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From Merdeka! to massacre: The politics of sugar in the early years of the Indonesian republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2012

G. Roger Knight
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Abstract

Between 1945 and 1965, what may be broadly defined as the politics of sugar in Indonesia passed through several critical stages. The industrial manufacture of sugar had begun in the Netherlands Indies in the mid-nineteenth century, but after a slump during the 1930s Depression, the industry virtually went into abeyance during the Japanese Occupation (1942–45). After the war, the years of struggle for Merdeka! (freedom) also saw a partial revival of the industry, which continued through national revolution and independence (1949) through to an incremental nationalisation in the late 1950s. Developments in the sugar industry culminated in massacre, rather than merdeka, however. The campaign against the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) which began in 1965 resulted in the murder of labour unionists and peasant activists associated with the sugar industry. This paper traces the course of events from Merdeka to massacre, focusing on the sugar industry of East Java's Brantas valley. Its themes, however, relate to the industry in Java as a whole, and the question of why the commodity production of sugar came to be so deeply embroiled in the politics of the new republic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , October 2012 , pp. 402 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 2012

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References

1 Rochijat, Pipit, ‘Am I PKI or non-PKI?’, Indonesia, 40 (1985): 43–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an extended discussion of the massacres in Kediri and Jombang, see Hermawan Sulistyo, ‘The forgotten years: The missing history of Indonesia's mass slaughter (Jombang-Kediri 1965–1966)’ (Ph.D. diss., Arizona State University, 1997), published in Indonesian as Palu arit di lading tebu: Sejarah pembantaian massal yang terlupakan (Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, 2000)Google Scholar. I am also grateful for valuable insights into the sugar industry both before and during the massacres to Mathias J. Hammer, of the ANU — and see his ‘The Klaten Regency, Central Java, from the revolution to the second land reform, 1945–1965’, paper presented at the Workshop on the politics in early independent Indonesia, 1945–1960, ANU, 27 Jan. 2011. For the general background on Kediri, this paper draws gratefully on Young, Kenneth R., ‘Local and national influences in the violence of 1965’, in The Indonesian killings 1965–1966: Studies from Java and Bali, ed. Cribb, Robert (Clayton: Monash University, Monash Papers on Southeast Asia no. 21, 1990), pp. 68–85Google Scholar.

2 The murder in Jakarta of six of the Indonesian Army's leading generals on 30 Sept./1 Oct. 1965 unleashed a wild rampage, including mass murder, against the PKI and its supporters, which quickly spread across Java, Bali and the rest of Indonesia. The massacres were rarely as ferocious as they were in Kediri, however. Cribb, The Indonesian killings, pp. 1–13; ‘The killings of 1965–66’, ed. Robert Cribb and Michele Ford, special issue, Inside Indonesia, 99 (Jan.–Mar. 2010); Roosa, John, Pretext for mass murder: The September 30th movement and Suharto's coup d’état in Indonesia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

