Muslims and Matriarchs: Cultural Resilience in Indonesia through Jihad and Colonialism

2. Shapes of the House

TWO Shapes of the House The reformist Padri War did not end because of a Dutch military triumph; Tuanku Imam Bondjol ceased his attack on the matriarchate from a position of strength. An ideological shift in Mecca, the temporary defeat of Wahhabism, and the Tuanku’s ultimate conscientiousness brought an end to the civil war. Following the Tuanku’s exile, the Dutch colonial government wasted no time in incorporating western Sumatra into its empire. The Dutch state had taken over the territory of the bankrupt Netherlands East India Company at the end of the eighteenth century. So the colonialism of the nineteenth century was beholden to more than a board of directors and investors; it was to be representative of the Dutch nation. Nineteenth-century colonialism was invasive and comprehensive.1 The Dutch administrators who followed the soldiers tried to reshape Minangkabau at the level of the village and the family. And they were particularly attentive to the most striking aspect of the matriarchate—the iconic longhouse. The Shapes of the House: Exteriors From the 1970s through the 1990s, the 100-rupiah coin—used for everything from bus fare to phone booths—featured a Minangkabau longhouse, or rumah gadang (figure 2.1). This structure is both a moral space and a symbol of Minangkabau custom. Although the forms of homes in West Sumatra have always 1. On Dutch colonialism, see chapter 1 and the conclusion of Elsbeth Locher-Scholten, Sumatran Sultanate and Colonial State: Jambi and the Rise of Dutch Imperialism, 1830–1907 (Ithaca: Cornell SEAP, 2003). Figure 2.1. Longhouse on the 100rupiah coin. 2. Summarized in Dobbin, Islamic Revivalism, 231–34; Kenneth R. Young, “The Cultivation System in West Sumatra: Economic Stagnation and Political Stalemate,” in Indonesian Economic History in the Dutch Colonial Era, ed. Anne Booth, W. J. O’Malley, and Anna Weidemann (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1990). 3. John S. Ambler, “Historical Perspectives on Sawah Cultivation and the Political and Economic Context for Irrigation in West Sumatra,” Indonesia 46 (1988): 49–51. 4. Freek Colombijn, “A Dutch Polder in the Sumatran Mountains: Nineteenth Century Colonial Ideals of the West Sumatran Peasant and Landscape,” in Environmental Challenges in South-East Asia, ed. Victor T. King (Surrey, UK: Curzon, 1998). On the colonial bureaucracy, see Gusti Asnan, Pemerintahan Sumatera Barat dari VOC hingga Reformasi (Yogyakarta: Citra Pustaka, 2006). 5. Taufik Abdullah, “Minangkabau 1900–1927: Preliminary Studies in Social Development” (M.A. thesis, Cornell University, 1967), 36–37. 6. Mestika Zed, “Melayu Kopidaun: Eksploitasi Kolonial dalam Sistim Tanam Paksa Kopi di Minangkabau Sumatera Barat (1847–1908)” (S2 thesis, Universitas Indonesia, 1983). 35 Shapes of the House been changing, the traditional longhouse became conceptualized and crystallized primarily during the period of the coffee cultivation system (1847–1908). The year 1847 brought the cultuurstelsel, a system for the forced cultivation of coffee, to the highlands of western Sumatra.2 With this, the Dutch set up a mechanism for maintaining a “native” managerial corps—including the positions of kepala nagari and tuanku laras that were first introduced in 1823.3 A subordinate native bureaucracy was created in parallel with the colonial civil service—the Dutch resident in Padang, assistant residents in the main highland towns, and controleurs in larger villages. Initially, the kepala nagari was responsible for enforcing the collection and delivery of coffee, receiving a bonus for success or considerable jail time for failure.4 By the 1860s, a newer position, the penghulu suku rodi, was introduced to manage both coffee collection and the fulfillment of corvée duties.5 In this period, Minangkabau began sarcastically to call themselves “leaf-coffee Malays,” in reference to the scraps of harvested bushes from which they would brew a weak beverage.6 It was for most a dif- ficult time. 7. Marcel Vellinga, “A Family Affair: The Construction of Vernacular Minangkabau Houses,” Indonesia and the Malay World 32, no. 92 (2004): 106. 8. Si Satie gelar Maharadja Soetan, “Partjakapan (paroendingan) Mamboeweh Roemah,” 15 November 1892, Leiden MS. Or., 5380 (gevolgd door MS. Or. 5831)/VRSC 690. Portion of a folio. Section one of four. 9. E. W. A. Ludeking, Natuur- en Geneeskundige Topographie van Agam (Westkust van Sumatra) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1867), 162. Ludeking lived in West Sumatra in 1853 and again in 1856– 1857. 10. Elizabeth E. Graves, The Minangkabau Response to Dutch Colonial Rule in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell SEAP, 1981), 93–94...