Banditry in West Java, 1869-1942

9 The Fight Against Crime

155 Notwithstanding the long history of banditry in the Dutch East Indies, the story of the concerted effort to stamp it out does not start until 1903. Voices had been raised earlier in favour of forming a more modern police force, but it was the protests that erupted in response to the plague of robberies in 1902–3 that finally compelled the colonial authorities to take action. Even Si Pitung’s annus mirabilis of 1893 had yielded a score of only 15 robberies, and in the following few years the numbers had dwindled further. But in 1902 Batavia and the surrounding area was beset by a dizzying 122 incidents of rampok. The rest of the archipelago witnessed a similar rise in this kind of crime, albeit to a lesser extent. One difference between the robberies that took place around 1902–3 and those in other periods was the degree to which the European élite now suddenly found itself the target of the bandits. Europeans are also found among the perpetrators; in some cases they masterminded operations and supplied firearms.1 The Malay press attributed the failure of the police to achieve any results to European involvement in the gangs.2 Europeans and indigenous people alike were in a state of alarm. Du Perron recalls this period in Het land van herkomst: As a child I had a vague fear that the robbers might suddenly burst forth from the river, in spite of the ravine. The tongtong (a hollowedout wooden trunk that was struck to sound the alarm) was heard C H A P T E R 9 The Fight Against Crime 09 BWJ.indd 155 12/13/10 2:06:42 PM 156 Banditry in West Java, 1869–1942 almost every evening those days; there was the amok tongtong: the manslaughter tongtong, and the fire tongtong: the servants heard the difference immediately, but I didn’t; in my mind it was always about the bandits. Especially on the Buitenzorg side, there was one robbery after another.3 The realization that anyone might fall victim to rampok, even Europeans, made the robberies of 1902 to 1904 front page news. In later years, around 1918, the number of robberies would actually increase in absolute terms, but they attracted far less coverage because very few of the victims were European. The 1902 wave of banditry even prompted questions in Parliament. Two different solutions were proposed: changes to the system of private estates and the reorganization of the police force. Rampok in the press: Gentis and Gantang The autumn of 1902 witnessed the biggest robbery in the history of the archipelago, a case that was even reported in the international press.4 Two Europeans, Herman and Cornelis Gentis, together with their indigenous accomplice Natadisastra, committed an armed robbery of the Javasche Bank in the middle of Batavia. The incident had many features of an ordinary case of rampok, including the use of force and firearms, but was remarkable partly because the two main perpetrators were European and partly because of the enormous sum of money involved: an astonishing 110,000 guilders was stolen, a real fortune for the time. The event inspired an 1,800-line poem in Malay.5 This spectacular crime may have encouraged others, such as the armed bandits who attracted attention with their theatrical violence the following year.6 One Gantang injected a more frivolous note into the topic of robbery, providing Batavia’s newspaper readers with months of entertainment. His story is also significant in that it demonstrates the powerful effect of continuing rumours. Gantang’s image was to some extent created by the press, and the pressure for an arrest steadily mounted. In consequence, a previously unknown Javanese man alleged to be Gantang was apprehended, on rather questionable grounds. A Malay-language newspaper reported in 1902 that a robber leader called Gantang, who hated the rich and was generous to the poor, was active in the vicinity of Buitenzorg. The Malay press reported that he 09 BWJ.indd 156 12/13/10 2:06:43 PM 157 The Fight Against Crime gave all his spoils away, that he was a ladies’ man, and that he possessed arcane secrets.7 After a lull in crime, the number of robberies suddenly soared in the autumn of 1903, prompting a journalist from the newspaper the Locomotief to go to the Ommelanden to investigate.8 In something of a...