Thomas Karsten's Indonesia* Modernity and the End of Europe, 1914-

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Author(s): Joost Coté

Source: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde , 2014, Vol. 170, No. 1 (2014), pp.

66-98

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Thomas Karsten's Indonesia*

Modernity and the End of Europe, 1914-1945

Joost Coté

Senior Research Fellow, Monash University [email protected]

Abstract

Colonial Indonesia's foremost town planner and prominent architect, Herman Thomas Karsten (1884-1945), was inspired in his work by contemporary discourses on modernity and critiques of Western civilization. Drawing on Karsten's published and private writing, this article argues that his disenchantment with the West and criticism of contemporary Dutch colonial practice led him to imagine and direct his town-planning and architectural projects towards the realization of a post-colonial, post-imperial world in which East and West would be united. Despite (or because of) his Utopian ideal of world unity, Karsten was unable to accept the demands of the Indonesian nationalist

movement.

Keywords

Thomas Karsten - town planning - colonial policy - modernity - Indonesia

Colonial town planning has generally attracted a 'bad press' in recent scholarship as epitomizing the worst elements of the interventionist character of late

* I would like to thank Roy Jordaan, Freek Colombijn and anonymous reviewers for their con- structive comments on earlier drafts of this paper and the patient editors who have brought a measure of discipline to this final version. I am grateful to Hugh O'Neill in Melbourne for the numerous discussions about the focus of this study, and to the descendents of Thomas Karsten in the Netherlands for their hospitality and generosity in making available their father's private papers and for sharing their memories of him. Notwithstanding their combined efforts, responsibility for the interpretation and remaining shortcomings is of course mine.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC 3.0) License.

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colonialism. The case 'against' has been cogently made by Anthony King (1991).

King defined colonial urban planning as essentially a more intense version of the broader process of colonialism, in which the drive for 'orderly development' was ultimately based on 'historically and socially derived concepts [...]

that evolved in the metropolitan society and applied to the indigenous environment and people [...] as part of the overall situation of colonial power' (King 1991:54). More recently, in his study of urban public-housing policy in colonial Delhi, Stephen Legg has characterized colonial urban planning as an exercise in 'biopolitical power'. Whatever the apparently benign intentions of the 'individual egos, temperaments and biographies' (Legg 2007:209) of the individuals concerned, he argues, in the final analysis the coloniality of colonial urban intervention is revealed in the racial assumptions embedded in the financial and administrative systems of the colonial government (Legg 2007:20).

In the case of colonial Indonesia, the name of Herman Thomas Karsten

(1884-1945), known primarily for his contribution to colonial architecture (Sumalyo 1995:39-68; Akihary 1988; Jessup 1988) is also closely associated with the history of town planning. Much of his architectural work involved the design of public buildings that were intended to contribute positively to the quality of Javanese urban public life, and Karsten's architectural work is generally recognized for its reference to Javanese architectural heritage (Sulma- lyo 1995). 1 In town planning in colonial Indonesia he is considered a 'pio- neer in the field' (Wertheim i958:xii), 'and one might say that his was the dominant role in the exportation of European planning to colonial Indonesia' (Cobban 1992:344). Karsten is best known for his key role in drawing up the detailed town-planning regulations prescribed as a blueprint for urban municipal authorities, the 1938 Stadsvormingsordonnantie (Wertheim 1958; Thijsse 1946), and for introducing 'garden suburb' concepts to late colonial Indonesia (Cobban 1992; Van Roosmalen 2008:127). In the development of town-planning discourse in the colony, he is noted for his insistence that socio-economic function, not race, should determine architectural diversity in the urban landscape (Van Roosmalen 2008:120-1).

While Thomas Karsten has been subject to some of the same criticism applied to colonial planners generally, notably by Kusno (2000, 2010; Mrázek 2002), 2 the evaluation of his role in ordering the colonial urban environment

1 Karsten was not alone in this. Another proponent of the incorporation of Javanese architectural traditions in contemporary architecture was his one-time business partner Henri Maclaine Pont (Sumalyo 1995; Jessup 1982).

2 While recognizing Karsten's desire to 'rescue it [indigenous culture] from deterioration',

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in the Netherlands East Indies has been largely positive (Bogaers 1983; Bogaers and De Ruijter 1986; Cobban 1992; Colombijn 2010; Van Roosmalen 2008).

Indeed, in the history of Dutch colonialism Karsten figures as a colonial critic

and his efforts in town planning as attempts to challenge the pervasive racism of the colonial establishment.

The aim of this article, then, is to examine in more detail Karsten's motiva- tions as a colonial town planner and architect and for dedicating his professional career to what he saw as the future of Indonesia. While Karsten's work during his almost 30 years in the Dutch colony is broadly known, the more philosophical ideas underpinning his intervention in colonial discourse and practice have not previously been examined. To do so here is not to chart a defence of this colonial town planner. Rather, this examination of what can only be described as a 'colonial intellectual' is intended as a contribution to a broader exploration of colonial thinking in the crucial years during which Asian and, in this case, Indonesian nationalism was defined. In this article I show that the principles underlying Karsten's professional practice as a colonial town planner and architect drew on a widely shared sense of disillusionment with the state of Western civilization circulating in metropolitan Europe. Contrary to many of his contemporaries who believed in the justification if not success of the Dutch colonial project, Karsten was severely critical of contemporary colonial practice. In his worldview, he envisaged - and believed he was working towards assisting - Indonesia as becoming part of a new, post-colonial world order. While this broad view gradually took on a more specifically Indonesian hue, it remained, essentially, one more colonial project opposed to the Indone- sian nationalist movement and, at best, an improbable Utopian one.

A New Arrival in the Colony

In many ways Karsten was typical of a new generation of colonial sojourn- ers in the early twentieth century. Encouraged by improved communications and the gradual provision of the accoutrements of a European lifestyle in the colony, they saw in the expanding colonial administrations and business enterprises 'wider scope and opportunity than they might have had at home' (Home

Kusno asserts that '[w]ith Karsten, architecture not only played its role as a sign of foreign domination but also as a symbol of colonial pacification' (Kusno 2000:33). Kusno cites Karsten's designs for public markets as a specific example of his critical intervention in Javanese life (Kusno 2010:189-99).

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1997:36). In Europe and across its Asian imperium, a growing cohort of such middle-class professionals, armed with 'distinct cognitive structures, claim- ing universality and a theoretical orientation' (Home 1997:36), brought their expertise to bear on the emerging technological, social and cultural issues con- fronting colonial administrations and the municipal authorities of the bur- geoning colonial cities. In the Netherlands East Indies where the new urban municipal councils, legislated in 1903 and gradually established from 1906, had introduced an element of administrative decentralization, such professionals were offered an opportunity to exercise a limited degree of direct influence on urban policy.3 It was this emerging colonial arena of professional activity and urban discourse that Karsten entered when he arrived in the city of Semarang in 1914.

