S
ELAMAT JALAN,
SAMPAI JUMPA LAGI (FAREWELL, UNT I L WE MEET AGAI N)TRANSCULTURAL FAMILY STORIES FROM COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL
I
NDONESIABy
K
ATHRYNP
ENTECOST BA HONS (UNISA),GRAD DIP ED (CSU,NSW),BA(CSU,NSW)
A thesis submitted for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATIONS, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES AND LANGUAGES DIVISION OF EDUCATION,ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA
2013
Principal Supervisor: Paul Skrebels
iv
7.
CONCLUSION
342
The journey never ends 343
On family stories, migration and the Indo diaspora 348
Postscript: Discovering the undiscoverable 358
REFERENCES 363
BI BLI OGRAPHY 380
APPENDI CES
Appendix 1 - Chronology of events a Appendix 2 - Old Cape Families: Ancestors of Marthinus Hendricus van der Poel j Appendix 3 - Family mobility: From Marthinus to me k Appendix 4 - Family connection: van der Poels and Snouck Hurgronjes l
v
LIST
OF
FIGURES
Figure 1: The Author 30
Figure 2: School students at Borobudur 76
Figure 3: Peter van der Poel with the author and her daughter 1994, NSW 85
Figure 4: Family document mentioning Albertus Petrus Gerardus and siblings 146
Figure 5: My great-grandparents Sitie and Hein 199
Figure 6: Riki and her girls 1939 215
Figure 7: Bruno Berler in Java 1933 244
Figure 8: The Berlers (and a neighbour) in Bandung 1939 252
Figure 9: Riki and her daughters, c. 1948 261
Figure 10: The author and tour guide in the kampung near the Kraton 285
Figure 11: Garut 289
Figure 12: Indonesian flag over Hotel Majapahit, Surabaya 296
Figure 13: Flying into Yogyakarta 297
Figure 14: Hotel sign at Jalan Jendral Sudirman 9, Yogyakarta 302
Figure 15: High tea at the Phoenix Hotel 304
Figure 16: Prambanan 310
Figure 17: Gateway, Borobudur 311
Figure 18: Borobudur 312
Figure 19: The garden at the Hotel Majapahit, Surabaya 314
Figure 20: The Flag Incident by Wi Long in Hotel Majapahit foyer 317
Figure 21: Gunung Bromo from the lookout 322
Figures 22 & 23: Hotel Tugu, Malang 328
Figures 24 -28: Malang architecture 331
Figures 29: Tempo Doeloe Festival Poster 332
Figure 30: Javanese dancers in Surabaya 335
Figure 31: Toko Oen, Malang 2011 342
vi
GLOSSARY
abangan (from Javanese adopted by Clifford Geertz) rural dwellers who practice a Hindu and animist-influenced (that is, syncretic) Islamic religious practice; the ‘red ones’. Meaning has changed over time- refers to those who practice traditional adat in preference to Sharia.
adat (Indonesian) behavioural patterns, rules and customs left by ancestors adsistent resident (Dutch) assistant Resident
ambtenaar (Dutch) civil servant afdeeling (Dutch) division, area
Afrikaaners (Afrikaans) settlers born in The Cape Colony/South Africa Angst (German) anxiety, worry
Arbeit Macht Frei (Nazi sign over Dachau & other camps) Work Makes Freedom babu (Indonesian) may refer to nursemaid
Batavia (Dutch) Jakarta
baatje (Indisch Dutch) cotton jacket closely tied at the neck (worn by men) Becak (Indonesian) bicycle-driven mode of transport for tourists
Belanda (Indonesian) Dutch, European
Berapa harganya? (Indonesian) How much (does it cost)?
Bersiap (Indonesian) Lit. purge or rise up; violent struggle in last three months of 1945 during which camp internees were killed by pemuda - young male revolutionaries Biasa (Indonesian) the usual thing
Binnenlands Bestuur (Dutch) Regional Government Service, consisting of a European and an Indigenous branch
blijver stayer/settler (may refer to those families who came earlier in the colonial period)
bubur ayam (Indonesian) chicken soup (also eaten for breakfast) budha (Indonesian) religious tradition of the Tenggerese of East Java bulé (Indonesian, may be derogatory) tourist/white person
vii
bupati (bupatih) (Indonesian) Regent; originally viceroys of the Javanese Court, later highest in the ranks of the Native branch of Binnenlands Bestuur
burgherrecht (Dutch) middle class values
burgerlijke stand (Dutch) Registrar Generals’ office campuran (Indonesia)’mixed-blood’ person
candi (Indonesian) temple
Civiel Departement Benoeming en Bevorderingen (Dutch) Civil Service Appointments and Promotions
dadar gulung (Indonesian) green coconut pancakes with palm sugar inside Der Anscluss (German) annexation of Austria by the Germans before WWII Dewa (Indonesian from Hindu culture) deity
dienaren (Dutch) employees (used to describe those working for VOC ) duā (Arabic) poem/prayer
duapuluh tujuh ratus rupiah (Indonesian) two hundred thousand rupiah (about $AUS20) echte Hollanders (Dutch)’real’ (white) Dutch; born in the Netherlands not in the colonies eigenaar onderneming (Dutch) owner of a company/ company owner
eigenaar houthandel en houtcontractant (Dutch) timber company owner and merchant eneden oetjie (or oetjie harpenden) (Indische) nickname – stop nagging
fatwa (Arabic) Islamic legal pronouncement on a specific issue gamelan (Indonesian) traditional Indonesian percussion orchestra gula (Indonesian) sugar
Hadjie (Haji) a person who has completed the pilgrimage to Mecca half-bloed (Dutch; derogatory) half-blood/half-breed
huisvrouwen (Dutch) housewives
huishoudster (Literally) housekeeper; (metaphorically) mistress/concubine
Ibu saya lahir dan tinggal di Jember (Indonesian) My mother was born and lived in Jember
Indier person living in the Dutch East Indies/Netherlands Indies
Indisch/Indische mensen (Dutch) Indies people/ people born in the Indies
viii
Indo people born in the Indies – the term is used with positive connotation to denote members of the diaspora in contemporary discourse but was used pejoratively in colonial times to denote people of mixed Dutch and Indonesian ethnicity and culture Inlanders (Dutch) Natives
Jawa Barat (Indonesian) West Java Jawa Tenggah (Indonesian) Central Java Jawa Timur (Indonesian) East Java jinta (Indonesian) lover
kampung (kampong) (Indonesian) village (which can be an urban one)
Kasodo Ceremony annual ceremony held near Gunung (Mount) Bromo by Tenggerese kayu manis (Indonesian) cinnamon
ketemuan (Indonesian) meeting of bride and groom in a traditional Javanese marriage ceremony
kina (Indonesian) cinchona
KNIL (Dutch) Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger (Royal Netherlands Indies Army) kloncing (Indonesian) performance area/stage; for example, Pura Kloncing in Ubud, Bali is a performance space for dance and gamelan performance
koi (Chinese) carp kopi (Indonesian) coffee
kraton (Indonesian) sultan’s palace krupuk (Indonesian) prawn crackers
kyai (or kiyai or kiai) (Indonesian) male religious teachers (Islamic) Lakendrapier (Dutch) draper