3 The major, regional histories of the industry all conclude with the Depression and its immediate aftermath, namely, Elson, R.E., Javanese peasants and the colonial sugar industry: Impact and change in an East Java residency, 1830–1940 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and the following Ph.D. dissertations: Lukman Soetrisno, ‘The sugar industry and rural development: The impact of cane cultivation for export on rural Java, 1830–1934’ (Cornell University, 1980); M.R. Fernando, ‘Peasants and plantation: The social impact of the European plantation economy in Cirebon residency from the cultivation system to the end of the first decade of the twentieth century’ (Monash University, 1982); Djoko Suryo, ‘Social and economic life in rural Semarang under colonial rule in the later nineteenth century’ (Monash University, 1982). Notable among the exceptions is the agricultural focus of van der Eng's, PierreAgricultural growth in Indonesia (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 224–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Boomgaard, Peter, in ‘Treacherous cane: The Java sugar industry’, in The world sugar economy in war and depression 1914–1940, ed. Albert, Bill and Graves, Adrian (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 157–69Google Scholar, leaves the broader field to the distinguished Indonesian historian Mubyarto (‘The sugar industry’, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 5, 2 [1969]: 37–59). On the rise of ‘smallholder’ production, see Colin Brown, ‘The intensified smallholder cane programme: The first five years’, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 18, 1 (1982): 39–60; Aard J. Hartveld, ‘Raising cane: Linkages, organisations and negotiations in Malang's sugar industry, East Java’ (Ph.D. diss., Landbouwuniversiteit Wageningen, 1996); Spaan, Ernst and Hartveld, Aard, ‘Socio-economic change and rural entrepreneurs in pre-crisis East Java, Indonesia: Case study of a Madurese upland community’, Sojourn, 17, 2 (2002): 274–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mubyarto, ‘The sugar industry: From estate to smallholder cane’, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 13, 2 (1977): 29–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Husken, Frans, ‘Cycles of commercialisation and accumulation in a Central Javanese village’, in Agrarian transformations: Local processes and the state in Southeast Asia, ed. Hart, G., Turton, A. and White, N. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 303–31Google Scholar; Beneath the smoke of the sugar mill, ed. Kano, Hiroyoshi, Husken, Frans and Suryo, Djoko (Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press, 2001)Google Scholar. See also Gordon, Alec, ‘The collapse of Java's colonial sugar system and the breakdown of independent Indonesia's economy’, in Between people and statistics: Essays on modern Indonesian history, ed. Anrooij, F., Kolff, Dirk H.A., van Laanen, Jan T.M. and Telkamp, Gerald J. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1979), pp. 251–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Indonesia, plantations and the “post-colonial” mode of production’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 12, 2 (1982): 168–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Northern Kediri was famously the location of the ‘Modjokuto’ project carried out in the mid-1950s by a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including Clifford Geertz (see his Social history of an Indonesian town, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965Google Scholar).

5 The Handelsvereeniging ‘Amsterdam’ (hereafter HVA) controlled the bulk of colonial-era sugar production in Kediri. See Goedkoop, J.A.M., ‘“Handelsvereeniging, Amsterdam”, 1945–1958: Herstel en heroriëntatie’, Jaarboek voor de Geschiedenis van Bedrijf en Techniek, 7 (1990): 222–26Google Scholar. The ‘company histories’ are: Anonymous, Aangeboden door de Handelsvereeniging ‘Amsterdam’ 1 Januari 1929 (Amsterdam: Directie der Handelsvereeniging ‘Amsterdam’, 1929)Google Scholar, henceforth HVA 1929; Brand, W., 1879–HVA–1979: Honderd jaar geschiedenis der Verenigde HVA Maatschappijen NV (Amsterdam: HVA, 1979)Google Scholar; and Goedhart, Adriaan, Eerherstel voor de plantage: Uit de geschiedenis van de Handelsvereeniging Amsterdam 1879–1983 (Amsterdam: Albini, 1999)Google Scholar.

6 HVA 1929, pp. 7–14; Goedhart, Eerherstel, pp. 32–49.

7 Notulen Bestuursvergaderingen der HVA (herafter HVAN), 1.2.1952/9642, Nationaal Archief, Den Haag (hereafter NA), Collectie Handelsvereeniging ‘Amsterdam’ 2.20.32, nos. 7–10 (detailed HVA documentation of its Kediri sugar factories did not survive the wilful destruction of much of the company's Amsterdam archive early in the 1970s).

8 HVAN 1.4.1955/1000 (drawing on the report of a board member who had recently returned from Java).

9 See the detailed account culled from the contemporary Jakarta press in Colin Brown, ‘Land use policy in the Java sugar industry, 1945–1957’, paper prepared for the ASAA/CAS/ISEAS Conference, Singapore, 1–3 Feb. 1989, pp. 22–3. I am grateful to Professor Brown for providing me with a copy.

