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Economic Myth and Geographical Reality in Indonesia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Charles A. Fisher
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Extract

Throughout the twenty years which followed 17 August 1945 when, as President of the newly proclaimed Republic of Indonesia, Sukarno first stepped into the limelight, he has provided the most flamboyant example of the ‘charismatic leader’ who, by personifying the aspirations of a formerly subject people, enables them both to establish and to project their identity as a nation. During this time Western well-wishers of the Indonesian people have been increasingly fascinated by his performance, which they have watched, often at first with sympathy and even admiration, later with disappointment and anxiety, and finally with astonishment verging upon incredulity.

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Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , March 1967 , pp. 155 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1967

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References

1 E.g. ‘The mountainous, volcanic nature of the country and the abundant rainfall have provided the majority of the islands with an extremely fertile soil. The country as a whole possesses vast natural resources…’ Indonesia–Review of Commercial Conditions, London, H.M.S.O., 1951, p. 6Google Scholar. Cf. the description of Indonesia as ‘a country simultaneously rich—and bankrupt’ in ‘Indonesia after Sukarno’, The Economist, 9 July 1966, p. 159, and the comment made by a leading Indonesian spokesman, in the author's hearing in 1965, that Indonesia is like a rich heiress—everyone is after her for her money.

2 Clark, Cohn, The Conditions of Economic Progress. London, 3rd edition, 1960, pp. 305–6.Google Scholar

3 Another smaller area of such soils occurs in northern Sumatra and similar transported material is also found in the adjacent north-eastern coastal zone, though this has a typical equatorial climate with rain at all seasons. See below, p. 160. However, huge areas of Indonesia, including Borneo, West New Guinea, and much of Celebes, are non-volcanic, and in many of the volcanic areas, including western Java and many parts of Sumatra, the ejecta are mainly of acid composition and, notwith standing the popular belief that all volcanically-derived soils are rich, do not give rise to fertile soils. As the comments in note I above unwittingly demonstrate, the fallacious belief in the fertility of all volcanic soils has served in the Indonesian context to intensify the myth of tropical fertility. Further misapprehensions also arise from the proverbial glance at the small-scale map. In fact the greater part of Indonesia is mountainous, with slopes often too steep for normal cultivation, and although the atlas shows large areas of encouragingly green lowland in eastern Sumatra, peripheral Borneo and southern New Guinea, most of this is ill-consolidated swamp which is quite useless for cultivation and only in a few places capable of being reclaimed. See below. The danger of generalizing from a few well-favoured areas, notably in much of Java and parts of Sumatra, to Indonesia as a whole, has been repeatedly emphasized by geographers ever since the publication of two basic studies, namely Broek, J. O. M., The Economic Development of the Netherlands Indies, New York, 1942,Google Scholar and Pelzer, Karl J., Pioneer Settlement in the Asiatic Tropics, New York, 1945. On Indonesia's mineral wealth see below, pp. 185–6.Google Scholar

4 Raffles, T. S., The History of Java, London, 1817 (Reprinted in Oxford in Asia, Historical Reprints, 1965) Vol. 1, pp. 57, 58 and 69.Google Scholar Although to modern readers this assessment may seem unduly deterministic, Raffles was surely right in stressing the immense natural superiority of Java for agriculture. To attempt to explain the difference in population density between Java and the outer islands merely in terms of the difference between sawah (irrigated rice cultivation) and ladang (shifting cultivation) is both to neglect the basic factor in the situation and to ignore the existence of irrigated rice cultivation in many small and widely scattered parts of the outer territories.