Like all such professionals, Karsten was dependent upon the projects deliv- ered and defined by colonial society. In Semarang, where he began his career as partner in the architectural firm of his friend Henri Maclaine Pont, he was fortunate in encountering a progressive municipal council that had already embarked on a number of urban reform projects (Coté 2002; Cobban 1974).

Aside from the architectural commissions issued by colonial enterprises and prominent citizens, many of Karsten's better-known architectural designs in Semarang and other colonial cities were prepared to meet the municipal requirements for public buildings. The latter included designs for produce markets, an abattoir, a hospital, a school, a theatre, a railway station and, on a more extensive scale, plans for entire residential districts complete with designs for houses intended for Javanese families.4 For this Semarang became Karsten's laboratory: here he first began to articulate the principles underlying his approach to architecture and urban planning and to apply his ideas concerning the process of modernization.

Karsten was self-consciously 'modern'. In later life he described himself in terms borrowed from the contemporary Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung as being 'a typical late European, totally individualized, intellectual'.5 Jung had

3 The council initially consisted of only government-appointed members, including Javanese, Chinese and Arab representatives. The number of elected members on the Semarang municipal council gradually increased, including the position of mayor after 1916.

4 Karsten is also (and perhaps better) known for several iconic office buildings designed for leading European enterprises. For a number of years he was also engaged in remodelling the Mangkunegara palace in Surakarta.

5 Notebook 16-12-1930, Private collection Karsten family (Collection Karsten). The unpublished Notebook (1930-1945) is an important component of what survives of Thomas Karsten's papers, most of which are believed to have been destroyed in the aftermath of the Japanese

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described such an individual (in 1928) as being separated and alienated from his 'spiritual community', but also as capable of seeing 'the abyss of the future

before him, above him the heavens, and below him the whole world of mankind

with a history that disappears in primeval mists' (Jung 1928/31 cited in Camp- bell 1976:456). Disillusioned with conventional contemporary European culture, like many European intellectuals and artists of his day, Karsten envisaged

contributing to the gradual modernization of Indonesia (Java) in a way that would avoid what he saw as the wrong turn taken in Europe. In a future era he saw a modern Indonesia and a transformed Europe as equal participants in,

and contributors to, a universal modern culture. His immediate self-assigned task, as architect, town planner and intellectual, then, was to transform, but

not to overthrow, colonialism.

Karsten's 'Task'

While in strategic presentations to conferences of professional bodies, such as the Vereeniging voor Lokale Belangen (Association for Local Interests) and the Planatologische Studiegroep (Planning Study Group), between 1919 and 1925 Karsten limited himself to 'professional topics' (Cobban 1992; Van Roos- malen 2008), elsewhere Karsten had already publically articulated a broader cultural agenda. In 1917, in association with a 'progressive caucus'6 of influential Semarang citizens, Karsten launched a short-lived publication, De Taak (The Task). Originally a weekly, it competed with a growing number of publications advocating a range of political agendas. Its contributors included several leading Javanese intellectuals,7 and it concentrated on defining what its editors believed were the 'essential elements' of the Javanese tradition that needed to be 'modernized' (Begin 1917).

occupation. In over 100 closely written pages, the Notebook contains notations of events, ideas, and summaries of, and long quotations from, his readings made between 1930 and 1945;

here this source is referenced throughout as 'Notebook', followed by the date of notation.

I acknowledge here the generosity of the Karsten family in making this and other items of Karsten's extant private archive available, and their willingness to submit this to critical examination.

6 The term was used by contemporaries to refer to this influential local group. J.E. Stokvis, editor of the progressive Semarang newspaper De Locomotief, was a leading member of this group.

Several were members of the municipal council.

7 Contributors to the journal included prominent (moderate) Indonesian intellectuals such as Abdoel Rivai, Tjipto Mangoenkoesoemo, R.T. Koesoemo Oejaya and R.N. Sosrohadikoesoemo.

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In the face of growing scepticism regarding the efficacy of the Ethical Pol- icy declared over a decade earlier, contributors to De Taak renewed the call for a reform of colonial policy. In De Taak' s version of the colonial project, the emphasis was on recognizing the potential transformative capacities of the Javanese and of Javanese culture. Articles were devoted to analysing var- ious manifestations of Javanese culture including architecture, music, arts and crafts, and lifestyle in general. The colonial 'task', it stressed, was not one of imposing Western ideas, but of preparing the inhabitants of Java 'in whose hands the future of the Javanese lay', to be able to 'advance'. Nevertheless, the journal's editorial group believed 'there is not the slightest possibility at the

moment that the people [Javanese] themselves or even their intellectuals can clearly define the path forward' (Begin 1917). Thus, for the foreseeable future at least, it was the 'task' of Westerners to provide the necessary leadership to guide their development towards modernity.

This view essentially represented the position Karsten espoused explicitly in his own contributions to the journal. While he also emphasized that leadership and the direction ofjava's future ultimately had to come from the Javanese themselves, he made it clear that until 'appropriate leaders' emerged, and in order for Javanese society to survive the impact of 'current rapid development', Westerners like himself needed to provide the essential, if temporary, direction (Karsten 1923:74). In several De Taak articles Karsten advanced his view that under the influence of the economic and social changes generated by colonialism Javanese society and culture were already changing. As he had privately noted in a letter to his sister, when informing her of his involvement in De Taak ,

the main reason [...] for the awakening of the indigenous population, the thorough shaking up, the ploughing over, which is necessarily followed by the emergence of self-consciousness and by the will to be themselves [was the result of] their daily work, the commercial agricultural industry, the city's commercial activity and everything related to it.

KARSTEN to BARTA KARSTEN, 5 August 1917

As he saw it, a new urban middle class was emerging in the cities and as a result, the locus of cultural expression was shifting 'from [their] aristocratic material basis to a more public one [ ... ] a shift that is running parallel to the general social development' (Karsten to Barta, 5 August 1917). In this transitional moment, it was therefore of immediate concern to ensure that traditional cultural forms evolved appropriately and were embedded in this changing contemporary lived culture. To fail to ensure this would be to assign Java to a fate

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worse than that facing modern Europe, where the loss of 'tradition' was creating a sterile cultural landscape.

In Traktiese zorg voor Javaanse kunsť (Practical care for the Javanese arts)

(1918), for instance, Karsten discussed how wayang wong, a traditional form closely associated with the central Javanese courts, could be developed by adapting it to modern Western forms of theatre performance. Subsequently,

he designed one of his most famous architectural projects: the Sobokartti people's theatre in Semarang. It was a building that cleverly combined elements of Javanese architecture with the design features of the schouwburg, the Dutch

theatre, to allow the performance of traditional Javanese arts in a modernized urban setting. Karsten specifically intended this project to contribute to

re-engaging an urban Javanese middle-class audience, primarily consisting of

professional and clerical employees of government, municipal and business agencies, with their cultural traditions in this new urban environment; in other

words, to rescue the past by transposing it into modern forms.8

The project announced by De Taak appeared to reflect the aims of the

Javanese cultural revival concurrently being advocated by leaders of an emerging Javanese nationalist movement. These included members of the proto- nationalist organization Budi Utomo, founded in 1908, and the Comité voor het Javaansche Nationalisme (Committee for [the advancement of] Javanese nationalism), established a year after De Taak was founded. The activities of the latter were centred on the court of the Dutch-educated Prangwedono of the Mangkunegara (the later Mangkunegara VII), with whom Karsten was closely associated (Jessup 1988), and a related cultural organization, the Java Instituut.

