The Minangkabau Response to Dutch
Colonial Rule in the Nineteenth
Century
Elizabeth E. Graves
Cornell Modern Indonesia Project
Monograph SeriesElizabeth E. Graves
The Minangkabau Response to
Dutch Colonial Rule in the
Nineteenth Century
Southeast Asia Program Publications
Southeast Asia Program
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
1981
SEAREditorial Board
Benedict R. O'G. Anderson
Tamara Loos
Stanley O’Connor
Keith Taylor
Andrew Willford
Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications
640 Stewart Avenue, Ithaca, NY 14850-3857
Cornell Modem Indonesia Project Number 60
© 1981, Cornell Modern Indonesia Project. All rights reserved.
Published 1981. Second Printing, 2002.
Except for brief quotations in a review, no part of this book may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the Cornell Modem Indonesia Project.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 0-87763-000-3TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
FOREWORD ................................................. v
NOTE ON SPELLING AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC SOURCES................ vi
INTRODUCTION ............................................. vii
Chapter
I.	THE MINANGKABAU WORLD AND ITS TRADITIONAL
VILLAGE SOCIETY.....................................  1
II.	THE VILLAGE AND THE WORLD BEYOND ................... 17
III.	A NEW POLITICAL CONFIGURATION: CENTRALIZED RULE
AND A STATUS QUO.................................... 29
IV.	ECONOMIC REORGANIZATION: TAXATION AND THE
CULTIVATION SYSTEM ..............................    50
V.	SECULAR EDUCATION IN THE 1840s TO 1860s: THE ERA
OF LOCAL INITIATIVE................................. 77
VI.	EDUCATIONAL REORGANIZATION IN THE 1870s: THE
GOVERNMENT ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS AND ADVANCED
EDUCATION ............................................   109
VII.	THE GENEALOGY OF THE NEW ELITE: A CASE	STUDY....... 129
VIII.	EPILOGUE: MINANGKABAU IN THE TWENTIETH	CENTURY .... 140
GLOSSARY
145LIST OF TABLES AND MAPS
Table	Page
1.	Sumatra's West Coast Population (1852 and	1920).................... 44
2.	Padang Coffee Exports ...........................................   58
3.	Coffee Warehouse Purchases (1867-1869 in	piculs)................... 64
4. Corvee Labor Levies (1880) ....................................... 69
5.	Rice Harvest, 1867-1868 ........................................... 72
6.	Coffee Warehouses: Michiels' Decision October 11, 1847 ............ 74
7.	Total Pupil Enrollment in Nagari Schools........................... 87
8.	Parents' Backgrounds--Highlands Schools 1860s (in percent of total
enrollment)........................................................ 90
9.	Parents' Backgrounds--Lowlands Schools 1860s (in percent of total
enrollment)....................................................... 101
10.	Geographic Origin of Sekolah Radja Pupils	.......................  116
11.	Elementary Schools in Sumatra..................................... 118
12.	Family Background of Pupils: 1872 ................................ 126
13.	Family Background of Pupils: 1873 and 1877 ......................  126
Map
1.	Minangkabau and the Western Archipelago............................. x
2.	Minangkabau World .................................................. 2
3.	Coffee Warehouses (1847 and 1867).................................. 62
4.	Nagari Schools .................................................... 82
5.	Government Elementary Schools, 1880 .............................. 120
ivFOREWORD
Despite the considerable expansion of scholarly studies of Minangkabau society
in recent years, the paucity of historical research on West Sumatra is still notable.
Especially is this so for the nineteenth century, where, apart from the new per-
spectives provided in Christine Dobbin's series of articles on the Padri Wars,* vir-
tually nothing has been published during the past decade. A significant study
dealing with this period that certainly merited publication was the 1971 University
of Wisconsin dissertation of Elizabeth E. Graves, which, following her revision, we
are now pleased to bring out in our Monograph Series. In this revision Dr. Graves
was not able to draw on Dobbin's work and other germane material published during
the last few years, but most of the data she has marshaled and analyzed cannot be
found in other published sources, and there is no doubt that her monograph fills
many of the extensive gaps in our knowledge of nineteenth century Minangkabau
society and its interaction with Dutch political and economic power. Moreover,
those familiar with Taufik Abdullah's classic study, Schools and Politics: The Kaum
Muda in West Sumatra (1927-1933), will find an excellent complement in her chap-
ters on the development of secular education during this earlier period.
In publishing this study, the Cornell Modern Indonesia Project is confident
that it provides an important addition to the regional dimension of Indonesian his-
tory and illuminating insights into the shaping of nineteenth century Minangkabau
society and the way its character feet the stage for better known developments in
the present century.
George McT. Kahin
Ithaca, N.Y.
July 1981
* See, in particular, her "Islamic Revivalism in Minangkabau at the Turn of the
Nineteenth Century," Modern Asian Studies, 8, 3 (1974), pp. 319-56, and "Eco-
nomic Change in Minangkabau as a Factor in the Rise of the Padri Movement,
1784-1830," Indonesia, 23 (April 1977), pp. 1-38.
vNOTE ON SPELLING AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC SOURCES
Spelling of Indonesian words generally follows the new system introduced in
1972. Exceptions include: personal names and titles, which have been spelled
according to individual preference insofar as this could be determined ; names and
titles of organizations and positions which had ceased to exist before 1972; and
quotations from contemporary documents.
Footnote references to Exhibitum, Verbaal, and Mail rapport indicate documents
in the Ministry of Colonies' archives in The Hague for the years 1814-1849; 1849-
1899; and 1900 to the present. Packets of incoming reports and correspondence
from Batavia to the Ministry on a particular issue were dated and numbered as re-
ceived, and then filed as Exhibitum. For the Ministry response to Batavia, all
the relevant documents on a given problem were collected and refiled, together
with the draft of the reply, according to the date and number of the letter. These
documents were placed under the heading Verbaal. Documents cited as Mail rap-
port are copies of twentieth century reports, correspondence, and decisions sent
from Batavia to the Ministry of Colonies. They were filed by serial number, the
last two digits of which indicated the year in which the correspondence was re-
ceived in The Hague.
viINTRODUCTION
At independence, Indonesia woefully lacked educated citizens possessing the
professional and technical skills critical for the success of the new nation. Many
of the relatively small number that did exist in 1945 came from the Minangkabau
ethnic group of West Sumatra. Minangkabau representation among the political,
intellectual, and professional elite of the new Republic far exceeded their 3 per-
cent of the total Indonesian population.
The roots of the Minangkabau achievement lay in their reaction to the advent
of Dutch colonial rule in the mid-nineteenth century. After gaining control of all
of West Sumatra in 1837, the Dutch needed a body of local people with rudimentary
mechanical skills--reading, writing, and elementary ciphering--to staff their geo-
metrically expanding colonial bureaucratic structure. Nevertheless, the colonial
government had no consistent policy for encouraging education in the region, al-
though Dutch officials did occasionally take the initiative in sponsoring individual
schools there. This was partly because the Dutch regime's periodic fears of Mus-
lim activity directed against Christian rulers led it to distrust the intensely Islamic
Minangkabau. The few schools the government did provide were designed to cre-
ate an educated class of enlightened hereditary rulers similar to that on Java.
When, however, the chiefs themselves showed little interest in education, prefer-
ring instead to hire educated clerks, the non-chiefly families, quick to see the
unique advantages offered by education, rapidly filled the vacuum. Thus, the
schools that sprang up in the nineteenth century in response to Dutch needs owed
less to official Dutch support than to local interest. This was particularly the case
in areas that were relatively poor agriculturally, where most men had traditionally
been forced to pursue occupations as traders or craftsmen away from their home
villages. Because these hill areas were often the same ones in which the Dutch
established the coffee cultivation system, the villagers early on had direct exper-
ience with and access to job opportunities that required some education.
The socio-economic system of the Minangkabau village, with its tradition of
merantau by which young men left home to seek their fortunes, was uniquely
suited to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by access to the Dutch
colonial empire. The Dutch administration needed clerks and other semi-literate
staff, and many upwardly mobile Minangkabau families had soon established civil
service dynasties within the Dutch administration. The Minangkabau family system
stressed pooling resources to advance a member of the next generation, who in
turn would carry with him proportionately greater numbers from the succeeding
generations. Thus, families which blossomed as intellectual leaders in the twen-
tieth century were those with relatives as school-teachers, coffeewarehouse clerks,
or petty civil servants in the nineteenth.
The reasons for Minangkabau advancement in the field of education must be
sought within the traditional society--the pressures and demands which it made on
individuals, the opportunities or restrictions it placed before them. The colonial
government chose to organize its own administration of West Sumatra by using
existing adat (customary law) village institutions, because it wanted to preserve
the existing indigenous pattern of local interfamily relationships. But, in fact,
the colonial administration blocked the natural rotation in the upper elite positions
viiand thus changed the nature of relationships between families. The lesser, but
upwardly mobile, families could no longer expect to gain chiefly status and had to
look outside the traditional milieu to find position and prominence.
It is among these middle-level families that one can see "progress" in the
sense of a creative response to the colonial presence and its attendant new chances
for wealth and prestige, power and position. For many of these middle families,
the best path upward lay in attaching themselves to the new government, and for
this they had to learn the new skills and techniques which were preconditions for
employment.
"Western" education in nineteenth-century West Sumatra represented a largely
pragmatic and almost opportunist response by certain groups to the needs of the
European administration for trained bureaucratic personnel. Traditionally, educa-
tion was not considered as the preparation for future employment, but rather
learning to recite the Quran and the Muslim commentaries was a religious obliga-
tion which gave proof of obedience to God, and hence religiosity. Even those who
became village religious teachers did not begin study with the predetermined idea
that it would provide them with the tools to earn a living in traditional Minangka-
bau society, although one could argue that many saw it as a way to achieve en-
hanced prestige. The new Western-style schools, however, graduated pupils who
sought specific benefits in the material world as a result of their education.
In examining the response to educational opportunities on the part of various
elements in the population, one gains at the same time insight into the wider impact
of colonialism on Minangkabau society. The reaction to education by the different
social groups seems to parallel their response to colonial rule in general. The
Minangkabau village leaders, the local aristocracy, were catered to by the colonial
authority during the early years as the best means to legitimize the new regime,
and, as a result, these local notables often made few if any adjustments in the
main ordering of their lives. They were anesthetized into acquiescence by the in-
creased security of their high positions, security which accompanied outward
cooperation with the new rulers. For them, the relatively small change at the top
level did not really effectively threaten their own positions. Former members of
the traditional aristocracy who rejected the new rulers were exiled or neutralized
through the power of the colonial regime combined with the approval of the other
notables. The Muslim component of the traditional leadership of Minangkabau
society were victims of continuous Dutch activity deliberately aimed at undermining
Islamic influence. The new administration played off the old aristocratic elite
against the religious leaders in such a way that any alliance between the two would
be unlikely. Dutch academic studies of Minangkabau society focusing on and ana-
lyzing the so-called "traditional conflict" between Islam and the adat ultimately led
many Minangkabau themselves to accept these "inherent contradictions," formerly
unrecognized, as accurate assessments of reality.
For the peasant, life in the new order differed little from that in the old; as a
member of the bottom layer irrespective of who was in power, he was engaged in a
constant struggle to withstand outside demands and interferences in his daily af-
fairs. The increased efficiency of the Dutch bureaucracy, however, did penetrate
Minangkabau life in a way never before experienced. These increasing irritations
usually erupted into short-lived cathartic bursts of violence against the regime and
anyone else considered associated with the oppression. But, by and large, life for
the peasant, as for the aristocrat, continued to follow the path sanctioned by tradi-
tion and legend.
It remained for those in the middle to take advantage of the colonial situation.
Unlike the aristocrats, they had no guaranteed place in the elite. For them, the
viiicolonial government offered a new way to success, and a major theme of Minangka-
bau history in the nineteenth century is the increasing acceptance by these Mi-
nan gkabau families of the new means to elite status.
The Minangkabau case demonstrates the importance of local initiative and in-
terest and the part that social system plays in how a people respond to changing
circumstance. The Dutch administration was more intensive in other parts of the
archipelago and the Dutch educational system more well developed elsewhere as
well, but few of these areas responded in the same fashion as did Minangkabau.
Moreover, the other areas later known for their educated and professional class
during the Dutch era were Christian communities protected and pushed by Dutch
missionaries and with preferred access to the benefits of colonial rule. The Dutch
always considered the Islamic Minangkabau a potential threat to public tranquility
in Sumatra. Because the Minangkabau achieved their success on their own account,
they did not believe its continuation depended on a permanent Dutch presence and
thus were early members of the nationalist movement and leaders of the new nation
in 1945.
ixMAP l: MINANGKABAU & THE WESTERN
ARCHIPELAGOCHAPTER I
THE MINANGKABAU WORLD AND ITS
TRADITIONAL VILLAGE SOCIETY
The island of Sumatra, neatly bisected by the equator, lies with its northern-
most tip pointing the way to India and the trading world of the Mediterranean Sea,
a world with which Sumatra has been tied in commerce for long centuries. The
great mercantile empires of Indonesia--Srivijaya, Melayu, Aceh to name but a few--
were based on Sumatra. Movement and competition were the hallmarks of life in
these states, and the people of the island as a whole displayed a high degree of
personal mobility, travelling far in search of trade or, in times of uncertainty,
plunder. Many sailed as far as the eastern coastline of Africa, joining in the Malay
settlement of Madagascar.
Sumatra has thus historically been the scene of dynamic and commercially orient-
ed peoples, at home in the arena of international power politics or individual achieve-
ment. The Minangkabau of West Sumatra are worthy spiritual heirs of this long
tradition. Their homeland, midway along the north/south axis of Sumatra, consists
of a series of fertile upland rice plains stretching eastward from the foothills of the
Bukit Barisan, the mountainous western spine of the island, to the beginnings of
the lowlands which mark the Riau coastal district on the Straits of Malacca. The
area is small, comprising some 18,000 square miles which represent only 11 percent
of the island's total expanse and less than 3 percent of presentday Indonesia. With
the exception of a thin coastal strip, most of the Minangkabau region is over 1,500
feet above sea level.
West Sumatra is the most densely settled residency of Sumatra and, along with
the three residencies of Java and that of South Sulawesi, one of the five major pop-
ulation zones of Indonesia. Within the Minangkabau area, the demographic patterns
follow the topographical characteristics; population is not evenly distributed but is
concentrated in the four rice-producing plains and, since late colonial times, the
area around the capital of Padang. Though the population of Minangkabau has in-
creased over the past two centuries, along with that of the rest of Indonesia, the
expansion, relatively speaking, has been slower.
The Minangkabau people are acutely conscious of themselves as a distinct and,
in their considered opinions, highly superior ethnic group. The intrusion by the
modern world did not shake this self-confidence nor basically alter their fundamen-
tal assumptions about themselves as a people or their worth as individuals. They
believe that the history of their singular group first began with a settlement on the
southern slopes of Mount Merapi, a volcano near Bukittinggi; from this geographic
focus, they expanded to fill what is now the province of West Sumatra. The Merapi
settlement was divided into three communities, each centered around its own well,
called in the language of those days a luhak. As time passed, it became necessary
to seek new land, and so each of the three groups set off to pioneer and settle a
district of its own. The group from the luhak agam, the well where the agam plant
(used for weaving mats) flourished, travelled to a broad plain north of the Merapi,
facing Mount Singgalang. Those from the luhak tanah datar, the well on the flat
1MAP 2: MINAHGKABAU WORLD3
ground, settled on a plain southeast of the Merapi. The people from the third well,
of whom there were some fifty (lima puluh) families, established themselves on the
plain north of Mount Sago.1
Henceforth, these three areas of settlement formed the heartland of Minangka-
bau and were known collectively as the Luhak nan Tigo (The Three Districts)--
Luhak Agam, Luhak Tanah Datar, and Luhak Lima Puluh Kota. Although the
Minangkabau people continued to expand in all directions from these core districts,
the Luhak nan Tigo are considered the real and true Minangkabau country, and all
other areas have legends of settlement which tie their ancestors to one of the three
original luhak communities.
The main center of Minangkabau development has been four large rice plains
which are enclosed within the rugged surrounding hills that divide the Minangkabau
from their neighbors. This area is known popularly as the Padang Highlands (after
the Dutch term for the area, Padangsche Bovenlanden) or sometimes the Minangka-
bau Highlands. Each of the four plains sustains a dense population, gathered to-
gether on a broad and gently sloping saucer of land, itself carefully demarcated
into terraced rice fields which are irrigated by a combination of winter's rains and
favorable topography. Artificial irrigation projects have never been an important
feature of Minangkabau village agriculture.
These four upland population concentrations include the cultural and historical
wellspring of the Minangkabau (the Luhak nan Tigo) plus the district of Solok
(known historically as the XIII and IX Kota). Collectively, the districts are
termed the darat (the land, or more specifically, the upland interior) in opposi-
tion to the rantau, a term applied to all those frontier, culturally mixed areas
which, though perhaps geographically "in" Minangkabau, are not considered quite
"of" it.
