeve, Ltd., 1960), 6; 400 note 5.)
[2][2] Louis Fischer, The Story of Indonesia (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), 3.
[3][3] Louis Fischer, The Story of Indonesia, 20.
[4][4] Max Lane, “Introduction,” House of Glass (New York: Penguin, 1992), xii.
[5][5] Max Lane, “Introduction,” x.
[6][6] Max Lane, “Introduction, xi.
[7][7] Adrian Vickers. “Reading Pramoedya Ananta Toer and writing Indonesian cultural history,” Journal of Contemporary Thought 1( 1991): 95.
[8][8] Pramoedya Toer, This Earth of Mankind (New York: Penguin, 1990), 18.
[9][9] Pramoedya Toer, House of Glass, 55.
[10][10] Pramoedya Toer, Footsteps (New York: Penguin, 1990) , 275.
[11][11] In fact, as late as 1905, only 36 Indonesians entered HBS. (M.C. Ricklefs. A History of Modern Indonesia c.1300 to the Present. (Bloomington: Indiana U.P., 1981), 150.)
12 Bupati: usually members of the Native aristocracy, bupatis were high ranking regional administrators who assisted Dutch assistant-Residents in Java
[13][13] Pramoedya Toer, This Earth of Mankind, 16.
[14][14] Pramoedya Toer, Footsteps, 60-64.
[15][15] Pramoedya Toer, Child of All Nations (New York: Penguin, 1990), 57-8.
[16][16] Pramoedya Toer, The Mute’s Soliloquy: a Memoir (New York: Hyperion, 1999), 110.
[17][17] Louis Fischer, The Story of Indonesia, 47. The Suez Canal was opened in 1869.
[18][18] Theorists argue that revolutions do not occur when people are greatly deprived, but rather when their lives are improving. Hence, these rising expectations fuel revolutionary fervor. The Native intellectuals not only deserted the Dutch but also took leadership positions in the independence movement. Kahin, citing Hendrikus Colijn (1869-1944), (Koloniale Vraagstukken van Heden en Morgen, Amsterdam: N.V. Dagblad en Drukkerij de Standaard, 1928), 47ff) noted the decline of sons of Indonesian administrators who sought their fathers’ positions from 72.3% in 1909 to the 44.7% in 1926. Many chose to become doctors to be economically independent from the Dutch to more effectively participate in the nationalist movement. A union of Indonesian students in Holland was formed in 1922. Many Nationalist leaders after 1927 came form its ranks. It was Marxist but not communist. Most returned home to become involved in politics by forming study clubs. It was the basis for the PNI. (George Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1952), 57-58;88; 90.) Colijn was a member of the anti-revolutionary party of the Dutch parliament from 1909-1933, a minister of colonies form 1933-7. For the importance of the role of intellectuals in revolutionary theory see Charles Tilley, “Does Modernization Breed Revolution?” in Jack A. Goldstone, ed. Revolutions: Theoretical, Comparative, and Historical Studies (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1986), 47-57.)
[19][19] The “Ethical Policy” was the creation of C.Th. van Deventer, a graduate of Leiden University who had a legal career in Indonesia, later becoming a Liberal/Democrat in the Dutch Parliament. In 1899, he established the idea of “honor debt.” Holland, having taken wealth from Indonesia, was honor-bound to repay this debt by contributions from the Dutch treasury. This was adopted as policy by the government in 1901. In essence, it combined elements of both self-interest and idealism, an official attempt to both foster and control social change. (S.D. Legge, Indonesia (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1964), 8-9; 86-95.)
[20][20] Louis Fischer, The Story of Indonesia, 50.
[21][21] C.S. Hurgronje (1857-1936) was a professor of theology and Arabic studies at Leiden University. He lived among the Indonesian community in Mecca and published a study of Islam in 1889. Subsequently he became advisor to the Dutch government (1889-1907) and the architect of its colonial policies towards its Muslim majority.
[22][22] Louis Fischer, The Story of Indonesia, 53.
[23][23] Pramoedya Toer, This Earth of Mankind, 145.
[24][24] Pramoedya Toer, This Earth of Mankind, 145.
[25][25] Pramoedya Toer, House of Glass, 177.
[26][26] Pramoedya Toer, Footsteps, 182.
[27][27] Johannes Benedictus van Heutsz (1851-1924) was a soldier in the Aceh War (1873-1908) from 1874 on and was Governor of Aceh from 1898-1904. He largely pacified Aceh, and Hurgronje was his constant advisor until 1903. Later as Governor-General of the Indies (1904-1909), he brought most of the outlying islands under Dutch control. For details see E.S. de Klerk. History of the Netherlands East Indies.2 vols. ( Rotterdam: W.L. and J Brusse, n.v, 1938).
