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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2012

JOHN INGLESON
JOHN INGLESON*
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia2052 Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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 kampung1. 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 government's 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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 6 , November 2012 , pp. 1633 - 1671
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 A kampung is a neighbourhood in a town or city occupied by non-Europeans, often with its own administrative structure and mutual aid organizations and usually with its own guard system.

2 De Telegraaf, 9 December 1932, quoting from the Indische Post. Sneevliet Collection 585, International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam (hereafter IISH).

3 The term ‘European’ is used throughout this paper to include Eurasians as well as ‘pure’ Europeans. Legally the people of the Indies were classified as European, Native or Foreign Oriental. By the 1930s Eurasians were probably 80 per cent of the people legally classified as Europeans. The economic interests of ‘pure’ Europeans, and their social position in the colony, were in many important ways very different to those of the Eurasians. They were predominantly people who saw themselves as only temporary residents in The Netherlands Indies—the ‘trekkers’ as opposed to the ‘blijvers’—and were mainly employed in the upper echelons of the colonial bureaucracy or as senior managers and professionals in European companies, including the huge plantation enterprises in Java and Sumatra. Eurasians were, by and large, employed in the middle levels of the bureaucracy or in private companies, though a few notable exceptions were high-ranking officials or managers. The ‘pure’ Europeans lived in the more salubrious parts of the towns and cities. The Eurasians for the most part lived in less expensive areas or adjacent to the kampung where the majority of the Indonesian urban population lived. Jobs and salaries in the bureaucracy—and most private companies—adhered to the racial/legal divisions in pay scales: ‘pure’ Europeans were paid the most, followed by Eurasians and the Chinese with Natives paid the least. The Eurasian experience in The Netherlands Indies is most recently discussed in Bosma, Ulbe and Raben, Remco, Being ‘Dutch’ in the Indies. A History of Creolisation and Empire, 1500–1920 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2008)Google Scholar. There is a recent biography of the politically prominent Eurasian, E. F. E. Douwes Dekker by van der Veur, Paul W., The lion and the gadfly. Dutch colonialism and the spirit of E. F. E. Douwes Dekker (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2006)Google Scholar. See also, Gouda, Frances, ‘Nyonyas on the Colonial Divide: White Women in the Dutch East Indies, 1900–1942’, Gender & History, 5 (3) (1993), pp. 318–342CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 There is a growing literature on the impact of the Depression on Indonesia, mainly focused on the rural impact. See Boomgaard, Peter and Brown, Ian (eds), Weathering the Storm. The Economies of Southeast Asia in the 1930s Depression (Leiden: KITLV, 2000)Google Scholar, especially chapters by Boomgaard, J. Thomas Lindblad, Jeroen Tauwen, S. Nawiyanto, William Gervase Clarence-Smith and Anne Booth. See also: Ingleson, John, ‘Urban Java During the Depression’ Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 19 (2) (1988), pp. 292–309CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Booth, Anne, ‘Living Standards and the Distribution of Income in Colonial Indonesia: a Review of the Evidence’ Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 19 (2) (1988), pp. 310–334CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Booth, Anne, ‘Japanese Import Penetration and Dutch Response: Some Aspects of Economic Policy Making in Colonial Indonesia’ in Sugiyawa, Shinya and Guerrero, Milagras C. (eds), International Commercial Rivalry in Southeast Asia in the Interwar Period (New Haven: Yale Southeast Asian Studies Monograph 39, 1994), pp. 133–164Google Scholar.

5 See: Taylor, Jean Gelman, The Social World of Batavia. European and Eurasian in Dutch Asia (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983)Google Scholar; and Bosma and Raben, Being ‘Dutch’ in the Indies.

6 See the discussion in Bosma and Raben, Being ‘Dutch’ in the Indies.

7 Ibid., Chapter 7, pp. 219–257.

8 See Ingleson, John, ‘Labour Unions and the Provision of Social Security in Colonial Java’, Asian Studies Review, 24 (4) (2000), pp. 471–500CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See Jan van Zanden, Luiten ‘The Dance Round the Gold Standard. Economic Policy in the Depression of the 1930s’, in Zanden, van (ed) The Economic Development of the Netherlands since 1870 (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1996), pp. 102–136Google Scholar.