Their views about Java's future were disseminated through their respective journals Wederopbouw (Revival or Rebuilding) and Djawa (Java), and through

numerous cultural congresses (Noto Soeroto 1918; Van Miert 1996).9

The vision of a Javanese future articulated by these organizations, journals

and associated congresses was evidence enough, perhaps, to support Karsten's conviction that the Javanese cultural development that he and De Taak had advocated - and predicted - was indeed taking place. In its inaugural num-

ber, RMS Soeriokoesoemo, Wederopbouw' s editor and leading contributor, for instance, alluded to notions of cultural self-consciousness very similar to those

8 The original Sobokartti people's theatre building in Semarang has recently been restored and is once again being used as an urban community centre for reviving interest in Javanese

traditional arts among the current generation.

9 Significant cross-membership existed between the Budi Utomo executive and members of the Comité.

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that Karsten went on to develop at length. The important difference between it and the stance assumed by De Taak , however, was that Wederopbouw explicitly described its journal as being "van ons, voor ons en door ons' (of us, for us and by us) - making it clear (despite the irony of its use of Dutch language to make the point) that Javanese leaders were ready to define, and own, their future.10 Significantly, moreover, where Karsten avoided defining any end goal, Soeriokoesoemo argued that 'consciousness of one's separate existence is the kernel of nationalism'. As he put it:

This self-consciousness is accompanied by a desire for self-expression, for a form of [separate] existence: it becomes purposeful. Javanese nationalism is thus not a fixed idea: it is a form of existence for which the Javanese people are searching in order to be able to express themselves.11

SOERIOKOESOEMO 1918:6

Thus, while Karsten clearly distanced himself from contemporary colonial policy, a significant gap was immediately apparent between the aims of colonial

progressives, such as Karsten, and their intended beneficiaries. While apparently closely aligned philosophically (and personally), this Javanese leadership explicitly rejected what appeared to be the end goal of De Taak' s thesis, namely the gradual assimilation of Indonesian society into a shared Westernized modern culture.12 In the event, both De Taak and Wederopbouw expired in the mid 1920s as the middle ground they attempted to define in colonial and Indonesian discourse was increasingly rejected by the more aggressively asserted nation- alisms of their respective communities. In 1925 the editorial of the final edition of De Taak recognized that the two sides for which the journal had attempted to provide 'a site for coming together and mutual cooperation' ( een terrein van samenkomst en samenwerking) were now irrevocably split:

10 Like De Taak, Wederopbouw encouraged participation of contributors from across the racial divide. Karsten himself appears not to have contributed to that journal although both he and his close associate on De Taalťs editorial board, the socialist Sam Koperberg, were active in the organization of the Java Instituut, of which Koperberg was the founding secretary.

1 1 In the Netherlands, Noto Soeroto, a member of the Paku Alam princely house of Yogya- karta, had been saying much the same for almost a decade (Karels 2010; Fakih 2012) and warmly welcomed this new organization (Noto Soeroto 1918).

12 As the recent biography of Noto Soeroto indicates, this 'modem Javanese' group was by no means homogeneous in its views (Karels 2010).

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the European supporters [of the journal] have drifted to the right and the majority of the native [supporters] increasingly to the left. After eight years it seems that the direction that the journal attempted to maintain

has landed it more or less in no man's land, in the middle of two opposing sides [...] The colonial relations have become so sharply divided that the 'site of coming together' now lies deserted, at the expense of the orderly

development of the Indies.13

Already by the mid twenties, then, Karsten found himself occupying a decid- edly marginal position in the political landscape of colonial Indonesia. Support

for the idealistic vision of the so-called 'Ethical Policy' had generally faded (Locher Schölten 1981) while Javanese commitment to any form of 'associa- tionism' was increasingly coming under suspicion as both sides of the colonial

divide hardened their respective positions.14

Karsten as Urban Planner

In the course of a series of seminal conference papers on town planning presented between 1920 and 1925, Karsten set out what he saw as being the essential principles for designing housing for the new Javanese urban middle class.15 The urgent issue for Karsten was whether this urban middle class ( stedelijke middens taná), who were 'the carriers of culture for the Indigenous population outside the principalities', would be able to realize their culture in their daily lives or whether, in this regard, they would become, in a sense, culture-less (Karsten 1925:36). The role of the town planner and architect was therefore to design urban and domestic environments to provide a physical framework for the modern lives of these urban Indonesians. In line with his belief that archi-

13 'Terugblik', De Taak 8 (i925):389-9i, p. 391. De Taak's role was briefly taken up in the late twenties by a similarly constituted progressive group, DeStuw, of which Karsten was also a member. It, too, soon foundered in the context of the growing conservatism of European society.

14 Academic debate continues about what advocates of 'association', whether European or Indonesian, saw as their end goal (Karels 2010:56-7).

15 His major presentations were 'Indiese stedenbouw', Praeadvies, presented to the Tiende Decentralisatiecongres, Bandung, 1920; 'Technisch-architektonische zijde van het volk- shuisvestingvraagstuk', Praeadvies, presented to the Volkshuisvestingscongres, Semarang, 1922, and 'Bespreking van de Stellingen betreffende: eigen woningbezit, eigenbouw en bevorderingen daarvan', presented to the Volkshuisvestingscongres, Bandung, 1925.

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tecture was the expression of a society's lived culture,16 modernization involved both material and psychological change. Karsten lectured his colleagues that design needed not only to take account of the natural constraints of climate, geography and the requirements for safe-guarding public health, but also had to take account of the culture of domestic life of their Javanese inhabitants.

To ignore this link with a lived tradition, Karsten argued, 'produces indiffer- ence towards the home, and a lack of interest in its value'; it would 'actively contribute to the impoverishment of the spirit in the same way as economic

impoverishment of people affects their income and neglect of hygiene that of their physical well-being' (Karsten i923:i4).17 Architects and planners, therefore, needed, as a starting point, to carefully study the daily lived life ofjavanese 'as a guide to [understanding] the sentiment of a people' (Karsten 1923:14). In

a position paper presented later to the 1925 Volkshuisvestingscongres, Karsten emphasized that

[t]hese are issues of much greater importance [than technical or hygienic matters] which must concern all of us who have been called to be leaders because the answers [we provide] are of great importance for the indigenous population not just for social reasons but also because they are of national importance (original emphasis).18

KARSTEN 1925:36

At the same time, he was concerned to stress that new public housing should not simply imitate traditional housing design. To do so would simply reinforce existing values, attitudes and techniques rather than contribute to their evolution. Indeed, Karsten explicitly rejected the architectural traditions of Java's past so admired by colonial orientalists. In his view

[t]he technique of stone architecture has been more or less lost, not only in terms of its forms, ornamentation and representations; it has become totally foreign to the contemporary population [ ... ] the correct basis for a future development of a native architecture seems to me to be suggested

1 6 Karsten had set out his views about society and culture in several articles published in 1911 and 1912 on his observations of modern society and culture in Vienna and Berlin (Karsten

1911, 1912).