Landhuis (Dutch) country house/townhouse Landraad (Dutch) Land Council
Machtergreifung (German) seizure of power
Mardijker (Dutch) former slaves; descendants of freed slaves; with Portuguese or Indian origin; mostly Christians
ix
Mischling (German Nazi categorization term) person with part-Jewish heritage; usually one or two grandparents are Jewish
mufti (Arabic) professional jurist who interprets Islamic law nasi goreng (Indonesian) fried rice
Nationaal Socialistische Beweging National Socialist Organisation/Dutch Nazi Party Nederlandsche (Nederlandse) Handel Maatschappij Dutch Trading Company notaris (Dutch) notary; someone authorised to witness document signing nyai word used differently depending on context.(Dutch) concubine-cum-servant (Indonesian) female religious teacher equivalent of a kyai (male religious teacher) Koninklijke Nederlandsche Stoomboot Maatschappij Royal Dutch Steamship Company oma (Dutch) grandmother
opa(Dutch) grandfather
orang Belanda (Indonesian) Dutch person overheid (Dutch) bureaucracy
pasa-en wijkenstelsel (Dutch) (Lit. pass and housing area regulation) designated neighbourhood
pasar (Indonesian) market
pendopo (Indonesian) open-air building
petjoe (used by Dutch) Literally means cormorant; derogatory term for mixed-blood person
pinisi (Indonesian) wooden schooners with long bows
PKI (Partai Kommunis Indonesia) (Indonesian) Indonesian Communist Party Prancis (Indonesian -pronounced Prancees) The French
priyayi (Indonesian) class of aristocratic government administrators; also used for Javanese upper-class
Raden (Indonesian) designation for Javanese royalty
Raad van Nederlands/Nederlandsche Indië 1(Dutch) Council of the Dutch East Indies; supreme executive and legislative body headed by the governor-general
1
The source of this information is LM Penders (1977) Glossary from Indonesia: Selected
Documents on Colonialism and Nationalism, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, QLD,
x
Regerings Almanak (van) Nederlandsche Indië (Dutch) Government Almanac of the Dutch East Indies/Netherlands Indies
Resident (Dutch) highest rank in the European branch of the regional Government Service
santri (probably from Sanskrit; adopted by Clifford Geertz) generally urban living Muslims who practice a more orthodox stream of Islam in Indonesia; the ‘white ones’- putihan
Selamat jalan, sampai jumpa lagi (Indonesian) Farewell (to those who are leaving) until we meet again (has an implicit reference to signs that one sees in Java when leaving a place which say virtually this)
Selamat pagi (Indonesian) Good morning shahadah (Arabic) religious conversion
sinjo (Portuguese origin) term for Indo-European person used in various ways, (sometimes in a derogatory manner)
slaapbroek (Indisch Dutch) wide batik trousers (Lit. weak/thin pants) Smid (Dutch) smith – blacksmith or silversmith
Stichting Het Gebaar (Dutch) Goodwill Foundation Stolenmaker (Dutch) cakemaker
stupa (Sanskrit) (Lit.) heap; decorative bell-like structures atop Borobudur Buddhist monument
suksumar (Balinese) thank you surah (Arabic) chapters in the Koran
Tanah Merah (Indonesian) (Lit. red earth) also called Dutch Siberia, a camp for political exiles in Dutch West New Guinea
tempo doeloe (tempo dulu) (Indonesian) literally ‘time past’; metaphorically ‘the good old days’
terima kasih banyak (Indonesian) thank you very much toko (Indonesian) shop
totok/totoker (Indonesian) newcomer (Dutch who came to the East Indies in the late colonial period)
Trekboers (Afrikaans) wandering farmers
trekker sojourner (or contract worker/entrepreneur who is not intending to settle) ulama /Ulema (Arabic) Muslim scholar or scribe; Muslim legal scholars
xi
uitwerker (Dutch) Lit. outworker; contract worker; someone on migratory employment vendumeester (Dutch) auctioneer
Veranderingen voorgevallen onder het afdrukken tot en met… (Dutch) Unforseen changes to printing (Lit. since and with) until and on…
Verzetsmuseum (Dutch) Resistance Museum
VOC (Dutch) (Abbreviation) Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie: Dutch East India Company
vol-bloed (Dutch) full-blood
Vrijburgers (Afrikaans) free settlers
Vrouwen Lief en Leed Onder de Tropen (Dutch) (Women Weal and Woe in the Tropics) waarnemend president (Dutch) acting president
warung (warong) (Indonesian) food stall or small shop on the street wayang Javanese shadow puppetry
wong cilik (Indonesian) commoners
zaman Belanda (Indonesian) Dutch time (meaning the colonial period)
zaman normal (Indonesian) normal time (meaning the colonial period and before Japanese occupation)
Zeilwerker (Dutch) sailmaker
xii
ABSTRACT
‘The story circulates like a gift; an empty gift which anybody can
lay claim to but never really possess. A gift built on multiplicity. ‘
(Minh-ha T. T. 1989: 56 cited in Bahari, 2007: 42)
According to Razif Bahari, metanarratives no longer provide any ‘comfort and stability’; especially since national boundaries are ‘increasingly becoming porous’ (2007: 42-43). He also makes the point that neither
individuals nor nations are subject to a ‘singular, unitary “experience of colonialism and imperialism”’ (Bahari, 2007: 43). In the case of the Dutch
East Indies, the majority of those who were classified as ‘European’ in a
legal sense were ethnically Indo-European; and by the late colonial period
had developed their own traditional values and sense of cultural identity
as Indisch or Indische mensen2 - markedly distinct from the Dutch in the
Netherlands, the Javanese, Sundanese and others in colonial Indonesia,
and from the more recently arrived totoks3 who were Dutch civil servants
and entrepreneurs.
Bearing in mind Minh-ha’s quote, there is no singular, closed story that
can be told which can account for all the myriad experiences of the former
inhabitants of the Dutch East Indies. The internet has changed the
communications environment in the twenty-first century, giving the
diaspora community (and their descendants) an awareness of (and access
to) new (or previously inaccessible) information, including texts now
translated into English from Dutch. With the assistance of the internet and
a trip to Indonesia, I explore my own family stories from colonial
Indonesia. In addition, I add my postcolonial perspective through stories
2
Indisch/Indische mensen – Dutch language term for Indies people/ people born in the Indies.
See a further discussion in Chapter Two.
xiii
written about my trip to Indonesia and about the
mother-daughter/daughter-mother relationship which is at the heart of my
discovery process.