5 Most of the inhabitants of western Java (away from the northern coastal zone) are Sundanese. See below, p. 165.

6 Harvey, G. E., British Rule in Burma, London, 1946, p. 11.Google Scholar

7 Raffles, , op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 71.Google Scholar

8 Cf. the comment of The Economist in note I, above.

9 For a penetrating analysis of the disastrous ecological consequences of the system, as well as of the different ecological changes introduced by the Dutch in the outer islands, see Geertz, Clifford, Agricultural Involution, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963.Google Scholar For a general survey of the opening up of the Indies under the Dutch see Fisher, C. A., South-east Asia, London, 2nd edition, 1966, Chapters 8 and 9.Google Scholar

10 See Furnivall, J. S., Netherlands India, Cambridge, 2nd edition, 1944, p. 362Google Scholar, and note also his further comment: ‘Hence the neatness and cleanliness of the village was a feature which impressed Money in 1860 as it still impresses visitors from other regions of the East, whether European of Asiatic.’ Ibid. p. 362.

11 Hart, G. H. C., ‘Recent Developments in the Netherlands Indies’, Geographical Journal, 99, 1942, p. 94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note also that although 90 per cent of the population of Java were rural, only 65 per cent were directly engaged in subsistence agriculture, the remaining 25 per cent depending mainly on casual labour.

Boeke, J. H., ‘Economic Conditions for Indonesian Independence’, Pacific Affairs, 19, 1946, p. 399.Google Scholar

12 The Chinese community numbered 1,200,000 in 1930 and 2,200,000 in 1954.

13 See Elsbree, Willard H., Japan's role in Southeast Asian Nationalist Movements, Cambridge, Mass., 1953, especially pp. 22–3, 46, 49 and 112.Google Scholar

14 The average density of population in Bali, which is overwhelmingly rural, is approximately 900 per square mile, but in parts of the island the figure rises far above this.

15 See Palmier, Leslie H., Indonesia and the Dutch, London, 1962, especially pp. 153–9Google Scholar, and also Asia—a Handbook, ed. Wint, Guy, London, 1965, p. 269Google Scholar. While in most important respects my argument here follows Palmier, I differ from him in bracketing the Balinese with the Javanese in this context.

16 See Fisher, Charles A., ‘Crisis in Indonesia’, Political Quarterly, 18, 1947, pp. 295–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 The classic study of this period is Kahin, G. McT., Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, Ithaca, 1952.Google Scholar

18 Sjahrir was a Menangkabau, as also are Hatta and Malik.

19 Before 1942 the Netherlands Indies army was largely recruited from these and other minority peoples of the outer islands. See Fisher, Charles A., ‘West New Guinea in its Regional Setting’, The Year Book of World Affairs, 6, London, 1952, pp. 189–210.Google Scholar

20 Luthy, Herbert, ‘Indonesia Confronted’ Part I, Encounter, 12 1965, p. 84.Google Scholar Notwithstanding my criticism here and again below, Professor Luthy's article ranks with Grant's, BruceIndonesia (Melbourne, 1964) as one of the most thought-provoking analyses ever made of Indonesia under Sukarno (Encounter, 12 1965, pp. 80–9, and 01 1966, pp. 75–83).Google Scholar

21 ‘Economic progress’, Report on Indonesia, 8, 1, 08–09, 1956, p. 15.Google Scholar

Fryer, D. W. Yet two years earlier, had referred to an identical Indonesian statement as an ‘extravagant claim' in his article ‘Indonesia’s Economic Prospects’, Far Eastern Survey, 23, 1954, pp. 177–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Cf. the following comment by the then Minister of Commerce and Industry: ‘Outside the cities dissatisfaction prevails. They were, in the past, brought under the impression that freedom would bring them the moon—now they ask for the moon’. Djojohadikusomo, Sumitro, ‘Our way out’, Indonesian Review, 1, 3, 04–06 1951, p. 180.Google Scholar

23 By the early 1950S it was estimated that West Irian was being run at a loss of some 80 million guilders a year, and that it would remain a liability for at least fifty years.