10 In the late 1930s formal government statements in the Volksraad and responses to questions from members consistently argued along these lines. See Volksraad Handelingen.

11 In the minds of many Europeans there was no such thing as genuine unemployment for any but the most Westernized Indonesians. The Algemeene Handelsblad expressed this view in 1936: ‘In the first place there is a sharp difference between unemployment in the Indonesian and the European spheres. It could be said that unemployment has never existed in the native world, at least in the sense that we in the West understand it. For the native, labour conditions are little different now than in earlier times. Certainly, there is a surplus of intellectuals and semi-intellectuals, but the question is if this would still be the case with or without the Depression.’ Algemeene Handelsblad, 4 August 1936, Sneevliet Collection 587, IISH. In 1937 the government informed the Volksraad ‘. . . that Western oriented poor relief does not have the same place in Eastern society as it does in the West’. Statement of the Director of Justice, Volksraad Handelingen, 26 July 1937, p. 451. He later explained that he meant that the government could not be expected to drive poor relief as it did in the West.

12 See, for example, ‘De bestrijding van werkloosheid’ in Java Bode, 17 and 19 February 1932, which discussed Indonesian unemployment, arguing that despite the impact of the Depression the absorptive capacity of native society had not reached its limits.

13 This view was seemingly universally held within the European community, as reflected not only in official reports but also in contemporary newspapers. See, ‘De bestrijding van werkloosheid’.

14 Statistical Pocketbook of Indonesia 1941 (Batavia: 1947), Tables 99 and 100, p. 68. There is a wider problem of the impossibility of establishing a baseline for urban unemployment before the Depression because statistics were not collected systematically.

15 ‘Mededeelingen der Regeering’, 6 July 1939, Volksraad Handelingen 1939–1940, p. 6; and ‘Memorie van Antwoord’, 12 July 1935, Volksraad Handelingen, 1935–1936, Subject 3, Department 2, Item 5, pp. 3–5. The 1930 Census put the total European population at 245,000. Prior to the impact of the Depression, there were approximately 40,000 Europeans employed by the government and government enterprises and about another 19,000 employed by the private sector. It was estimated that at the end of December 1932 real unemployment among Europeans was 5,520, or 9.3 per cent of the workforce. The total European workforce would have decreased between 1932 and 1937, therefore the 10,000 unemployed Europeans in 1937 constituted at least 17 per cent of the total. A. G. Vreede, ‘De Werkloosheid in het eerste halfjaar 1932’, Koloniale Studien (October 1932), p. 672. The unemployment rate among Europeans in the colony was comparable with that in The Netherlands itself, where unemployment peaked in 1936 at 19 per cent. See: Gert P. den Bakker, ‘Interwar Unemployment in the Netherlands’, in van Zanden (ed.), The Economic Development of the Netherlands since 1870, p. 149.

16 Statistical Pocketbook of Indonesia 1941, Table 90, p. 61. This estimate is based on the fact that 20 per cent of all government employees were Europeans.

17 It has been estimated that half the 1,700 European employees on the east coast of Sumatra plantations were retrenched and that most were repatriated. Elson, Robert E., ‘International Commerce, the State and Society: Economic and Social Change’, in Tarling, Nicholas (ed.), The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Vol. 2, p. 188Google Scholar.

18 In discussing European unemployment in the first half of 1932, the Head of the Labour Office, A. G. Vreede, emphasized the importance of repatriating retrenched Europeans: ‘The figures would be so much greater without the exodus of retrenched people to the Netherlands, an exodus which has had such an impact that for some months all berths in the lower classes of the mailboats have been fully booked in advance’, A. G. Vreede, ‘De Werkloosheid in het eerste halfjaar 1932’, Koloniale Studien (October 1932), p. 672.