[28][28] An area in the northern tip of Sumatra. One of the first territories converted to Islam in the 9th century. Islam spread from Aceh to encompass the entire archipelago, save Bali, by the 15th century. The 35-year war with Aceh was the biggest, most costly, and bloodiest military operation in Dutch colonial history. When the war ended in 1908, it was estimated to have cost 400 million florins. No statistics were given as to the number killed. For details see M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, chapters 4 and 12. (See also James Seigel, The Rope of God (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), 7-77.)
[29][29] The resurgence of Islam as a force in colonized areas of Africa and Asia was a recurrent theme throughout the 19th century. In India, it was given impetus by Sayyid Ahmed Khan, particularly in journalism and education. Muslim colleges and cultural associations were established. And by the time of World War I (1914-18), Sir Mohammad Iqbal (1877-1938) was bemoaning the powerlessness of Muslims in India, lauding the achievements of the Mogul Empire and criticizing the decadence of contemporary Islam (see Kwame Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Gates, and Michael Colin Vazquez, The Dictionary of Global Culture (New York: Vintage, 1999), 21). By 1905, a Muslim League was established to defend the position of Muslims from dominant Hindu majority of the Indian National Congress. The type of Islamic revivalism most feared by European imperialists was exemplified by the Mahdist insurrection in the Sudan (1881-98). Mohammad Ahmad, a Sufi mystic, believed himself a divine reformer whose goal was to liberate the Sudan from corrupt Anglo-Egyptian administration. Failed efforts to defeat him increased his following which culminated in the massacre of Gordon at Khartoum in 1885. His successor expanded the Mahdist state until it collapsed in 1898 as the result of famine, drought, epidemics, internal political rivalries, and Kitchener’s modern avenging army. Hurgronje wrote articles of broad concern and importance to the Muslim world, including articles about the Young Turk Revolution (1908) in the Ottoman Empire and the related Arab Revolt (1915-16) during the Great War (1914-18). For more information, see Johannes Pedersen, The Scientific Writings of Snouck Hurgrontje (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1957), 25. The Ottoman Empire had seen its territories nibbled away by the European powers form the 18th century on. Its response, influenced by reformers Namik Kemal and Micthet Paha, was to modernize its law codes and begin internal improvements, particularly the building of the Hijaz Railway to Muslim Holy places in Arabia to strengthen its support among its non-Turk Islamic subjects. Attempts by Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909) to retard such developments initiated the Young Turk Revolution. During World War I, the Arabs of Hijaz rebelled and proclaimed their independence. Its ultimate victor was Adb al ibn Saud, leader of the puritanical Wahabi sect, a reform movement originating in Arabia that was critical of lax Islamic practices. Pan-Islamism, preached the doctrine of loyalty to the Ottoman Caliph because as head of the most powerful Muslim state he was the best individual to direct and coordinate the political force of Islam. Islamic modernism is a movement of devout Muslims who felt constrained by its medieval scholasticism and institutions (George Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, 44-45 citing H.A. R. Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam (Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press, 1947), 11.). Many Indonesians brought reformist ideas home via contacts with large Arab communities in Singapore and Java, and whereas Pan-Islamic ideas were largely restricted, modernist Islam found its expression in the first powerful Indonesian nationalist organization, Sarekat Islam (George Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, 48) .
[30][30] Pramoedya Toer, This Earth of Mankind, 366.
[31][31] Pramoedya Toer, This Earth of Mankind, 340.
[32][32] The Boedi Oetomo (1908-35) was created by Dr. Wahidin Soedirohoesodo (1857-1917) in 1908. He was a Western-educated doctor, journalist, and gamelan performer. His goal was to restore Javanese culture through Dutch education. Its power base was primarily among Javanese priyayi and its Javanese focus deprived it of mass political support. Its moderate policies were endorsed by the Dutch, and it was considered by many to be a quasi-government party. For details see M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, 156-157.
[33][33] Pramoedya Toer, Footsteps, 276.
[34][34] Adat: is the term used for local customs which are, at times, in conflict with orthodox Muslim law
[35][35] Santri: a student of Islam, a pious Muslin
[36][36] Harry Benda, The Crescent and the Rising Sun: Indonesian Islam under the Japanese Occupation 1942-1945 (The Hague: W. van Hoeve Ltd., 1958), 24.
[37][37] Marie van Zeggelen (1870-1957), a Dutch writer who wrote many historical novels about the Dutch East Indies. Sympathetic to the Natives’ struggle for freedom, she wrote a biography of Kartini as well as a trilogy of novels about Aceh in the 16th and 17th centuries.