24 It is impossible to give reliable value figures for Indonesia's raw material production (as opposed to exports) but it may be safely assumed that much the greater part of its total raw material production is exported, not withstanding the growing home consumption of petroleum. Total Indonesian exports (including foodstuffs which do not rank as raw materials) were as follows in the years stated (all figures in million U.S. dollars): 380 (1938);394 (1948); 777 (1950); 1259 (1951);992 (1952); 840 (1953); 946 (1955); 840 (1960); 784 (1961); 682 (1962); 696 (1963); 688 (1964). Compared with these totals British annual coal production (exclusive of coke etc.) was valued (million U.S. dollars) at 2058 (1960); 2254 (1962); 2229 (1963–4). Many of the misleading statements about Indonesia's rank as a raw material producer arise from confusion over the term raw materials. While, as noted above, this should exclude foodstuffs, there is no general agreement as to whether or not it includes fuels, such as coal or petroleum. In my calculations I have excluded foodstuffs and included fuels, but were fuels to be excluded Indonesia's total figures would drop by 25–30 per cent, while if foodstuffs were included Indonesia would be overtaken by several other countries. Finally, note that whereas before 1942 raw materials (as defined above) comprised about 65 per cent of Indonesia's exports (the rest being mainly foodstuffs) raw materials today account for about 90 per cent of the total.

25 These figures are also for the same year, and although the Malayan total includes substantial re-exports, this does not invalidate the basic argument.

26 One-ninth when Indonesia did not include Irian, but only one-fourteenth when it did.

27 It is interesting here to note the comment of Lewis, W. Arthur (in The Theory of Economic Growth, London, 1957, p. 53)Google Scholar: ‘Accessibility is a resource in the sense that it stems from geographical features.… Accessibilityplays a decisive partin stimulating economic growth. It stimulates trade, therefore widening the range of demand, encouraging effort and furthering specialization. It also results in a mingling of peoples, with different customs and ideas, and this keeps the mind active, stimulates the growth of knowledge and helps to keep institutions free and flexible.’ As a broad generalization this statement contains a great deal of truth, and incidentally goes far to explain the much higher level of human advancement in pre-colonial South-east Asia compared with that in the inaccessible lands in similar latitudes in continental Africa and Amazonia. Nevertheless the more recent experience of South-east Asia, and especially of Indonesia, suggests that accessibility provides no exception to the rule that it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

28 On the political parties and their rivalries during the 1950s, see Feith, Herbert, The Indonesian Elections of 1955, Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, Ithaca, 1957 (mimeo), Fisher, South-east Asia, Chapter II, and Palmier, op. cit. pp. 153–67.Google Scholar

29 Significantly, President Kwame Khrumah of Ghana, the first of the black African states to achieve independence, seems to have been profoundly influenced by Sukarno's, thinking. Consider, e.g. the opening remarks in his Neo-colonialism— the Last Stage of Imperialism, London, 1956, p. 1Google Scholar: ‘Africa is a paradox which illustrates and highlights neo-colonialism. Her earth is rich, yet the products that come from above and below her soil continue to enrich not Africans predominantly but groups and individuals who operate to Africa's impoverishment.’ In fact the earth of most parts of Africa is by no means rich.

30 Fischer, Louis, The Story of Indonesia, London, 1959, pp. 149–50.Google Scholar

31 For an account of this Plan, and of Indonesian planning in general, see Higgins, Benjamin Jean, Indonesia: the Crisis of the Millstones, Princeton, 1963, especially chapter 6.Google Scholar

32 In contrast to eastern Sumatra, swamp reclamation here presents no great technical problems.

33 For an excellent account of the economic background to the events of 1956–7 see Fryer, D. W., ‘Economic Aspects of Indonesian Disunity’, Pacific Affairs, 30, 1957, pp. 195–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The same author's unpublished Ph.D. thesis, ‘Indonesia, the economic geography of an underdeveloped country’ (University of London, 1958) provides a more detailed account of the country's economic geography at approximately the same period.Google Scholar

34 And once again the old arguments were used. Thus ‘The Dutch have been getting excited for nothing. All that they are now doing with regard to West Irian merely constitutes a reflection of their fear of losing a treasure in the South-west of Pacific.’ Editorial in The Indonesian Spectator, 15 July 1958, p. 9.