Grounded in the scholarly (and sometimes contested) perspectives of
Bosma and Raben, Coté and Westerbeek, Gouda, Hellwig, Metta, Stoler,
Taylor, Pattynama, Protschky, and others, I aim to contextualise my
ancestral stories within the socio-historical situation of colonial Indonesia.
In particular, I attempt to fill in some of the gaps and silences about the
female members of our clan, turning to scholarly texts about colonial
novels with the aim of exploring attitudes to women: Asian, Eurasian and
white.
The rhetorical deployment of images of women as mothers or whores has
been used in colonial, wartime and postcolonial contexts in the Dutch East
Indies/Indonesia. These tropes were part of a broader rhetorical use of
‘the family’ as a metaphor for ‘the nation’, where women were
domesticated and subservient to men and where the voices of actual
women were conspicuously absent or silent (Gouda, 1998: 236 - 254).
My stories will be different from other stories told by Indische mensen;
different from stories told by Dutch, Australian and American scholars;
different from stories told by Indonesians themselves; but they will also
share something of the intertwined history of Indonesia, the Netherlands,
Australia (and elsewhere). Certainly, they aim to reveal something more
about the situation of women4 and families within the complex and
changing social structure of the Dutch East Indies, in particular in Java
c.1807 – c. 19575
4
It must be mentioned here that the thesis in no way claims to exclusively focus on this.
5
xiv DECLARATION
I declare that:
this thesis presents work carried out by myself and does not incorporate
without acknowledgement any material previously submitted for a degree
or diploma in any university; to the best of my knowledge it does not
contain any materials previously published or written by another person
except where due reference is made in the text; and all substantive
contribution by others to the work presented, including jointly authored
publications, is clearly acknowledged.
Kathryn Pentecost...
xv AUTHOR’S NOTE
I have used the Harvard-style in-text referencing system in both the exegetical and creative components of the thesis (adapted to UniSA standards). The reference system and bibliography are compiled with reference to the UniSA referencing style, though I have adapted it in the manner of other conventions, for instance, deliberately using brackets on the year of publication date for ease of reading.
The default language used in the thesis is Australian English, exemplified,
for instance, in using ‘s’ instead of ‘z’ in words such as categorise, contextualise, recognise and civilise. Other spelling conventions (notably in American English), are used when they appear within quotations by other authors.
All non-English words are italicised in the thesis (except in some quotes by other authors and official titles in the family narratives), and all non-English words and phrases are explained in the glossary. For clarity, the
van der Poel family name is italicised in the thesis. Javanese place names in
the colonial spelling are included in brackets after the postcolonial spelling (at least in the first instance), because the place names are written in the former manner in the family documents, for example Garut (Garoet). In addition, it is acknowledged that both Indisch and Indische are used by different scholars and commentators in the context of describing Indo-Europeans. The expression tempo doeloe is deliberately written in the old spelling of Bahasa Indonesia in this thesis because this seems to be the most common form still in use today, both inside and outside Indonesia, although I acknowledge that the newer form tempo dulu is also occasionally used. Dutch words have also changed in spelling over time; for example, what we call the Dutch East Indies in Australia was written
as Nederlandsche Indië and is now written as Nederlands Indie.
The work of all translators is acknowledged in the text. In the case of
Szilvia Cseh’s work, mostly her translation of Hungarian language
xvi
ON PUBLISHED THESIS MATERIAL
Parts of the thesis have been previously published/presented in the
following manner:
Peer-reviewed journals (hardcopy & online versions)
Pentecost K (2011) ‘Imagined Communities in Cyberspace’ in R Glibert
and B Stevens Social Alternatives: Shifting Cultures, Vol. 30: 2: 2011, University of the Sunshine Coast and University of Queensland, Australia (http://www.socialalternatives.com/)
University Conferences
Pentecost K (6 - 7 August 2010) ‘Constructions of race – an enduring legacy in the twenty-first century?’ in EAS (Education, Arts, Social Sciences)
Higher Degrees by Research Forum, University of South Australia, Magill
campus
Pentecost K (22 - 24 November 2011) ‘Re-orienting oneself to Indonesia: a
transcultural perspective on attitudes, identity and travel’ in CSAA Annual
Conference: Cultural Reorientations and Comparative Colonialities, University
of South Australia City West campus International Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding, Adelaide, Australia (NB: Abstract in proceedings booklet, 59).
Pentecost K (19 October 2012) ‘Personal Reflections on Relating the
Exegesis and Creative Components of a Research Thesis’ in CIL (Communications, International Studies and Languages) School Series Seminar,
University of South Australia, Magill campus
Online publications as an invited author
Pentecost K (4 August 2010) ‘Selamat Jalan: A Family Story 1933 - 1949’ in
The Indo Project,http://www.theindoproject.org/
xvii
Pentecost K (2 May 2011) ‘Rising from the Ashes’ in Indo Discovery Travel, http://www.indodiscovery.com/rising-from-the-ashes/
Pentecost K (6 May 2011) ‘Emotional Catharsis: My Visit to Kembang Kuning’ in Indo Discovery Travel, https://www.facebook.com /indodiscovery/posts/159422250788294
Pentecost K (6 July 2011) ‘Remittance man and resistance fighter’ in Inside
Indonesia, http://www.insideindonesia.org
/weekly-articles-104-apr-june-2011/remittance-man-a...
xviii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would firstly like to thank my husband, the sculptor Geoff Bromilow, who listened while I read all the various versions of the dissertation to him aloud and who accompanied me on the trip to Indonesia. I am
indebted to Tim O’Callaghan from Indo Discovery Travel for guiding us through Indonesia and taking us to places of special significance; in particular Kembang Kuning cemetery outside Surabaya. I wish to thank
our guides, Joe and Anna in Java; Mādé and Gusti in Bali, for sharing their
local knowledge with us.
I must thank all the van der Poel relatives (and friends) who contacted me via Facebook discussions sites and provided me with invaluable family documents and information; in particular, Arelene and Owen Langsmith (USA), Jeremy Smith (Australia), Johan van der Poel (South Africa), Eddy Fredericks (The Netherlands), Peter van der Poel (The Netherlands) and Annisa Anandatia (Indonesia). I also want to acknowledge the editor and compiler of The Defining Years of the Dutch East Indies, 1942-1949: Survivor’s
Accounts of Japanese Invasion and Enslavement of Europeansand the Revolution
That Created Free Indonesia, Jan Krancher (1996), for having the foresight to
collect family documents and to collate stories from survivors of the Japanese occupation.
I am indebted to Jess Pacella, Jody George and Rosie Roberts – the editors
of ‘Shifting Cultures’, Social Alternatives, (Vol 2, No 30, 2011) – for
including ‘Imagined Communities in Cyberspace’ in this well-known peer-reviewed magazine. This essay was a springboard for my work in Chapter 5: Issues of Identity and Diaspora and I was surprised to discover later that the article had been included on an Indonesian blog site Sejarah
Indonesia: History of the East Indies with both the original title and the
Indonesian translation ‘Kisah orang2 Indo-ambon dulu dan sekarang’ (cpatriaw, 2013: 26/456)6.