19 See Knight, G. Roger, ‘A sugar factory and its swimming pool: incorporation and differentiation in Dutch colonial society in Java’ Ethnic and Racial Studies 24 (3) (2001), p. 456CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Verslag van het Plaatselijk Comite te Soerabaja tot Steun aan Werkloozen over het jaar 1931 (Surabaya: 1932), p. 11. This report provided a detailed breakdown of the ethnicity and marital status of the 195 men supported at 1 February 1932. Of the unemployed, 124 were married and 71 unmarried. Children of the unemployed totalled 295. Men living in Surabaya or nearby environs totalled 173, with 22 in more remote locations.

21 The Labour Bureaus realized this and responded by encouraging their officers to get out and about in the towns and cities in an effort to persuade the unemployed to register.

22 The Labour Office recognized that one of the reasons for the low registration rate among unemployed Indonesian intellectuals was because Labour Bureaux were located in the large towns and cities whereas many Indonesian intellectuals had moved to smaller towns in the interior of Java because of the cheaper cost of living. See, ‘Nota Inzake Jeugdwerkloosheid in Nederlandsch-Indie en haar Bestrijding’, in Mail Report 1937/858, National Archives, The Hague.

23 A. G. Vreede, ‘De Werkloosheid in het eerste halfjaar 1932’, Koloniale Studien (October 1932), p. 677.

24 A.G. Vreede, ‘De Werkloosheid in Nederlandsch-Indie in het tweede halfjaar 1931’, Koloniale Studien (April 1932), p. 201.

25 Stoler, Ann Laura, Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra's Plantation Belt, 1870–1979 (Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, second edition, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 The total includes departing and returning workers from Java to all Outer Provinces, to Suriname and to British and French colonies. Source: Statistical Pocketbook of Indonesia 1941, table 98, p. 67. The emigration/immigration figures from/to Java and the Outer Islands are revealing:

Source: Vijftiende Verslag, Zestiende Verslag, Zeventiende Verslag, Achtiende Verslg van de Arbeidsinspectie (Batavia: Kantor van Arbeid, 1933, 1937, 1939 and 1941).

27 It is difficult to know with any precision the number of returned contract labourers who ended up in the major towns and cities. Surabaya had one notorious slum at the side of the major railway line into the city, known locally as ‘kampung Melarat’ (impoverished kampung), which was composed entirely of returned contract labourers. The question of whether returned contract labourers stayed in the villages of Java or drifted to the cities is discussed by Peter Boomgaard in ‘Surviving the Slump: Developments in Real Income During the Depression of the 1930s in Indonesia’, in Boomgaard and Brown, Weathering the Storm, p. 34. The contemporary view of government officials was that while most ex-contract labourers in the first instance went back to their village of origin, many found that they quickly ran out of money and could not get work in or around the village. Significant numbers then drifted to the major towns and cities, especially to Surabaya, the major city of East Java, in the hope that they would have better opportunities to find work.

28 ‘Nota Inzake Jeugdwerkloosheid in Nederlandsch-Indie en Hare Bestrijding’, Labour Office, 8 November 1936, enclosed in Director of Justice to Governor-General, 10 May 1937, Mail Report 1937/858, National Archives, The Hague.

29 Labour Office, ‘Samenvattend Overzicht van de Werkloosheid en Haar Bestrijding’, p. 6 enclosed in Mail Report 1937/858, National Archives, The Hague.

30 In 1937 the Labour Office estimated that youth unemployment was still growing by about 1,000 each year and that it would be at least eight years before the problem of youth unemployment could be solved. ‘Nota Inzake Jeugdwerkloosheid’ p. 7.

31 Economische Weekblad, 23 June 1933, pp. 2179–2180.

32 ‘Nota inzake Jeugdwerkloosheid in Nederlandsche-Indie en Hare Bestrijding’, Labour Office, 8 November 1936, enclosed in Director of Justice to Governor-General, 10 May 1937, Mail Report 1937/858, National Archives, The Hague.

33 Director of Justice to Governor-General, 18 August 1937, Mail Report 1937/858, p. 15, National Archives, The Hague.

34 See Ingleson, ‘Urban Java during the Depression’, and Djojosoemarman, R. N., ‘Taxi chauffeurs te Batavia,’ Koloniale Tijdschrift 30 (1941), pp. 606–632Google Scholar.

