John Ingleson

Life and Work in Colonial Cities: Harbour Workers in Java in the 1910s and 1920s

history. Certainly, Indonesia was, and is, predominantly an agricultural society, but since the 187os an increasing number of Indonesians have lived in towns and cities, earning their living from the urban economy. In the colonial period many worked in the Indies bureaucracy, while others formed a small but growing professional class of doctors, lawyers, engineers and teachers. From this group came most of the intellectual and organizational leadership of the nationalist movement. Through their writings and speeches we have a reasonably clear picture of their changing perceptions of the world and their struggle to work out what it meant to be an Indonesian in the last three decades of colonial rule. Most urban dwellers, however, were of a very different mental outlook, possessed far fewer marketable skills and were far more concerned with the day-to-day problems of surviving in an often harsh economic and social environment. They left no personal records, no speeches and no newspaper writings, only rarely coming into the public view during disturbances and strikes or as the subjects of government and private socio-economic inquiries. We need to recover these ordinary people from their obscurity in order to see them as far more than passive victims of exploitative colonial structures. By analysing their social and economic situations, their individual and collective aspirations and their changing perceptions of the world they will be seen as important actors in their own right in the urban landscape.

Urban Java during the Depression

The depression devastated export crop earnings from the Netherlands Indies, with consequent severe effects on a colonial economy dependent on them. For many Indonesians in the towns and cities of Java the depression was a time of difficulty but not a disaster — wage cuts, worsened conditions, slower promotions and reduced opportunities for their children may have been partially compensated by a decline in the cost-of-living. Many others, though, lost their jobs and were forced to take lower paid work or eke out a living as best they could with casual or day-wage work wherever they could get it. Some gave up on the cities for the time being and returned to their villages of origin where they were supported by family and relatives.

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Workers, Unions and Politics

In Workers, Unions and Politics. Indonesia in the 1920s and 1930s, John Ingleson revises received understandings of the decade and a half between the failed communist uprisings of 1926/1927 and the Japanese occupation in 1942.

Fear of the kampung, fear of unrest: urban unemployment and colonial policy in 1930s Java

This paper discusses the responses of The Netherlands Indies colonial government to the rise in urban unemployment in Java brought about by the 1930s Depression. At least one in six of the large European/Eurasian population in the colony, and an even larger proportion of urban Indonesian workers, became unemployed as a result of the Depression. The colonial government and the European community were greatly concerned that the growth of unemployment among Europeans would lead to destitution for many, ultimately forcing them into the native kampung 1 . They were also concerned about what they saw as the moral decay of local-born European/Eurasian youth who were unemployed in unprecedented numbers. Furthermore, the European community feared that the growth in unemployment among western-educated Indonesians in the towns and cities in Java would create a fertile recruitment ground for nationalist political parties leading to urban unrest. Fear of the kampung for destitute Europeans, and fear of urban unrest from unemployed western-educated Indonesians, shaped the colonial governments responses to urban unemployment. The impact of the Depression on both Indonesian and European unemployed in the towns and cities in Java triggered lengthy debates on the role of the state in the provision of social security.

Labour Unions and the Provision of Social Security in Colonial Java

Over the last three decades urban history and the history of the working classes have been a major focus of historians of western societies as well as of much of Asia, South America and Africa. The emphasis has gradually shifted from studies of working-class institutions and political formations to national, regional and local studies of working lives, working conditions and working class cultures, more recently with a gender and ethnic focus. The result is a much richer and more nuanced understanding of the process of modernisation and urbanisation and the ways in which ordinary people have been affected by and have adjusted to accelerating social and economic change. Urban history and the history of the emerging working classes in Indonesia are still in their infancy. For the colonial period the focus has been largely on understanding the institutional structures of labour unions and the relationship between labour unions and nationalist political activity. This essay shifts the focus to the provision of welfare and social security. In western societies the connection between labour unions and the provision of social security was very strong. Indeed, many labour unions were created out of friendly societies and other working-class mutual benefit associations. While the evolution of working-class organisations in colonial Java differed from the western model in many important ways, the nexus between labour unions and the provision of social security for urban workers is central to understanding their strength and vitality. Despite the considerable restrictions imposed by the colonial state, labour unions were the largest urban organisations in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1931, when total membership of political parties was around 20,000, there were around 100,000 financial members of labour unions. Many more urban workers had at some time joined a labour union but let their membership lapse, either through fear of retribution, disillusionment with what unions could do for them or simply

The Asian values debate: Accommodating dissident voices

This article focuses on four common assertions in the ‘Asian values’ and ‘Asianisation of Asia’ debates. First, that deference to authority is an intrinsic Asian value. Second, that political pluralism is a Western concept arising from Western cultural values. Third, that a strong civil society is a Western phenomenon. Fourth, that all human rights are not necessarily universal. The article argues that a crucial issue for all Asian countries is the creation of more flexible institutions that provide for their peoples to have a greater say in the decision‐making process. It also argues that Western observers must pay more attention to the countervailing voices to the political and economic elites in Asian societies.