I would especially like to thank Bianca Dias-Halpert from The Indo Project,
for giving me the opportunity to publish one of my first stories about
6
xix
Bruno Berler, my grandfather and for her knowledgeable feedback on my writing. I would also like to thank Priscilla Kluge McMullen the subsequent Chairwoman of The Indo Project, for inviting me to be a
regular contributor starting with a revised version of ‘Imagined
Communities in Cyberspace’. In addition, I want to thank the editors of
Inside Indonesia for the series ‘Jews in Indonesia’ and my opportunity to
publish an article in that series. I would also like to acknowledge Eline
Jongsma and Kel O’Neill, whose work The Empire Project: The Unintended
Consequences of Dutch Colonialism, I discovered towards the end of my
research and which confirmed the wider interest in the topic which I believe has been facilitated by the internet.
I am most thankful to Albert Gillissen who drew a conceptual diagram for
me of the research process, which helped me to put my ‘journey’ into
perspective. His personal memoir of his time in Indonesia was pleasurably useful to read. In addition, he gave me his time and friendship willingly and lovingly; I felt connected to the culture, events and places of my ancestors through our many informal conversations. I would like to thank Chris Raff for introducing me to Albert.
I am deeply indebted to my friend, the author Lolo Houbein, for many interesting conversations about the Dutch East Indies; also for her time spent translating the video clip of Bep Stenger from the Verzetsmuseum
(Resistance Museum) website. Lolo’s critique and feedback on some of the
minutiae of the thesis was also invaluable.
I would like to thank my translators: Albert Gillissen, Lolo Houbein and Szilvia Cseh for their knowledge and assistance. I want to thank the photographic restorers, Tamas Csizmadia and Bill Stevens for their attention to detail in bringing out the best from damaged documents and photographs.
xx
I wish to thank Professor Claire Woods for her ‘groundwork’ as one of my
teachers during my BA Honours course. Her Textual Cultures course was significant in terms of developing both my thinking and my writing style. Finally, I wish to thank my supervisors, Dr Paul Skrebels and Associate Professor Peter Bishop for their encouragement and critiques over the three (plus) years of the dissertation, and Dr Adrian Guthrie (now retired) for his profuse enthusiasm for my project.
I wish to acknowledge the emotional and psychological support that I received from my counsellor, Christine Jamieson, in the early stages of the thesis. Her professional insights helped me through my thesis journey – a journey that was all the more tricky for encompassing the personal realm of family stories.
I make my belated apologies to family members and friends for the lack of attention I sometimes paid them by necessitity of the workload over the past few years. I thank my adult children for their listening skills, support and intellectual engagement and hope that the information contained herein will give them a deeper understanding of their ancestors.
I wish to acknowledge the friendship of other PhD candidates who enriched my experiences at the university. I am especially thankful to Arianna Dagnino who read various drafts of the thesis and was generous with her time and intellectual energy. It was reassuring to know that others were experiencing similar highs and lows on the seemingly endless, often lonely journey which was the process of the PhD.
I thank Allan - my printer from Aspera Images in Aldgate - who gave me excellent and necessary layout advice along the way and during the final stages of print preparation, and the bookbinder Jim Harley of William Harley & Son of Thebarton, Adelaide. Both these men treat their
customers with ‘old-fashioned’ quality personal service.
- 1 -
INTRODUCTION
We live our lives in the shadow of other people... Conversely, other people are shaped by our presence in their lives... Others become the metric by which we are measured... whether we embrace or reject what others would have us be, we cannot escape the formative influence they have upon us. (Small, 2009: 10)
Growing up in Australia (1950s – 1970s), I knew very little of the land of
my maternal ancestors, previously called the Dutch East Indies or
Netherlands Indies, now Indonesia. Nor did I know anything except what
my mother had told us about a community of people whom scholars call
Indisch or Indische mensen7 and who inside the diaspora may now refer to
themselves as Indo.
Throughout childhood, our mother had told us many stories about the
country of her birth but I had little historical knowledge with which to
contextualise the people she referred to as Indische (never Indisch or Indo).
What led me to begin seriously researching my maternal family history in
2009 was a serendipitous email from my youngest brother, who had
discovered a hitherto unrevealed piece of information about our opa
(grandfather) during World War II. This information came from the
website of the Verzetsmuseum (Resistance Museum) and contradicted, in
part, what our mother had told us about her father’s death. Challenged by
the new information, my brother and I decided to see what else we could
discover about our maternal family history, especially now that the
internet could facilitate that research.
7
- 2 -
Early on, we came in contact with another family historian living in the
USA; she had information to offer us about our ancestors who had come
from the Dutch-East Indies. The relatives in the USA are Mormons
(members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), with access
to a vast genealogical database that houses most of the remaining
personal records of families in the worldwide Indo diaspora. We began to
realise that the family from which we were descended comprised an
extensive network of Dutch, (some of whom could be traced back to a
common ancestor in the Netherlands around 1600 CE), South African,
Indos, (Dutch-Indonesians and/or people born in the Indies), Javanese
and other people.
In addition to this first contact person, I also met other relatives who
approached me once I had posted my ancestral name van der Poel (also
written as van de Poel), on a Facebook group discussion site for
Dutch-Indonesians8. This is a loose definition which includes mostly people of
mixed ethnicity but also those who could be referred to as echte Hollanders
(real Dutch) from blijver (settler) families in the Indies. In reality, each
family and the languages they spoke varied depending on the specific
ethno-cultural composition of the particular family; for instance, some
households spoke Malay at home, others Dutch as the first language. In
This site had a name change to Old Dutch-Indonesian community in c.2012.
9
Bruno, my opa (grandfather) spoke three dialects of Indonesian, Dutch, German, Hungarian and English.
10
Riki, my oma (grandmother) spoke Malay/Bahasa Indonesian, Javanese, Dutch and German, as far as I know.
11
- 3 -
dialects. What became apparent to me for the first time in my life, was
that our family was not some strange cultural anomaly but one of many
thousands of other families whose metis (ethnically and culturally mixed)
composition made them vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the changing
circumstances of late colonialism, World War II and the Indonesian
struggle for independence. In fact, these events, in a sense defined what is
now called the Indo diaspora.