35 See Ingleson, John, In Search of Justice. Workers and Unions in Colonial Java, 1908–1926 (Singapore, Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 213Google Scholar.

36 For example, the Labour Office persuaded the government in February 1932 to regulate the minimum notice that an employer was required to provide to an employee to equivalent to one month's wages, which was to be lengthened by an additional month for each year of service to a maximum of three months. Mail Report 1932/286, National Archives, The Hague.

37 de Kat Angelino, P., Verslag betreffende eene door den inspecteur bij het Kantoor van Arbeid, P. de Kat Angelino op de Vorstenlandsche tabaksondernemingen gehouden enquete (Batavia: Landsdrukkerij, 1929)Google Scholar; de Kat Angelino, P., Rapport betreffende eene gehouden enquete naar de arbeidstoestanden in de batikkerijen op Java en Madoera (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 3 vols., 1930–1)Google Scholar; Reijden, B., Rapport betreffende eene gehouden enquete naar de arbeidstoestanden in de industrie van strootjes en inheemsche sigaretten op Java (Batavia: Landdruikkerij, 3 vols., 1934–1936)Google Scholar.

38 For a discussion of the establishment of the Labour Bureaux see, Economische Weekblad, 26 May 1933.

39 Statistical Pocketbook of Indonesia 1941, Table 99, p. 68.

40 See Summary of the Volksraad Committee to consider unemployment in the context of the 1935 Budget, in Volksraad Handelingen, 1935–1936, Subject 3, Department 2, Section 4, pp. 1–8.

41 For a clear statement of government policy see Volksraad Handelingen, 1935–1936, Third Subject, Second Department, Item 4, p. 2: ‘. . .care for the unemployed in the Netherlands Indies, understood as primarily the provision of financial support, should not be the direct responsibility of the government, rather should be left to private initiatives as long as possible’.

42 A good example is an article in April 1934 in the Dutch language colonial press on unemployment among Indonesians which argued that: ‘Among the millions of natives how will one determine if somebody is unemployed, or is a victim of the Depression? Thousands and thousands have known no other condition throughout their lives. Thousands work for years for a few months each year and for the rest of the time do nothing, living on the labour of their wives, their communities, their families or from all kinds of casual labour.’. Quoted in Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 4 April 1934, Sneevliet Collection 587, IISH.

43 Werkloosheid in Nederlandsch-Indie (Batavia: Kantoor van Arbeid, 1935), pp. 3–4.

44 See Werkloosheid in Nederlandsch-Indie, p. 5.

45 Werkloosheid in Nederlandsch-Indie, pp. 48–49.

46 See ‘Vergadering van het Hoofd van het Kantoor van Arbeid met de vertegenwoordigers der verschillende Steuncomite's van Oost-Java gehouden in de raadszaal van het Gemeentehuis te Soerabaja op Zaterdag 2 April 1932’, Mail Report 1932/809, National Archives, The Hague.

47 Werkloosheid in Nederlandsch-Indie, p. 9.

48 Central Committee for the Support of the Unemployed, Circular 15, 11 July 1932, Archives of the Archbishopric of Batavia (hereafter AAB), KDC 4 - 5/13.

49 Central Committee for Support of the Unemployed, Circular 15, 11 July 1932, AAB, KDC 4 - 5/13.

50 See speech of Suroso in Volksraad Handelingen, 16 August 1938, p. 977.

51 Director of Justice to Governor-General, 20 March 1935, enclosed in Governor-General to Minister of Colonies, 23 March 1935, A-Dossier 7449–5, National Archives, The Hague.

52 By 1935 the Central Committee for the Support of the Unemployed admitted that its expectation that colonization would be a major solution to urban unemployment had not been met. It believed that the problem was that the wrong people had been selected for the colonization schemes. In future it determined only to support urban unemployed sent on colonization schemes if they had worked for at least one year in one of the work camps operated by the Indies Society for the Relief of Unemployment and who were known to be physically and psychologically suitable. Central Committee for the Support of the Unemployed, Circular 71, 12 June 1935, AAB, KDC 4 - 2/13. Likewise, the Central Committee's provision of free passages back to The Netherlands for unemployed Europeans and their families was also unsuccessful. To the end of November 1934 only 160 unemployed Europeans were repatriated under this scheme. ‘Nota inzake het Werloozensteunvraagstuk’, Daily Executive of the Central Committee for the Support of the Unemployed, 7 December 1934, AAB, KDC 4 - 3/13.