Each broad plain has its own attendant volcano, constant reminder to the vil-
lagers that their ancestors descended from such a mountain in the dimly perceived
past before wet-rice cultivation was known and when life on the unprotected plain
was too hazardous to contemplate. Mount Sago, now dormant, dominates the Luhak
Lima Puluh Kota; an equally inactive Mount Singgalang lies on the southern border
of Luhak Agam; Mount Merapi, still active and dangerous, acts as a boundary be-
tween Agam and Luhak Tanah Datar; and Mount Talang, only relatively recently
returned to life, lies to the south of Solok. These mountains and their rings of
foothills girdle the rice plains and provide an atmosphere of separation which has
helped isolate and distinguish the men of one district from those of another. Two
great crater lakes, Maninjau and Singkarak, provide spectacular and unsuspected
breaks in the rugged Barisan Mountains along the western rim of the darat. There
are no navigable rivers to connect this upland realm to the outside world. The
colonial roads, like the footpaths which predated them, snake along the sides of the
mountains and slip through the narrow passes that separate the four plains each
from the other.
Life in each of the plains is similar, the regular cycle of the wet-rice farmer,
but the inhabitants of each are credited with their own distinctive characters.
Agam, in the north, centering on Bukittinggi, is equated with dynamic pragma-
tism , peopled with men quick to turn any situation to their economic advantage.
The Lima Puluh Kota, slightly removed to the east and in closer contact with the
traders' world of the Malacca Straits, forms a center for traditional religious
1. Ahmad Dt. Batuah and A. Dt. Madjoindo, Tambo Minangkabau dan Adatnja
(Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1956), pp. 14-16.4
studies, especially at the numerous tarekat (mystical, Islamic brotherhoods) schools
which dot the landscape near the administrative center at Payakumbuh. In the
south, the XIII and IX Kota, with their center at Solok, reputedly have the most
arrogant and aristocratically minded of all the Minangkabau people. Tanah Datar,
in the middle geographically and cosmologically, contains the birthplace for the
Minangkabau and their culture as well as their former political center, Pagarruyung,
the last visible remains of the reputedly glorious Kingdom of Minangkabau.
These upland plains nurtured Minangkabau culture and were the scene of its
most complex and systematic form of development. Here extensive sawah (wet-rice
fields) holdings allowed the growth of large matrilineal families organized by in-
creasingly intricate adat relationships. The land was sufficient to support all of
its people, and few needed to look elsewhere to supplement the rice harvest. An
aristocracy of land-based families ruled the villages and preserved the customary
law to their advantage. Within the village, each extended family, or lineage, has
its own area or compound where large family houses (rumah ga.da.ng) built on wood-
en pilings face onto a common courtyard. The most impressive house in the com-
pound belongs to the lineage's main family, the one entitled to hold the family
chieftaincy and provide the place for family rituals. Somewhere nearby, but a bit
removed from the complex of houses, stands the lineage surau, serving as the
gathering place of adolescent and adult males for all sorts of social and religious
activities.
In the rugged hills which wall in the four rice plains, nestle villages which
also belong to the Minangkabau sphere, but where the tempo of daily life is differ-
ent. Here in the high upland passes, one finds only the occasional narrow plain
suitable for wet rice, and the harvests are small. The farmers plant the hilly
slopes with vegetables and fruit mixed with a bit of dry-field rice. To survive,
these hillside people have developed handicraft or service industries whose prod-
ucts they sell to their compatriots of the plain. Each year, young men from these
villages leave for the market towns to become artisans, petty traders, tailors,
coffeeshop owners, or bullock cart drivers. The ideal Minangkabau life was
evolved by the plains people who could easily sustain it with their extensive rice
harvests. For the hill people the ideal is a constantly pursued dream, only par-
tially attainable through the profits of nonagricultural labor.
The image of the Minangkabau as a peripatetic merchant and artisan derives
more from the people of these hill villages than from those of the prosperous rice
villages of the plains. The bus company owner in Medan, the exclusive antique
dealer in Jakarta, the small cloth merchant in Makassar, each comes from an upland
village and each represents the financial hopes, and probably significant monetary
investment, of an upland lineage.
These hillside villages exist at the fringes of Minangkabau life, but they pro-
vide many of the services and goods required to keep the "classic culture" going.
Each market day, before dawn, people from the hills begin their journey down to
the populous towns of the plains. They bring the cabbages and coffee, the bas-
kets and pottery, the cloth and the jewelry which contribute to the ease of living
on the plain. Each hill village is known to the people of the plain according to the
service which it can render them.
Along the western coastal lowlands, one finds villages which differ from both
of the highlands types. They are in the Minangkabau territorial area, but not
completely a part of its culture. Their ethnic composition is mixed; they are trad-
ing entrepots and have attracted mercantile elements from as far as India and as
near as the Minangkabau darat itself. A Minangkabau resident in the coastal port
of Padang, Painan, or Pariaman rarely considers himself a true citizen of any of5
these places. He belongs instead to the village of his mother's people in the high-
lands, or, if his mother is part of the coastal population herself, then he takes his
father's village as his own, or even that of his grandparents. One may live and
work in Padang, one may even be born and die there, but the only people who are
really ever "from” Padang are a few "feudal" families, the recognized overlords of
the ports who, in a bygone era, collected tribute from the trade conducted in the
harbors. Even they, however, can trace their families' origins ultimately to high-
lands nobility of a not-quite-forgotten past.
On the coast, the cultural conventions of the highlands Minangkabau adat
(customary law) have become blurred, diluted by years of outside influences,
starved by semi-isolation from highlands sources. There is little of the interlin-
eage rivalry which keeps the darat villages in continual cycles of renewal and pre-
vents the development of an entrenched aristocracy.
The small satellite agricultural villages which serve the coastal centers are
likewise composed of people who came originally from the Padang Highlands. Their
remembered ties to specific villages are important links proving their oneness with
the Minangkabau world, for all that their families have resided on the coast for
generations. Although their land appears rich, their villages are poor and shabby.
Many supplement their livelihood by fishing. The large lineage houses, center and
symbol of Minangkabau society in the heartland, apparently did not survive the
transition to life on the coast. They were, perhaps, too expensive to maintain,
or unsuited to the different lifestyle, or, perhaps, no one who settled here wanted
to accept the reality that he had in fact changed his "home village."
Geographically and in terms of life style, therefore, one can divide the Minang-
kabau nagari (extended village units) into three fairly distinct categories. In the
Padang Highlands, the main focus of Minangkabau history and culture, two life
styles have developed--that based on the sawah-rich plateau with its plentiful har-
vests, and that centered in the "marginal" villages of the hill country with their
handicraft and entrepreneurial interests. The social and political structure of
these two types of villages, however, follow the same basic outlines of adat law
and custom, differing mainly in their interpretations about how these regulations
ought to operate in practice. The third type of nagari are those of the western
coast--in its towns and along the narrow surrounding plains. This area was known
to the Dutch as the Padang Lowlands (Padangsche Benedenlanden), and to the
Minangkabau as the rantau or frontier. Culturally and in terms of social and polit-
ical organization, ■the coastal districts often present only a dim reflection of the
highlands adat style. These differences in geography, historical experience, and
general approach to life would greatly influence the way the various nagari reacted
to the events of the nineteenth century and the challenges of the Dutch presence.
Traditional Village Society
A major factor in traditional Minangkabau village society was the constant com-
petition among individuals and their families to attain recognition and status; such
position conferred, and at the same time also derived from, lineage power and pres-
tige. Birth, wealth, and prestige in varying combination opened the path to the
top for aspiring families and their members. Although, at first glance, the village
appears to have been a closely knit oligarchy, organized to benefit the direct heirs
of the initial "founding families," a closer examination reveals that a constant circu-
lation took place in and out of this "aristocracy." Birth, though perhaps most im-
portant, was by no means decisive. Its importance derived more from the leverage
it gave certain families in the struggle to acquire and maintain wealth and prestige6
than from any recognized preeminence for a particular bloodline. Village life in
the Padang Highlands, whether in the plains villages or the hill villages, followed
roughly the same general outlines, though it often differed in style, intensity, and
the degree to which any given factor was influential or important.
Matrilineal Lineages
The basis of social organization and the arena within which the fundamental
power struggles were carried on was the suku, a matrilineal lineage group sub-
divided into large extended branch families. Depending upon the number of its
members, and to a certain degree also its importance in the village, a particular
lineage might occupy one or more housing compounds in the village.
The composition of each lineage unit, or suku, was based on its members' pre-
sumed common descent from the same ancestral mother. Suku were subdivided into
large branch families, or kaum; here, too, membership was based on descent from
a common foremother, usually a great- or great-great-grandmother. The smallest
unit, the sabuah parui, consisted of all the children of one woman plus the children
of her daughters. 2 A sabuah parui was usually the same as the residents of one
large family house. Only the women and small children were considered the actual
residents of such a house, and only they were entitled to live and sleep there.
Men were technically regarded as temporary visitors in the house of their mother.
The men either stayed at their wife's house at night, or, if unmarried, they slept
in the lineage surau, a combination Quranic school and male clubhouse.
Family Property
The main base of operations for the suku was not regional but rather within
the village, where it served as the basic political, social, and economic unit.
Wealth, and hence power, prestige, and social position, derived from lineage-held
lands, properties, and perquisites--known collectively as the harta pusaka, or,
more usually, pusaka.
The most important single item in the harta pusaka were the lineage lands, but
the pusaka also included such various items as the central lineage house, individual
large family houses and other buildings, jewelry, rights to woodland, and rights
to the title of family chief (penghulu) and lesser adat positions. The harta pusaka
was considered as property "owned" by the whole lineage, branch, or family as a
unit. It was inalienable and no single individual could make private contracts con-
cerning it. It served as a "trust fund" for the family members because it could
not be sold, and, theoretically, it protected the family from complete poverty. At
the same time, as one commentator has pointed out, such a system also made it very
difficult for any one family in the lineage to gain control and become very rich
quickly.3
Family properties were especially important as social security for the family
women. Insofar as one could identify "heirs," to the property, these were, prop-
erly speaking, women; men were charged, on the other hand, with guarding the
inheritance and watching over their sisters' welfare. The male guardian was called
the mamak kepala waris, which means the "uncle" who controls the legacy or who
2.	P. E. de Josselin de Jong, Minangkabau and Negri Sembilan: Socio-Political
Structure in Indonesia (Jakarta: Bhartara, 1960), p. 10.
3.	A. W. P. Verkerk Pistorius, Studien over de Inlandsche Huishouding in de
Padangsche Bovenlanden (Zalt-Bommel: Noman, 1871), p. 58.7
heads the inheritance unit (waris can be used in either sense). The term is usually
shortened to mamak, meaning uncle or guardian. In theory, the mamak could not
make any disposition of family property without consent of the women. ** He was
usually the eldest male who could also claim direct descent from the family's ances-
tral female founder. He supervised division of family property and its profits and
was charged with nurturing it so that its wealth increased.
The most important component of harta pusaka was the wet-rice land, the
sawah. The mamak supervised its equal division among his sisters. No considera-
tion was given to the relative size of the constituent families to be supported, but
rather each received an equal portion. This matrilineality in inheritance practice
among the Minangkabau has long confounded outside observers, because the Mi-
nangkabau were, at the same time, an intensely Islamic people. Islam has a strong
patrilineal bias and, though Shariah law divides property among children of both
sexes, the males receive the greater share. In Minangkabau, such Islamic concepts
of inheritance tended to influence the disposal of a man's personally acquired prop-
erty, which adat did allow him to leave to his children. But, even here, the matri-
lineal family exercised a good deal of influence. The problems of inheritance were,
and are, so complicated and so intertwined with adat regulations that the Islamic
courts in West Sumatra consistently refused to hear inheritance disputes. 4 5
Strict regulations prevented alienation of the family's harta pusaka. Movable
property, and of that usually only items considered of a "personal" nature such as
jewelry, might be pawned on a short term basis to raise money for almost any need,
but this still required prior consent from the mamak and anyone else thought to
have rights over the item to be pawned. 6 Immovable property, principally sawah,
could only be pawned to raise money to meet an adat requirement whose neglect
would reflect badly on the whole family or lineage and thereby diminish its reputa-
tion within the community. Only four situations were considered important enough
to warrant pawning a parcel of family land: burial of a family member; marriage of
a spinster sister; repairs to the family house; and installation of the lineage peng-
hulu.7 Pawning family land required the unanimous consent of all members. Land
had to be pawned to some individual or family within the same lineage if possible
and preferably within the same branch; as a last resort, however, the land could
be pawned to someone from another lineage within the same village. Adat prohib-
ited any alienation of land or its profits to an "outsider."
Adat restrictions governing land alienation had two important consequences in
terms of the continuing competition for power and position. An individual could
not own land and, therefore, no one could acquire large tracts of it for permanent
use as an independent nonfamily source of personal wealth and power. If one
wished to acquire a personal fortune, it was necessary to look elsewhere, usually
outside the village to the sphere of the market town. Because land was usually
pawned within the lineage, the major focus of the competition for power was con-
tained within a relatively limited circle. Interlineage competition on matters of vil-
lage importance also existed, but the major energies were devoted to the ongoing
intralineage jockeying for leadership and prestige.
4.	Batuah and Madjoindo, Tambo Minangkabau, pp. 99, 145.
5.	Nancy Tanner, "Disputing and Dispute Settlement among the Minangkabau of
Indonesia," Indonesia, 8 (October 1969), p. 51.
6.	Batuah and Madjoindo, Tambo Minangkabau, p. 91.
7.	Ibid., p. 92.8
Despite the seemingly levelling effect of a system which did not allow permanent
alienation of land, branches within the lineage continuously changed economic, and
hence social and political, position, relative to each other. If a family were obliged
to finance a series of expensive ceremonies in close succession (for example, the
funeral of an important family member soon after the wedding of an eldest daugh-
ter), accumulated wealth might be exhausted, forcing the family to pawn property
to raise the needed funds. This was a double hardship when the property pawned
was sawah land, because the family not only owed money but had lost future income
from the land as well; this made it that much more difficult to get out of debt.
Since the land should not be removed from lineage jurisdiction, other branches or
families in the lineage which had not had any major expenditures recently or, alter-
natively, which had members abroad who earned extra money for the family, would
loan the money and acquire the profits from the land. These changes in financial
status had political as well as economic ramifications, for wealth acted as an impor-
tant criterion when it came to choosing the lineage chief, the penghulu. A decline
in the fortunes of a penghulu family could cause it to lose possession of the peng-
hulu-ship to a newly emerging, wealthier family.
Every family continually worked to increase its base wealth, the harta pusaka.
The main core of wealth, the pusaka tinggi (lit. high pusaka) inherited from the
original ancestors, was considered the property of the entire lineage, but individ-
ual families and lineage branches possessed other property which belonged in com-
mon only to their particular unit. Additional land could also be acquired by re-
claiming new sawah or ladang (nonirrigated, generally hillside, fields). The "own-
ership" of a given parcel of land belonged to the family (and their heirs) who had
first tilled that patch of soil. 8 During his lifetime, the person who had established
the plot controlled it and its proceeds, and, theoretically at least, he could freely
make decisions concerning it without his mamak's consent. 9 But as it usually hap-
pened that the tiller had required family capital to finance his initial operation, he
was not entirely free of supervision by the mamak, acting as formal guardian of
family investments. Privately acquired property was called the harta pencarian,
and it too became part of the family's communal harta pusaka at the death of the
person who had first acquired it. As a result, the family as a whole would keep a
close watch during the "owner's" lifetime to make certain that their potential harta
pusaka wealth was not being wastefully used.
Wealth, other than land, which an individual accumulated during his lifetime
was also included in his harta pencarian and also reverted to his mother's lineage
at his death. Most such additional wealth was earned outside the village by Minang-
kabau merchants or artisans, two occupations for which people from the region
were famous throughout the western archipelago. Such business ventures were
usually undertaken with the expectation that the profits would increase markedly
the harta pusaka and hence improve the entire family's power position within the
lineage.
Father /Son Relationships
The issue of individual property was important because it was often entangled
in the more specific problem of a man's relationship to his children vis-&-vis his
8.	"Bijdrage tot de Kennis van het Grondbezit op Sumatra," Tijdschrift voor
Nederlandsch Indie [henceforth TNI], 14, 1 (1852), p. 109.
9.	Edwin M. Loeb, Sumatra: Its History and People (Vienna: Institute fur Volker-
kunde, 1935), p. 108.9
obligations to his kemanakan (his sisters' children). The ambiguity surrounding
this question could easily create an atmosphere of intense rivalry between sisters
and wives over disposition of property. Worried sisters would accuse a brother
of spoiling his own children instead of fulfilling his traditional duties toward his
nephews and nieces, who, according to strict interpretation of adat, had first
claim on his attentions. Obviously, personal affection could influence the man's
decisions, and thus conditions existed for constant competition among youngsters
for attention from their fathers and uncles.
General custom provided that all property, whether individually acquired or
inherited, belonged to the matrilineal family, and hence to sisters and their chil-
dren, upon the death of the owner. But this was not a hard and fast rule. Chil-
dren , for example, were not automatically excluded from all inheritance of their
father's property. They could receive a share of his personally acquired goods if
he had so specified before his death and with the prior agreement of his lineage.10
In general, however, only movable wealth earned through personal labor could be
bequeathed.* 11
Minangkabau adat also accepted the right of a person to cede temporary rights
over immovable property, similar to provisions in Islamic law. Such grants, called
by the Arabic word hibah, could be conferred upon a wife, children, or even a
total outsider, but they expired on the death of the recipient, and the property
returned to the original holder or his lineage heirs.
Personal accounts by Minangkabau tend to support the contention that it was
in more intensely Islamic families that patrilineal elements were most pronounced.