1 7 Karsten's idea here suggests a reference to Berlage's emphasis on 'HausmateriaC in designing appropriate housing for a modem Dutch urban working class (De Heer 2002:70-7).

18 Of particular concern in his 1925 presentation was the question of home ownership and 'feeling at home' in the context of the debate over public rental housing.

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by the still 'living building tradition' which, while it is linked to the old art, can unquestionably be said to have represented for several centuries already an independent style.19

cited in Berlage 1931:100

While, therefore, 'tradition alone [...] will not suffice for [constructing] the town developed on modern lines', it was 'highly important above all for cultural reasons and reasons of social psychology, to base modern solutions on the

traditional ones wherever possible' (Karsten cited in Berlage 1931:10o).20 In this regard Karsten had reiterated the view that Europeans would have to lead the

way until 'qualified Indonesian and architects trained in the Indies' could be found as long as these colonial architects ensured that their designs 'connected

as closely as possible with the lifestyle of the native', using as their guide 'traditional native housing' (Karsten 1923H5-6).21

Expressed specifically in terms of architecture and urban design, and refor-

mulated later in the 1938 Stadsvormingsordonnantie , these key principles were consistent with the broad concept of cultural evolution that was implicit in his earlier De Taak articles on the transformation of Javanese culture more generally. Whether it be the traditional arts of music or dance, or the more mundane matter of public housing, the contemporary cultural expressions of a society

had to be channelled into new forms. Architecture and town planning were to be the tools for constructing the framework for this modern society. Alienated

from their traditional lifestyle by the impact of colonialism, well-conceived

19 The quotation was selected by the visiting Dutch architect Berlage to represent Karsten's position in the contemporary debate amongst colonial architects - notably between

Karsten, Wolff Schoemaker and Maclaine Pont - about the possibility of developing an Indo-European architectural style drawing on Javanese and European traditions (Berlage

1931:100-5).

20 The criticism his paper received at the 1922 conference from fellow architect and town planner Wolff Schoemaker is indicative of Karsten's alternative stance on this question.

With reference to Indonesian domestic architecture, Schoemaker declared: There is nothing we can learn from the native' (Verslag 1923:35). Karsten responded with some emotion 'against this entirely incomprehensible assertion by this speaker' ( Verslag 1923: 45). In his 1920s design for the new centre of Malang, Karsten explicitly adapted traditional Hindu design principles, as reflected in the royal city of Yogyakarta, to situate the main civic buildings of the modern municipality around a central square, or aiun-alun.

2 1 In the latter part of his paper, Karsten set out what he saw as the main (what he defined as the essential) elements of the traditional native house to show how he incorporated these in his designs in order to illustrate his proposal.

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house design would function to reshape the otherwise undirected domestic behaviour and attitudes of Javanese living in urban kampongs, enabling them to 'evolve' as modern citizens.

Moreover, the enlightened colonial town planner needed also to aim to fit the existing 'three, sharply separated races' within a single overall urban plan. This Karsten believed would encourage a 'natural' evolutionary process towards a unified society differentiated only by the separate (socio-economic) needs of its constituent groups. In an early position paper ( prae-advies ) that he presented to the seminal Woningcongres (housing conference) of 1920, he had introduced the issue of 'controlled differentiation' that planners needed to address when providing new public housing for the diverse groups populating the urban area. Extending this theme in 1922, he emphasized the importance of expanding 'the higher levels of the urban native population, with the raising of their standard of living'. Here, the major challenge for planners was to over- come '[t]he differentiation that dominates existing Indies housing [...] [that]

in the first place derives from racial differentiation in living style and standard of living' (Karsten 1923:2). It was a cultural goal he codified as a planner in the principle of 'socio-economic zones' (Van Roosmalen 2008:120-1). This entailed that within an overall plan, house design was to reflect the assumed cultural behaviour of economically, rather than racially, differentiated individuals and communities. In practice, in his designs for the Semarang municipal public- housing complex of Mlaten, this meant providing a variety of house types, available at a graded rental that reflected the inclusion of a range of 'modern facilities', from the provision of separate rooms to kitchens and sewered wash- rooms (Van Roosmalen 2008:79-80).

For Karsten, proper town planning provided a self-evident and 'practical' solution to resolve the social, economic and cultural tensions produced by colonialism. He saw his town-planning principles as unlocking the cultural determinism held in place by contemporary colonial assumptions about racial categories by promoting both racial interaction and social mobility across traditional racial boundaries. Given that contemporary colonial cities were home to a growing class of Western-educated Indonesians engaged in a broad range of colonially generated occupations - according to the 1930 census 6.35% of the indigenous population ofjava and Madura lived in urban areas (Wertheim 1958:8-9) - it could be argued that Karsten's concept of zones anticipated the emergence of a post-feudal Javanese leadership. In challenging the assumptions of an increasingly conservative colonial society by threatening the privileged colonial position of Europeans, this aspect of Karsten's approach to planning indicates his relative position as a progressive reform figure in late colonial Indonesia. However, in practice his maxim of socio-economic zones would

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seem to have offered little challenge to the colonial status quo. It assumed the possibility of a natural evolution, but conveniently ignored the fact that

standards and style of living were, and would continue to be, largely deter- mined by the socio-economic structures that underpinned the colonial state.

Planning and design that privileged the ideals of a European modernity in themselves amounted to a colonial imposition as at least one Dutch-trained Javanese architect - and even his erstwhile partner Maclaine Font - pointed out.22 In the final analysis, it implied a political and social solution that in practice appeared to differ little from that which characterized conventional

colonial society. It also implied the imposition of a particular 'vision' of a future Indonesia.

Karsten, however, specifically rejected such criticisms in the preamble to the Stadsvormingsordonnantie of which, it is generally accepted, he was the author (Nix 1949:9). His view was that

[t]he central regulation of the question of urban development and cre- ation of officiai machinery capable of tackling the problems involved, is not a sort of legal, technical or social perfectionism out of keeping with our present sober way of life. It is not a social perfectionism that will oppress the masses of Indies society needlessly. On the contrary, it will create for them the indispensable conditions for tolerable living within urban society which is alien to their nature and yet unavoidably dominant over them.