35 Nevertheless, in view of the high proportion of the army which continued to be drawn from the outer territories (including General Nasution himself) the army now became the custodian of the legitimate aspirations of the outer territories, which desired not secession, nor even federalism, but only a more rational policy at the centre and a larger share of their own earnings of foreign exchange. Meanwhile, since with each successive lurch into further extremism Sukarno became increasingly closely aligned with P.K.I., whose policies the outer territories abhorred, the age-old geographical dualism of Indonesia had by the early 1960s become focused in the struggle between the army and P.K.I. which eventually exploded in the coup of 30 September 1965. See below, p. 38.

36 See Armstrong, Hamilton Fish, ‘The Troubled Birth of Malaysia’, Foreign Affairs, 41, 1963, p. 683.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 In September 1966 Indonesia was readmitted to membership of the United Nations.

38 Higgins, and Higgins, , op. cit. p. 128.Google Scholar On the significance of Yamin's thinking see Gordon, Bernard, ‘The Potential for Indonesian Expansionism’, Pacific Affairs, 36, 1963–1964, pp. 378–393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Significantly Bali also has been the scene of very heavy slaughter. Turner, Nicolas, The Guardian, 7 04 1966, referred to ‘a consular official … who accepts a figure of 200,000 for Bali…’;Google ScholarCoast, John, ‘The Sacrificial Communists of Bali’, The Guardian, 30 August 1966Google Scholar, stated ‘The total mentioned in Bali today is something short of 50,000.’ See also note 14 above.

40 Luthy, , op. cit. part I, p. 68.Google Scholar

41 Myrdal, Gunnar, Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions, London, 1957, Chapter 5.Google Scholar

Fisher, Charles A., ‘Les conséquences sociales et economiques de l'agriculture commerciale européenne en Asie du Sud-est’, Les Cahiers d'Outre-Mer, 18, 1965, pp. 295–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 The term metropolitan core is used in this context to include the whole of Java. As noted above (p. 179) the towns of Java experienced some benefit from the early policies of the Sukarno régime, but more recently they have been hard hit by runaway inflation. The events of the past decade have also pulled down living standards in many parts of the outer territories, though basically the prospects of the latter remain better than those of Java.

43 The matter of age is perhaps more important than is usually realized. While in Western countries the favoured age for the head of the government seems nowadays to be from 50 to 70, when a politician is presumed to be at his prime, it must be noted that the first generation of independent Asian leaders consists of men who grew up at a time and under conditions which gave an average life expectancy barely half of that in the West. By the 50S or early 60s, many of them may well have passed their prime, a possibility which may help to explain the fairly common tendency among such leaders to revert to the traditional values to which they were accustomed in their early days. Sukarno was born in 1901.

44 Though maintenance of all these has been grossly neglected in recent years, and rehabilitation, both here and in the outer territories, is urgently needed.

45 Providing that this is related to modern schemes for extensive mechanized cultivation, as in the Schophuys project, and not to the older Dutch methods of transplanting the intensive Javanese peasant agriculture on small holdings to the outer territories. For a criticism of the latter, see Peizer, Karl J., op. cit.Google Scholar

46 Which should also develop related processing industries.

47 Recent reports of new oil discoveries in Java itself are particularly welcome. Although the Indies first oil production began in Java in the nineteenth century, that island's oil production has been of negligible importance for several decades.

48 The predominantly youthful island arc structure characteristic of most parts of Indonesia does not normally give rise to an abundance of accessible minerals.

49 Cf. Grant, Bruce, op. cit., p. 149.Google Scholar

50 Palmier, , op. cit., pp 180–3.Google Scholar

51 ‘Indonesian seeks free economy’, The Guardian, 50 May 1966.

52 This is not, however, to suggest that Indonesia, without major resources of coal or iron, should at this stage develop heavy industry on anything like the Indian scale. But its oil and hydro-electric potential are extremely useful assets for the development of lighter industries.

53 The towns of Java contain approximately 12 million people, and not all of its rural areas are overcrowded.