Hamka [H. A. Malik Karim Amrullah], an important postindependence Minangkabau
writer and religious leader, recalled that, although during his childhood he lived
first with his mother's people, his father, a noted Islamic scholar, intended from
Hamka's birth that he would also become an ulama (religious teacher). Thus, when
his father divorced his mother, Hamka went to live with his father--an unusual
practice since children are considered members of their mother's lineage.12 An-
other Minangkabau writer, Muhammad Radjab, related a similar childhood relation-
ship with his father, also a respected religious teacher.13 In each instance, the
Islamic pattern of paternal supervision prevailed on matters concerning the boy's
future and his residence.
Pre-Islamic adat, however, apparently also recognized a bond between father
and children. According to tradition, one of the two legendary founders of the
Minangkabau adat generally stressed a somewhat patrilineal orientation. The royal
families and some of the self-styled nobility of the coastal and highlands areas, who
proclaim adherence to this adat interpretation, tend to emphasize the paternal lines
of descent. A common proverb, reputed to be of an early origin, described the
10.	A. M. Datuk Maruhun Batuah and D. H. Bagindo Tanameh, Hukum Adat dan
Adat Minangkabau: Luhak nan Tiga, Laras nan Dua (Jakarta: Poesaka Aseli, n.d.),
p. 51.
11.	Loeb, Sumatra, p. 108. See also letter of the Governor of Sumatra's West
Coast, August 15, 1861; Advice of the Council of Justice, Padang; and the Deci-
sion of the Governor General, February 15, 1862, No. 27, Verbaal, April 23, 1862,
No. 9.
12.	Hamka, Kenang-Kenangan Hidup (Kuala Lumpur: Pustaka Antara, 1966).
13.	Muhammad Radjab, Semasa Ketjil di Kampung (1913-1928): Autobiografi Seo-
rang Anak Minangkabau (Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1950).10
proper relationship of a man as one which gave protectiveness to his children and
guidance to his kemanakan.ll* The social protest novels of the twentieth century
depict Minangkabau adat as creating intense and irrational conflicts between men
and their sisters over alleged favoritism to children as against nephews.15 In
practice, however, intense conflict occurred only rarely in the village.
The Penghulu Suku
The important position in each descent unit was that of mamak, and as the
mamak supervised progressively larger numbers of dependents, called anak buah,
his own power increased proportionately. A mamak was supposed to foster his
dependents, protect them, and provide for their needs. Standing in roughly the
same position vis-&-vis the entire suku was the penghulu suku (usually shortened
to penghulu), designated by the honorific title datuk (abbreviated as Dt.). He
served also as the pinnacle of the adat hierarchy represented by the suku. As
such, he was charged with executing the principles of the adat which affect the
suku and which govern the relationship between his suku and others, his suku and
the village, his suku and the greater world outside. He represented the interests
of the lineage in village government, most importantly in the partition of unculti-
vated lands and assignments of rights to forest and other communal properties.
The position of penghulu, as with that of the mamak, generally passed from
mother's brother to sister's son. It is also worth noting here that the Minangka-
bau adat was not in fact matriarchal, though many continue to identify it as such.
Power and the administration of family affairs resided not with the women but with
the men. The maternal line was important in determining which men.
According to adat tradition, a specific family--one which claimed, whether accu-
rately or not, the closest proximity to the founding female of the lineage in that
village--held a hereditary right to the title of penghulu. The penghulu should be
chosen, in theory, from among the wisest, most capable, and clearest sighted males
of the eligible lineage--a clever speaker, truthful, patient, just, experienced in
adat customs, trustworthy, and of reputable family on both his mother's and his
father's sides.16 In reality, the penghulu-designate usually owed his nomination
to his family's wealth and personal influence, as exercised in the struggle of intra-
lineage politics. The penghulu-ship often rotated among a specified group of line-
age branches. Sometimes this accorded with long-established custom but more often
it represented changes in power relationships among branches, as for instance af-
ter the gradual decline of a traditional penghulu family and its subsequent replace-
ment by a rival branch.
Wealth played an important role in the rise and fall of penghulu families. The
installation of a penghulu involved long and expensive ceremonies, including mass
feasts for the lineage members and villagers, lavish popular entertainments and
gifts. Obviously, an impoverished family would be unable to maintain its para-
mountcy in the face of such expenditures and would be forced to surrender the
title. Tradition verifies the need for wealth, with the self-serving explanation
14.	The exact proverb reads: Anak di pangku, Kemanakan di bimbing [The child
in the lap, the nephew held by the hand]. Darwis Thaib, Dt. Sidi Bandaro, Seluk-
Beluk Adat Minangkabau (Jakarta: Nusantara, 1965), pp. 78-79.
15.	One such novel is: Marah Rusli, Sitti Nurbaja: Kasih Tak Sampai (Jakarta:
Balai Pustaka, 1965).
16.	Batuah and Tanameh, Hukum Adat, pp. 17-19.11
that a poor penghulu would be a burden to the whole lineage because it would have
to underwrite his official and personal expenses.17
The total number of penghulu in a given village varied over time. When the
number of members in a lineage increased greatly, the lineage often divided into
autonomous units, each with its own penghulu. The title of the new penghulu
usually contained some element of the original title to indicate the relationship. If
the suku Sikumbang, for example, had a penghulu entitled Datuk Narajau, but the
suku had outgrown the ability of one man to administer, then it would split into
two penghulu-ships, each retaining the suku name of Sikumbang. The new chief
might be known as Datuk Narajau Mudo (the Younger Daruk Narajau) or alterna-
tively the original chieftain might assume an enhanced title such as Datuk Narajau
Besar (the Greater Datuk Narajau).18 Such actions had to be ratified by the line-
age and be approved by the other village lineages. Sometimes, the split in the
title represented not increased lineage size but a compromise solution to a quarrel
over possession of the title. In order to prevent a permanent and bitter rupture
of relations between families, the lineage might decide to recognize each disputant
as penghulu over his own faction, but the titles would be changed somewhat to
differentiate between them--for example, Datuk Narajau Kuning (the Yellow Datuk
Narajau) and Datuk Narajau Hitam (the Black Datuk Narajau).
The opposite process could also occur. A lineage, because of an epidemic or a
declining birthrate, might have only a few, or mostly female, descendants, and
thus be too small to support a penghulu of its own. The family might then decide
to merge its interests with another branch within the same larger lineage. Usually
the small family merely kept its own penghulu title in abeyance until it grew large
enough to support one again. In the meantime, its members placed themselves un-
der the temporary protection of another lineage. Sometimes they agreed to combine
the titles and create a new position; thus Datuk Narajau and Datuk Malekewi might
become Datuk Narajau Malekewi.19
The pressure was always strong among wealthy upwardly mobile families to cap-
ture the position of penghulu. By accumulating much mortgaged land or outside
wealth from trade, a new family could, in effect, "purchase" the title from a long-
standing but faltering penghulu family. This was not an indication of inherent in-
stability in the adat structure or a symptom of gradual decay; rather expansion
and decline in the number of datuk and the shift of the title from one lineage branch
to another indicated an ongoing ability to absorb and adapt to changing relation-
ships among various branches or individuals within the same branch.
In order to wrest the title from the current holder, an emergent family needed
strong support among other lineage branches and within the village generally.
Other groups had to believe that the aspiring family would be in a better position
to exercise authority than the existing penghulu line. Given such support, and
especially in cases where the penghulu family had no obviously capable candidate
17.	Ibid., p. 17. In more recent times, a lineage often leaves the position of
penghulu vacant until a suitable candidate comes of age or returns from abroad,
or, if the problem is financial, until the family saves enough.
18.	Nofian, S. H. Lecturer at the Law Faculty of the University of Andalas,
Padang. Interview, July 14, 1967.
19.	Stibbe, "Het Soekoebestuur in de Padangsche Bovenlanden," TNI, 3 (3rd
Series) (1869), p. 33. Such combined titles may later split apart again if the com-
ponent families increase in size.12
of its own, the incumbent family could be forced to relinquish the title or else com-
promise and divide the lineage leadership into two penghulu-ships. 20
Subordinate Lineage Positions
The penghulu usually relied upon subordinates to help administer lineage af-
fairs. Foremost among these was the malim (sometimes called the imam) who acted
as the suku's highest religious authority and the person responsible for those adat
affairs which had religious overtones--for example, marriage and divorce. The
manti (or chatib) acted as a kind of "examining magistrate" and clerk, to hear com-
plaints about adat infringements, and also as a formal communications link between
the penghulu and his dependents. 21 The dubalang (or hulubalang) exercised the
"police power" of the penghulu; probably his office evolved from that of the suku
panglima (military leader), a position more crucial in the days when the lineage was
organized on a martial basis, and fighting to maintain its rights vis-a-vis other
suku or,combined with other suku,to defend the area against outside incursions. 22
Over time, the dubalang came to act more as an enforcer of decisions by the peng-
hulu or of specific adat provisions governing lineage affairs than as a general.
In addition to these specific offices, there existed a group of petty function-
aries called the pegawai; they delivered invitations to adat functions, escorted
people on ceremonial occasions, and performed other tasks of a bureaucratic or
ritual nature, supporting the penghulu or his assistants. 23 The community also
included a recognized but amorphous body of people called the cerdik-pandai (lit.
the clever ones), best described as the "pillars of the community." Although they
did not hold any formal adat office, they were usually consulted on important com-
munity decisions. The cerdik-pandai included the skilled, the wealthy, the clever,
and the prestigious, in short, anyone who had influence in the community. Their
agreement would be essential for village decisions. Consent and cooperation were
crucial; the rather loosely structured social and political system and the geographic
mobility of the people made coercion difficult. To avoid conflict, as many elements
as possible were drawn into the decision-making process, or at least nominally con-
sulted .
The fundamental concept operating both within the lineage and in the supra-
lineage sphere was that of mutual obligation. In Minangkabau, the relationship was
most generally expressed in the kinship terminology of the mamak (uncle, guardian,
or, simply, patron) to his kemanakan (nephew, dependent, or, simply, client),
and one's position in the community could be as much a reflection of the prestige
and position of one's mamak as of one's own achievements. Any newcomer, called
an orang datang (lit. person who comes), who planned to settle in a village needed
a mamak who could serve as the connecting link in making him a recognized member
of village society. He had to belong to someone; someone had to take responsibility
for him in the village, and frequently a newcomer would choose a particular village
because he had distant relatives there, the result of wandering on the part of a
20.	Report of G. A. Baud to the King, June 18, 1830, Verbaal, August 13, 1830,
No. 42.
21.	Verkerk Pistorius, Inlandsche Huishouding, p. 91; Batuah and Tanameh,
Hukum Adat, p. 28.
22.	Batuah and Tanameh, Hukum Adat, p. 28; L. C. Westenenk, De Minangka-
bausche Nagari (Weltevreden: Visser, 1918), p. 59.
23.	Batuah and Tanameh, Hukum Adat, p. 28.13
male forebear. Failing the presence of a blood relative, the orang datang sought
someone of the same suku name, or a close business associate.
Despite adoption by a local mamak, the orang datang could not hold any office
in his adopted lineage because he was not a maternal descendant of the lineage
founder. Otherwise, in most matters, he was considered equal to other individual
family members. His advice was often sought on family matters, and he was not
regarded els a servant or slave in the household. 24
A common type of orang datang was the ulama (religious scholar) come to study
or teach in a nearby mosque school. He might only stay a few years before moving
on again, but, if he was an adult, he usually married a village girl and became,
albeit peripherally, a part of village society.
The individual orang datang was usually a transient and thus his "second
class" status rarely became an issue. Occasionally, however, whole families moved
to new villages. In the late eighteenth century, for example, refugee families were
especially common in areas affected by the militant Padri, who sought to purify vil-
lage society and reorganize it on the basis of revolutionary Islam. Penghulu fami-
lies often fled in the face of the new force and many never returned, settling per-
manently in another village. These families had to be recognized by the nagari
council in the new village before they could receive rights to use land for building
houses and planting crops. Lacking traditional land rights placed new families at a
disadvantage, because they had no burial land in the village, a significant factor
determining who really "belonged." Possession of land was important in deciding
who was a person of "consequence" in local affairs. Even should a new family be
wealthy or gain control of enough property by moneylending that other villagers
were forced to acknowledge its de facto power, yet for a long time it was considered
second class vis-a-vis founding families--a mere transient among the permanent
residents. 25
Slavery and Debt Bondage
The orang datang were treated as full members of society in most matters other
than those concerned with inheritance and disposition over family properties and
privileges within the adopted lineage. In precolonial village society, there were
also people who were definitely regarded as inferior to other villagers--the slaves
and bondsmen. 26
Gradations and styles of slavery varied, depending on the circumstances of
entering servitude. Since the advent of Islam in Minangkabau, slaves were sup-
posed to be taken only from among non-Muslim peoples, in this case the pagan
people of Nias, Mentawei, Tapanuli, and Riau. Slaves and their descendants lived
in satellite settlements attached to most of the larger villages, especially the impor-
tant rice-growing villages of the highland plains. They provided the main source
of labor for the fields and households, working as day laborers and sharing the
harvested crop. 27 Unable to marry anyone from the so-called orang patut (lit. the
24.	Ibid., pp. 16-17.
25.	Ibid., p. 41.
26.	Ibid., p. 17.
27.	E. B. Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 1819-1890, 1 (The Hague: Bijdragen re-
print, 5th series, n.d.), p. 136.14
proper people) of the village,28 they usually remained dependent on their former
masters for their economic and social position. Their best chance of escaping this
situation was to seek refuge in the relative anonymity of the coastal towns as ap-
prentices or workers for artisans, traders, or sailors.
In addition to the captured or purchased slaves, the village labor force often
included many debt bondsmen, temporarily attached to their creditors in lieu of
payment for debts. Such persons became full members of the society again once
their period of service was over, although they probably were still considered of
rather low status by virtue of their poverty and former "slave" status. 29
Nagari Government
The basic geographic and political unit in Minangkabau has traditionally been
the nagari, generally comprising a large village with its satellite settlements. Na-
gari size varied widely both in geographic extent and in total population. Number-
ing perhaps as many as 600, in the precolonial period these districts ranged from a
few hundred persons in underpopulated fringe areas and hills to a few thousand in
densely settled plains. 30 Actual area covered probably varied inversely to the size
of the population, there being many fewer nagari in the thinly settled hills where
agricultural conditions required more land in the form of lading and forests. For
example, the relatively small region of Agam in 1967 had some 73 nagari while the
extensive Pasaman region in the north had only 48.31
The satellite settlements included both the colonies of laborers who worked the
lineage rice fields and the new villages established by members of the lineages from
the core village. Even after they had grown into separate and autonomous nagari,
these settlements continued to recognize their historic relationship to the mother
nagari (induk nagari) in their own tambo (histories). 32 Often certain rituals con-
tinued to require participation by "observers" from the induk nagari and in quar-
rels within or among new settlements, the induk nagari might be called upon to
mediate.33
28.	J. F. M. de Rooij, "De Positie der Volkshoofden in een Gedeelte der Padangsche
Bovenlanden: Hunne Ethnographische en Hunne Politieke Beteekenis," dated Soe-
liki March 15, 1889, Koninklijke Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde [hence-
forth KITLV] Manuscript, H 594.
29.	Ibid.
30.	The exact size in area and population of the individual nagari for the nine-
teenth century was not available to me. The Adat Council of West Sumatra issued
a list in 1967 which recognized 544 nagari determined according to adat require-
ments. Daftar Nama-Nama Kode Kabupaten /Kotamadya Nomor Urutan Ketjamatan
dan Kenegarian Se-Sumatera Barat (Padang: Lembaga Kerapatan Adat Alam Minang-
kabau, 1967). The Census of 1920 recorded 578 districts, a colonial district was
usually equivalent to a nagari. Uitkomsten der in de Maand November 1920 Gehou-
den Volkstelling, II (Batavia: Drukkerijen Ruygrok, 1922). How far this can be
taken to reflect the actual number of precolonial nagari, I am unable to determine,
but I would assume there to be a close correlation since the nagari are generally
adat-organized rather than government-organized divisions.
31.	Daftar Nama-Nama, pp. 1-4 and 8-9.
32.	P. J. Kooreman, "De Rechtspraak in de Burgerlijke Zaken van de Maleiers ter
Sumatra's Westkust: Voorheen en Thans," TNI, I (NS) (1902), p. 916.
33.	J. van den Linden, "Het Inlandsch Bestuur in het Gouvernement van Suma-15
Presiding over the affairs of the nagari and interactions among its constituent
lineages, was a council formed of the lineage chiefs, the penghulu suku. In nagari
which accepted the hierarchical and quasi-authoritarian adat style called Koto
Piliang, certain penghulu were designated as penghulu pucuk, paramount chiefs
with greater authority in council sessions. Seating arrangements and other out-
ward marks of superiority set these men off from other penghulu in the council.
Even villages belonging to the so-called egalitarian tradition of the Bodi Caniago
adat style, which did not formally install penghulu pucuk, still recognized certain
penghulu as having greater weight in council decisions by virtue (supposedly) of
particular personal qualities and their family's status.3lf The recognized distinc-
tion in both cases was generally cited as that between original or founding families,
considered the "owners" of the nagari land because they had first opened it to
settlement, and the relatively recent arrivals, considered merely "occupiers" of
land because they had "received" it on arrival from the founding lineages.35
The preeminence of particular penghulu in nagari affairs followed more closely
their achieved position in society than their ancestors' arrival dates in the area.