WERTHEIM 1958:77

Creating order was the planners' highest ideal. It was an ideal that, for Karsten, ultimately justified the European colonial presence. It implied that the ideal society could be achieved by the objective assessment of, and provision of well-considered spatial arrangements to cater for, the needs and aspirations of its different component elements. Without order there would be chaos, not just in terms of the built environment, Karsten was suggesting, but also in society at large, and no less within the individual. To understand, therefore, how

22 For instance, Soerjo Winoto, the Javanese architect and Delft graduate, was quoted by Berlage as protesting that contemporary Javanese architecture was being threatened by Western influence. Whether this represented a criticism of Karsten is not clear (Berlage 1931:102-3). Karsten's emphatic rejection of the value of classical Javanese architecture as a model for contemporary building implied a clear rejection of Maclaine Ponťs interest in traditional Javanese architectural practice based on his extensive research into Javanese construction materials and methods (Maclaine Pont 1924).

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Karsten imagined the process of socio-cultural transformation of Indonesia would occur, the following section examines Karsten's philosophical views that came to underpin these 'practical solutions' and his specific ideas concerning a post-colonial Indonesian future.

Karsten and the West

In a series of articles published in De Taak on his observations of post-war Europe while on furlough Karsten defined what he saw as the causes of Europe's cultural decline. It was in a state of 'psychological and emotional impoverishment' and 'the average, contemporary Westerner' of post-war Europe, he asserted,

with or without diploma and titles, with a head full of knowledge, in this wristwatch-timed society with its machines and electric light, its auto- bahns and automobiles and God knows what else - has become poorer than a child emotionally [...] and become insensitive to the fundamental unity of his inner life with the world at large.

Any possibility of a European cultural revival would depend upon a

will to form one class, and a mass. That will require an imagination, élan, idealism; it demands self-sacrifice of the individual for the sake of a far-off ideal; it demands valuing an imagined future above all tangible and practical reality; it demands persistence of powerful, inspirational feelings which can only emerge from burning hearts. And this is what Europe basically no longer has. What there is, the little that was there, has been burnt up in the nationalist fever of the first years of the war, by the hysterical ( opgezweepte ) actions of press and governments, burnt out to the last embers.

KARSTEN 1920-21:502-3

Karsten's account of post-war Europe closely echoed his analysis of contemporary Java. For Karsten, Java's equivalent to Europe's war experience was the shock of colonial modernity, which similarly produced emotional impoverishment and loss of cultural will. Java, too, although like post-war Europe now 'usefully freed from tradition', was falling victim to 'nationalist fever' and 'the hysterical actions of the press' - in this case the Indonesian nationalist press. It, too, was lacking leadership and imagination as to the future and would require

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the 'self sacrifice of the individual for the sake of a far-off ideal'. Karsten was not alone in holding such pessimistic views on contemporary Europe, but for him

the condition of Europe was projected onto a larger canvas and viewed through the lens of his Java experience.

Ten years later, during his second furlough - this time bringing his Javanese

wife and his four children to the Netherlands - he visited America. In a series of more optimistic articles on his observations there he concluded that America

presented a working model for the future new world that he envisaged. 'What attracted me to the USA' he wrote,

was the realization - we see it so clearly from here [the Indies] - that Western Europe is in the process of losing the unchallengeable hegemony

it had in the 19th century and that now North America is becoming the leading continent; perhaps not to such a dominant extent as Europe once

was, given the rivalry of other older and newer powers, but nevertheless

with an extraordinary influence in the coming period, not only politically and economically, but also, and particularly, on the thinking and feeling

of entire humanity.23

KARSTEN 1931:21-2

References in a private diary-notebook he commenced during this visit suggest there were two key influences that had motivated his visit and confirmed his

interest in the United States: Count Hermann Keyserling and Carl Gustavjung.

Keyserling (1860-1945), a cultural essayist, was 'Germany's most influential philosophical writer in the early 20th century' (Kämpchen 2011). Often referred to as the 'travelling philosopher', he had 'sought to propagate an internationalist outlook in an epoch increasingly dominated by narrow nationalism' (Clarke 1994:59)- Keyserling was best known for his Reisetagebuch eines Philosophen (1919), published in English as Travel diary of a philosopher in 1925, which described his journey through India, in which he had promoted an interest in the East in a way which 'attempted to grasp the "soul" of the East' (Clarke

!994:59). For Karsten, of particular influence was Keyserling's conclusion urging the need for some kind of synthesis between Eastern and Western thought (Clarke 1994:59; Kämpchen 2011:7). Keyserling had also published a particu-

23 Karsten's articles in Lokale Belangen discussing his impressions of this trip were later reprinted by that journal as a separate pamphlet. His more general impressions of Amer-

ica, Japan and the Philippines, published in the journal Timboel for a more general public, were also reproduced as a separate pamphlet.

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larly influential account of America, Amerika, Aufgang einer neuen Welt (1930) (translated as 'America set free'), one prominent reviewer of which was Carl Gustav jung.24 Jung had concluded that

[i]n this age of Americanization we are still [...] only at the threshold of a new spiritual epoch [...] If we are pessimists we shall call it a sign of decadence; if we are optimistically inclined we shall see in it the promise of a far-reaching spiritual change in the Western world.

jung cited in Campbell 1976:476

Both author and reviewer, as referenced by Karsten in his notes, saw in Amer- ica, in Jung's words, signs of hope for the emergence of 'the modern man' and a modern spirit (Jung cited in Campbell 1976:462). He noted Jung's observation that Keyserling's book included 'numerous wise observations [that] make it an important book' and quotes Keyserling's own conclusion that '[t]he greatest problem in the foreseeable future is to develop a new spiritual life for this technological age'.25 Karsten welcomed what Jung saw as the 'characteristic symp- toms of our time': the Americanization of Western civilization, epitomized by a new emphasis on sport, cinema and jazz, which Jung had written about in 1927 (Campbell 1976:478). He noted down with evident approval several of the key pronouncements made by Keyserling that Jung had cited in his review, including that '[t]he American is now more irrational than the European', and Jung's own description of Americans as 'European with negro manners and an Indian soul'.26 In agreeing with these writers that the influence of Afro-American culture on white society in America, in terms of dance, music and song, and even the apparently matter-of-fact behaviour of the white Americans, was 'in reality irrational', Karsten understood this as a positive symptom. Europeans in America were beginning to divest themselves of the ultra-rationality and individualism of contemporary Europeans, and consequently were more in touch with their 'unconscious' and more in tune with 'the collective'. The advance of

modern technology, rather than representing a contradictory direction here, in fact contributed positively to the development of this emerging integrated

24 Keyserling, who was also an influence in the development of Jung's views about the East, was equally impressed byjung and published Jung's first commentaries on the psyche, 'Die Erdbedingheit der Psyche' in 1927. For references to Jung's association with Keyserling, see Stern (1976:202-9) and Hardy (1987:163).