I began to read widely and intensively, as well as reflect on my mother’s
oral stories (and other family material), in order to write a series of
narratives about my ancestors and immediate maternal family. Overall, I
aimed to contextualise my family stories within the broader sweep of
colonial history in the Indies, in order to better understand the complex
nature of Indies society. Other stories shed light on the postcolonial
relationship of relatives to their former home or my experience of visiting
Indonesia for the first time. In particular, scholars such as Ann Laura
Stoler, have enlightened me about the relationship of the colonial state to
the family, and alerted me to the internalisation of colonial racial ideology
taking place in the late colonial period (mid-1800s – 1942). During my
research process, I have started to understand the somewhat contested
nature of the postcolonial scholarship concerned with Dutch colonisation
of Java and other islands of the Indonesian archipelago.12
A little less than half way through the PhD timeframe, an opportunity
arose to travel to Indonesia as part of a small tour group13. This trip was a
turning point in my understanding of the country of my forebears;
though, of course, I must acknowledge here the very real limitations of
12
In fact, the boundaries of the subsequent Republic of Indonesia (1949 onwards) were only created by the Dutch around 1910 and existed unchanged until 1975 when Suharto’s forces invaded East Timor (Anderson, 1991: 120-1).
13
- 4 -
the relatively short amount of time that I could afford to spend in
Indonesia. I kept a travel journal in an attempt to record my impressions
about the land of my ancestors and my journey of discovery about the
family history. I hoped to create narratives which interwined the travel
tales with my process of uncovering more about the family history.
As the PhD process has unfolded, my focus has narrowed in on the role of
women in colonial Indonesia, particularly in Java: home of my ancestors
and immediate family members. My mother and other family members
had often spoken about their lives in colonial Indonesia: most especially
with regard to World War II, the Japanese occupation, the Bersiap (violent
early period of the Indonesian independence struggle) and Indonesian
independence struggle, and their repatriation to Australia and the
Netherlands. I acknowledge that the relationship with my mother is
integral to my journey of discovery and I draw on the work of scholars
such as Marilyn Metta and Stephanie Young to contextualise it in a
scholarly manner.
The gendered nature of colonialism, particularly in the late colonial
period (from the mid-nineteenth century onwards when Dutch
administrative power was being consolidated), is of particular interest.
Hence, I turn my attention to the work of female/feminist scholars who
seem at times, to be at odds with their male counterparts in the field. If it
is true that ‘history is written by the victors’, then the subordinate place of all women in colonial society means that the grand narratives have often
left them out entirely; colonial novels, however, are still a rich source of
revelation about attitudes to women within both the Asian colony and the
European metropole and they offer some insight into how women’s lives
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D
EVELOPMENT OF RE S EAR CH AIMS AND TH E MESIn developing a research methodology, I established several aims:
1. To record and contextualise my family stories within the historical and social events in colonial Indonesia (c. 1807- c.1957)14, including World War II.
2. To explore the nexus between personal, family and national identity within the context of Dutch colonialism, in particular in Java. To understand how the colonial state attempted to shape family life in Indo-European communities, especially for the
purpose of cultivating loyal ‘Dutch’ citizens in the late colonial
period.
3. To comment on/explore how memories are handed down from one generation to another, in this case within a mother-daughter/daughter-mother relationship.
4. To better understand the impact of Dutch colonialism on my family members and others in the diaspora; to consider how diasporic identities are being expressed in globalised times and
through ‘new’’ technologies, such as the internet.
In order to execute my first aim, I developed an historical timeline15 which
compared and contrasted family events with local, national and
international moments of significance (for instance, colonial governance
changes, World War II and so on), over the period that the family were in
the Dutch East Indies/Indonesia c. 1807 – c. 1957. I used this timeline to
develop a basic narrative structure and to establish the main themes of
each story. In particular, I aimed to examine domestic and family life,
most especially the role of women and I looked to scholarly research
14
These dates are based on what could be ascertained from official documentation and family stories, and relate to family members who were generally Indo-Europeans. The period
considered here does not include the length of time that Javanese relatives were in Java, which I cannot substantiate.
15
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about women, including portrayals of female characters in colonial
novels. Aware of the gaps and silences in my own family’s oral tales, I hoped to flesh out the lives of the female characters more fully. Several
distinct themes have emerged in the research process which I outline as
follows:
FA M I L Y H I S T O R Y R E S E A R C H
The mother-daughter relationship of the researcher is integral to the
research process, in particular to the transmission of memories from one
generation to another which Zerubavel labels as mnemonic transitivity
(2003: 6). The colonial state’s relationship to the domestic sphere and
family life was central to the shaping of personal, social and national
identity in colonial Indonesia and in the diaspora. I acknowledge that is
impossible to construct a wholistic/balanced picture of one’s ancestral
background (and relevant historical events), given the limitations of the
sources (in particular access to Javanese sources, either oral or written),
and the historical gaps and silences with regard to women’s voices in
colonial Indonesia.
CO L O N I A L I S M A N D T H E R O L E O F W O M E N
In the VOC/early modern period, the colonial administration encouraged
relationships between soldiers and local women to create blijvers (stayers)
in order that the Dutch colony could be developed for economic reasons.
While relationships between European men and Asian/Eurasian women
continued, nevertheless, attitudes changed in the late colonial period,
from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, when Europeans in
the metropole (and newcomers - totoks - arriving in the colony) were
influenced by eugenics and new notions of nationalism and nationhood.
In the late colonial novels like De Stille Kracht (The Hidden Force) - still
popular in the Netherlands today - reinforced gendered and racist
stereotypes of powerful white males at the mercy of Asian/Eurasian
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Dutch/European identity. The interventionist nature of the colonial state
helped to internalise racist ideology; the links between the Netherlands
and its colony in the East Indies also shaped personal and diasporic
identity in colonial and postcolonial times.
TR A N S C U L T U R A L I S M16 A N D I N T E R T W I N I N G H I S T O R I E S
In post-colonial and globalised contemporary times, some people
(including me) may choose to identify as ‘transcultural’ actors, rather than ‘mono’- or ‘multi’-cultural beings. Dagnino defines the ‘transcultural’ as:
the condition of people, practices and artefacts that transcend the borders of a single culture (and of traditional notions of nation), based on a non-essentialised, inclusive conceptualisation of cultures, where cultures are not seen as fixed, autonomous and insular entities but rather as confluential formations characterised by interconnectedness, permeation and ongoing transforming dialogues between/among them. (Dagnino, pers. comm. 2013)
Perhaps it is impossible to speak or write from some universal ‘post’
-colonial perspective. Nevertheless, the notion of examining historical
events within a more interconnected framework, i.e. between particular
nations, not just within individual nations - what Ien Ang refers to as
intertwining histories
-
may be valuable in any case.TH E IN T E R N E T’S R O L E I N F A C I L I T A T I N G C O M M U N I C A T I O N I N T H E IN D O D I A S P O R A (A N D I N IN D O N E S I A)
Social media via the internet, including The Indo Project site and
Facebook, is facilitating not only information sharing across the Indo
diaspora but also the identification of younger generations with their
16
For a further explanation, one can read Dagnino’s paper ‘Transculturalism and Transcultural Literature in the 21stCentury’ in S M Vladiv-Glover & A Padgett (2012) Transcultural Studies: A
- 8 -
ancestral history. In addition, young generations of Indonesians,
especially (but not exclusively) those with Dutch ancestors, are being
presented with opportunities to dialogue across difference as well as
read/hear/witness the telling of personal and family stories about life in
Indonesia under Dutch colonialism. For all of these people, many
unanswered questions remain about colonialism and its legacy.