No two nagari "adat authorities" can ever agree on which families were the original
settlers; each asserting that at least one family currently in the ascendant is an
upstart heir of a "new arrival." Families on the decline were naturally anxious to
retain their hold as penghulu pucuk, but even should they keep the nominal desig-
nation, their advice often passed unheeded, once their status iri the nagari had
otherwise declined. Dutch experience confirmed the occurrence of changes among
"paramount chiefs." For example, as part of a twentieth-century reorganization
program, a government-sponsored rapat nagari (nagari council) was to be estab-
lished in each nagari. It was to be composed of only the so-called core penghulu
(kern penghulu). But villagers could not agree upon which families should be
included.36
Nagari often joined together in loose confederations which acted in concert in
cases of mutual need or against outside aggression. In most cases, these federa-
tions seem not to have been negotiated political alliances but rather represented
a group of nagari which, over time, had come to think of themselves as a single
unit. Often, the sense of a common fate represented a believed descent from a
common induk nagari; in other cases, they had at some time in the past actually
banded together effectively in an alliance for a specific end and had retained the
feeling of association.
Changing perceptions about the ranking of families, relations between the
nagari, and indeed society in general allowed the traditional Minangkabau village
to accept the realities of life without discarding the verities of adat. Adat was
vague and ambiguous and some portion of it could always be found to justify any
given change when this became desirable, or, perhaps, unavoidable. That is not
to imply, however, that change was always accomplished harmoniously or that
once one view had prevailed on a given issue, its adherents could assume that the
tra's Westkust," Tijdschrift van het Bataviaasch Cenootschap van Kunsten en
Wetenschappen [henceforth TBC], 4 (1885), p. 263.
34.	Nofian, S. H., interview, July 14, 1967, in Padang; G. de Waal, "Aanteeke-
ningen Betreffende het Adat-Bestuur in de Onder-Afdeeling Soloq," Tijdschrift
voor het Binnenlandsch Bestuur [henceforth TBB], 3 (1889), pp. 67-69.
35.	De Rooij, "De Positie der Volkshoofden."
36.	H. S. Stap, "De Nagari-Ordonnantie ter Sumatra's Westkust," TBB, 53 (1917),
p. 704.16
opposite faction would acquiesce permanently, or even gracefully. But a major
function of adat was to help at least smooth over the rough edges and try to pre-
vent any violent explosion which might cause a permanent rupture of relations.
For those Minangkabau who could not be reconciled and for those others who
wished to regroup their energies for another assault on the status quo, it was
always possible to leave the village and thereby avoid the confrontation--or at
least postpone it for awhile.CHAPTER II
THE VILLAGE AND THE WORLD BEYOND
Although in many ways the nagari are self-contained units, worlds motivated
by the internal play of politics and the struggle to attain wealth and prestige, the
villagers are well aware of the world outside. Many rely on that outside world for
supplements to their daily livelihood, mainly through a process known as merantau,
meaning to go abroad. The village society as a whole has also always had relations
with the outside. Some of these resulted from institutional arrangements, such as
those with the Minangkabau raja, and some are the consequences of historical forces
moving in the outer world, for example the Islamic revolution of the early nine-
teenth century. These different types of outside relationships affected the village
in different ways, reflecting, in the course of the interaction, inherent strengths
and weaknesses in village society and sometimes in the outside elements also.
The Raja of Pagarruyung
In theory, at least, the various Minangkabau nagari, which otherwise acted
much like petty autonomous republics, were joined into one geographic and political
entity under the Yang Dipertuan Besar (He Who is Made Great), the Raja of Pagar-
ruyung, the Ruler of Minangkabau. His position, at the supranagari level, in
function and design corresponded roughly to that of the penghulu at the nagari
level. Two other "raja” were subordinate to him, the Raja Adat (Ruler over Adat
Affairs) and the Raja Ibadat (Ruler over Religious Affairs).1 It has been variously
suggested that these two represented two major geographic subdivisions within the
kingdom or that they served merely as cosmological symbols of the Minangkabau
world order. 2 The Minangkabau royal epic, the Kaba Cindua Mato, credits these
raja with actual jurisdiction over issues within their respective realms of adat and
religion. For example, when the hero Cindua Mato infringes on an important adat
custom, the Raja Adat convenes a council to hear the case and consider the punish-
ment; then he delivers the council's decision to the Raja of Pagarruyung. This
seems to suggest that the ruler did not, or should not, intervene directly in the
daily affairs of the kingdom but rather ratify the advice of others charged with
investigation and making decisions. 3
In fact, however, the organization, jurisdiction, and even the origin of the
Kingdom and the Raja of Minangkabau have never been satisfactorily explained.
According to the most prevalent tradition, the first raja was a Hindu-Javanese
1.	P. E. de Josselin de Jong, Minangkabau and Negri Sembilan: Socio-Political
Structure in Indonesia (Jakarta: Bhratara, 1960), pp. 13-14.
2.	William Marsden, The History of Sumatra (London: J. McCreery, 1811), pp.
282-83; de Josselin de Jong, Minangkabau and Negri Sembilan, pp. 107-11.
3.	A fuller discussion of the royal myth is contained in: Taufik Abdullah, "Some
Notes on the Kaba Tjindua Mato: An Example of Minangkabau Traditional Litera-
ture,” Indonesia, 9 (April 1970), pp. 1-22.
1718
prince named Adityavarman. He arrived in West Sumatra only after the system of
lineage government under the penghulu and the organization of the independent
nagari was well-established. Because the land had already been divided among the
nagari, the new ruler could not amass any independent blocks of territory. “*
It is difficult to know whether the Raja ever exercised important political power,
as the first written evidence about the kingdom comes only in the sixteenth century
from European observers. By that time, the Raja and his chief ministers exercised
only nominal preeminence--and even that was confined largely to Tanah Datar, the
district immediately surrounding the royal palace at Pagarruyung.4 5 Such physical
intervention in village life as did occur was probably limited to periodic visits by
the Raja to receive tribute, usually in rice or gold, as evidence of his people’s
veneration and his own presumed imperial rule. One should perhaps view the King-
dom of Minangkabau as in fact merely the collective name for a multitude of inde-
pendent petty "states," united by virtue of their common origin, language, and
custom. The lack of a superior authority meant that nagari quarrels could be
solved only by local mediation and, as a last resort, by warfare.
The outer frontiers of the Minangkabau kingdom were ruled by local lords,
also termed "raja," who, according to tradition, were descendants of royal viceroys
dispatched from Pagarruyung. In these outer areas, one found a pronounced trend
toward a more patrilineal, hierarchical, and authoritarian type of society--similar
to that associated with the Pagarruyung court--than the usual pattern prevailing
in the Minangkabau nagari. The ruling families of Padang, Pariaman, and other
coastal towns of the west are also called raja, and they too claim a direct blood kin-
ship and historical political ties with Pagarruyung. They say they are the descen-
dants of viceroys sent to administer the ports and collect customs tolls in the name
of the Raja. 6
The royal preference for patrilineality and formal hierarchical arrangement of
rank and status tended to set it even more apart from the general highlands village
pattern. It was perhaps intentionally so, a way to affirm royal superiority and
prerogative through uniqueness. The existence of the royal-style system in the
fringe areas may reflect the late absorption of these settlements into the Minangka-
bau cultural sphere, that is, that they were incorporated into Minangkabau after
the organization of the Pagarruyung court and perhaps at its direct initiative.
Whatever the reason, the raja families both in Pagarruyung and on the rantau are
the only ones which avowedly and consistently adhere to the more authoritarian
and hierarchical of the two Minangkabau adat styles--the Koto Piliang. 7
Even though the Raja of Pagarruyung was technically supposed to be outside
the adat system entirely, the members of his administration were in fact all repre-
sentatives of the Koto Piliang adat style, and the Raja himself was recognized as
4.	A. M. Batuah and D. H. Bagindo Tanameh, Hukum Adat dan Adat Minangkabau:
Luhak nan Tiga Laras nan Dua (Jakarta: Pusaka Aseli, n.d.), p. 30.
5.	A traditional account reports that the court’s decline was precipitated by a
seventeenth-century succession dispute. Ahmad Dt. Batuah and A. Dt. Madjoindo,
Tambo Minangkabau dan Adatnja (Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1956), p. 42.
6.	Padang raja families, interview, August 10, 1967, Alang Lawas, Padang.
7.	A description of the two systems and their legendary founders, Datuk Perpatih
nan Sebatang (Bodi Caniago) and Datuk Tumenggung (Koto Piliang) can be found
in, among others, Batuah and Tanameh, Hukum Adat, pp. 20-31, and Batuah and
Madjoindo, Tambo Minangkabau, pp. 33-38.19
the titular head for that system. The traditional supreme representative of the
other adat style, the Bodi Caniago, was also located near Pagarruyung; he was the
Datuk Bandaro Kuning of Lima Kaum, a small village outside Batu Sangkar. He
was not considered a member of the royal court, but the king supposedly would
consult him in times of external threat which required concerted action by all
Minangkabau. 8
Insofar as most villagers were concerned, however, the existence of the Raja
at Pagarruyung was not a matter of concern in their everyday lives (with the
possible exception of the inhabitants of villages in the immediate geographic vicinity
of the palace).
Merantau
The most important interaction between the villagers and the outside world was
through the process known as merantau, which means to go to the rantau, that is,
to go abroad. Rantau, in this context, could be anywhere beyond the village--as
near as the local market town or a religious school in a neighboring village; or as
far as the ports of Riau or the markets of Batavia.
The rantau was as much an experience as a geographic destination. The vil-
lage man actively sought out the rantau; he consciously decided to leave home and
family and to try and make it on his own. The ease with which this was possible
resulted in large measure from the network of relationships represented by the no-
tion of mutual obligation between the mamak and his kemanakan. Common ties of
blood, village of birth, or similarity of lineage name set up patterns for geographic
movement within Minangkabau and in other areas where groups of Minangkabau had
established semipermanent settlements. Families with long-established traditions of
merantau could usually locate a kinsman in any major town almost anywhere in West
Sumatra (and, since the nineteenth century, almost any major city in Indonesia as
well).
The families with the most strongly developed tradition of merantau can be di-
vided into two different, though not mutually exclusive, categories--Islamic schol-
ars and petty traders (or artisans). Typically, in the major highlands rice areas,
these families had middle (probably lower middle) level socioeconomic status. They
had income from rice cultivation which was sufficient for subsistence but not enough
to confer importance in village society. In hillside and other marginal villages with
insufficient sawah land to support an essentially landed elite, almost every family
(except the very poor and the very rich) had a tradition of merantau. The young
men would leave home while in their early teens, either as apprentices to someone
from their family or village who had gone before or else as freelance artisans or
traders. In such villages, one finds that many penghulu were successful traders
in their youth and gained prestige as a result; they returned to live in the village
as permanent residents only after acceding to their titles. Merantau was an es-
teemed institution in such villages and was often idealized as the proper road to
maturity and success; in some areas, it took on the role of an initiation into adult
life.
The Minangkabau social system both facilitated and stimulated the exodus of
males; especially unmarried youth. Supervision of agriculture was, to a large ex-
tent, in the hands of women. They organized the family’s dependent laborers and
also assisted directly in the fields themselves when necessary. In a practical
8. The incumbent Datuk Bandaro Kuning, V Kaum (Batu Sangkar), interviews,
August 21 and 22, 1967, in Batu Sangkar.20
sense, young men had no responsibilities directly connected with daily life in the
village. Until marriage, they were at loose ends, having no family to look after. 9
After the age of puberty, young boys could no longer sleep in their mother's
house but rather went to the surau at night. Traveling students, religious schol-
ars, and merchants also stayed at the surau when passing through the area. Thus
the surau acted as a center for information and contacts about life outside the vil-
lage. Such experiences created among the young village men an interest in travel.10
The Minangkabau author Mohammad Radjab, in his reminiscences about life in the
hill village of Sulit Air, recalled the tremendous attraction the perantau life had for
young boys. They romanticized it as the way to future success, prestige,and a
good marriage. Anyone who did not join in merantau, and yet had no particular
position or excuse which required his continued presence at home, was ridiculed
by his friends.* 11
The perantau usually returned home every year during the fasting month of
Ramadan. Initially they came to marry; later, they came to visit wives and chil-
dren. They also renewed ties with relatives and neighbors. A woman was not per-
mitted to leave her mother's home and thus could not accompany her husband
abroad. The returning perantau brought the profits of a year's business to invest
in family projects. These profits were used to repair the family house, extend sa-
wah and ladang holdings, repossess pawned lands,and finance marriages or other
important ceremonies. Excess money was invested in gold, usually made into jewel-
ry. 12 This extra capital coming from outside enabled the families with small sawah
holdings to continue the matrilineal system relatively unchanged by funding the
large family house and permitting the continued maintenance of the women and chil-
dren in it. The profit made on the rantau could be used to rebuild family fortunes,
and, if the perantau were really successful, he might use his money to make loans
to other families in the lineage, thereby gaining control of more land. Eventually,
his family might have enough wealth to take over the lineage penghulu-ship.
Not all families, or even all areas, placed a positive value on the merantau tra-
dition. In the sawah-rich villages especially, the perantau element was fairly small,
increasing perhaps in times of general agricultural decline. The perantau's main
driving force, despite the "idealistic rationale" that it was initiation into adult life,
came from the need for additional wealth to support the family in the village. In
most places, with the exception of some poorer hill settlements, the families of peng-
hulu and other village notables had sufficient sawah or other wealth to provide for
9.	As with most other things Minangkabau, this custom has been honored with a
proverb: Keratau medang ke hulu; berbuah, berbunga belum, kerantau bujang
dahulu; di rumah berguna belum. The first two phrases set the rhyme scheme,
the second two state that the bachelor goes to the rantau first because he is not
yet needed (i.e., has no use) at home. Siegel describes a similar process in Aceh.
There, the young men leave the village to work on the pepper fields in the rantau
because they are not needed at home. James Siegel, The Rope of Cod (Berkeley:
University of California, 1969), pp. 48-57.
10.	Bahder Djohan, formerly Minister of Education, interview, June 1, 1967, in
Jakarta; Iljas Sutan Pamenan, author and teacher, interview, February 28, 1967,
in Jakarta.
11.	Muhammad Radjab, Semasa Ketjil di Kampung (1913-1928): Autobiografi Seo-
rang Anak Minangkabau (Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1950).
12.	Radjab in his "autobiography" vividly describes the return of the perantau as
seen through the eyes of a young boy.21
all members adequately. The penghulu, after all, was expected to be a man of
means; he was supposed to be able to remain in the village in order to administer
lineage affairs. He needed sufficient financial resources to support such a "non-
productive" position.
Penghulu families often displayed a definite prejudice against the idea of meran-
tau. Dismissing the idealized values attributed to perantau life by other segments
of the community, these men identified it for what it in fact was, an admission of
poverty or, at the least, of an inability to live in comfort without extra effort.13
In a society where others had to find supplements for their yearly income, the
penghulu's position was the more lofty because his family could support him without
resort to merantau. This "aristocratic" prejudice against leaving home seemed most
fully developed in the rich sawah areas of Agam, Tanah Datar, Solok, and Lima
Puluh Kota, and also among the coastal nobility. Typical of this attitude was the
assertion by a penghulu from the richest rice area in Tanah Datar that no one
would want to merantau except in case of direst need--if he were poverty-stricken,
or, in later days, because he feared the Dutch.llt
The young boys in the rich sawah villages also gathered in the surau and also
met the traveling merchants and teachers, but disinterest born of aristocratic prej-
udice and a comfortable life kept such boys from the rantau. These boys perhaps
worked off excess adolescent energy in gambling, cock fighting or, if more inclined
to quiet pursuits, in Islamic studies. Such young men of means probably married
much earlier than those who had to go abroad. The richer and more extensive the
sawah land, the greater the number of villagers whose incomes came mainly from
rice agriculture, and the more the prevailing attitudes and values were those of
the settled farmer rather than the adventurist merchant.
In addition to its economic aspects, however, merantau served as a kind of out-
let for tensions which might easily build in the matrilineal family-centered society
of village Minangkabau. It provided a kind of an "escape valve" which helped pre-
vent social pressures from exploding. The energies and forces which might create
tensions could flow outward. Moreover, they could be channeled to benefit the
lineage and even village as a whole. An ambitious youth, tired of being known
merely as a "member" of a particular lineage or the "nephew" of some important
person, could legitimately build his own life elsewhere and still not cut off ties to
his village, family, and adat. The family which desired power and prestige, but
was deprived by the existing lineage status quo, could seek to overcome this by
sponsoring perantau merchants and artisans. Lineages which had insufficient rice
land to support everyone preferred to supplement it with merantau.
Islamic Institutions
The first major threat to the Minangkabau way of life in the nineteenth century
grew out of local Islamic traditions. Minangkabau, along with Aceh to the north,
had served traditionally as an important area for the study of Islam. Payakumbuh
and Pariaman, especially, were noted educational centers which produced many
famous religious scholars, ulama. Both areas possessed large and famous surau
schools. Marsden suggested that Minangkabau was so important to the Islamic
13.	Datuk Simaradjo of Simabur, V Kaum (Batu Sangkar), interview, August 30,
1967, in Batu Sangkar; penghulu of Kota nan IV (Payakambuh), interview, Novem-
ber 21, 1967.