25 Notebook 22-3-1931, Collection Karsten.

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society - this 'unconscious collective' in the Jungian terms he was increasingly employing - since

the production of the mass product [which] promotes a similarity of wants [and] equal goods, in the form of mass production and consump- tion, material as well as spiritual, [will eventually] lead to a collective perspective, to a stronger sense of social cohesion, by which inevitably the private-egotistical profit motive of capitalism will, in the long term,

become unacceptable.

KARSTEN 1931:17

While agreeing with both influential writers that America - and for Karsten also the Soviet Union - provided a model for the transformation of the West,

Karsten was observing America through the lens of his preoccupation with colonial Java. For Karsten America demonstrated that a cultural synthesis

across a racial divide was possible. A new land - such as America - could offer

a new beginning. In dealing with its novel geography and indigenous population, as well as its Afro-American communities, European immigrants were

recreating the essential primordial unity between the human spirit or soul and its material existence, but now in the context of a new technological age. It was how Karsten envisaged that an enlightened colonial society might represent a

pathway to a new world.

Of the US he wrote that, despite having to cope

with completely different problems to our own [...] [and while America]

is still too much in an early stage of seeking out and trying things to provide any direct instruction [...] in broad terms, nothing could be more extraordinary in human terms than the birth of a new culture - and in a general technical sense this is very educative; to be able to see how freely, how readily and self-evidently this people makes use of and controls technology gives a much better idea about modern possibilities.

KARSTEN 1931:30

Whether he saw a parallel between African Americans and the emerging Western-educated Javanese urban middle class Karsten did not make clear; his

concern in the first instance was how white America was able to respond to Black American culture.27 But he evidently did regard America as pointing to

27 Karsten also admired the dynamic culture of white America, which he saw embodied in

BIJDRAGEN TOT DE TAAL-, LAND- EN VOLKENKUNDE 170 (2014) 66-98

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the possibility of the kind of cultural convergence he believed was possible, and perhaps he believed was, in a limited sense, already evident in the Indies.

Thomas Karsten and the 'Psychology of Modernity'

At the beginning of the 1930s, confronted by an environment increasingly hostile to the kinds of idealistic visions such as he was contemplating, Karsten evidently felt the need to ground his socio-cultural ideals in a more 'scientific' basis. He had also reached the symbolic middle age of 45, when men are want to review their lives and contemplate what remains. In December 1930, he noted in his Notebook:

I have for a long time felt the need to develop my intellectual life more systematically [...] so that good ideas and formulations of thoughts would not disappear from consciousness as quickly as they do now [...] so that [I could develop my] thoughts more systematically [...] [and could] note down things that struck me, happenings, conversations, books etc.28

What he now for the first time committed to paper, but had evidently been pondering at length for some time, was the formulation of a core philosophical thesis which would direct his life and life's work, as this was increasingly being challenged. The first page of what he intended to be the record of his private meditations baldly announced his central philosophical ideal:

I recognize in the first place the immanent Unity of the World and this Unity as the highest spiritual value. The spiritual and the material world as a unity. This unity as the fundamental, the essential, the primary, the infinite.29

An early notation referred to an anonymous article from a German periodical, Neue Rundschau , entitled 'Die Einheid der Welť (The unity of the world). This sketched an account of how recent historical events in European history had brought about an increasing convergence in world affairs. For Karsten the idea

the impressive skyscraper-dominated skyline of American cities such as New York and Chicago.

28 Notebook December 1930, Collection Karsten.

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of 'Die Einheid der Welt' had both teleological and psychological relevance for his vision of a future modern Indonesia. Seen in retrospect, it had already

implicitly formed the basis and goal of his professional work. In formulating

a coherent philosophical basis on which practical policy could be grounded, it also provided Karsten with a moral justification for his work, and for his involvement in a colonial regime, albeit one of which he had always been a

critic.

The ideal of a universal brotherhood, of world unity, as already noted, was

not unique to Karsten at this time. Foremost advocates of such a view in the colony were the adherents of Theosophy, the religion of choice of a dwindling

number of colonial 'progressives', such as those linked to De Stuw and Kritiek en Opbouw (Sears 1996; Locher Schölten 1976, 1980) and of many of the Javanese

intellectuals closely involved in the Javanese cultural revival movement of the

twenties (Van Miert 1996). Noto Soeroto, for instance, the Netherlands-based Javanese aristocrat, poet and intellectual espoused the ideal of a racially inte-

grated society in terms very similar to that explored by Karsten (Fakih 2012;

Karels 2010; Djajadiningrat-Nieuwenhuis 1993). Noto Soeroto defined as the 'greatest Indonesian problem' of the day the need for 'the formation of a new

society in a tropical land in which different races, each with their own talents and capacities would organically find their own position'. He believed that this would only be possible when 'the person living in the tropics ( tropenmensch ) is able to live to his full potential, which is to say, when the Indonesian spiritually, politically as well as economically forms part of a new society' (Noto Soeroto i93i:98-9)-30

One prominent contemporary colonial response to the worsening tensions that appeared to pre-empt the embryonic views that Karsten was beginning to articulate at this time was a publication by De Kat Angelino, a colonial bureaucrat. In his three-volume work Staatkundig beleid en bestuurszorg in Nederlandsch-Indië (Government policy and administration in the Nether- lands Indies) (1929-1931), De Kat also argued the case for creating a racially and culturally integrated future society in the Indies (Taselaar 1992).31 Inter-

30 As a member of the Nederlands-Indische Verbond (Netherlands Indies Association) Noto Soeroto advocated an association between Hollanders and Indonesians to form 'a new society'. Amongst its principles was the 'fight against racism and racist assumptions' which would have 'broad international significance', and legislative recognition of racial equality which would find acceptance from 'the best amongst Indonesians' (Noto Soeroto 1931:110).

3 1 Chapter titles of De Kat's first volume were: I. The meeting of East and West; 2. The call of leadership; 3. The spirit of the West; 4. The soul of the East; 5. The synthesis in cultures; 6.

Synthesis in History.

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nationally, as well as the aforementioned Keyserling, the Japanese and Indian intellectuals Kakuzo Okakura and Rabindranath Tagore, were widely read and celebrated for advocating an East-West cultural dialogue (Akagawa forthcom- ing; Bonnett 2004:81-4, 107-22; Kämpchen 2011). Tagore in particular, who was seen in the West as 'the mouthpiece' of the East and as advocating 'the need [for the East] to assimilate the good qualities of the West' (Kämpchen 2011:7), was widely quoted by Javanese nationalists.32

Although Karsten briefly referenced Tagore, whom he had met during the latter's visit to Bali and Java in the 1930s,33 Notebook entries show that to amplify the socio-psychological implications of his vision of a world unity Karsten was increasingly attracted to the writings of Carl Gustavjung. In particular, Karsten appeared to have been attracted to Jung's writing on the concept and significance of 'the collective', the importance of 'the unconscious', and the function of 'the psyche' in formulating how the contemporary world with its distinct cultural and racial divisions might evolve towards a future ideal unity.

