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II. Some Remarks on the Development of Colonial Bureaucracies in India and Indonesia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

C. Fasseur  and
D.H.A. Kolff
C. Fasseur
Affiliation:
University of Leiden
D.H.A. Kolff
Affiliation:
University of Leiden
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Extract

A systematic comparison of the development of modern bureaucracies in India and Indonesia during the colonial era has never been made. No equivalent of the excellent work done by J.S. Furnivall on the colonial administration in Burma and Java is available. Yet, much of what he said is useful for the subject of this paper and we shall therefore lean heavily on him. It would be an overstatementto say that Indians before the Second World War felt interested in the events and developments in Indonesia. In the other direction that interest surely existed. We need only to recall the deep impact the Indian nationalist movement made upon such Indonesian nationalists as Sukarno.‘The example of Asian nationalism to which Indonesians referred most often was the Indian one.’ This applies for instance to the Congress non-cooperation campaign in the early 1920s. Indonesian nationalists could since then be classified as cooperators and non-cooperators, although for them the principal criterion was not the wish to boycott Dutch schools, goods and government officials(such a boycott actually never occurred in colonial Indonesia)but the refusal to participate in representative councils such as the Volksraad(i.e. People's Council).

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 10 , Issue 1: India and Indonesia from the 1920 to the 1950s: The Origins of Planning , March 1986 , pp. 31 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1986

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References

Notes

1 Abeyasekere, Susan, One hand clapping Indonesian nationalists and the Dutch 1939-1942 (Monash University 1976)8Google Scholar.

2 Kolff, Cf. D H A., ‘De kontroleur G K. van Hogendorp (1844-1879) een enthousiast statisticus’, in Anrooy, F. van a o. ed., Between People and Statistics. Essays on modern Indonesian History presented to P Creutzberg (The Hague 1979) 192Google Scholar.

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4 In 1930 there were only 12 Indonesian towns with more than 50, 000 inhabitants, Jakarta heading this list with 553, 000. Cf Statistic Pochetbooh of Indonesia 1941 (Batavia 1948)Table 19Google Scholar.

5 Fasseur, ‘Nederland en het Indonesische nationalisme’, 39.

6 Ibidem.

7 The first exception was a note by an Indian civil servant, who had been deputed to Java, on the working of the currencysystem there. His research seems to have convinced Lord Kimberly in 1892 that a gold currency could be safely introduced in India. Ambirajan, See S., Political Economy and Monetary Management India 1766-1914 (Madras 1984) 142.Google Scholar Another example was the cultivation system in Java that also aroused Money's enthusiasm. It was discussed at length by Ranade, M G. in Essays on Indian Economics (Bombay 1898) 65–97Google Scholar.

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10 Misra, The Bureaucracy in India, 49, 59.

11 The term ‘regent’ was adopted from the Dutch vocabulary the members of the Dutch patriciate who participated in the government of the more important cities in Holland were called regenten.

12 Blunt, The I C S., 50.

13 See for an enumeration of these native states and other particularities Indisch Verslag [Indian Report] 1938 (Batavia 1939) 473–497.

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27 J B. van der Houven van Oordt, Aanteekeningen betreffende het Britsch Indisch Bestuursstelsel, bijeengebracht op last van Z E den Minister van Kolonien (n.p 1901)

28 Sutherland, The making of a bureaucratic elite, 130 It is not very clear to us how she can on the basis of this survey conclude that ‘the core of hereditary succession had beenlost’ Article 69 of the Government Regulation of 1854 states that insofar as it was reconcilable with the need for a candidate of‘ability, diligence, honesty and loyalty’ a son or close relative ol the last regent in office would be chosen as his successor. Cf. Indisch Verslag 1939, 498-517, esp 498, 512

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36 Ibidem, 220-222

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