14.	Datuk Paduko Batuah of V Kaum (Batu Sangkar), interview, August 24, 1967,
in V Kaum.22
world that Sumatrans who could not make the pilgrimage to Mecca would at least
try to visit one of the West Sumatra centers.15
Each surau center was closely associated with the prestige of an individual
ulama, whose erudition had attracted the pupils to him. Some ulama were success-
ful in transferring their aura to favored disciples, but usually the surau declined
with the death of its teacher and either disappeared entirely or perhaps was re-
vived again later by another scholar.
The most famous center in West Sumatra, and a good example of a successful
Islamic educational foundation which survived its founder, is located outside the
small coastal village of Ulakan near Pariaman. Its focus is the holy grave of Syekh
Burhanuddin, an ulama of the late seventeenth century who reportedly first heard
about Islam from a Muslim sailor and went to Aceh to study more about it. After
returning to West Sumatra, he established a training center, in Ulakan, to facili-
tate the study and propagation of Islam in Minangkabau. But the kind of Islam
which he taught was heavily infused with mysticism, and focused on the figure of
the Syekh himself.16
Most of the other early Islamic centers were also formed as mystic brotherhoods
or tarekat. The followers sought a mystical and spiritual experience guided by the
ulama who was their leader. The story of the Syekh of Ulakan and that of corre-
sponding syekh in the highlands illustrate also the relative newness and, by ortho-
dox standards, the impurity of Islam in West Sumatra in the seventeenth century.
When Islam arrived is not known, but as late as the sixteenth century, the Portu-
guese traveler Tome Pires reported that the Tiku-Pariaman area (in which Ulakan
was located) was still heathen as was also most of the highlands interior; he be-
lieved that only one of the "three kings of Minangkabau" had so far been converted
to Islam.17
The surau study centers were probably the major departure points for the
proselytizing of Minangkabau. Advanced students went to Aceh and perhaps the
Middle East or India, and, on their return, they either assisted their former men-
tors or established new centers of their own elsewhere. Many students undoubted-
ly took up positions in village mosques helping those less learned or practiced to
strengthen their belief and to fulfill the basic requirements of Islamic life.
The kind of Islam which spread out from these centers was heavily infused
with mysticism and bore little relation to the religion envisaged by the Prophet,
but then neither did the religion being practiced in Mecca or Medina during the
same period.
The Padri Revolution
A series of individual and highly militant religious campaigns to purify Minang-
kabau Islam began in the late eighteenth century within the traditional isolated
mosque study centers, particularly those located around the northern fringes of
the plateau of Agam. It is probably not coincidental that these areas were also far
from Pagarruyung, the traditional cultural and "political" center of Minangkabau
15.	Marsden, History of Sumatra, p. 278.
16.	Current head of the Ulakan Religious Center, interview, November 15, 1967,
in Ulakan, Pariaman.
17.	Armando Cortesao, The Suma Oriental of Tome Pires (London: Hakluyt Society,
1944), 1, p. 164.23
and the focus for its adat "religious" rituals. At the beginning, there was no
apparent cooperation among the reformers, all of whom sought to cleanse village
Islam. They especially directed their attention to the rival Islamic centers, the
tarekat, which, they charged, had diverted Islam from the pure religious disci-
pline taught by Muhammad.
In subsequent European and Indonesian accounts, the reformers and their fol-
lowers have been called Padri, though the origin and first use of the term itself is
obscure.18
Whether or not there is a direct connection between the timing of the Padri
campaign in West Sumatra and the Wahhabi reform movement in Arabia is another
often debated issue. The Wahhabi movement like the Padri was a militant and puri-
tanical campaign. The Wahhabi wanted to cleanse Arabian Islam of the accretions
' it had gained since the death of the Prophet, and those who refused to repent of
their impious ways were dealt with summarily. The movement reached its peak
about 1810 under sponsorship of the new Saudi dynasty, which rode to power on
the crest of the reformist wave by using the awakened religious zeal to drive the
Turks from the Arabian Peninsula.19
In its broad outlines, the Padri movement certainly pursued the same announced
goal as the Wahhabi, that is, ridding local Islamic practice of pagan accretions.
Some of the Minangkabau haji who led the Padri could well have been students in
Mecca during the beginning of the Wahhabite campaign. According to Minangkabau
tradition, local concern about the need for reform had existed already in the late
eighteenth century but had only developed into a concerted and aggressive cam-
paign against an "impure" Islam as a result of the catalytic effect of three haji who
returned to the highlands in 1803. 20 The translation of their message of spiritual
reform into one of political and religious revolution was principally the work of four
local leaders who had never been to Mecca--Tuanku nan Renceh of Kamang, Tuanku
Passaman of Lintau, Tuanku Imam Bonjol of Alahan Pandjang, and Tuanku Rau of
Rau.
As with the tarekat leaders, the reformers also gathered their followers into
settlements on the periphery of established villages. But unlike their predeces-
sors, these new religious teachers worked aggressively to convert neighboring
villages to their ideas about a purified Islam. As a result, friction grew and often
erupted into open warfare. 21
18.	An early discussion of the nomenclature problem is contained in H. J. J. L.
Ridder de Stuers, De Vestiging en Uitbreiding der Nederlanders ter Westkust van
Sumatra (Amsterdam: van Kampen, 1849-50), 1, p. 33.
19.	R. Bayly Winder, Saudi Arabia in the Nineteenth Century (New York: St.
Martins, 1965), pp. 1-16.
20.	According to widely accepted tradition, the three haji were: Haji Miskin of
Pandai Sikat (Agam); Haji Sumanik of VIII Kota (Solok); and Haji Piabang of Tanah
Datar. The most complete summary of the conventional version of the Padri wars
is in Muhammad Radjab, Perang Paderi di Sumatera Barat: 1803-1838 (Jakarta:
Perpustakaan Perguruan Kementerian P. P. & K., 1954).
21.	The name Bonjol itself comes from one of these religious settlements, a hilltop
fortress at Alahan Pandjang, which the local people called bonjol. The Dutch re-
ferred to the whole village as Bonjol and eventually this became the commonly ac-
cepted name. Radjab, Perang Paderi, p. 27.24
The absence of a strong central authority to serve as an alternative to the
Padri and a rallying point to coordinate efforts against Padri aggression was an
important contributing factor to the reformers' initial quick success. Nagari could
not agree to cooperate until it was too late, and individual lineages within nagari
often used the chaotic and uncertain situation to usurp power from others rather
than cooperate in a common defense. 22
One could argue, as later European observers sometimes did, that the Padri
were consciously attempting to evolve a new political centralization using religious
ties for bonds of loyalty and directed toward the total abolition of the penghulu by
replacing them with a central authority, an imam.23 The Padri leaders proposed
not necessarily an end to the system of family chiefs but rather a closer supervi-
sion of it by zealous Islamic monitors. The major conflict arose between two dif-
ferent versions of Islam--the traditional accommodating and eclectic Islam (taught
in the lineage surau and the village mosque) and the reformers' less tolerant and
more puritanical version. The Padri collided with adat authorities about who
should determine correct religious practice and its role in village life.
Adat leaders as well as "establishment" Islamic scholars joined both sides of the
religious struggle. Imam Bonjol had as his sponsor and protector in Alahan Pan-
jang the chief adat official in charge of religious affairs--the Rajo Ibadat. During
Imam Bonjol's struggle with the leaders of Alahan Panjang, the major cleavage was
not between Islamic scholars per se and adat officials; each side had penghulu as
supporters. The split undoubtedly followed the lines of traditional political activity
within the village and its lineages. After the Padri movement developed into open
warfare against the Dutch, Imam Bonjol was supported by several penghulu in addi-
tion to his own religious disciples; he was later betrayed to the Dutch by a reli-
gious figure. 21t In Kamang (north of Bukittinggi, in the mountains), Padri chief
Tuanku nan Renceh also had penghulu among his most ardent followers. 25
The force of the Padri campaign to reform the village was partially diverted be-
cause they were themselves beyond the institutions of village rule. Most of the
principal Padri leaders were men who were not tied, by blood to the adat institutions
of their village, and thus they had no particular authority according to local cus-
tom. Some were newcomers to the village, and others had descended from former
orang datang adopted by local penghulu. Such men had no stake in the adat sys-
tem and, at the same time, local adat officials could not enforce control over them
with the techniques which could be applied to suku members. Being outside socie-
ty also meant that Padri critiques of village life carried correspondingly less weight.
They had no effective channel for introducing change short of persuasion or coer-
cion.
The Padri, over the long term, proved unable to establish themselves firmly in
the four highlands plains areas. On the other hand, the Padri phenomenon devel-
oped rapidly and spread quickly through the fringe areas of Minangkabau--the
22.	Emanuel Francis, "Register der Aanteekeningen en Verigtingen van den Resi-
dent van Sumatra's Westkust, op eene Reis over Pariaman, Tiekoe en de Danouw
naar de Padangsche Bovenlanden" (June 20-August 6, 1836), KITLV Manuscript,
H 554a/H 554b, esp. the section dealing with the VIII Kota.
23.	Report of the Resident of the Padang Highlands van der Hart, 1852, Verbaal,
July 13, 1858, No. 35.
24.	Current Imam of Bonjol, interview, October 27, 1967, in Bonjol.
25.	Rad jab, Perang Paderi, p. 29.25
border areas located in an arc surrounding the northern plains and in the villages
of the hills which touched the plains themselves. The movement is perhaps best
characterized as one of "outsiders"--marginal people and areas considered tradi-
tionally as slightly beyond the pale of Minangkabau civilization. The Islamic schol-
ars in their fortified religious compounds had chosen to remain outside the village
and thus the adat community life (at least for the most part). The border villages
were also "outside," in the sense that they were in areas not fully absorbed into
the classic civilization of the heartland. Their exclusion, like that of the hillside
villages, partly resulted from a lack of rice land necessary to support a large lei-
sure class of expensive adat functionaries. They were the villages of the highly
developed merantau tradition, and their inhabitants may well have resented the
smug and only barely concealed superiority complex of their plains kinsmen. The
plains people considered these villages as rantau areas and not quite "Minangkabau-
ified." Inside the fringe areas themselves, however, the adat (or at least its out-
ward matrilineal trappings) was often very strongly adhered to and the villagers
often far more conservative than the men of the plains.
The Coastal Experience
The Padri uprising was only a brief upheaval in the life of many highlands vil-
lages . Another outside force, one which would have a much more pervasive impact,
was already developing by the 1800s--but on the coast not in the interior. The
consequences of this new force would be foreign penetration of virtually every as-
pect of Minangkabau life. Historically, culturally, and economically, life on the
coast had always been different, so it is perhaps fitting that change when it came,
entered via the port towns of the west coast--Pariaman, Padang, and Painan.
The coastal towns had grown up around river mouths or bays, which formed
natural trading centers where the products of the highlands could be exchanged
for imported goods and sea products, principally salt and salted fish. They had
mixed populations but with strong Minangkabau bias, provided by their aristocratic
rulers, the numerous itinerant highlands traders and the agricultural families who
had migrated to the coast to support the new towns. The ruling lineages, by tra-
dition viceroys of the Raja at Pagarruyung, represented a well-developed indige-
nous noble class, not found elsewhere outside the immediate vicinity of Pagarru-
yung itself. They gained control not only of the profitable trading ports but also
of the rich rice land located in pockets between the sea coast and the nearby moun-
tains. Although along most of the shore the mountains fall abruptly into the sea,
near the areas where the major harbor towns grew, there are broad expanses of
fertile rice land (though drainage is often a problem). The coastal raja followed a
greatly modified version of the highlands adat, especially with regard to land own-
ership; on the coast, land often became concentrated in a few large and privately
held tracts. Transfer of title was possible because the nobility had paramount
authority and did not have to contend with the traditional suku institutions which
had power in the highlands.
The concept of an aristocracy and its perquisites was more highly developed in
the coastal areas, in contradistinction to the highlands provinces where the lineage
form of government was the most common. Coastal ruling families paid almost no
lip service to supposed village democracy; they owned the major portion of local
wealth and land and believed themselves above the need to work for a living. They
did not conform as closely to the matrilineal aspects of the highlands adat, despite
their protestations that their families had originated there, but rather they showed
a tendency to favor the male line in distribution and administration of family prop-
erty. Children did not leave home at puberty to live in the surau, nor was the
idea of merantau an important concept.26
The hallmark of the coastal nobility was (and is) a system of titles which dif-
fered markedly from any found in the highlands interior and which preserved the
idea of certain superior bloodlines and the need to recognize them. In the interior,
titles belonged to the family pusaka but they did not imply any particular blood-
lines of the bearer's father or mother, except that of datuk which implied relations
to the previous penghulu, but even that was not certain nor always direct. On
the coast, however, when a "raja" (titled Sutan) married a woman of equal rank
(titled Puteri), then their children received the titles Sutan and Puteri to connote
this heritage. If the woman were not of aristocratic birth, as would often happen
with the second wife, the children would be titled Marah and Sitti. Matrilineal
aspects still retained importance, however, for the children of a noble woman, a
puteri, were always addressed as Sutan and Puteri regardless of the father's social
standing. But the puteri rarely married commoners (unless they had very high
achieved status such as an important official), and as a result many puteri could
find no suitable marriage partner and remained single. 26 A single woman would be
very unusual and considered as such in the highlands, but this was not the case
among the coastal nobility. A family with many unmarried women was not neces-
sarily at a disadvantage, because family wealth was not being dissipated among an
ever-expanding number of descendants.
Except for the raja and their subordinate families of agricultural laborers,
there were few really permanent settlers along the coast , no one to establish and
preserve the pure traditions of Minangkabau adat. The coastal towns included
many and diverse groups: the Nias and Mentawai pagans who served as slave la-
borers and occupied the bottom of the social scale; numerous non-Minangkabau
merchants, such as Indians and Acehnese, attracted by the rich export trade
(mainly pepper); and a large group of perantau merchants from the highlands,
using the ports as bases for commercial operations which often extended back to
the handicraft industries of their home villages. For the perantau merchant, the
port town was often the final destination in the peripatetic trading system which
funneled the agricultural products, the gold, and the handicrafts of the interior
to the coastal exporters.
Because outside powers continually struggled to control the lucrative trade,
the coast was often isolated politically from the interior of Minangkabau. Aceh was
the principal power in the area in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,
and much of the paramount position of the local raja, particularly in Padang and
Pariaman, was linked to their direct associations with their Acehnese suzerains,
rather than their ties to the Raja at Pagarruyung. Aceh could and did enforce its
will on the Minangkabau coast. Pagarruyung probably never exercised more than
the influence of cultural leadership and prestige. Aceh itself eventually gave way
in the face of superior European naval and political power.
Because the coastal areas were so undefined in terms of their population compo-
sition, the adat system and social codes of the interior explain less about the coastal
way of life. Because the raja were more powerful and controlled the economic re-
sources so completely, coastal village society did not experience the frequent rise
and fall among elite families, such as occurred in the highlands villages. Because
of their secure aristocratic position, the elite rarely participated in trade or sought
26. This was especially true among the Padang nobility, according to current mem-
bers of the raja's family. Interview, August 10, 1967, in Alang Lawas, Padang.
An example of a commoner who was acceptable would be the father of Sutan Sjahrir;
he was a wealthy merchant who had good connections to the Dutch regime (he came
from Kota Gedang in Agam). Sjahrir's mother was a puteri from Natal.27
training in skills to change their way of life. Their social code would not permit
the merantau; to leave home was to open oneself to ridicule from one's peers.
Coastal settlements had largely escaped both direct relations with Pagarruyung
and interference from Padri attacks—both experiences which had formed the rela-
tions between highlands villages and the outside world. But in contrast to the
highlands, the coast had had a long, often profitable and sometimes dangerous,
contact with non-Minangkabau elements. Although less important at first, Euro-
pean contact proved the most lasting of these. The major cause for European in-
terest in Minangkabau was not its legendary importance as a source of gold (which
had attracted the first Portuguese explorers in 1515),27 but rather competition for
its agricultural trade goods. Aceh, the major commercial power along the west
coast in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, held a virtual trade
monopoly over the Minangkabau pepper ports, the most important of which were
Tiku and Pariaman. 28 The Sultan of Aceh used this monopoly to establish himself
as the sole middleman between the producers and the European buyers, and he re-
quired traders to buy pepper only in Aceh itself. By the mid-seventeenth century,
both the Dutch and the English were seeking a way to bypass the Acehnese middle-
men, and both had begun operating their own factories along the western coast.
Already by 1613, the Padang raja, at least some of whom had been acting as
Acehnese agents, had decided to invite the Dutch merchants established at Pulau
Cingkuk, off the Painan coast, to build a branch factory at Padang. In return,
the Dutch had to agree to protect the raja from Acehnese reprisals. 29 European
factors dealt with the large local merchants who had joined forces with the Padang
leaders to control the collection and sale of pepper in the coastal ports.30 By 1660,
Padang had become tjie focus for Dutch operations in the west coast area. Pariaman
still remained the major trading center for the Minangkabau highlands generally
(at least the major west coast center), and, for some time, it retained its close ties
with Aceh. 31
The Dutch rapidly expanded their control from the headquarters at Padang
toward the south, mainly the area called Bandar X, the dependent coastal terri-
tories of the interior Minangkabau principality of Sungai Pagu. This southern area
not only produced pepper, but also contained a gold mine, at the village of Salida
outside Painan. A 1663 contract between Dutch authorities and the chiefs of Sungai
Pagu/Salida granted the Dutch trading company, the Vereenigde Oostindische Com-
pagnie (VOC), a trade monopoly without tariffs. In return, the Dutch would de-
fend the town against Aceh and would continue payment to the raja of the customary
gifts formerly supplied by the Acehnese. This treaty, known as the Painan Con-
27.	The Portuguese interests in Sumatra are discussed in: Ronald Bishop Smith,
The First Age of the Portuguese Embassies, Navigations, and Peregrinations to the
Kingdoms and Islands of Southeast Asia (1509-1521) (Bethesda, Md.: Decatur
Press, 1968), pp. 85-88; and Armando Cortesao, Tom& Pires, 1, p. 164.
