Banditry in West Java, 1869-1942

6 Progress and Degeneration

107 In the early twentieth century, progressive politicians and leaders of public opinion sought to improve the poor social conditions in the Ommelanden through new infrastructure, a more effective police force, and changes in ownership structures on the private estates. Increasingly, the Ommelanden were viewed as the antithesis of civilized existence in the colonial capital of Batavia. The popular media in the colony, including the Indonesian press, were clearly influenced by the late nineteenth-century discourse on progress and its dark side, degeneration. This discourse, which cannot be seen in isolation from the rising urban middle class, had a profound influence on later descriptions of bandits, up to and including Hobsbawm’s well-known study. Progress versus degeneration In the colonial period, the metaphor of the family was used to distinguish among the world’s peoples. Skin colour (‘race’) was seen as parallel to gender; whites were superior to coloured people, and men took precedence over women.1 White men were at the top of the hierarchy and coloured women at the bottom. Until the nineteenth century, differences between peoples were explained in terms of degeneration from the ideal, which was the white man Adam. By drifting away from this common ancestor, some people (under the influence of a different climate, for instance) had become ever further C H A P T E R 6 Progress and Degeneration 06 BWJ.indd 107 12/13/10 1:57:15 PM 108 Banditry in West Java, 1869–1942 removed from the ideal. A competing theory postulated that mankind had been created not in one place (the Garden of Eden), but in many. Some parts of the world had produced less perfect races.2 In the late nineteenth century both of these creationist views were challenged by Darwin’s theory of evolution, first published in 1859. This new theory made it even easier for scientists to devise explanations for purported differences between races. For instance, it seemed only natural that races which had occupied different parts of the planet for long periods had followed different evolutionary paths and therefore differed from one another physically. Moral and intellectual differences could be explained in the same way. Not only evolutionary theory was used to support these conclusions, but also statistics. Scientists began measuring and comparing all sorts of physical traits, identifying a biological basis for social differences. A hierarchy of human races was developed on the basis of anatomical criteria:3 at first, mainly cranial features, but later, limbs, ears, eyebrows, and other body parts as well. Anatomical features were used to deduce the character traits of different races, but not only for that purpose. They could also provide insight into the roles of individuals and groups within their own races. They were used to identify ‘backward’ (or ‘degenerate’) people and groups within European societies, such as prostitutes, Jews, lunatics, the unemployed, and criminals. The major scientists in this field, known as eugenics, included its founder, Francis Galton, and the surgeon Paul Broca, both of whom claimed that the geometry of the body determined the form of the psyche.4 Cesare Lombroso is often mentioned in the same breath as Galton and Broca. An Italian physician, he postulated that thieves and murderers differed fundamentally from ordinary people. According to Lombroso, you could distinguish criminals from other people through their physical traits. He introduced the idea of the ‘born criminal’ — a person who, for reasons both hereditary and environmental, was destined to stand outside the social order. Lombroso’s key term was ‘atavism’, meaning a kind of primitive relic.5 He arrived at his theory after seeing the skull of the notorious bandit Vilella: At the sight of that skull, I seemed to see all of a sudden, lighted up as a vast plain under a flaming sky, the problem of the nature of the criminal — an atavistic being who reproduces in his person the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity and the inferior animals. Thus were explained anatomically the enormous jaws, high cheek bones, prominent superciliary arches, solitary lines in the palms, extreme 06 BWJ.indd 108 12/13/10 1:57:15 PM Progress and Degeneration 109 size of the orbits, handle-shaped ears found in criminals, savages and apes, insensibility to pain, extremely acute sight, tattooing, excessive idleness, love of orgies, and the irresponsible craving of evil for its own sake.6 During his own lifetime, Lombroso saw his...