10 HVAN 5.2.1954/987. Hanafiah, former Bupati of Rantau, South Kalimantan, was a member of Nahdlatul Ulama and that party's Minister for Agrarian Affairs, 1953–54. His political affiliation with the PKI's main rival would presumably have meant that he had little sympathy with the actions of PKI-affiliated peasant and labour organisations. I am indebted for this information to Dr Steven Drakeley of the University of Western Sydney.

11 HVAN 7.5.1954/989.

12 HVAN 5.3.1954/988; 2.4.1954/989; 7.5.1954/989.

13 HVAN 28.5.1954/991.

14 Djengkol [Jengkol] was not a former sugar factory (Young, ‘Local and national influences’, p. 75 and Pipit, ‘PKI’: 39). The key references to the Djengkol ‘estate’ and what it was used for under the HVA are in HVA 1929, p. 10 and Goedhart, Eerherstel, pp. 48, 151.

15 Jaarverslag (hereafter JV) Administrateur Gending 1951: 28, NA, Archief Koloniale Bank (hereafter KB) 2.20.05/155.

16 For the replacement of women on the night-shift, see, e.g., JV Administrateur Gending 1952: 9, NA KB 2.20.05/155; JV Administrateur Kanigoro 1952: 6, NA KB 2.20.05/118. On the more general point, see Wertheim, W.F., ‘Conditions on sugar estates in colonial Java: Comparisons with Deli’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 24, 2 (1993): 275CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levert, Philip, Inheemsche arbeid in de Java-suikerindustie (Wageningen: Veenman, 1934), pp. 119–20Google Scholar.

17 On the rise of worker organisations, see especially Brown, Colin, ‘The politics of trade union formation in the Java sugar industry, 1945–1949’, Modern Asian Studies, 28, 1 (1994): 77–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For specific examples of strikes and stoppages during the sugar campaign, see, e.g., JV Cultuurmij ‘Gending’ 1950: 3–5; 1952: 3–5, NA KB 2.20.05/1149.

18 JV NHM Factorij Djakarta, 1950(2): 14. NA, Archief Nederlandsche-Handel-maatschappij 2.20.01 (hereafter NHM) 4570.

19 JV HVA 1952:10, NA 2.20.32/3.

20 JV Administrateur Gending 1955: 28, NA KB 2.20.05/155.

21 Rapporten Bandjaratma 7.4. 1955, NA KB 2.20.05/116.

22 HVAN 2.4.1948/914.

23 HVAN 6.10.1950/947; 30 .6.1950/945 and 6.10.1950/947.

24 See Knight, G. Roger, ‘A house of honey: White sugar, brown sugar and the taste for modernity in colonial and postcolonial Indonesia’, Food and Foodways, 17, 4 (2009): 197–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 This kind of Factory White was manufactured by a carbonation process in the same factories in which cane was crushed. George Martineau, in his authoritative Sugar: Cane and beet: An object lesson (London: Pitman and Sons, c.1910), pp. 56–62, singled out Java as the country ‘where carbonation has been adopted in many factories and [where] its use will probably increase with increased demand in Eastern markets for white sugar’. See also Geerligs, H.C. Prinsen, De fabricatie van suiker uit suikerriet op Java: Handboek ten dienste van de suikerriet-cultuur en de rietsuiker-fabriceage op Java, vol. 3 (Amsterdam: De Bussy, 1911), pp. 160–80Google Scholar.

26 ‘Suikerinvoer ordonnantie 1934’, Indisch Verslag, 1 (1935): 45Google Scholar.

27 Mubyarto, ‘The sugar industry’: 37.

28 See Geerligs, H.C. Prinsen, The world's cane sugar industry: Past and present (Altrincham: Norman Rodger, 1912), p. 13Google Scholar; Creutzberg, P., Changing economy of Indonesia (1): Indonesia's export crops 1816–1940 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1975), p. 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 JV NHM Factorij Batavia 1934: 206, NA NHM 4566.