[38][38] Pramoedya Toer, Footsteps, 44.
[39][39] priyayi: members of the Javanese aristocracy who become the salaried administrators of the Dutch
[40][40] Harry Benda, Crescent, 25.
[41][41] Sarekat
Islam was begun by Raden Mas Tirtoadisirjo, an aristocratic Javanese
merchant and manager of a trading company in the process of liquidation. A former civil servant turned journalist, he
was Pramoedya’s model for Minke. Originally it was a Muslim commercial union,
designed to combat Chinese involvement in the batik trade; it later came under
the influence of the charismatic H.O.S. Tjokroaminoto (1882-1934). Its base was
Java but it spread to the outer islands. Proclaiming loyalty to the Dutch, Sarekat Islam generated hostility
towards them, the priyayi, and the
Chinese, resulting in several riots in 1913-14.
It was nonetheless recognized as a legal organization by
Governor-General Idenburg (M.C. Ricklefs, A
History of Modern Indonesia, 158-9; George M. Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, 67)
[42][42] Alexander W.F. Idenburg: Minister of the colonies from 1902-5; 1908-9; 1918-19 and Governor General form 1909-16. He is most noted for three “principles” of a new policy towards the Dutch East Indies: education, irrigation, and emigration . (M.C. Ricklefs, History of Modern Indonesia, 143-5.)
[43][43] Dr. Raden Sutomo (1888-1938) was a prominent leader of Indonesian nationalism and key founder of the Boedi Oetomo. He espoused the radical idea that Islam detracted from nationalism. He became leader of the nationalists when Sukarno’s radical rhetoric led to his internment. Sutomo advocated a dual program of social welfare and political progress. Under his auspices, and despite police surveillance, his study clubs worked to increase literacy, and establish schools and cooperatives. In 1931, he established the Indonesian People’s Party (P.B.I.) a group looked upon with suspicion by the Dutch government. Four years later, the BO and the PBI merged to form Parindra with Sutomo as chairman. (in Bernard Vlekke, The Story of the Dutch East Indies, (Cambridge: Harvard U.P., 1945), 182-3; Bernard Vlekke, Nusantara: A History of Indonesia ( Chicago: Quadrangle, 1960), 348, 373, 382-3; M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, 174-177)
[44][44] Pramoedya Toer, House of Glass, 260-261.
[45][45] Pramoedya Toer, Child of All Nations, 15.
[46][46] Pramoedya Toer, Child of All Nations, 15.
[47][47] Indonesian Chinese established their own schools after 1900. Although the Imperial Chinese government sought to control them, the majority of their teachers had studied in Japan or the United States and brought with them ideas of reform and revolution that slowly spread among the Indonesian Chinese. The Young China Movement in Indonesia took the lead in organizing support for the revolutionaries in China who overthrew the imperial government in 1911. The Chinese movement was an early expression of nationalist discontent in Indonesia. Bernard Vlekke, The Story of the Dutch East Indies, 182; Bernard Vlekke, Nusantara, 343-4.
[48][48] Pramoedya Toer, Child of All Nations, 169.
[49][49] After its modernization in the last half of the 19th century, equality of status with the Europeans was granted to Japanese citizens living in the Indies in 1899. Both Indonesians and resident Chinese resented this discrimination. These sentiments encouraged the growth of a national consciousness. Bernard Vlekke, The Story of the Dutch East Indies, 180; Bernard Vlekke, Nusantara, 346.
[50][50] Pramoedya Toer, Child of All Nations, 48.
[51][51] Sir John Hawkins, son of a prominent Plymouth merchant, conceived of the idea of selling African slaves to Spanish colonists, despite the fact the colonists were forbidden to trade with foreigners. His slave trading ventures between 1562-68 were extremely profitable. Walter Hall, Robert Albion, and Jennie Pope. A History of England and the Empire Commonwealth 4th edn. (New York: Blaisdell, 1965), 202.
[52][52] Pramoedya Toer, Footsteps, 110.
[53][53] Pramoedya Toer, Footsteps, 179. The idea of self-determination was echoed by Sukarno (1901-70), founder of the Indonesian Nationalist Party: unity, self-reliance, and secularism (a non-Muslim basis) as the basis of independence for all Indonesians. It was useless to wait for help from “an airplane from Moscow or a Caliph from Istanbul” (George Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, 91).
[54][54] In 1900, there were 280,000 Chinese in Java; in Sumatra there were 260,000. With the growth of plantations and mining, there were 1,250,000 by 1930. Bernard Vlekke, Nusantara, 342.