ARTICUL ATING TH E R E SEARC H QUEST ION
The research question has evolved in four parts to articulate the
following:
1. What can personal stories reveal about the complexities of van der
Poel/Berler family life in colonial Indonesia, (formerly known in
Australia as the Dutch East Indies)? How did the lives of my ancestors and immediately family members evolve over the period c. 1816 – c. 1957 in response to changing social and political conditions?
2. How did colonial novels and housekeeping manuals shape attitudes to women in colonial Indonesia; were these attitudes part of the gendered racism of the late colonial society (mid-1800 to 1942)?
3. How might family stories contribute to a more nuanced understanding, (than perhaps previously imagined), of the late colonial period and of postcolonial Indonesia; in particular, of those who may now identify as Indo?
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O
N DEF ININGI
NDIS CH/I
NDISC HE MENSENDefining the term Indisch or Indische mensen17 is no easy task. The word
Indisch (or Indische) is used by scholars in different contexts with various
explanations. Actually, getting a concrete sense of who were Indische
mensen18 or the Indisch, seems fraught with complexity, and it is essential
to bear in mind that the fluidity which characterised Indies society over
the seventeenth to twentieth century makes it virtually impossible to
provide a definitive or closed definition. In addition, we must recognise
that an understanding of the terminology is also contingent on who is
speaking.
Scholar Ana Dragojlovic makes the point that:
Most studies of diaspora emphasise hybridity against essentialist and purist assumptions of identity (e.g. Clifford 1994; Brah 1996; Werbner and Modhood 1997). Individuals tracing genealogies, however, focus on the pursuit of knowledge about connections based on shared biological substance that involves understanding of family, race, genetics, gender, and nation that stands in controversial opposition to studies of mobile subjects that celebrate hybridity, fluidity and mobility. The genealogy tracing of the Indisch diaspora is particularly intriguing because of its generations-long histories of ‘mixed’ Dutch and Indonesian ancestry during colonial times in the Dutch East Indies. (2011: 320)
For me, Dragojlovic’s comment (2011: 320) resonates with an experience
earlier in my academic career when I was accused of being an apologist
for colonialism. The accusation serves to highlight the idea that the
history of Indische mensen has been largely considered equivalent or
coterminous with the history of Dutch colonialism in the East Indies (now
17
This literally translates into English as Indies people.
18I never saw it written down in my youth and my mother’s pr
onunciation always made it sound like Indees or Indeese. My colleague, author Lolo Houbein suggests that the Dutch language has
undergone many spelling revisions and that the ‘sch’ was pronounced as ‘s’; for example, the
- 10 -
Indonesia). Dragojlovic’s reference to the idea that ‘Individuals tracing genealogies’ are standing in controversial opposition to contemporary
studies of people celebrating ‘hybridity, fluidity and mobility’ is both
enlightening and challenging for me. In my own case, I argue that by
seeking to understand the family history in colonial Indonesia, the
celebration of ‘hybridity, fluidity and mobility’ is enhanced and I feel a
greater sense of both connectivity to others and freedom to be myself
(whilst acknowledging all my own disparate internal elements).
Dragojlovic claims that she has heard the terms ‘Indische Mensen (Indisch people) and Indische Nederlanders (Indisch Dutch)’ during her research,
used by the descendants of Dutch nationals from the Indies (2011: 321).
She suggests that before World War II, ‘the term Indisch was used both
for Eurasians and Europeans who settled in the Dutch East Indies’ (2011:
321). Her interpretation of the position of ‘mixed-blood’ people in the
Indies to whom she refers as ‘Indo-Dutch’ is that ‘on the one hand their
hybridity granted them privileges reserved for Europeans, but on the
other hand they were able to move between European and Indonesian
worlds’19 (2011: 321).
Elsbeth Locher-Scholten suggests that the Indisch20 ‘included both
European and white families who had resided in the Indonesian
archipelago for several generations’ (1998: 133). She maintains that the
Indisch and other Europeans only comprised ‘0.4 percent of the total
population of 60 million people’ at the 1930 census and that 80 percent
lived on Java (1998: 133). Locher-Scholten’s definition of Indisch certainly
fits my ancestral situation – as the early van der Poels were Dutch men
19
She refers to the work of McClintock 1995 and Stoler 1992.
20
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with Dutch wives, while in later generations the men had Javanese
partners (and perhaps also Dutch wives).
During my formative years in Australia, I did not learn much about the
Indische mensen or colonial Indonesia. This is not surprising perhaps
because, according to Jooste Coté, there has been a somewhat ambivalent
relationship between Australia and Indonesia. This has developed from ‘a complex set of reasons’ including the fact that Australia was a colonising
nation dealing with ‘a racist past’ that was grappling with its ‘historical
paranoia’ about its place in Asia (2005: 15).21 Loes Westerbeek makes the
point that until 1986, it has been impossible, for instance, to deduce
information about the Indisch community within Australia, as prior to this
all migrants were only classified according to their country of birth, so
these people were effectively categorised as either Dutch or Indonesian
(Coté and Westerbeek 2005: 289). It is only since the 1986 Census that data
about ethnic origins through a question on ancestry has been available to
researchers (Coté and Westerbeek, 2005: 289).
With respect to my research, while asking myself the question ‘How do I
define the Indische mensen?’ I have kept in mind Wim Willems’ suggestion
that ‘Identity formation is ultimately a complex issue’ and reacquainted
myself with his ideas about the process of identity formation with respect
to people from the former Dutch East Indies (Coté & Westerbeek, 2005:
254 - 255). Willems offers a conceptual schema about identity which views
it as ‘a map comprising different shaded regions’ (Coté & Westerbeek, 2005: 254). In this map, he describes at least ‘two regions’ as ‘the country of birth’ and (as peoplegrow older), ‘the realm of childhood’ that includes the ‘landscape’ to which people felt connected. In the case of those who
had to leave the Indies, Willems says that three major events also played a
21
- 12 -
role in that identity formation: World War II, the Japanese occupation and
the Indonesian independence (Coté & Westerbeek, 2005: 254 - 255).
Complicating matters further is the fact that some migrants went to the
Netherlands and then moved onto the USA, Australia or elsewhere
(Willems cited in Coté & Westerbeek, 2005: 254). In addition, others who
had opted to stay in Indonesia initially and become Indonesian citizens
(like some of our family members), were forced to leave later when
Sukarno nationalised all Dutch businesses in retaliation for Dutch refusal
to recognise Indonesian claims to Dutch New Guinea (Willems cited in
Cote & Westerbeek, 2005: 255). In 1962, when Dutch New Guinea was
annexed by Indonesia, more ‘mixed-bloods’ (and others) left for the Netherlands and elsewhere (Willems cited in Coté & Westerbeek, 2005:
255).