28.	Arun Kumar Das Gupta, "Acheh in Indonesian Trade and Politics 1600-1641:
(Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1962).
29.	Batuah and Madjoindo, Tambo Minangkabau, pp. 41-42. The invitation may
have stemmed from an internal power struggle whereby the former Panglima Aceh
in Padang was replaced. The new panglima was then recognized by the Dutch as
the "Governor of the Malays" and given a percentage of the produce traded.
30.	Das Gupta, "Acheh in Indonesian Trade," pp. 115-17.
31.	W. J. A. de Leeuw, Het Painansch Contract (Amsterdam: Paris, 1926), p. 18.28
tract, served as the model for future Dutch treaties with other coastal raja.32 The
British, meanwhile, had established their own trading post farther south at Beng-
kulen, an area often economically and historically tied to the Minangkabau area,
though culturally dissimilar.33
The British challenge stimulated Dutch efforts to consolidate their position in
Padang and gain tighter control over the area immediately surrounding their Padang
operations. As a result, in 1685, the VOC made an agreement with the local chiefs
by which the Dutch gained full possession of the land where the Company had es-
tablished its warehouses and over sales of the lands directly across the river from
them. 34 By 1775, VOC influence had spread from Padang as far south in the direc-
tion of the British as Indrapura. 35
Dutch presence on the coast had little effect on the interior areas of Minangka-
bau beyond perhaps encouraging people to trade via the west coast rantau rather
than the outlets to the Malacca Straits. The VOC represented more a continuation
of the Acehnese system than something new. The Raja at Pagarruyung theoretically
still controlled all trade at the coastal ports and received income from customs du-
ties levied there. It is a measure of his lack of power that, despite the theoretical
arrangement with his "representatives and customs collectors" (the coastal raja),
the latter had signed treaties with a foreign power (the Dutch) which guaranteed
to its merchants duty-free trade at the west coast harbors.
In 1795, the English occupied the former Dutch possessions on the west coast
as part of their European foreign policy, which was designed to counter the power
of Napoleon on the Continent by denying him access to the colonies of the occupied
countries. In Padang, the British made no effort to expand beyond the limits of
the post as already established, and, indeed, if the Dutch reports are to be be-
lieved, they allowed the post to lapse into a state of neglect as part of a deliberate
effort to enhance their own operations at Bengkulen. 36 Preferring not to mix in
local political affairs, the British interregnum administration dealt with troublesome
local leaders by buying them off. Stamford Raffles, the head of the interim admin-
istration, expressed a direct interest in the interior of Minangkabau, however, and,
in 1818, did succeed in leading an expedition to Solok and establishing a small gar-
rison at Semawang on Lake Singkarak. By and large, however, the British govern-
ment preferred to spend as little money and effort as possible improving its hold on
an area which London (but not Raffles) conceived as but a temporary possession.37
When, to Raffles’ intense displeasure, the territories were returned to the Dutch in
1819, Padang existed as a small headquarters town already under the shadow of
Padri bands operating around Kayu Tanam only a few miles along the interior road
from the coast.
32.	Ibid., pp. 22-23.
33.	John Bastin, The British in West Sumatra, 1685-1825: A Selection of Documents
with an Introduction (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya, 1965), pp. xii-xv.
34.	E. B. Kielstra, "Onze Kennis van Sumatra's Westkust, Omstreeks de Helft der
Achttiende Eeuw," Bijdragen tot de Tool-, Land- en Volkenkunde [henceforth
Bijdragen], 36 (1887), p. 530.
35.	"Nota over de Statie der Voorname Hoofden Langs de Westkust van Sumatra,
van Indrapoera tot Tico, Welke Alhier Zullen Gerangschikt Worden Volgens hunne
Classe en Waardigheid," Padang, c. 1820, KITLV Manuscript, H 113.
36.	E. B. Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 1819-1830, 3 vols. (The Hague: Bijdragen
reprint, 5th series, n.d.) , l,p. 10.
37.	Ibid., pp. 2-6.CHAPTER III
A NEW POLITICAL CONFIGURATION: CENTRALIZED
RULE AND A STATUS QUO
When the British surrendered custody of the former Dutch trading posts on
the west coast of Sumatra, probably few highlands Minangkabau gave it much
thought, even those who were aware of it. Certainly the returning Dutch officials
did not anticipate any momentous new developments in their relations with the high-
lands behind Padang, although they knew about the Padri zealots and their relent-
less attacks on Minangkabau villages. The government in Batavia, for its part,
planned a return to the status quo ante, which meant little more than maintaining
a series of entrepots on the coast and making the most commercial profit with the
least administrative effort.
The second arrival of the Dutch, however, set in motion a chain of events
which ended in the creation of a new relationship between the Minangkabau nagari
and the world beyond their borders. Unlike the former supravillage "government"
exercised from Pagarruyung, the new, European regime soon penetrated into the
village and its affairs--organizing, bullying,and cajoling the inhabitants to the
greater imperial glory of The Netherlands. The villages found it harder and
harder to escape the demands of the new, more effective outside force. Even the
hill villages were now drawn into the same political structure as the rest, because,
in the final analysis, they were to prove the mainstay of the new economic order
upon which the colonial regime was built.
The changes did not come all at once, nor were they apparent everywhere to
the same degree or at the same point in time. Strangely enough, the coastal areas,
which had had the longest continuous contact with the European world were the
last to be fully absorbed into the new political structure. The first to feel the
colonial weight were the populous upland plains, followed in a decade or so by the
hill villages and, eventually, the more distant frontier areas to the north and south.
For a time, uncertainty in Dutch plans and bickering between the Padang admin-
istration and Batavia preserved the villages from total integration into the colonial
regime. By mid-century, all West Sumatra had been absorbed into the Dutch East
Indies, and Minangkabau society was slowly being reorganized to fit Dutch percep-
tions of what it should be. Village political competition was stifled. In an ironic
turn of fate, however, the former "outsiders" now came into their own. The hill
villages had the natural and human resources which the new regime valued and
needed. The agricultural products which the colonial economy valued not only
grew well in the hills but also only the hill villages had the available empty land
for planting. Moreover, hill villagers needed to supplement their incomes and were
thus susceptible to the new colonial needs and enticements. The perantau element
both in the hills and in the plains villages found a new outlet for their abilities
and energies--the colonial civil service and its supporting agencies. And the
Dutch administration soon found itself unable to function without their services.
The people whom Indies society came to regard as the representatives of Minang-
kabau were in fact from the former fringe groups of traditional highlands village
life.
2930
The Beginning of the "Colonial" Problem
The Minangkabau participated hardly at all in the opening scenes of the drama
which ended in colonial control over their lives. At the most, they played support-
ing roles which provided the rationale for particular Dutch actions; at the least,
they were the colorful backdrop for the main stage whose featured players were
Europeans. In the early scenes, however, there was little indication to either side
of what was about to happen.
After the British surrendered control of West Sumatra to the Dutch, in May
1819, Batavia officials planned to reestablish the trading pattern which had existed
in the late eighteenth century. Cautious about large-scale operations outside Java,
the central regime proposed to limit Sumatran activities to the port towns of Padang,
Pariaman, Air Haji, and Pulau Cingkuk (Painan). Efforts would thus be directed
toward reviving the monopoly trading contracts with the local raja and counteract-
ing British trading interests, which had become well-entrenched during the pre-
ceding years, by opening the ports to American and other ships.1 Even such
modest plans were hindered by lack of personnel. Smaller than the pre-British
administration, the new Dutch staff included only the same number of civil servants
as had the British interim regime, plus some 150 European infantry and support
troops. Attempts to reestablish the trading entrepots suffered, moreover, because
the VOC post archives had disappeared; the government had to rely on the memory
of the former chief merchant of the factory. 2 Added to this were the disruptions
in the interior, which inhibited trade flow to the Dutch ports. By 1819, Padri
bands were threatening Padang itself, and it appeared that the town might soon
lose its position as a major center for trade and the collection of raw materials from
the highlands.3
Dutch officials on the spot in West Sumatra took a more expansionist concept
of their role than that envisioned in Batavia. They wanted authority to pacify the
interior by force of arms and establish a Dutch presence which could assure secur-
ity and therefore improve trade prospects. To the Governor General, West Suma-
tra, though important as a source for trade goods, was not sufficiently so to justify
a large colonial establishment there. In the competition between the two divergent
viewpoints, the Padang local authorities had the advantage because they could com-
mit the government's forces first and create a situation which Batavia was obliged
to finish. Authorities in Batavia fumed, but they were usually forced to accept
the fait accompli though warning Padang officials not to do it again.
Minangkabau refugee penghulu from the highlands, now living in Padang,
thought to use Dutch adventurism to their own advantage. By encouraging the
Dutch to ally with them against the Padri and their followers, these penghulu hoped
to regain lost powers (or perhaps build new ones) in the highlands nagari. They
played upon the expansionist desires of Padang officials who, in turn, knew the
arguments best designed to overcome central government opposition. A classic
example of this process is that used by the first Padang Resident, du Puy. He
played on the acute Anglophobia of Batavia officials in order to gain permission to
1.	Report of General de Stuers on the Situation on Sumatra's West Coast, May 17,
1826, Verbaal, October 23, 1826, No. 48.
2.	E. B. Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 1819-1890, 3 vols. (The Hague: Bijdragen
Reprint, n.d.), 1, p. 9.
3.	Report of General de Stuers on the Situation on Sumatra's West Coast, May 17,
1826, Verbaal, October 23, 1826, No. 48.31
reoccupy the former British fort at Semawang (Lake Singkarak), far in the interior
behind Padang. Du Puy went to Batavia, in 1820, armed with a letter from a high-
lands penghulu which promised popular support for any Dutch military action
against the Padri. Du Puy argued that, if the Dutch refused, the penghulu might
seek help elsewhere, specifically from the British in Bengkulen. **
Batavia approved, though reluctantly, the reoccupation of the post, but only
as a measure to restore order to the countryside for the advancement of trade. No
further expansion would be countenanced. The Governor General was irate when,
in February 1821, the Padang administration made a further agreement with four-
teen penghulu, purporting to represent the Raja of Pagarruyung, by which the
Kingdom of Minangkabau itself was ceded to the Dutch in return for protection
against Padri raiders. Batavia believed, and rightly so, that the penghulu had no
authority to cede the territory in question; Batavia also feared that du Puy would
use the treaty as an excuse for conducting a war of conquest. 4 5 In the event, these
fears all proved fully justified.
Having committed themselves to protect the interests of those who did not wish
to join the Padri, the Padang officials soon found themselves caught up in the task
of preserving an apparently disintegrating system against the vigor of the religious
revolutionaries. Against the will of authorities in Batavia, the regime was gradually
pulled into the maelstrom of Minangkabau internal politics. The highlands plains
villages were not under Padri control, as such, but often their inhabitants had been
forced to reach an accommodation--tributary, political,or both. Those who could
not do so, or whom the Padri considered completely undesirable, had been forced
to flee, usually ending up in the eastern or western coastal towns. As a result,
when the Dutch and their client penghulu began asserting control over the high-
lands in the 1820s, they became a third major faction in an already confused local
situation. The Dutch found that local politics was not a question of merely pro- or
anti-Padri forces but rather consisted of a variety of elements vying for lineage or
village power positions. Moreover, sometimes the Dutch client penghulu proved to
be only one of the anti-Padri factions and often not even the paramount one. Often
too, they were not the actual penghulu of a given lineage but only the unsuccess-
ful candidate for the job.
Rather than being merely quasi-neutral arbiters between two sides, as they had
originally envisioned, Dutch officials began to side wholly with what they identified
as the "anti-Padri" elements. Eventually, the Dutch officials determined that it was
necessary to take over and reorganize the whole area themselves in order to assure
peace and security to the Minangkabau--the necessary preconditions to profitable
commerce. Because the Padri forces were concentrated in the hills around the
highlands plains, the Dutch were able to establish a presence in the plains areas
fairly easily--particularly in the Tanah Datar plain and in the southern parts of the
Agam plain. But their position was exceedingly tenuous and depended on local co-
operation and Padri indifference.
The leading architect of the concept of economic development in West Sumatra as
a product of a Dutch-imposed peace was General de Stuers. He arrived in Padang
in 1824 as the newly appointed military administrator for West Sumatra. De Stuers
argued that, because Padang's main source of income derived from an export tax on
coffee plus the sale of imported trade goods, it was essential that secure routes be
4.	Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 1, p. 18.
5.	Ibid., pp. 21-24; Muhammad Radjab, Perang Paderi di Sumatera Barat: 1803-
1808 (Jakarta: Perpustakaan Perguruan Kementerian P.O. & K., 1954), pp. 43-44.32
maintained connecting the highlands producing areas with Dutch entrepots on the
coast. If disorder continued, he believed, the Minangkabau would prefer to trade
via the rivers of the east coast, an area less subject to Padri attack, with the re-
sult that the British settlement at Singapore would be the main beneficiary of the
growing European market for Padang coffee as well as the major supplier of con-
sumer goods to prosperous Minangkabau villages. 6
The traditional flow of trade from the highlands had always been across the
relatively lower hills on the eastern rim. ■ From there these goods traveled by river,
usually the Siak or Kampar, to the coastal trading ports such as Siak Sri Indra-
pura, headquarters of the Sultan of Siak. Goods which went to the west had to be
transportable by an individual bearer, and thus must be of relatively high value
for small bulk, such as pepper, gold, and probably coffee. No rivers and only a
few very steep trails connected the highlands with the western coast . To attract
goods from farther away than the surrounding foothills, buyers in west coast ports,
therefore, had to be very competitive. , In the early nineteenth century, the prob-
lem was exacerbated by Padri activities in the northern and western hills, including
the area where the trails cut through to the coast--especially near Lake Maninjau
and just outside of Padang. De Stuers hoped, however, that, if he could make the
area secure, the traders would prefer to deal with the Dutch merchants directly
rather than continue dealing with the aristocratic middlemen who operated in the
Malacca Straits, presumably because it would mean greater profit.
De Stuers' desires to impose peace,, however, were hampered initially by troop
cutbacks caused by Diponegoro's uprising (known as the Java War) which required
available Dutch military force to be concentrated there. As an alternative to mili-
tary action, de Stuers arranged a negotiated settlement with Bonjol, which he iden-
tified as the Padri central authority, based on peaceful coexistence and noninter-
ference. 7
"Border incidents" continued despite the peace treaty, and de Stuers reported
a general state of anarchy in Padri areas caused, in his opinion, by an uncertain
and constantly changing leadership. Older leaders, such as Tuanku Pasaman (of
Lintau), were apparently losing their hold over their followers.8
Caught in the middle between militant or terrorist religious leaders and the
might of the Dutch army, Minangkabau villages were often torn apart into quarrel-
ing factions. There was no real battleline drawn, but rather villages passed back
and forth between the two spheres of influence. Few chiefs were willing to commit
themselves fully to the Dutch side. De Stuers complained that, except for those
areas actually occupied by government troops (some eight places on the coast and
five in (he interior), one could not depend on the local chiefs. 9 When the Dutch
took the offensive, however, people declared themselves subjects of the government
and delivered weapons, materials, and foodstuffs to aid the war against the Padri.
Popular witchhunts took place in the recently defeated areas, as the victors turned
on those who had backed the "wrong side."10 Many non-Padri penghulu preferred
6.	Report	of	General	Stuers, May 17, 1826, Verbaal, October 23, 1826, No. 48.
7.	Report	of	General	de Stuers, November 25, 1825, contained in Kielstra, Suma-
tra's Westkust, 1, pp. 154-56 and 147-52.
8.	Report	of	General	de Stuers, May 17, 1826, Verbaal, October 23, 1826, No. 48.
9.	Report	of	General	de Stuers to the Military Department, December 30, 1828, No.
43, contained in Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 2, p. 39.
10.	Report of Resident MacGillavry, November 20, 1829, Exhibitum, May 5, 1830,
No. 5/A.33
to seek refuge with government forces rather than remain in villages conquered by
Padri bands.11 These penghulu gathered at Dutch posts and agitated for military
assistance and support to return them to power.