30 See, e.g., Indisch Verslag, 1937 (1): 154.

31 Dutch estimates were that by the late 1930s annual production of indigenous sugar made from cane was something less than 100,000 tons annually. Java's ‘single seller’ sugar organisation, NIVAS, estimated that in 1939 rather less gula Jawa or ‘native’ Java sugar (87,975 tons) had been produced than in 1938 (91,193 tons). See: JV NIVAS 1938–39: 38–9 and 1939–40: 47 in NA NIVAS 2.20.09.03/14 and 15. According to the colonial government's data, the output of what was designated as gula mangkok — a form of cane sugar deriving its name from the half coconut shells in which it was set after boiling down — amounted to 71,584 tons in 1929 and 90,765 in 1940. See Creutzberg, Export crops, pp. 75–6. One colonial ‘reckoning’ c.1918 was that twice as much ‘native’ sugar was made from palm sap as from cane juice (cited in Creutzberg, Export crops, pp. 63–4). If this broad ratio continued to hold good for the remainder of the inter-war period, and allowances are made for under-recording of all kinds of indigenously made sweeteners, it might therefore be speculated that around 1940, Indonesian consumption of brown sugar, in one form or another, amounted to something less than 300,000 tons.

32 JV Koloniale Bank 1953: 7, Amsterdam, Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, no. L1116; JV Cultuurmij Gending 1956: 6, NA KB 2.20.04/1149.

33 JV NHM Factorij Djakarta 1958: 2: 1, NA NHM 4572.

34 See the data for the period 1959–67 in Mubyarto, ‘The sugar industry’: 52–4.

35 NIVAS (Nederlandsch-Indische Vereeniging voor de Afzet van Suiker, Netherlands Indies Association for the Sale of Sugar) was a mouthful in both languages, but under a new Indonesian guise post-1949 it proved to be one of the more enduring of agencies bequeathed to the new Republic by the Dutch.

36 See Societeit Tjomal accounts for 1936, in NA, Archief Tjomal 133. Understandably, given his worth to the undertaking as the most senior of the local Indonesian power holders, he never paid his bill.

37 Keyman to Brands, Tjimahi 6.11.1945, in file ‘Bandjaratma 1945–1948’, NA KB 2.20.04/1022; JV Administrateur Gending 1948: 3, NA Koloniale Bank 2.20.05/155.

38 Sutter, John O., Indonesianisasi: Politics in a changing economy, 1940–1955 (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, Data paper No 36-II, 1959), p. 396Google Scholar.

39 This was BPPGN or Badan Penjelenggara Perusaahan Gula Negara [State Sugar Enterprises Administration Board]. See Sutter, Indonesianisasi, pp. 396–9. This coordinating body was possibly an attempt to replicate NIVAS in the Republic's territories.

40 JV HVA 1948: 7–8, KIT LD 1061.

41 Sutter, Indonesianisasi, pp. 626–9, 782–4.

42 Lindblad, J. Thomas, Bridges to new business: The economic decolonisation of Indonesia (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2008), pp. 82–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. BIN's other major investments at the time were in a cement factory, a paper mill and a hotel in Jakarta.

43 Sutter, Indonesianisasi, pp. 704–6.

44 On the Indonesian Army during the Sukarno era and in the early years of the New Order, the classic and still indispensable account is Crouch, Harold, The army and politics in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

45 For a recent account, see Purwanto, Bambang, ‘Economic decolonisation and the rise of Indonesian military business’, in Indonesian economic decolonisation in regional and international perspective, ed. Lindblad, J. Thomas and Post, Peter (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2009), pp. 39–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Crouch, Army and politics, pp. 273–303.

46 Redfern, William A., Sukarno's Guided Democracy and the takeovers of foreign companies in Indonesia in the 1960s (Leiden: KITLV Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar; Lindblad, Bridges, pp. 195–200.