While growing up in Australia, I never met any Indisch or Indische mensen
(Dutch-Indonesians22), or Indos23, (as younger generations now call
themselves), other than my mother and my aunt. In fact, it is only very
recently, since I joined the Australia-Indonesia Association in 2009, that I
met any Indonesians living in Australia, though I was aware that many
Indonesian students were studying here in Adelaide, particularly at
Flinders University. As a young person, I knew that my mother was
My meaning here is people of ethnic Javanese and Dutch mix. The term Dutch-Indonesians is often used in English in Australia, and within the diaspora generally, (eg on Facebook), it more widely applies to various ethno-cultural compositions which include Europeans such as
Portuguese, Dutch, Belgians, Germans, French and British, with indigenous Indonesians, such as Javanese, Sumatran, Moluccan, Minahassan etc (Bosma & Raben, 2008).
23
- 13 -
mother was missing out on celebrating her own culture. I certainly did
not understand that my mother did not regard these Dutch people (what
one might call zuiver Nederlanders), as being part of her cultural
background.
My mother and her sister were the only Dutch-Indonesians who migrated
here in 1948/924 that I know of25. The one notable exception may be Mrs Annie O’Keefe’s family who were the subject of one of the most famous
deportation cases in Australian history. Certainly, at the time when my
mother, aunt and Mrs O’Keefe sought to be permanently accepted into Australia, the Commonwealth Immigration Restriction Act (IRA) which had
been instituted by Australia’s first Commonwealth Parliament in 1901 still
meant that non-British/non-European persons seeking to migrate to
Australia would have to pass the infamous dictation test26 and be unlikely
to gain entry (Tavan, 2005: 7). Indeed, restrictions against non-European
immigration had been sporadically enacted in Australia since the 1840s
and White Australia - the notion of not mixing coloured people with the
white people of Australia - was a well-established doctrine (Tavan, 2005:
9). In February 1949, Mrs O’Keefe took Immigration Minister Arthur
Calwell27 (of Ben Chifley’s Labor Government) to the High Court to
challenge her right to stay in Australia (with her eight children), after her
husband Samuel Jacob (who had been working for the Netherlands Indies
24
My mother says that she came to Australia in April 1948, whilst official records (i.e. National Archives of Australia) show 1949 as the date of application for sponsored immigration.
25
Although 10,000 bureaucrats and military had been evacuated during the war (because the Dutch East Indies government took up exile in Melbourne) and another 6,000 had been evacuated after 1945, most had returned to the Netherlands by 1947 (Peters, 2008: 1). From 1951-1970, as many as 10,000 Indisch Dutch (of the 150 - 160,000 Dutch from the Netherlands), chose to resettle in Australia (Peters, 2008: 2; National Archives, 2011: 2) but they must have been white enough to migrate.
26For further details on this and Australian immigration, refer to Gwenda Tavan’s (2005)
The Long, Slow Death of White Australia.
27
- 14 -
Forces Intelligence Service), had been killed and she had married John
William O’Keefe, their former landlord who was a British subject (Tavan, 2005: 54-55). According to Gwenda Tavan, ‘The O’Keefe case brought the
issue of wartime refugees and the certificate-of-exemption system28 to a head’ and issues of racism in relation to immigration into the media spotlight (2005: 58). Fortunately for the O’Keefes, the Melbourne Herald
assisted the family with favourable newspaper coverage and assistance
with legal expenses. Mrs O’Keefe (and her family) succeeded in staying in
Australia but Calwell then introduced the War-time Refugees Removal Act
1949 which gave the minister power to deport in relation to the idea of
‘aliens and defence’ (Tavan, 2005: 59).
The diaspora from the Dutch East Indies/Indonesia was certainly
invisible to me where I grew up on the north shore of Sydney, New South
Wales. Recently, my mother told me that she and my aunt were two out
of only three ‘non-white’ girls in her class at their Catholic high school;
the other girl was an Italian born migrant (Mater, per. comm. 2013). It
must have been a strange (and confronting) time to come to Australia. In
their case, I was told that family connections in political circles (and their
lighter colouring because of a European father) had gained them
permanent entry, whilst Riki (their mother), had simply been ‘too dark’ to
be allowed to stay. Riki joined other relatives who had ‘repatriated’29 to
the Netherlands.
My mother and her sister were sponsored by the Jewish30 side of the
family who had been extremely lucky to be allowed into Australia before
World War II (National Archives of Australia, Record search, 2010).
28
This was a system of temporary entry permits for the purpose of business or study and did not require people to a dictation test (Tavan, 2005: 58).
29
See Chapter 5 for a discussion about the concept of repatriation.
30
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According to Westerbeek, under the Australian Census process before
1986, my mother and aunt would have been classified as Indonesians
(Coté and Westerbeek, 2005), despite the fact that the Department of
Immigration records cite my mother and my aunt as ‘nationality Dutch’31
(National Archives of Australia, Record search, 2010). After 1986, the
place of birth question was supplemented by a question about ethnicity
(Coté and Westerbeek, 2005).
Either of these categorisations is too simplistic and not explanatory
enough. My mother and her sister were the children of a marriage
between my Javanese-Dutch grandmother (Riki) and my Austrian
grandfather (Bruno), who had been introduced to one another in Jember
(Djember), East Java by the first husband (Peter) of my grandmother’s
sister (Doddy). As a child, I heard three or four languages spoken around
me – English, Dutch, Hungarian and German; though not until I was in
my mid-twenties visiting relatives overseas (in the 1980s), with a Javanese
boyfriend, did I ever hear any dialects of Indonesian spoken. My parents
only spoke English between them because my father only speaks fluent
English and a little French; my mother’s efforts to teach him to speak in
Dutch had apparently failed; so we were not the beneficiaries of bilingual
language proficiency, as such; just the recipients of the smallest residue of
our ancestral linguistic culture.
The ancestors of my maternal family lived in what is now Indonesia for
approximately 150 years, from the early 1800s until the late 1950s. Some
early male ancestors married Dutch women and brought them to Batavia
(or elsewhere); later on, others lived with Javanese women (Lutter, 1992).
The van der Poel and Berler surnames can be found in the Government
Almanac of the Indies 1815-1942 (Regerings-Almanak van
Nederlandsche-Indië 1815-1942) – an invaluable source of basic information about those
31
- 16 -
with European ancestry. This two DVD set (in the Dutch language), is
known to members and descendants of the Dutch-Indonesian32 diaspora
scattered across the world and to Indonesians33 seeking to discover more
about their European ancestors.