53 See enclosure in Director of Justice to Governor-General, 21 August 1933, Mail Report 1933/1274, National Archives, The Hague. It was argued that the spirit of discontent against the government in the urban areas was growing daily.

54 See Ingleson, John, Road to Exile. The Indonesian Nationalist Movement, 1927–1934 (Singapore: Heinemann, 1979), pp. 176–228Google Scholar.

55 See discussion in Economische Weekblad, Extra Number 1933.

56 Some cases are discussed in Soeara Oemoem, 8 July 1932. I have also discussed aspects of labour union support of the unemployed in ‘Sutomo, the Indonesian Study Club and organized labour in late colonial Surabaya’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 39 (1) (2008), pp. 31–57.

57 Algemeeene Handelsblad, 17 April 1936, Sneevliet Collection 587, IISH.

58 Nieuwe Rotterdamsch Courant, 31 December 1932, Sneevliet Collection 585, IISH.

59 ‘Report on the General Support Committee for Native Destitute for the 3rd quarter 1936’, Sneevliet Collection 587, IISH.

60 Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 6 April 1932, Sneevliet Collection 585, IISH.

61 Quoted in Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 28 February 1932. Sneevliet Collection 585, IISH.

62 De Telegraaf, 9 December 1932, quoting from the Indische Post. Sneevliet Collection 585, IISH.

63 De Telegraaf, 24 November 1932, quoting from the Soerabaiasch Handelsblad. Sneevliet Collection 585, IISH.

64 Zeydel in Volksraad Handelingen, 11 February 1931, p. 2275.

65 ‘Attitudes like this are of course not uncommon among Europeans. They want to work cooperatively but the Native must always be subservient.’ Soeara Oemoem, 5 August 1932. See also Soeara Oemoem 11 August 1932.

66 Verslag van het Plaatselijk Comite te Soerabaja tot Steun aan Werkloozen over het jaar 1931 (Surabaya: 1932), p. 13.

67 Economische Weekblad, 16 December 1932. The analysis of the 2,485 registered unemployed Europeans at 31 May 1932 showed that 693 had some means of support (for example, a pension or support from parents), and 811 lived with family or acquaintances. 752 were deemed to be living in straightened circumstances.

68 Central Committee for the Support of the Unemployed, Circular 34, 4 August 1933, AAB, KDC 4 - 4/13.

69 See, for example, the argument of the Chief Editor of Java Bode, J. E. Jasper, that direct financial support for the unemployed on a large scale was neither possible, because of the cost involved, nor desirable, because it would dampen people's initiative to seek work. The unemployed must be made to realize their obligation to the community through working. ‘De bestrijding van werkloosheid’, Java Bode, 17 January 1932.

70 Central Committee for the Support of the Unemployed, Circular No 48, 28 March 1934, AAB, KDC 4 3/13. In November 1936 the Committee considered whether a ‘concubine’ of an unemployed European should attract the same support as a wife. After weighing the moral issues it determined that he should be paid only 50 percent of the difference between the relief provided to a married and an unmarried man. Circular 91, 3 November 1936, AAB, KDC 4 - 9/13.

71 There were regular reports in the Surabaya newspaper, Soeara Oemoem, in the 1930s on committee members from the unemployed support group within the Indonesian Study Club visiting the unemployed in their kampung homes before providing material or financial support.

72 In April 1936 there were only 156 people employed by government departments through this scheme. Jaarverslag van het Centraal Comite voor Steun aan Werkloozen over 1935 (Batavia: 1936), p. 13.

73 ‘Nota inzake het Werkloozensteunenvraagstuk’, Daily Executive of the Central Committee for the Support of the Unemployed, 7 December 1934, AAB, KDC 4 - 3/13.

