A Prince in a Republic—The Life of Sultan Hamengku Buwono IX of Yogyakarta by John Monfries (review)

In June 1940, Dojoratun, the son of a ruling sultan, succeeded his father and took the dynastic name of Hamengku Buwono IX and the title of Sultan of Yogyakarta. Yogyakarta was then a principality of not quite 3,200 sq. km. (only slightly larger than the Hawaiian island of Oahu), with a population of 1.8 million people. It was a remnant principality of Mataram, the last Javanese kingdom that ruled the East and Central Javanese regions in the seventeenth century. As a scion of that dynasty, Hamengku Buwono IX had considerable prestige and retained it for his lifetime. While yet a youth, Dojoratun was being prepared for ruling this small, but important, principality. He lived with a Dutch family in the Netherlands while in secondary school, and later attended Leiden University, where he studied “Indology,” a discipline consisting of cultural studies of the East Indies and Dutch policies that formed the backbone of Dutch rule there. He was twenty-four when he assumed the title of Sultan.

Hamengku Buwono IX proved compliant with Dutch authority until it was replaced by Japanese occupiers in 1942. He then passively cooperated with the Japanese. However, in 1945, he decided not to cooperate with the returning Dutch, but threw in his lot with the Indonesian nationalists, inviting them to establish their capital at Yogyakarta, away from the Dutch capital city of Batavia-Jakarta, where they would have room to maneuver politically. He also entered the republican cabinet, and, when most of the other Indonesian leaders were imprisoned by the Dutch in 1948, he assumed the role of acting president. In what many regard as his finest moment, he stood up to those Dutch officials who came to force him to cooperate or be banished. He held firm in the face of the ultimatum, stating, “I didn’t invite you gentlemen to come to Yogyakarta.” They left with their mission unaccomplished, knowing that without his aid a central Javanese state loyal to the Dutch could not be fashioned and that international pressure would force Indonesian independence on terms favorable to the republican side. Indeed, that’s precisely what happened soon afterward.

Hamengku Buwono IX left national politics in 1952 amidst a policy quarrel and remained outside the political arena for some fourteen years. Upon the downfall of Sukarno in 1966, he returned as a triumvir with Adam Malik and General Suharto and assumed control of economic development as coordinating minister in the cabinet. He brought together many economists trained abroad and gave them key government ministries to run, as well as the ability to negotiate debt rescheduling and to acquire new loans to rebuild the national economic infrastructure. His work led directly to the reinvigorated Indonesian economy of the 1970s that was to become an important model for “Third World” development. This was Hamengku Buwono IX’s second great contribution to the Indonesian nation-state. But triumvirates, being informal alliances, inevitably lose their efficacy, and in the mid-1970s he was shuttled off to the backwater position of vice president. When his influence sank further, he resigned and went into retirement in 1979. He died some ten years later, still with his dynastic name and title, which had been legally certified by republican law, even though nearly all other such titles and claims held by other nobles had been abnegated.

In her introduction to this volume, the prominent Australian scholar Virginia Hooker notes that Hamengku Buwono IX was an enigmatic figure. He was not charismatic, and he was seldom the originator of grand programs or schemes. He said little that was quotable. Other commentators assessed that his dry and retiring personality was deliberate, reflecting the historical royal Javanese notions that forthrightness was “crass” and using inference was a “polite” tool of persuasion. In this volume, John Monfries discusses these puzzling assessments—somewhat briefly—and expresses his hope that the matter will be clarified...