The Javanese ancestors comprised ‘commoners’ (wong cilik) and Javanese Muslim Raden34 (royalty/priyayi) - both male and female ancestors who
lived in West Java (Jawa Barat), Central Java (Jawa Tengah) and East Java
(Jawa Timur). One of my great-great grandmothers (Kanapia) from
Probolinggo was (likely) living in a huishoudster (concubine/nyai)
arrangement with my great-grandfather Albertus Petrus Gerardus, whilst
my other great-great-grandfather, Raden Hadjie Abdulhamed Djochria,
had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, as symbolised by the inclusion of
‘Hadjie’ in his name (Gillissen, 2011) and was likely a village leader.
To add to the complex family ‘melting pot’, my maternal grandfather was
a Jew, and (by unofficial estimates), he was one of only about 2000 Jews
living in either Java or Sumatra in the 1930s (Cassuto, 2005 - 2011). During
the Japanese occupation in World War II (as far as I know), all the
surviving members of the family were incarcerated in various POW
camps across Java. Meanwhile, my grandfather was executed by the
Japanese for being a resistance fighter in the underground (codename
‘Corsica’35), operating out of Malang.; my great-grandparents, Hein and
32
This is a general description which is used, for instance, by members in the disapora but which includes various metis family groups with European and Asian ancestry. For instance, I came across people with Chinese-Scottish ancestors who identified as part of the diaspora.
33
I was surprised for instance that my cousin in Yogyakarta had a copy when I visited her in 2011.
34
Before the Dutch came, there were many kingdoms across Java were controlled by royal families.
35
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Sitie saw their property and business burnt to the ground; Uncle Peng36
was taken to work on the Burma railroad and was later killed by
American submarines whilst aboard a Japanese ship going to Nagasaki.
After Indonesian independence, most family members relocated to the
Netherlands, though some had taken Indonesian citizenship before
leaving.
O
N T HE COMPLEXITIE S O FI
NDI ES SOCIETYOur family composition - including people from various religious groups,
social classes and ethno-cultural communities - exemplifies the
complexity of the Indies society through the period c.1807 – c.195737.
Importantly, according to Pamela Pattynama:
The late colonial Indisch (sic) community is often portrayed as a static in-between group squeezed in somewhere between native
and totok population. This is a stereotype that does not do justice
to the differences and contrasts that existed within this group. The differences in economic well being and status were so vast that it is actually impossible to categorise them as a single group. Moreover, the image of this community as an oppressed group elides the dynamic processes they were involved in. Ideas, norms and habits were constantly changing and traditions were forever being modified as an effect of social and political developments. (2005: 49)
Nevertheless, Pattynama claims that ‘certain community traits can be
ascribed to pre-war Indisch society’ (2005: 49). These traits characterise
family life and include: ‘daily rituals of bed and bath, traditional ways of
36
‘Peng’ is Albertus Hendricus van der Poel (son of ‘Hein’ van der Poel), born 19 November 1915
in Meester Cornelis. For more information see page 221.
37
This is not meant to define the period of late colonialism. 1800-1942 is the period when hybridity versus purist/essentialist notions of race were dominant factors and led to the internalisation of colonial racism in the society. These dates are an indication of the time period during which many of my ancestors and immediate family lived in colonial Indonesia before
- 18 -
eating food, dressing, greeting, showing hospitality, and methods to raise
children’ (2005: 49).
Coté also describes the society of the Dutch East Indies as one whose
‘racial heterogeneity’ created a ‘static tension’ or what he suggests was ‘a permanent ambiguity’;one which was ‘ritualized’ by the 1920s (Coté and
Westerbeek, 2005: 19). Coté agrees with Pattynama in saying that, by the
very last stages of Dutch colonialism, Indische mensen had their own
‘traditional lifestyle’ which was very distinct from both Dutch culture in
the Netherlands and from the totok (newcomer) Dutch who had migrated
from the Netherlands in the last stages of colonialism (Coté and
Westerbeek, 2005: 19) and were still migrating even after 194538 (Gillisen,
2010).
The topic of social hierarchies of the Netherlands/Dutch East Indies is a
contested area of research amongst scholars. The stories of what
happened to Eurasian families have seldom been told. Joost Coté explains:
There has been no attempt to cover the long history of the evolution of this community from the 1600s to the beginning of the twentieth century since, largely, that history is coterminous with the broader history of Dutch colonialism for which good general histories exist. (Coté and Westerbeek, 2005: 19)
Defining a community of Indische mensen is problematic. Ulbe Bosma
suggests that it was only ‘at the end of the colonial period that the
historical roots of the Indisch community were at last defined’ (Coté and
Westerbeek, 2005: 20-21). Jean Taylor maintains that ‘ethnicity’ was ‘not a
dominant issue’ until the late colonial period and stresses instead the ‘fluidity of racial, religious and ethnic categories’ within a group quite
38
According to Albert Gillissen, who worked in Java and Sumatra as an immigration officer 1946-9, civil servants were still being recruited and sent to the Dutch East Indies after the declaration of independence (2010).The Dutch government was also recruiting administrators and plantation managers, oil company executives, entrepreneurs (and so on) with the purpose of
- 19 -
‘distinct’ from the late colonial migratory Dutch (Coté and Westerbeek,
2005: 18). Stoler and Taylor broadly concur that European social mores
only had a strong influence in the late colonial period, when the pressure
to cultivate a European sense of identity meant ‘mixed-blood’
people/Indo-Europeans needed to adequately perform middle-class
values (Protschky, 2011: 548). Coté and Westerbeek maintain that the
boundaries of the Indisch community were never clearly defined (2005:
18). Interestingly, female (and/or feminist) scholars Stoler, Hellwig,
Protschky (et al) emphasise the nexus between race and gender within the
colonial mechanics of control, whilst male scholars, such as Bosma,
Wiseman, Cribb (et al) seem to largely ignore this dynamic in their
examinations of the social stratification of the society in the Dutch East
Indies.
Presently, those who claim an Indische mensen/Indo identity39 (or family
connection) are keen to share stories about the former Dutch colony and
the lives of their ancestors. All the more surprising, perhaps, is that
second and even third generation descendants of those who left the
Indies/Indonesia, are interested in knowing about their ancestral ‘home’, ‘histories’, ‘traditions’ and the events that forced their families to relocate.
Bosma makes the point that:
For the second generation, free from the clutter of their parents’ painful memories, being ‘half-Indonesian’ can now be an exciting discovery. Some decades ago, this was not the case in the Netherlands40. It was also not possible in the racist climate of
39
Loes Westerbeek makes the point that that ‘the question of ‘who is Indisch’ in relation to (future) research among second generation migrants is best answered by women, who often are referred to as the bearers of culture. She believes that they ‘are largely responsible for the
intergenerational transmission of culture and as such shape and inform their children’s sense of cultural identity’ (2005: 291). The word Indo is often used now by younger generations in the diaspora, with positive connotations, but I have reason to believe that in colonial times, it was used (sometimes) in a derogatory manner by the Dutch (Gillissen, 2010).
40Bosma’s point here is contested anecdotally by my colleague Lolo Houbein who grew up in the