Karsten's use of each ofjung's concepts was, of course, hardly unique as they had become standard referents in a broader European cultural discourse. In particular, as Hans Pols (2007) has shown, psychological theory was becoming increasingly important in colonial discourse with reference to the character of native society. The 'native psyche' came to form a core element in the conservative interpretation of the inherent 'nature' of the colonial subject and used to justify the correctness or failure of particular colonial policies. A leading expo-

nent of this 'psychological perspective' was J.H.F. Kohlbrugge, the former colonial psychologist-turned-professor of ethnography at the university of Utrecht.

Critical of liberal reformers' emphasis on the intellectual training of the native, he argued instead that the psychological nature of 'the native' was such that it required a gradual programme of broad moral and cultural development, a view not dissimilar to that of Karsten.34 But for Karsten, psychology - or, at

32 Tagore was regularly referred to by contributors to the Javanese nationalist journal Weder- opbouw in the 1920s, and also by Noro Soeroto in his 1931 tract. This Javanese nationalist discourse was largely sidelined by the later Indonesian anti-colonial nationalist move-

ment.

33 Karsten describes Tagore as personifying the tradition of India's intellectual and cultural history committed to a double task: 'disseminate the wisdom of the ancients in a contemporary style and to demonstrate in person and by his teachings how a Hindu lifestyle can be adapted to new circumstances' (Notebook August 1936, Collection Karsten).

34 The psychologist J.H.F. Kohlbrugge appears to have been an early exponent of use of the concept of 'the psyche' to explain the Javanese character; see Kohlbrugge 1907. He also

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least, Jung's key psychological concepts - had a significance beyond colonial policy-making: it was the key to what might be termed his theory on cultural

evolution.

The accumulation of detailed references to Jung in Karsten's Notebook in the course of the 1930s suggests a close reading of the consecutive publications (presumably read in the German original) of Jung's works which appeared, often in revised and republished form, in the late twenties and thirties (Camp- bell 1976: Appendix). It was particularly the themes ofjung's 'Die Erdbedingth- eit der Psyche' (1927) (The structure of the psyche) and 'Das Seelenprobleem des modernen Menschen' (1928) (The spiritual problem of Modern Man), and 'The concept of the collective unconscious' (1936 [1972]) as well as his writing on Western and Eastern cultures that, given the almost contemporary frag- mentary references to them in Karsten's Notebook, appear to have been most influential. Karsten must have responded immediately to the content and tone ofjung's 1928 (revised 1931) lengthy essay on 'the modern condition', with its stark criticism of colonial practice and admiration for the integrity of the East.

It appeared to directly confirm his own views. Like Jung, Karsten too had criticized what Jung described as 'the insatiable lust' and the 'megalomania' of Western society in appropriating the rest of the world. Karsten also had, from the beginning, been appalled by the conditions generated by colonialism which, in Jung's words, had set 'the whole of the East in turmoil with our science and technology and exact[ed] tribute from it' and by the arrogant assumption that 'Christianity is the only truth' (Jung cited in Campbell 1976:475). But above all, it was 'the emphasis in Jung's writing on the primacy of inner experience and on the reality of the psychic world' (Clarke 1994:5) that spoke to Karsten's

own concerns.

For Jung the essence of the 'modern problem' in the West was the discon- nection between the 'dark stirrings of the unconscious' and 'our rational world order' (Jung cited in Campbell 1976:463). For Karsten the town planner, urban Javanese faced a similar condition in the contrast they experienced between

their internalized traditional life values and the modernity of the European- dominated city. Since, however, the world in Java had now been irrevocably altered by colonialism, in line with Jung's assessment of the European Karsten believed that internal moral order of the Javanese could only be re-established by reconnecting their inner spiritual existence to the realities of the new material world. This had, at least implicitly, been Karsten's concern in articulating

explained the emerging nationalist movement in psychological terms; see Kohlbrugge 1927.

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his planning principles for the renewal of the colonial cities and the construction of modern Javanese homes expressed a decade earlier. But now it was the mental process through which such a readjustment might occur that preoc- cupied him. The problem Karsten wanted to resolve for himself was, of course, based on two key assumptions that he was not inclined to question: that, firstly, the Javanese middle class had indeed become, like modern Europeans, alienated from their cultural roots; and, secondly, that it was a modern European- styled modernity that Javanese needed to adjust to.

Specific references to Jung's discussion of the psyche begin to appear in his Notebook early in 1930, where Karsten refers to Jung's 'geological conception of personality' that Jung had developed in 1928 (Noll 1994:99-100) and the role of the psyche as the dynamic element driving the evolution of civilization and culture explored in 'Die Erdbedingtheit der Psyche' and 'Das See- lenprobleem des modernen Menschen', (Odajnk 1976:4-6). Simply put, Jung suggested that through the material transformation of an idea (for instance, through magic or ritual) psychic energy in both primitive and contemporary society entered the material world to provide it with a spiritual dynamic. This was the case

[s]o long as all goes well [...] But no sooner are one or two channels of the psyche activity blocked up than phenomenon of obstruction appear [...]

and we are at war with ourselves.

jung cited in Campbell 1976:463

For Jung, 'canalizing the psychic energy into an object or activity' (Odajnk 1976:5-6) through externally imposed 'channels' was the key to transforming mindless behaviour into autonomous acts of will. Armed with Jung's theory, Karsten portrayed the task of the planner of the urban Javanese's domestic and urban environment, as the 'canalizer of psychic energy' 'channelling' the unconscious behaviour of its occupants towards 'modernity' until eventually they would act as a consequence of conscious will. Only through 'leadership' and planning of the urban environment and the development of modified cultural forms could the new urban Javanese be 'trained' to act autonomously in appropriate ways in the new circumstances of the colonial city.

Jung gave to the concept of the psyche, as the essence of the human being, quite literal dimensions. It was, he concluded:

a thing of such infinite complexity that it can be served and studied from a great many sides [...] the psyche is the only phenomenon that is given to us immediately and therefore is the sine qua non of all experience [...]

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Consciousness seems to stream into us from outside in the form of sense- perceptions. We see, hear, taste and smell the world so are conscious of the world.

jung cited in Campbell 1976:23-4

But it was the 'the underlying uniformity of our reactions' to these sensory stimuli that Jung wanted to emphasize. This revealed that embedded in the psyche of all individuals were universal 'archetypes', or shared precepts common to all humanity, that made up the 'collective unconscious'. It was what linked individuals together, but also where the transaction could take place between modernity - contemporary sensory perceptions - and tradition - the value system based on the accumulated cultural beliefs and practices of a society.

It was this 'collective unconscious' that the modern man needed to become conscious of if modern society was to advance.