47 HVAN 5.9.1947/905 and 3.10.1947/906.

48 Sutter, Indonesianisasi, pp. 622, 716. Initially, in the wake of the Police Actions, the industry organised its own paramilitary units, the so-called Ondernemingswacht (lit.: ‘enterprise watch’). For a brief account of the Ondernemingswacht, see van der Zwaag, Jaap, Verloren Tropische Zaken (Groningen: De Feniks Pers, 1991), pp. 286–7Google Scholar.

49 See, for example, the discussion of developments in North Sumatra between 1950 and 1964 in Stoler, Ann Laura, Capitalism and confrontation in Sumatra's plantation belt, 1870–1979, 2nd rev. edn (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), pp. 126, 142 and 153CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 See, for example, Crouch, Army and politics, pp. 24ff.

51 HVAN 5.3.1954/988; 2.4.1954/989; 7.5.1954/989, 28.5.1954/991.

52 Lindblad, Bridges, pp. 196–7.

53 Redfern, Takeovers of foreign companies, p. 99 identifies the commissions as ‘committees of authority’ (panitia penguasa). He likewise draws attention (p. 101) to the ‘infighting’ that characterised their existence.

54 The evidence here relating to the NHM's Sumberhardjo and Tersana Baru sugar factories comes from: NHM Jakarta Office to Amsterdam, 5.12.1957/546; 17.12.1957/550; 20.12.1957/552; 7.1.1958/560; 8.1.1958/561, etc. Brieven 2de Afdeeling Conf. NA NHM 2.20.01/8295.

55 Lindblad, Bridges, pp. 183–200.

56 Sulistyo, ‘Forgotten years’, pp. 112–20.

57 Ibid., pp. 123–4.

58 Ibid., pp. 141, 145ff, 150 and 158.

59 Ibid., p. 160.

60 For an extended account, see Sulistyo, ‘Forgotten years’, pp. 145–60.

61 From Professor Harold Crouch's notes of his conversations with military officers and others in the early 1970s; personal communication, Feb. 2011.

62 Young, ‘Local and national influences’, p. 67.

63 JV NHM Factorij Djakarta 1958: 2: 1 (‘Waardoor de moegelijkgedid van staking werd geelimineerd. De Campagne hadden dan ook opgevallend rustig verloop’).

64 See, for example, the account provided by an anonymous ANSOR activist to Harold Crouch in the early 1970s: ‘The army did nothing. It was powerless. Often soldiers sympathised with the PKI, and sometimes military men protected their own relatives in the PKI. But in general it did nothing to stop the killings. The RPKAD [the TNI unit most closely associated with initiating massacres] never came to Kediri until August 1967….’; personal communication, Harold Crouch, Feb. 2011.

65 Stoler, Capitalism and confrontation, p. 142, emphasis added.

66 ‘Forgotten years’, pp. 294–8. According to Crouch's notes of a conversation with an anonymous ANSOR activist about contemporary developments elsewhere in Kediri in 1965: ‘On 13 October, NU held a demonstration at the PKI building [in Kediri city]. Although Y says it was planned to be peaceful, it met with PKI resistance. Y saw his friend hack open a PKI neck at this demonstration…. After this the killings commenced. NU simply rounded up communists each night. Sometimes they were killed in their homes, sometimes taken out of the town and killed. Then their bodies were thrown into the Brantas river. Not only men but sometimes their wives were killed also …. The killings continued on a big scale well into 1966. After that the army arrested communists. The army continued to kill them into 1967 and 1968.’ Personal communication, Professor Harold Crouch, Feb. 2011.

67 Hartveld, ‘Raising cane’, p. 104.

68 Brown, ‘Smallholder cane programme’: 45, Table 3; Stapleton, Tim, ‘Institutional determination of Indonesian sugar trade policy’, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 42, 1 (2006): 95–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 The figures for 2008 were imports of 1.074 million tons as compared with domestic production of 2.895 million. International Sugar Organization (ISO), ISO Sugar year book 2009 (London: International Sugar Organization, 2009), p. 119Google Scholar.