[55][55] Pramoedya Toer, House of Glass, 3.
[56][56] The early Chinese immigrants belonged to the merchant class and came form Fukien. The 20th century immigrants came from Canton and belonged to the coolie class of contract laborers. The latter had a reputation for quarrelling, secret societies (Tongs), and notorious behavior. Bernard Vlekke, The Story of the Dutch East Indies, 181.
[57][57] Pramoedya Toer, House of Glass, 3-5. Previously the Dutch had restrictions on admission of Chinese to Dutch or Indonesian schools. This was resented by the Chinese who felt their privileged position viz a viz the Dutch colonialists had been undermined. They established their own school system; the Dutch response after 1911 was the HCS. The elite position of the Chinese had ended; forces of Indonesian nationalism were now often focused against them. Bernard Vlekke, Nusantara, 342-7.
[58][58] Pramoedya Toer, Footsteps, 253. The army was officered by Dutch and Eurasians. Many recruits were drawn from Christian Indonesians from Menado, Ambon, Timor. Some Nationalists claim it was a deliberate policy of the Dutch to detach Christian Indonesians from the Nationalist movement, stating a Muslim victory would be harmful tot heir interests. These soldiers received higher pay relative to other groups and hence strongly identified with Dutch policies. (George Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, 60, 61).
[59][59] Wars lost by China included the Opium War (1839-42) which added territory and trade concessions to Great Britain, and the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) which meant even further losses of land and humiliating concessions. The Taiping (1850-64), the Nien Fei (1853-68), Muslim (1855-73) and Meo (1855-81) Rebellions left a legacy of death, destruction,, decentralization. Provincial governments were given taxing powers to raise armies to fight the rebels which led to the problem of war-lordism in the 20th century. With its weaknesses exposed, Europeans demanded even more concessions. A last gasp to expel the foreigners was the Boxer Rebellion (1900-03), which saw China occupied even more forcefully by European powers. Attempts at reform were begun, but it was a case of too little too late. Anti-Manchu forces under Sun Yat Sen staged a successful revolution in 1911.
[60][60] Pramoedya Toer, Child of All Nations, 68.
[61][61] Pramoedya Toer, Footsteps, 391.
[62][62] Moro was the term was first used by Spanish invaders of the 16th century who associated Filipino Muslims on the southern islands of Mindinao and Sulu with Moors, Islamicized North Africans who ruled Iberia from the 8th to the 15th centuries. Numbering about half a million, the Moros at the time were considered the “bravest of tribes.” And like the Achenese, it was not until late in its occupation it was brought under European control. During the Philippine insurrection (1899-1902) the capture of its leader Emilio Aguinaldo by strategem in 1901 essentially quelled the rebellion but guerilla warfare persisted and the geographic center of resistance shifted to the Moro lands. “When the Mohammedans found their provinces suddenly teeming with white Christians, they took to the warpath in earnest.” The war was officially over in 1902, but the “wretched conduct” of the Mohammedans continued to 1916 (Leon Woolff, Little Brown Brother (NY: Longman’s, 1970), 347).
[63][63] Pramoedya Toer, Child of All Nations, 89.
[64][64] Nicholas Roosevelt, The Philippines (NY: AMS Press, 1926), 83, 85. They have a long history of resistance to Spain and later to Christianized Filipinos, preferring after conquest, to have American administrators instead of Filipinos. Roosevelt gloats over the real and potential wealth of the Philippines--sugar, tobacco, rice, copper, coconut oil, hemp, corn, rubber, quinine, camphor, coffee, cattle—and spoke of how the Dutch had systematically encouraged such development in the Indies: “The entire system is designed to make the islands as productive as possible” (Nicholas Roosevelt, The Philippines, 126).
[65][65] Nicholas Roosevelt, The Philippines, 7-8.
[66][66]Nicholas Roosevelt, The Philippines, 136. An overstatement perhaps. While reluctant to endorse general repression, Andreas de Graeff, Governor-General (1926-31), exiled numerous political leaders in the wake of the PKI rebellion. (M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, 176.) Yet Kahin believes him to be the governor-general most tolerant of the Indonesian Nationalist movement. (George Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, 91).
[67][67] Pramoedya Toer, House of Glass, 48.
[68][68] Padri reformers opposed cock-fighting, matriarchy, opium, alcohol, betel nut. They overthrew the ruling family of Minangkabau in 1815 and encouraged Islamicization among the people. The Dutch return after the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars led to a long war (1821-38) between the two until defeated by Holland. See M.C.Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, 133-4.