Understanding the role of the 'psyche' provided Karsten with the vital miss- ing element in his ideas about cultural change. It provided the solution to the puzzle that he first addressed in his articles for De Taak , of how a reshaped external environment might work its influence on the individual.35 He now had a clear model for explaining how the transformation from the tradition-bound Javanese to the modern Javanese urban dweller could take place. Closely echo-

ing Jung's account, Karsten described by means of an elaborate series of dia- grams his own model of how the psyche, as the primary sensory organ in which the 'collective unconscious' was embedded in each individual, could be gradually modified. Representing the psyche literally as an organ in his Notebook, his cryptic notations of how this organ operated are almost indecipherable;

however, in broad terms they showed how different kinds of sensory inputs occurred and consequently how, if these could be controlled, the Javanese psyche could be expected to respond.

What was crucial, though, asjung had emphasized, was that ultimately '[t]he process of adaptation requires a directed conscious function characterized by inner consistency and logical coherence' on the part of the individual (Jung cited in Storr 1983:60). Only if properly marshalled and ordered could the psychological tensions produced by the cultural and social bipolarities of colonial life have a potentially positive effect on the workings of the psyche, to become a potential source for dynamic and coherent progress. The key to this, implicitly, as it was for Jung, was the presence of leaders to guide cultural development

35 Undated notations in 1942 also refer to earlier annotations made in 1934. Notebook 1942, Collection Karsten.

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to select appropriate 'sensory perceptions' and to 'canalize' the energy it produced. For Jung, it was clear that the majority of people were incapable of recognizing their destiny since 'mankind is, in essentials, psychologically still in a state of childhood [and that] [t]he vast majority needs authority, guidance, law' (Jung cited in Campbell 1976:401). Karsten had implicitly asserted the same in 1917 with regard to the Javanese and continued to emphasize the leadership role of the Westerner. While this sounded almost indistinguishable from the arrogance of conventional colonial assumptions that he himself had rejected, Karsten's criticism of colonial ' rassenwaan ' (racialism) indicated he was thinking of some 'ideal' notion of leadership (Karsten 1917). Karsten's increasing use of such psychological terminology perhaps also enabled him now to bypass, or at least neutralize, the echoes of the racialist assumptions embedded in the conventional colonial discourses of the day present in his own thesis.

Applied to colonial society, this psychological model also formed the basis for imagining how a collective based on a synthesis between European and Indonesian cultures could develop. By becoming conscious of their respective 'collective unconscious', Europeans and Indonesians would, he assumed, be able and willing to articulate and draw from the wisdom of the past cultures of both. From this, and extending his earlier observations about the 'new world' emerging in America and the nature of the Javanese character, Karsten developed an even grander, if somewhat convoluted, model for achieving 'the unity of the world' based on the possibility of a cultural synthesis between the West (Europe, America and Russia) and the East. It was a theoretical formula based on the assumed psycho-cultural characteristics of East and West and was to form the basis of the final phase in the development of Karsten's thinking:

Europe is the carrier of A [the conscious individual unaware of the unconscious collective] which it defends. The East is the traditional carrier of B [individuals trapped in an unconscious collective] and therefore has the role of forming the link between the old B condition [unconscious collective] and the new B-A condition [unconscious collective made conscious]. America is typically the new B reaction [that is, where individuals are becoming conscious of the unconscious] to [the old] A but without the old B elements, while Russia is typically a new B [that is, where individuals are conscious of the unconscious] reaction to [old] A with old B elements.36

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This penultimate stage in a development which, already in the early nine-

teen thirties, he had envisaged as a conceptual pathway towards his ultimate vision of world unity, could be readily conflated with much contemporary orthodoxy. It appeared to be based on little more than the conventional dichot- omy of a rational West and a spiritual and mystic East, the starting point for

numerous alternative visions of an East-West cultural 'synthesis'. The primary

difference, however, was Karsten's insistence on a modern, 'scientific' expla- nation rather than on what he regarded as the pseudo-religious notions of

Theosophy. It also assumed the outcome would take the form of a culturally enriched modernity, underpinned by technology and driven by the dynamic of a modified system of capitalism. It assumed, in the final analysis, the inevitabil-

ity of the hegemony of a Western-styled modernity.

Karsten and Indonesian Nationalism

Although Karsten consistently expressed his interest in, and concern for, the development of Javanese society, his later Notebook entries contain numerous implicit criticisms of the more radical Indonesian demands for political freedom. While there are few specific references to the political debates regarding Indonesian independence circulating at the time, his abstract reflections on world unity clearly shaped the few oblique observations that he did commit to his private Notebook about Indonesia's future. Expressed publically in the politically charged environment of the 1930s, it would have carried a clear message for Indonesia's nationalist leaders: the unity of the world implied the rejection of Indonesian separatism. Karsten's early articulation of belief in a 'spiritual' form of world unity carried this notably prescriptive message:

Recognition of the Unity as the highest Order, of its role as guide, thus makes each connection with a grouping in a sense a sacrament, a holy bond [...] Thus each group is essentially of a higher order than its constituent parts [...] the human individual is thus subordinate to the unity of all mankind. And because of this hierarchy, our entire personal and social life must be based on this religious insight.37

More specifically, it implied a more fundamental conception of the value of freedom, which, in the privacy of his Notebook, he lectured these leaders

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lies not in being free - of being unbound - but in the possibility of enter- ing the true bondedness of a [sense of] piety. An unfree people or ethnic group then does not have the right to 'freedom' in the sense of being unbound, but in the sense of [being freed from] a self-chosen, self-con- structed imprisonment. In relation to that it may and must struggle against and throw off that which prevents liberation.38

This was at base a reformulation of what he had stated in 1917 and directly reflected the principles of what he later incorporated in drawing up the colony's town-planning regulations. The modern desire for total freedom - whether at a cultural or political level - was dangerous as it involved the destruction of the 'collectivity' and the pursuit of false dreams. Town planning and the careful modulation of traditional cultural forms was, by contrast, focussed on buttressing, in a material sense, the ideal of an ordered and well-integrated 'collectivity'.

Karsten provided one public summary of his thoughts on social psychology and the possibility of a new world order that he had been privately contemplating in a succinct paper in Kritiek en Opbouw in 1939, entitled (in English trans- lation) 'On the individualistic and collective tendencies in Asian development' (Karsten 1939). Here he expressed his criticism of the development of modern individualism in Asia which, he argued, had given rise to the appropriation of dangerous and outdated ideas from the West. The article is a barely disguised reference to the political activism of the Indonesian nationalist movement and as close as Karsten came to criticizing it directly, publicly or privately. In contrast to his positive response to the nationalist discourse of the Wederopbouw group two decades earlier, which he had regarded positively as an example of a 'coming to consciousness', he was now forced to recognize that the contemporary Indonesian nationalist movement had rejected these, for him, early promising tendencies.39

While he did not of course see the 'end result' of either his town-planning regulations or of the Indonesian nationalist movement, he continued contemplating a post-war and a possible post-colonial future during his incarceration in a Japanese internment camp. He continued to reject the possibility of any formal national independence for Indonesia. Rather, he saw (or hoped for)

39 Later, with news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the apparent inevitability of war, he appeared to accept with equanimity the fact that 'generally no Indonesian is really pro-Dutch' (Notebook 7-12-1941, Collection Karsten).