74 Jaarverslag van het Centraal Comite voor Steun aan Werkloozen over 1934, (Batavia: 1935), in AAB, KDC 4 - 12/13.

75 Jaarverslag van het Centraal Comite voor Steun aan Werkloozen over 1935, p. 8.

76 Jaarverslag van het Centraal Comite voor Steun aan Werkloozen over 1934, p. 3, AAB, KDC 4 - 12/13.

77 Gemeenteblad van Soerabaia, No 103, 8 May 1935, in AAB, KDC 4 - 1/13.

78 Jaar Verslag van het Centraal Comite voor Steun aan Werkloozen over 1937, pp. 33–34.

79 Jaar Verslag van het Centraal Comite voor Steun aan Werkloozen over 1936, pp. 25–27; Jaar Verslag van het Centraal Comite voor Steun aan Werkloozen over 1937, p. 27. See also: H. W. Dick, ‘Formation of the nation-state, 1930s–1966’ in Howard Dick, Vincent J. H. Houben, J. Thomas Lindblad and Thee Kian Wee, The Emergence of a National Economy. An Economic History of Indonesia, 1800–2000 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2002), p. 160.

80 Jaar Verslag van het Centraal Comite voor Steun aan Werkloozen over 1938, pp. 22–27.

81 ‘Nota Inzake Jeugdwerkloosheid in Nederlandsch-Indie en Hare Bestrijding’, Labour Office, 8 November 1936, Mail Report 1937/858, National Archive, The Hague.

82 Report quoted in Algemeene Handelsblad, 10 April 1936, Sneevliet Collection 587, IISH.

83 Director of Justice to Governor-General, 10 May 1937, Mail Report 1937/858, National Archives, The Hague.

84 Central Committee for the Support of the Unemployed, Circular No 86, 1 April 1936, AAB, KDC 4 - 10/13.

85 Speech of Wirjopranoto, Volksraad Handelingen, 16 August 1938, p. 992. Raden Sukarjo Wirjopranoto was a member of the Volksraad between 1931 and 1942. He was a lawyer who worked with the Surabaya Board of Justice in the 1930s. See entry in Orang Indonesia Jang Terkemoeka di Djawa (Jakarta: Gunseikanbu, 1944). HIS—Hollandsch-Inlandsche School—primary school for natives where the instruction was Dutch. MULO—Junior High School for natives where the language of instruction was Dutch.

86 Jaarverslag van he Centraal Comite voor Steun aan Werkloozen over 1935, p. 11. The Labour Office, which was generally not given to hyperbole, described those dismissed from the work camps as displaying characteristics of ‘. . .indolence, indifference, brutality, lack of discipline, lack of morals, etc’. It lamented the future of unemployed European youth who were caught in the trap of hopelessness and were joining urban gangs visible on the streets of the major cities. ‘Nota Inzake Jeugdwerkloosheid in Nederlandsch-Indie en Hare Bestrijding’, Labour Office, 8 November 1936, enclosed in Director of Justice to Governor-General, 10 May 1937, Mail Report 1937/898, National Archives, The Hague.

87 ‘Nota Inzake Jeugdwerkloosheid in Nederlandsch-Indie en Hare Bestrijding’, Labour Office, 8 November 1936, enclosed in Director of Justice to Governor-General, 10 May 1937, Mail Report 1937/858, National Archives, The Hague.

88 ‘De Werkloosheid onder de Jeugd’, Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 21 March 1939, Sneevliet Collection 587, IISH.

89 Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 14 March 1939, Sneevliet Collection 587, IISH. See also, Nederlands Dagblad, 5 January 1939, quoting an article in the Soerabaia Post titled ‘Eenhoevigbeeld’, Sneevliet Collection 587, IISH.

90 See Booth, Anne, ‘Japanese Import Penetration and Dutch Response: Some Aspects of Economic Policy Making in Colonial Indonesia’, in Sugiyama, Shinya, Guerrero, Milagros C. (eds), International Commercial Rivalry In Southeast Asia in the Interwar Period (New Haven: Yale Southeast Asian Studies Monograph 39, 1994), pp. 133–164Google Scholar.

