Banditry in West Java, 1869-1942

7 From Bandit Novels to Detective Stories

120 The years 1915–20 in the Dutch East Indies have been described by some authors — such as the historian Henri Baudet — as the watershed between the modern age and the legendary tempo doeloe, the good old days. The attitudes of European colonists towards the locals changed in this period: they grew interested in learning more about the colony’s indigenous people, in part so that they could control them better. For centuries the city of Batavia had been cut off from the surrounding countryside, not only physically but also by its laws; for instance, all the inhabitants were obliged to carry travel documents when leaving the city. Around 1880, Batavians started to lose their patience with the uncivilized rural areas around the city. A couple of decades later, there were attempts to reorganize both the governance and the infrastructure of the Ommelanden. This was a job for specialists, who were brought in from institutes of higher education in the metropole. The arrival of these new Europeans in the archipelago made practical experience of colonial administration an increasingly rare commodity. As a result, Europeans began to rely on intermediaries who understood the indigenous culture. These intermediaries also played an important role in gathering information about crime, including banditry. The modern age It is certainly true that after the First World War, there were many new elements of the political and socioeconomic landscape, elements which C H A P T E R 7 From Bandit Novels to Detective Stories 07 BWJ.indd 120 12/13/10 2:00:23 PM From Bandit Novels to Detective Stories 121 had not yet existed ten years earlier. First came the colony’s early political independence movements, such as Sarekat Islam and Budi Utomo. Social services also began to bear fruit, with credit banks, agricultural programmes, and a growing variety of educational offerings. The entire street scene was transformed, as motor vehicles gradually replaced horses and carriages, and the modern shopping streets filled with European customers. One representative of the modern age is A.F. Tillema, who is sometimes said to have ushered in the antithesis of tempo doeloe. Born in Friesland in 1870, Tillema left for the Dutch East Indies at the age of 26 to work as a pharmacist. In Semarang he converted a small business affiliated with the pharmacy where he worked into a modern soft drink factory. Tillema believed that pure, clean drinking water was the basis of good health. He put up a slogan for his own brand of mineral water (‘Hygeia-waterlemonade are unequalled.’) on a large billboard displayed prominently in the centre of Semarang. When the city council forced him to remove it, he had it suspended from a hot-air balloon and flown over Semarang. But even more than hygiene, photography was Tillema’s true passion. After he made his fortune with drinking water, he used it to publicize the poor living conditions of the indigenous population. Like Multatuli’s famous novel Max Havelaar, Tillema’s photographs documented the lives of local people.1 He was especially interested in prisons, criminals, and the margins of society. Europeans were eager to penetrate deeper into Indonesian society. Around 1900, rapid development in Europe lent new ambition to the colonial project. As part of its ‘modern imperialism’, the Netherlands expanded the territory under its control, and the influence of local rulers over governmental affairs was gradually diminished. One consequence of this was that the colonial authorities had no choice but to learn more about their indigenous subjects — after all, knowledge was power. A whole series of adat collections were published, detailing the customs of the archipelago’s people. In De indologen (an indoloog was a European expert in the cultures of the East Indies), Fasseur describes how students of colonial administration were given a thorough grounding in the archipelago and its people, to prepare them for their future careers and teach them how to maintain ‘order and tranquillity’ (orde en rust) in the colony. The new science of anthropology was used by the authorities to gather more and more information about the colony’s people. Yet this information did not suggest many strategies for keeping urban and semi-urban areas under control. The colonial administration was confronted with major new 07 BWJ.indd 121 12/13/10 2:00:23 PM 122 Banditry in West Java, 1869–1942 problems, especially in and around Batavia, a veritable...