Meanwhile, by 1830, the Java War had been concluded to Dutch satisfaction,
and the new Governor General, van den Bosch, was free to turn his attention to
the situation in Sumatra. He had decided that, as a general policy, all peoples and
princes should recognize the Dutch regime as the overlord for the entire East In-
dies archipelago. With regard to Sumatra, he thought it sufficient for the control
of trade that, in addition to acknowledged allegiance of the princes, the Dutch
should also occupy ports, river mouths, and selected interior market towns. Dutch
forts, garrisons, and trading factories would be built on each such site. Because
Sumatra (unlike Java) was, he believed, too large to be held by an army, local
colonial administrators would necessarily be too weak to intervene directly in the
course of native affairs and should confine themselves to encouraging "profitable
activity."12 He did concede, however, that peace would have to be restored to
West Sumatra, and, to this end, he sent additional troops to reenforce the campaign
to reach a settlement with the Padri and recover "government villages." Van den
Bosch agreed that, if all the measures for peaceful coexistence with the Padri should
fail, local authorities would be free to prepare for a military campaign. He would
accede to Padang's wishes for an all-out conquest of Minangkabau if the Padri could
not be coerced into some form of lasting "peaceful association" with the Dutch ad-
ministration. 13
West Sumatra officials continued to argue that only total subjugation of Padri
activists could assure peace and hence guarantee the commercial prosperity so de-
sired by Batavia.11* Under their persistent pressure, therefore, van den Bosch
finally acquiesced to the proposition that the anarchy in the interior had blocked
the energy and killed the trade of an "otherwise very industrious society." He ac-
cepted the view that the area must be organized politically, that roads must be
built to tie the interior producing areas to the coast, and that supervision must be
given to the planting of cash crops for export.15
In 1832, therefore, Resident Elout received substantial reenforcements from
Java, including a Javanese battalion under Prince Ali Basa Prawiro Diredjo, known
as Sentot. The story of Ali Basa must certainly rank as one of the more bizarre
episodes in the Dutch war against the Padri. Van den Bosch had developed the
idea of establishing a settlement composed of Javanese troops in the heart of the.
contested Minangkabau area (apparently near Lintau), which could then serve as
a permanent auxiliary force aiding Dutch pacification. To this end, in 1832, Ali
Basa and 1,800 followers were sent to West Sumatra. Van den Bosch promised to
cede him a district of some 5,000 to 6,000 people to rule as a small kingdom--in
permanent vassalage to the government on much the same basis as the Pangeran
Mangku Negoro in Solo. Van den Bosch counted as negligible any chance of a
11.	Rad jab, Perang Paderi, pp. 116-17.
12.	Letter of Governor General van den Bosch to Resident Elout, December 26,
1830,	contained in Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 2, pp. 73-74.
13.	Instructions of Governor General van den Bosch to Resident Elout, January 14,
1831,	No. 56, contained in Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 2, p. 82.
14.	Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 2, pp. 95-99.
15.	Letter of Governor General van den Bosch, February 20, 1832, contained in
Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 2, p. 129, see also p. 132.34
future Minangkabau-Javanese alliance against the government.16
Sentot's company was established in the Iintau/Buo area according to plan but,
rather than accept his role as written, Sentot determined to enhance his position
and make himself the Prince of all Sumatra. He set about cultivating good relations
with local penghulu; he dropped the Javanese portion of his name (Prawira Diredjo);
and he began publicly displaying an enthusiastic devotion to Islam. Moreover, in
Elout's view, he took a provocative stance vis-a-vis the Dutch regime by traveling
outside his territorial district (he celebrated Puasa at Pagarruyung, the royal cen-
ter) and not treating the Resident with proper respect (he began addressing Elout
in letters as "brother" instead of "father"). When the Bonjol area suddenly erupted
again into full-scale revolt, Elout blamed it on the machinations of Sentot, who was
thus subsequently recalled to Batavia.17
After 1832, then, both Batavia and Padang were in agreement that all of Minang-
kabau would have to be pacified and subjected to close control. How this control
would be exercised would be a matter of some debate in the future, but, for the
Minangkabau, it was now only a question of time before village life would be rear-
ranged to suit a new, more powerful and more organized outside force.
In 1837, Batavia appointed Lt. Col. Michiels as military administrator for West
Sumatra. He brought a new determination and vigor to the Dutch forces. He prose-
cuted the war with a singlemindedness which, by August, had culminated in the
occupation of the last Padri center, Bonjol--causing its defenders to disperse into
the jungle. The most important symbol of anti-Dutch resistance was gone, and
with it the Padri will to fight. Sometime later, the Imam of Bonjol surrendered and
was exiled first to Java, and then to Sulawesi. From then on, the Dutch could con-
centrate on organizing administrative and fiscal matters which hitherto had had to
be taken care of on a more or less ad hoc basis. Now, for the first time, Minang-
kabau villagers really began to understand what it meant to belong to the Dutch
East Indies.
Isolated revolts of varying size broke out after 1837--the most serious being
in Batipuh in 1841 and Pau in 1844--and incursions from nongovernment areas con-
tinued, but, by and large, Dutch control of Minangkabau was an accomplished fact.
Working from this geographic base, the Dutch continued their expansion into other
areas of central Sumatra. The last major part of Minangkabau to be incorporated
was the autonomous southern kingdom of Sungai Pagu (centered at Muara Labuh);
it was occupied in 1845 because its inhabitants had allegedly attacked Dutch patrols
operating on their borders.
Within the space of less than twenty years, the Dutch operation in West Suma-
tra had grown from a small series of neutral trading post enterprises into the begin-
ning of a conquered empire which, by the end of the century, would absorb all of
the island of Sumatra. The logic of the desire to make a profit from the territory
had led to administrative control over the producing areas. This in turn would
lead to major reorganizations of Ideal society designed to provide the products de-
sired as well as assure their efficient transportation to the West Sumatran market
centers.
16.	Letters of Governor General van den Bosch, May and June 1832, contained in
Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 2, pp. 138-39.
17.	Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 3, pp. 5-18. There are still families in the
Lintau area who can trace their antecedents to Sentot or his men.35
Indirect Rule: Life as Before (Almost)
After restoring peace and destroying any chances for an Islamic state, the
Dutch had originally hoped to return to their fortified garrisons and let the Minang-
kabau resume the business of agriculture, especially coffee production. Such guid-
ance and control as would be needed could, or so Dutch officials had thought, be
exercised through the paramount rulers of Minangkabau--identified by the Dutch
as the Raja of Pagarruyung and the Regent (paramount raja) of Padang, along with
several lesser coastal and interior overlords who had pretensions to territorial
sovereignty. Every thing, would return to the status quo ante Padri, except that
now Dutch protection would be extended over the highlands penghulu in the same
manner, and for the same concessions, as formerly with the coastal raja.
For the coastal villages and their raja, relations with the returning colonial
regime had at first differed little from the old ties with the VOC and with the Aceh-
nese before them. In 1821, Resident du Puy was authorized by Batavia to provide
each coastal raja or regent with documents stating his duties and obligations as a
vassal of the government. The raja should encourage careful production of coffee
and organize its delivery to Padang, receiving in return f. 0.25 per picul in com-
mission. Diligence in promoting coffee production would form a major factor for
continuing official government recognition of them as raja.18 Most, if not all, of
the predecessors of these raja had held similar contracts in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, with the VOC; in these earlier contracts they had agreed to
recognize the Company's authority in matters of trade and defense. The 1821
agreements reactivated these long-standing relationships and transferred the vas-
sal relationship from the VOC to the government in Batavia. But the situation in
1821 differed from that of 1615 or even 1775, and Dutch perceptions had changed
as a result of their new position of strength vis-a-vis the various coastal raja.
The two sides no longer confronted each other as relative equals.
The former "company raja," it seemed, had declined considerably in terms of
the actual power they could exercise, or, more probably, the Dutch now better
understood the exact nature of that power. One report did suggest that, in the
seventeenth century, the prince of Indrapura, for example, had had control over
the whole southern coast, but by the nineteenth century, this power was com-
pletely gone. The heir apparent worked as a clerk for a Dutch official in Paria-
man,19 a measure of how far the family's fortunes had declined. But Dutch offi-
cials believed that they could rebuild the raja into the strong rulers they believed
them to have been. The perquisites of the coastal "lords" were reconfirmed, and
the various raja were divided into first, second, and third class rank, based more
on pretensions to grandeur than on the reality of power. The logic of the arrange-
ment was that the control which these chiefs presumably had over trade would now
be exercised in the name of the Dutch regime. As a consequence, the raja must
be compensated for any financial loss this might entail and be paid as agents of
the regime as well. Moreover, they should be treated with proper respect so that
their subjects would continue to stand in awe of them and obey. As examples of
such super-inflated royal privilege, one can take the Tuanku Panglima Padang and
the Prince of Indrapura, both designated by Dutch decree as raja of the first rank.
18.	Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 1, p. 15.
19.	"Note over de Statie der Voorname Hoofden Langs de Westkust van Sumatra,
van Indrapoera tot Tico, Welke Alhier Zullen Gerangschikt Worden Volgens hunne
Classe en Waardigheid," Padang c. 1820, 13 pp., KITLV Manuscript, H 113.36
As such, each was entitled to a thirteen-gun salute and a reception by the Resident
at the Government House, complete with a twelve-soldier honor guard, not to men-
tion the particular potentate's own elaborate retinue which preceded him. 20 Lower-
ranking raja received proportionately less elaborate formal honors.
Despite their impressive "entourages, titles, and honors, in terms of authority
these chiefs often proved unsatisfactory tools for Dutch attempts at a new, more
organized administration. Comparing the situation along the Padang coast to that
which obtained in Java, one Dutch official wrote that a village chief on Java could
exercise more control over his subordinates than the "most conceited monarch"
found on the West Coast. But, he added, the Dutch were powerless to replace
these "monarchs" with a more "rational" system, because each district had an inde-
pendence of spirit which would not allow a competing raja to be given a superior
position or greater honors. It was impossible to combine the territories under one
supreme head. The VOC, he said, had deliberately encouraged this autonomy for
political reasons and had treated each district as a wholly separate entity, individ-
ually allied to the Company on an equal basis with every other territory.21	-
On the coast, the concept of a series of paramount chiefs each with authority
to speak for a specific geographic area did make some sense given the history of
political developments there. But in the interior, such a solution was doomed to
failure. Nagari were ruled by councils of penghulu and, although certain ones
might have more recognized authority in council decisions, no single penghulu
could speak for the people,of his district. What was more to the point, no single
penghulu could give orders tp all the people. A penghulu had "authority" only
over his own lineage group. But the Dutch did not fully understand this, partly
because they had dealt primarily with refugee penghulu or other, often self-
appointed, "nagari spokesmen" who had implied that they could in fact exercise
full and legitimate authority over a particular geographic area. Under the uncer-
tain and chaotic conditions of the Padri war, such individual penghulu often in-
trigued with the Dutch to seek recognition as the paramount authority for their
area.
In the 1820s and 1830s , when neither the Dutch nor the Minangkabau had a
clear understanding of the other, some chiefs were able to gain certificates of office
which made them territorial rulers in alliance with the Dutch. In return for guar-
anteeing the loyalty of their followers, these men received promises of Dutch pro-
tection.22 Two self-styled court notables from Suroaso (near Pagarruyung), were
already recognized in 1819 as the official representatives in Padang of the Minang-
kabau court. 23 Early Dutch attempts to maintain their rule over West Sumatra were
based on the erroneous assumption that a "court" existed in fact and could command
obedience and speak for Minangkabau in relations with the Padang authorities.
There were many penghulu who were all too willing to continue this illusion.
Based on the legal fiction provided by the 1821 Cession of the Minangkabau
Kingdom, Padang officials proposed to use the Raja of Pagarruyung as the instru-
ment for authority. He would receive an act of appointment and a monthly salary,
and, in turn, he would install the district penghulu in their own positions as his
vassals. 21* The Dutch would then merely advise the Raja and preserve peace among
20.	Ibid.
21.	Ibid.
22.	Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 1, p. 111.
23.	Ibid., 1, p. 18.
24.	Ibid., 1, pp. 84-85.37
the nagari. Although the early Residents, du Puy and Raaff, had recognized the
weakness of the Raja's position, they had attributed it more to the existing state
of unrest than to any inherent qualities of the Minangkabau political style. They
believed that, once the Dutch had demonstrated their own reliance on the Raja,
the lesser penghulu would respond and place themselves under his power. 25 Al-
though the Dutch had more military force than the former Raja of Pagarruyung, it
was still insufficient to forge a strong centralized authority under him. There was
also some question about the royal credentials of the man seleoted as Raja, who,
consequently, could not command even the "sacral" authority of the prior Raja.
With the possible exception of the districts in the vicinity of Pagarruyung, holding
a certificate from the Raja had very little meaning in the traditional competition for
village leadership. As a result, each nagari worked out its own "understanding"
with the Dutch, who found it all very confusing and a bit irritating.
The Dutch misunderstanding was part of a persistent and general problem which
consistently colored their relations with the Minangkabau; previous Dutch experience
at direct administration had been, by and large, confined to Java, which had a tra-
dition of strong centralized government. Prior to 1819, their experience with the
Minangkabau had been confined to the coast where local raja, for various reasons,
exercised almost authoritarian control over population areas. When they found
themselves entangled in the interior districts of West Sumatra, then, the Dutch
tended to look for similar paramount chiefs around whom to organize their relation-
ship. But the Minangkabau highlands were composed of small independent nagari,
some of which belonged to loosely-federated units formed solely for mutual conven-
ience, and the Raja represented a cultural symbol more than a political reality.
It became clear over time that the Cession of 1821, by which the Dutch could
supposedly act in the name of the Raja, did not in fact give them a corresponding
measure of political control. In the first place, the cession itself was soon recog-
nized as, in the words of one Resident, a "pactum in illicito" by which a group of
unauthorized persons had given that which they had no right to give. 26 In the
second place, as de Stuers pointed out to the Governor General, it was soon clear
that the whole idea of a "cession" was a meaningless concept. Not only were the
major signatories to the treaty all refugees, many of whom had been living in Pa-
dang since the beginning of the Padri troubles and thus separated from contact
with their villages, but, in fact, the so-called kingdom (which purported to include
the entire area from the Batak lands to Indrapura, extending between both coasts)
had never existed as a centralized strong administration under one overlord. 27
After the arrival of de Stuers, in 1824, the Dutch administrators began to re-
examine their notions of Minangkabau and to realize that its organization and rule
would involve more Dutch supervision and hence interference. There was no exist-
ing system of paramount chiefs in the highlands which would enable it to be admin-
istered simply through the offices of a Raja at Pagarruyung. Because of this,
under de Stuers' guidance, a system based on district level rulers was created
practically from whole cloth, which therefore represented a major change in village
social and political organization. De Stuers contended that by virtue of the Act of
Cession, the Kingdom of Minangkabau no longer legally existed as an independent
25.	Ibid., 1, p. 84.
26.	Report of Resident MacGillavry, November 20, 1829, Exhibitum, May 5, 1830,
No. 5/A.
27.	Report of General de Stuers to the Governor General, August 30, 1825, Exhibi-
tum, August 24, 1826, No. 41.38
entity. He believed that, in any event, the spirit of the times had already decreed
its demise. It should remain in the oblivion into which it had fallen rather than be
resurrected by the Dutch for use as the regional administration for the Padang
Highlands. The current Dutch-appointed Prince of Minangkabau (Begagar Shah),
in de Stuers' opinion, owed his position solely to the presence of Dutch authority.
De Stuers believed, therefore, that the Dutch Assistant Resident for the Highlands
could better act as the chief official for the regional administration. 28 He had not
abandoned the idea of centralizing authority in the highlands, only the belief that
it could be carried out through existing institutions and personnel.
A New Local Administration:
Creation of Paramount Chiefs
The political administration designed by de Stuers significantly altered the bal-
ance of power within the villages and the relationship between them and the outside
political world. The new form of rule was organized hierarchically with the lowest
level corresponding roughly with the existing nagari unit; above this, a series of
ever larger geographic districts was established ending with the Dutch Resident
(later Governor) in Padang. De Stuers had originally envisioned that the three
lowest levels would be staffed by Minangkabau chiefs, the highest of whom would
be similar to the bupati (regent) on Java. But this plan was abandoned as unwork-
able.
A hierarchical organization of government, according to de Stuers, had proved
feasible on Java only because, before the Dutch had arrived, the Javanese had al-
ready evolved a form of hierarchic government with powerful chiefs. The Minang-
kabau , he said, had, on the contrary, maintained an individual freedom so great
that there was little discernable difference between chief and follower; rather "all
will govern, none be governed." As a result, provisions for large regional con-
glomerations under paramount chiefs would not only create a series of merely nomi-
nal overlords, but, worse, would create unrest, stemming from jealousy on the
part of the subordinate leaders. To be successful, de Stuers suggested the admin-
istrative organization must recognize the "republican spirit" of Minangkabau insti-
tutions including the numerous egalitarian leaders, or penghulu, who acted more
as mediators than judges. 29
Under the new administrative organization established by de Stuers, the peng-
hulu of each nagari had to select one of their number to serve as the nagarihoofd,30
to act as the community's spokesman in its relations with the Dutch administrators
and to relay their orders to his constituents. In de Stuers' view, this would pre-
serve traditional lineage administration from European interference; in all daily
affairs, the penghulu suku would continue to function as before. Over the long
28.	Instructions of General de Stuers to the Assistant Resident of the Padang
Highlands, March 1, 1825, and the Decision of the Governor General, No. 16 of
December 20, 1825, contained in Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 1, pp. 114-17.
29.	H. J. J. L. Ridder de Stuers and B. C. Verploegh, "Report van Komissarissen
voor de Overname der Britische Bezittingen op Sumatra," Westkust van Sumatra,
November 30, 1825, KITLV Manuscript, H 543.
30.	The Minangkabau term for the office was the penghulu kapala, literally the
head penghulu. In order to avoid possible confusion between this Dutch-created
position and the pre-existing adat paramount penghulu, the penghulu pucuk, the
Dutch term will be used in the text.39
term, however, more and more of such "daily affairs" were absorbed into the realm
of "government (Dutch) affairs."