91 There is an extensive discussion of the government's industrial policies, including extensive statistical material, in Boomgaard, P. (ed.), Changing Economy in Indonesia. Vol. 8. Manufacturing Industry 1870–1942 (Amsterdam; Royal Tropical Institute, 1987), pp. 27–40Google Scholar. The new economic policies achieved their objective of turning back the tide of Japanese imported goods. In 1924 Japanese imports to the colony were 31.9 per cent of total imports. By 1939 they had declined to 17.8 per cent. See Booth, ‘Japanese Import Penetration’, p. 134.

92 ‘Mededeeling der Regeeering’, 6 July 1939, Volksraad Handelingen 1939–1940, pp. 2–6. Analysis of the registered unemployed at the end of December 1940 supports this view. For Europeans the figure had dropped to 3,679, from a peak of 6,865 in December 1937. For Indonesians, it had dropped to 11,193, from a peak of 18,449 at the end of December 1936. For Chinese it had dropped to 893, from a peak of 1,205 at the end of December 1934. Given the limitations of the statistics on unemployment these figures were still high: for the three communities nearly double the figures at the end of 1931. The registered unemployment in December 1931 was 2,041 Europeans, 5,693 Indonesians and 465 Chinese. Statistical Pocketbook of Indonesia 1941, Table 99, p. 68.

93 Director of Finance to Governor-General, 24 July 1937, Mail Report 1937/858, National Archives, The Hague.

94 An article in the Dutch language press at about this time illustrated the problem by citing the petroleum industry in the Indies, which in 1929 employed 1,347 Europeans and 31,945 Indonesians but in 1937 employed 470 Europeans and 11,000 Indonesians with production 50 per cent above the 1929 level. AID Preanger Bode, quoted in De Telegraaf, 3 July 1937, Sneevliet Collection 587, IISH.

95 Director of Justice to Governor-General, 18 August 1937, Mail Report 1937/858, National Archives, The Hague.

96 Ibid.

97 Director of Finance to Governor-General, 21 December 1937, Mail Report 1937/1281, National Archives, The Hague.

98 Director of Justice to Governor-General, 10 May 1937, Mail Report 1937/858. National Archives, The Hague.

99 Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 18 July 1939, Sneevliet Collection 587, IISH.

100 See. for example, Director of Justice to Governor-General, 18 August 1937, Mail Report 1937/858, National Archives, The Hague. In his discussion of the effects of the 1937 Budget on combating unemployment, he argued that the government had to confront a new problem of permanent, structural urban unemployment. He was concerned that there were no policies in place to manage this. He was also concerned that the reliance on private support of the unemployed was no longer working.

101 See speech by Suroso in Volksraad Handelingen, 16 August 1938, pp. 977–979.

102 Volksraad Handelingen, 1938–1939, Subject 1, Department 2, Item 2, p. 5.

103 Jaar Verslag van het Centraal Comite voor Steun aan Werkloozen over 1938.

104 See, Onderzoek naar de mindere welvaart der inlandsche bevolking op Java en Madoera (Batavia: Landsdrukkerij, 1905–20, 14 Vols.).

105 Quoted in De Telegraaf, 3 July 1937, Sneevliet Collection 587, IISH.

106 Volksraad Handelingen, 16 August 1938, p. 1032.

107 Ibid, p. 980. Ko Kwat Tiong (Mohammad Saleh) was born in Central Java in 1896. He studied law in The Netherlands and on his return established a law practice in Semarang. Between 1935 and 1939 he represented the Partai Tionghoa Indonesia in the Volksraad. For a biographical sketch see Suryadinata, Leo, Prominent Indonesian Chinese (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1995), pp. 138–139Google Scholar.

108 ‘Toelichting op de Ontwerp-Richtlijnen 1939’, AAB, KDC 4 - 5/13.

109 ‘Een gloeiende aanklacht tegen onze maatschappij’, De Oosthoekbode, n.d. (November 1939), Sneevliet Collection 587, IISH.