In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

136 Around the mid-twentieth century, Batavian banditry started to disappear from popular Dutch historiography. Two books were published just after the Second World War: the memoirs of I.H. Misset, Batavia’s chief of police, and a book by Jan Fabricius entitled Tempo doeloe, one entire chapter of which is devoted to Hinne and Si Pitung. The name Hinne also cropped up occasionally in the magazine Moesson, produced for a Dutch readership with roots in the Dutch East Indies.1 Hinne’s truncheon still lies in an attic in Oldemarkt, in northern Overijssel. Unfortunately, his letters were recently thrown away by a great-grandson. The Indonesian collective memory is in a somewhat better state, and the memory of the bandit Si Pitung is still alive and kicking. He is the popular hero of the Betawi, the ‘real’ native Jakartans. According to oral tradition, Si Pitung lived at the end of the nineteenth century and was a thorn in the side of the colonial authorities, as one of the many outlaws who prowled around Batavia and the Ommelanden. But legend has it that Si Pitung was more than just a bandit; he possessed supernatural gifts that enabled him to outwit the authorities time and again. It is interesting to see what his story has to teach us about banditry in the Dutch East Indies. We shall see in the following pages that there is nothing new about today’s interest in documenting the popular history of Batavia/Jakarta. Writing popular local history has long been part of the city’s culture, and it was influenced by the ideas of the people who lived in Batavia around 1900. The resulting stories were shaped by oral tradition, the press, the C H A P T E R 8 The Bandit Si Pitung and Popular History 08 BWJ.indd 136 12/13/10 2:01:44 PM The Bandit Si Pitung and Popular History 137 theatre and later the cinema. In this chapter I shall try to shed some light on this process by studying the stories of the legendary jago Si Pitung. We shall look at the interaction between newspaper articles, films and indigenous literary art forms such as lenong and rancak,2 before turning to consider the value of the story of Si Pitung as a historical source. The colonial sources The folkloristic figure of Si Pitung can be traced back to a historical person of that name who lived at the end of the nineteenth century. The first items about him appear in the Malay daily newspaper Hindia Olanda in the summer of 1892. That he was not well known at that time is clear from the different spellings of his name: sources refer to him variously as ‘a certain Bitoeng’ or ‘Pitang’, but after a few months his name is spelt consistently as ‘Si Pitoeng’.3 It is immediately apparent from the earliest newspaper reports that he was a colourful figure. On 18 June 1892, Hindia Olanda reported that the sheriff of Tanah Abang had searched the house of one Bitoeng in the Sukabumi kampong in Kebayoran, south of Batavia. He found stolen goods including a black coat, a sheriff’s cap and the uniforms used by the bandit and his accomplices when entering kampongs, dressed as police officers, to rob houses.4 A month later, during another search, a hidingplace was discovered under the house, containing 125 guilders and the proceeds from two big recent robberies targeting the homes of Nonya de C. and Hadji Sapiudin, the latter being a Buginese man from Marunda.5 Si Pitung had forced his way into this haji’s home with five accomplices (Abdul Rachman, Moedjeran, Merais, Dji-ih and Gering) in the night of 30–31 July 1892, armed with pistols. One of the bandits threatened the owner with a firearm while his comrades fired warning shots to keep the neighbours at bay.6 In August 1892, Si Pitung and some of his companions were arrested after the police was tipped off by the village chief, Kebayoran, who received 50 ringgit in return for the tip.7 In the spring of 1893, Si Pitung and his friend Dji-ih staged a mysterious escape from the prison of the village Meester Cornelis. An internal investigation of this escape yielded little useful information. The four prison guards fell under suspicion but all denied any involvement in the escape. One fellow-convict admitted having given Si Pitung a pick-axe. It further...

Share