[69][69] Louis Fischer, The Story of Indonesia, 52.
[70][70] A significant force for unification was the use of Malay as a national language. It was later adopted as the national language, Bahasa Indonesia, in 1926 at a conference of the Young Indonesia Youth organization. A national anthem called Indonesia Raja in Malay was composed in 1929 by W. R. Soepratman for a youth congress in 1929 and was later adopted by Sukarno and the PNI. This coincided with the widespread use of the language in literature and journalism Because it had been used for centuries as a lingua franca, it was culturally neutral (George Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, 39; 97 fn 101; 132; M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, 176). Minke becomes aware throughout the novels of the importance of writing in Malay as a way of reaching this audience—the Natives who could not read Dutch. Minke must have his work translated from Dutch into Malay at the end of This Earth of Mankind so that he can plead his case about his marriage to Annelies and reveal Dutch injustice and repudiation of Islamic law.
[71][71]Mirceau Eliade, Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 7:412; M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, 162-3.
[72][72] Louis Fischer, The Story of Indonesia, 55; M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, 158-9.
[73][73] Louis Fischer, The Story of Indonesia, 55.
[74][74] Hendrik J.F.M. Sneevliet (1883-19420), a Dutch social revolutionary, established the Indies Social Democratic Association in 1914. European –based, it sought to broaden its support among Indonesians, absorbing many Indo radicals of the Indies Party of Eduard Douwes Dekker, after which it began to infiltrate the ranks of Sarekat Islam. Sneevliet was later an agent for the Comintern in China under t he pseudonym G. Maring. (M. C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, 163; Louis Fischer , The Story of Indonesia, 55).
[75][75] Louis Fischer, The Story of Indonesia, 62; M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, 172-4.
[76][76] Louis Fischer, The Story of Indonesia, 53.
[77][77] Pramoedya Toer , Child of All Nations, 187.
[78][78] Pramoedya Toer, House of Glass, 46-7. George Kahin says basically the same thing. “Even the student who limited his reading to the curriculum could not help noting the dominant strain in the Dutch nationalist ideology was independence from outside control and found it hard not to see a parallel between an upholder of Dutch power in the Indies, such as van Heutsz, and the Duke of Alba. Likewise he found it difficult, in view of Dutch national history, to understand why the history book s on Indonesia painted . . . leaders of resistance to the Dutch as worthless traitors and selfish opportunists. A large number utilized their command of the Dutch language to explore extra-curricular subjects, especially of a political nature [nationalists, socialists, revolutionaries]….” (George Kahin,Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, 49.)
[79][79] Pramoedya Toer, House of Glass, 1. Colijn saw the quick growth of European education, especially secondary education, as a “danger to the peaceful development of affairs in Indonesia” (qtd. in George Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, 55)
[80][80] Mirceau Eliade, Encyclopedia of Religion, 7:411-12. Islamic modernism in Indonesia after 1925 is the history of the Mohammadiyah (M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, 163)
[81][81] Pramoedya Toer, The Mute’s Soliloquy, 109.
[82][82]Pramoedya Toer, Child of All Nations, 46-8.
[83][83]Pramoedya Toer, This Earth of Mankind, 112.
[84][84] Japan had moved from a feudal, agrarian, isolated society to become a modern, military, industrialized, parliamentary state in a quarter of a century. Public support endorsed expansionist, nationalist policies. The Russo-Japanese War (1904-5) was the first time an Asian colonial power had defeated a European one. Its impact on Asia was significant. It spelled the end of white supremacy and an end to Asian inferiority. With each retreat and defeat, the West gave Asians an increased confidence and nourished a sense of nascent nationalism.
[85][85] Pramoedya Toer, Footsteps, 77.
[86][86] Pramoedya Toer, House of Glass, 286.
[87][87] Raden Adjeng Kartini (1879-1904), the educated daughter of a Javanese bupati, was the leader of the Indonesian women’s movement. She rejected the Islamic concept of purdah, the limited educational opportunities for women, and arranged marriages. Her letters of despair were written to Dutch friends and resulted in the founding of girls schools throughout Java, beginning in 1902 (see Bernard Vlekke, The Story of the Dutch East Indies (Cambridge: Harvard U.P., 1945), 184-5). Kahin credits her with stimulating the cultural-nationalist movement in Indonesia and the important role women came to play in it. ).
[88][88] M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, 155.
[89][89] M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, 176. See footnote 66.
[90][90] Eduard J.M. Schmutzer. Dutch Colonial Policy and the Search for Identity in the Netherlands 1920-31 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1977), 118;119;126-8; 137