Above the nagarihoofd, de Stuers created a new position, a chief in charge of a
wholly new territorial political unit which he called a laras. 31 The nagarihoofd from
a given laras district would select one of their number to serve as larashoofd. 32
After his selection, the larashoofd was officially installed by the Dutch administra-
tion which provided him with a certificate of office and a silver-headed baton. The
Dutch believed that conferring upon the larashoofd the official approval of the Euro-
pean authority would increase his power and prestige in the eyes of his followers.
When possible, the laras districts were drawn to correspond to preexisting group-
ings of nagari, and thus many conformed with historic confederations. All laras-
hoofd in the highlands were of equal rank.33 The next higher level in the adminis-
tration was wholly Dutch-staffed.
The governmental arrangement first instituted by de Stuers was extended to
each new district as it was added to the West Sumatra Residency in the course of
the nineteenth century. Sometime after mid-century, it was also introduced into
the coastal areas, and the former raja were transformed into the same type of ad-
ministrator as their upland counterparts. Although the larger, Dutch-staffed levels
were rearranged and renamed as the regime became larger and more complicated,
the Minangkabau-staffed lower units remained essentially unchanged until the ma-
jor reorganization of 1914.
From the Dutch point of view, in order to provide the best possible atmosphere
for increased trade and production, the local society should have a regularized and
orderly administration. De Stuers argued that the method of selecting penghulu,
based as it was on family and lineage rivalry, was a particularly disruptive element,
being on many occasions accompanied by violence. Although Padri activities had
exacerbated this condition, he believed it was endemic from pre-Padri times. 31f
From the beginning, the Dutch directed their attention to countering any activities
or elements in village affairs that could be construed as disruptive of general peace
and order. Eventually their desire to prevent disruption and the need to maintain
contact with every level of village society, led to Dutch interference in the selec-
tion of the penghulu suku themselves.
Dutch imposition of a rigid government hierarchy on top of local society and
their interference in local affairs in an effort to smother conflict tended to prevent
the free working of traditional politics and to stifle social change.35 Certain indi-
31.	Although de Stuers chose to call these new district units by the term laras,
one should not equate this with an older, adat usage of laras nan duo which re-
ferred to the two adat styles of Minangkabau, i.e., the Koto Piliang and the Bodi
Caniago.
32.	The Minangkabau term was tuanku laras, literally lord of the laras, but the
Dutch term will be used as an indication that it was a Dutch-created position and
to avoid any possible confusion with pre-existing adat terminology.
33.	Report of General de Stuers, January 15, 1827, contained in Kielstra, Suma-
tra's Westkust, 2, p. 29; H. J. J. L. Ridder de Stuers, "Verslag van Padang 1828
(1. 1825)," Padang, May-July 1826, KITLV, manuscript, H 726.
34.	De Stuers, "Verslag van Padang."
35.	For similar descriptions of the smothering effect of colonial rule, see James
Siegel, The Rope of Cod (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), esp.
Chapter 5; E. R. Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma (Boston: Beacon40
viduals and families received official designation as village leaders, which, more
often than not, assured that these families would continue in this position for gen-
erations. Persons from lower ranking families, who, in former times, might have
hoped to move to the top through changes within existing economic and power rela-
tionships , now found themselves effectively cut off from advancement via traditional
adat institutions. But, at the same time, the new institutions of the nagarihoofd
and larashoofd removed most significant issues from the authority of the old nagari
council, and thus the position of penghulu suku lost some of its traditional appeal.
Over time, the originally alien institutions of nagari- and larashoofd became
thoroughly domesticated. It became accepted as "adat tradition" that the successor
to each post would be the incumbent's nephew, although preferably the most able
of his nephews. This total absorption of the new administrative positions into the
traditional world view of the Minangkabau produced an almost "schizoid" reaction
on the part of Dutch officials. They found themselves sometimes resolving succes-
sion disputes according to so-called "adat tradition" and, at other times, asserting
that, since the positions did not represent true "adat officials" but Dutch creations,
matters could be settled without regard to adat custom.
The disputes which arose continuously over selection of the larashoofd indicate
the ambiguity of the position vis-a-vis the adat system, as well as the reactions of
the Dutch officials who had to resolve the arguments. An 1872 larashoofd election
in the IV Kota (Agam) is a good example of the problem. It was invalidated by the
Governor because the voters had included everyone with an honorific title (called
a gelar) rather than solely the penghulu suku "as provided by adat" (that is to
say, "adat" as interpreted by the Governor). The election had, in the Governor's
view, "contradicted the custom of the Highlands." But, when a new election held
"according to adat" returned the same candidate, the Governor still refused to in-
stall him. This time, he said that the larashoofd was a government-created not an
adat position, and hence he was not obligated to accept the people's choice if he
disapproved of the person. The penghulu of the IV Kota sent a delegation to Bata-
via charging that the government favorite was being chosen only because his mamak
was an important Minangkabau official and a close confidant of the Governor. 36 Al-
though the government candidate got the job, at his death the position returned to
the lineage of the previous larashoofd which kept it until the twentieth-century
reorganization of the local administration.37
In the VIII Kota (Agam), when the Governor refused to appoint the local candi-
date, again the nephew of the incumbent, a delegation of penghulu and their follow-
ers marched on Padang to protest this interference in "sovereign village affairs."38
The Governor defended his action on the grounds that selection of larashoofd had
no basis in adat history, because the Raja of Pagarruyung had never chosen his
officials from among candidates elected by the people.39 The penghulu were forced
to acquiesce and apparently no one bothered to point out that the Raja of Pagarru-
yung had never chosen territorial officials this way because the position had not
existed under the Kingdom.
Press, 1965), esp. pp. 69-71; and Frank L. Cooley, "Village Government in the
Central Moluccas,"< Indonesia, 7 (April 1969), pp. 139-64.
36.	Verbaal, January 22, 1875, No. 39.
37.	Village elders of Kota Gedang, IV Kota, Agam, interviews, October 1967.
38. Verbaal, February 3, 1875, No. 83.
39. Verbaal, December 4, 1875, No. 146.41
The above cases were the exceptions rather than the rule, for, in most in-
stances, both Dutch officials and local penghulu regarded the selection procedure
as part of established adat tradition and hence protected by a declaration of van
den Bosch in 1833 (called the Plakaat Panjang) in which he had guaranteed the
Minangkabau that Dutch officials would never interfere with adat institutions.1,0
In both disputes cited above, the Plakaat Panjang provisions were used as the le-
gal basis for challenging the Governor's decision, and it is evident from the accom-
panying documents that the Governor was in the minority of Dutch officials who
believed that the man selected by the village penghulu could be denied installation
by government administrators. Dutch administration in West Sumatra was rarely
conducted by majority vote of even the European officials, however.
In most instances, Dutch officials saw themselves as the upholders of adat
tradition, protecting it from erosion caused by contact with either Islamic fanati-
cism or European modernism. This belief that Dutch administrators should work
actively to preserve adat rule had already begun in the 1830s when officials were
searching for the best means of pacifying the interior and securing local allegiances.
Commissioner van Sevenhoven, sent from Batavia to investigate the problems of
West Sumatran unrest, concluded that the basic misunderstandings which had cloud-
ed Dutch rule so far must be adjusted and the administration be restored to conform
with "correct local adat tradition." Under the wartime conditions, unscrupulous
villagers had gained positions as government sponsored chiefs and, he said, had
used the cloak of Dutch authority to plunder villages and assert themselves over
the "legal adat penghulu," whom he identified as being those from the oldest vil-
lage lineages. According to van Sevenhoven, a penghulu's rank was predetermined
by his lineage, and the Dutch had caused great insults by appointing their own
favorites without regard to adat prescriptions. Thus, in his view, the persisting
rebelliousness represented Minangkabau retaliation to the unaccustomed affronts
they had suffered at Dutch hands.1,1 His view of village adat politics and the be-
lief that the Dutch should preserve "tradition" formed the basis for nineteenth-
century concepts of what kind of interference was allowable in village affairs.
A highwater mark of the view that the government must support adat was an
1888 circular from the Resident, which proposed a series of regulations to assure
that people not become penghulu unless they fulfilled adat requirements. The Resi-
dent asserted that, unless the government took direct action soon, the Minangkabau
would no longer respect the adat, and consequently the penghulu would decline as
an important village institution (a crucial problem since they were the foundation
of Dutch rule). To prevent abuses in penghulu elections, a family would have to
notify the local Dutch official before it could install a new penghulu, and he would
then check the nominee against adat requirements. The final court of appeal in
disputed cases would be the Dutch Resident.1*2 Dutch influence consistently favored
the status quo in village politics. Families holding the title when the Dutch arrived
tended to retain it, and other families found it increasingly difficult to challenge the
incumbent. Although in traditional society upcoming family branches apparently
frequently established separate penghulu-ships if they were unable to dislodge the
incumbent family, the Dutch labeled such new penghulu as "extra-legal" and pre-
40.	Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 3, pp. 99-102.
41.	Letter of Commissioner van Sevenhoven to Governor General van den Bosch,
December 25, 1833, No. 205, contained in Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 3, pp.
105-8.
42.	"Circulaire van den Resident der Padangsche Bovenlanden, 25 September 1888,
No. 3383," Adatrechtbundels, 11, pp. 91-92.42
dieted that, whatever their wealth and cleverness, they would not be regarded as
legitimate by the people and would have no influence in the village. Dutch officials
feared that such new penghulu might even degrade the office in the eyes of the
villagers and thus erode the administrative system as a whole.1,3 Wherever possi-
ble, therefore, Dutch officials worked to prevent the rise of new penghulu.
Perhaps more important than direct Dutch influence in preserving the status
quo was the new source of power and wealth to which government-recognized peng-
hulu had access in contrast with other, potential leaders. Traditionally, lineage
members had owed a certain amount of assistance, called serayo, to their penghulu
as leaders of the lineage. This was mainly exacted in the form of labor for the
penghulu's fields. But, during the nineteenth century, both the penghulu and the
government chiefs (larashoofd and nagarihoofd) were able to expand the scope of
personal service by using their new positions as administrators of the Dutch gov-
ernment corvee labor corps. I*‘* All government chiefs received monthly salaries as
well as a commission on the export crops harvested in their area, particularly, in the
early years, coffee. Penghulu suku, though unsalaried, also received a commission
on the export crops harvested by their dependents in the lineage. The lowlands
Residency raja usually received f. 50 per month salary and the highlands larashoofd
received f. 80; each also received f. 0.20 commission for each picul of coffee deliv-
ered by their dependents. The nagarihoofd received f. 20 per month salary plus
f. 0.20 per picul commission. In addition, each chief was entitled to a certain num-
ber of bodyguards and freedom from corvee duties for himself and members of his
family.1>5
The development of the government chiefs into a class set apart by wealth and
power was part of a conscious policy by the Dutch to create a Minangkabau aristoc-
racy where none had existed before--an aristocracy which could command the re-
spect, honor, and obedience of the people. The new chiefs must, or so it was
believed in Padang, live on a far grander scale than an ordinary penghulu suku--
having horses, houses, and large retinues to add grandeur.1,6 The larashoofd's
official connections with the government often gave him an advantage in gaining
government contracts and other benefits. During the early years of the coffee cul-
tivation system, for example, almost all transport contractors were government
chiefs; over half of them were larashoofd. **7
Although some expressed the fear that association with the government would
decrease the penghulu's prestige,118 this seems not to have been the case. The vil-
lagers realized that the person who had the ear of the colonial regime, had the
power to grant requests or make trouble. After the abolition of the quasi-adat
village administration in 1914 and its replacement by a merit civil service, there
were, for example, complaints from officials that no one paid attention to the new
43.	H. W. Stap, "De Nagari-Ordonnantie ter Sumatra's Westkust," TBB, 53 (1917),
pp. 702-5.
44. Resident Le Febvre, October 8, 1917, Verbaal, March 4, 1919, No. 23.
45. Verbaal, March 7, 1863, No. 26; Verbaal, September 12, 1912, No. 66.
46.	Assistant Resident of Padang, August 13, 1858, Verbaal, September 24, 1859,
No. 7.
47.	Governor of Sumatra's West Coast, March 29, 1860, Verbaal, March 7, 1863,
No. 26.
48.	A. W. P. Verkerk Pistorius, Stud fen over de Inlandsche Huishouding in de
Padangsche Bovenlanden (Zalt-Bommel: J. Norman, 1871), p. 93.43
civil servants but instead continued to consult the old nagari- and larashoofd; no
one believed that the new officeholders were really in a position to understand com-
plaints or convey them to the regime.1,9
Unlike the penghulu, who gained some benefits from the new regime in terms of
wealth and prestige, his assistants in the former lineage government gradually lost
most of their real function and significance. During the nineteenth century, for
example, the Dutch recognized the religious personnel directly associated with the
village mosque as the only legitimate Islamic authorities for the community, 50 at the
expense of the adat religious officials, such as the malim, who were connected with
the lineage religious institutions, such as the surau. And by the twentieth century,
a Minangkabau official noted that, although each penghulu continued to have his own
religious "advisor," when a case arose the penghulu tended to settle it himself. 51
The decline in the malim's position may also have been hastened by the renaissance
and purification movements which occurred within Islam itself in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries.
Under Dutch auspices, a new legal system with a European-style board of jus-
tice was introduced to hear complaints in civil affairs. This board eventually super-
seded village level adat courts, and the chatib was reduced to the role of mediator
in a few minor family disputes. The dubalang also lost most of his former function,
in this case to new, Dutch-appointed village policemen. In all cases, the former
adat officials retained ceremonial functions, but, by and large, as adat affairs
generally lost importance within the total life of the village, these functionaries
also lost relevance. New problems that arose were often handled only in the sphere
of the European system.
Supra-Nagari Government:
The European Administration
The Minangkabau kingdom was dead and gone by mid-century. The ideal of
centralized government, which it had embodied but never achieved, now existed in
fact; but it was in the form of a European-staffed bureaucracy. This administra-
tion was on top of the Minangkabau larashoofd and connected the local nagari with
the central government's representative in Padang. The number of officials and
their titles changed over the course of the nineteenth century, but, in general,
the bureaucratic outline remained the same.
At the top of the administrative pyramid stood the Governor, with his headquar-
ters in Padang. Next in line were the Residents of the Padang Highlands (with
headquarters in Bukittinggi) and the Padang Lowlands (with headquarters in Pa-
dang). The first, as suggested by his title, had charge of the areas east of the
mountain ridge dividing the coast from the Minangkabau heartland. But the Low-
lands Residency, up until 1891, also included the northern hill country, the area
between northern Agam and Tapanuli which the Dutch knew as Ophir. Each Resi-
dency was divided into Assistent Residencies. The Highlands usually had five to
49.	Memorie van Overgave, Resident of Sumatra's West Coast Le Febvre, Mail rap-
port, No. 4904/'19.
50.	L. C. Westenenk, De Minangkabausche Nagari (Weltevreden: Visser, 1918),
p. 58.
51.	Mailrapport, No. 253/'35.
52.	A full discussion of these changes in adat functions is contained in Verkerk
Pistorius, Inlandsche Huishouding, and Westenenk, Minangkabausche Nagari.Table 1. Sumatra's West Coast Population (1852 and 1920)*
Political Subdivision	Europeans	Natives	Chinese	Other Asians	Slaves	Total
1852 Census
Padang Lowlands Residency
Padang/Environs	662	35,126	1,140	953	2,277	40,158
Southern Division	32	34,075	73	17	8	34,205
Pariaman	48	59,887	223	209	151	60,518
Air Bangis/Environs	9	4,039	3	3	2	4,056
Ophir	1	19,078	7	7	--	19,093
Rau/Environs	3	12,729	2	13	--	12,747
Padang Highlands Residency						
Tanah Datar	21	153,471	12	100		153,604
A gam	30	196,927	49	190	21	197,217
L. Kota	9	103,541	3	10	4	103,567
XIII & IX Kota (Solok)	12	70,709	5	24	2	70,752
Totals	827	689,582	1,517	1,526	2.465	695,917
1920 Census						
Padang Lowlands Residency						
Padang/Environs	2,447	136,216	6,909	1,190		146,762
Southern Division	82	124,772	844	79		125,777
Pariaman	335	250,410	1,027	193		251,965
Air Bangis/Environs	4	22,190	79	--		22,273Table 1 (continued
Political Subdivision	Europeans	Natives	Chinese	Other Asians	Slaves	Total
1920 Census (continued) Padang Highlands Residency Ophir	23	46,214	18	1		46,256
Lubuk Sikaping (Rau)	7	38,389	8	--		38,404
Tanah Datar	566	238,741	638	64		240,009
A gam	404	245,736	583	167		246,890
L. Kota	126	220,218	832	56		221,232
Solok	153	182,323	148	48		182,672
Totals	4,147	1,505,209	11,086	1,798		1,522,240
* These figures can give only an approximation of the population growth in each district because boundary
lines changed so much between 1852 and 1920; unfortunately, the 1852 subdivisions do not appear on any maps
so it is difficult to tell exactly how far they correlate with 1920 divisions of the same name.
Source:	1852 Census, General Report of Governor van Swieten, Verbaal, July 13, 1858, No. 35; 1920 Census,
Volkstelling 1920, pp. 166-74.46
eight and the Lowlands three to five. At the lowest level of Dutch territorial admin-
istration was the controleur. He dealt directly with the laras- and nagarihoofd and
was the connecting link between the Dutch and the Minangkabau administration.
The territory of a controleur could be equivalent to one laras district if that dis-
trict were particularly important, but usually a controleur had several larashoofd
under him. The controleur were divided into three grades depending on the rela-
tive importance of the area they administered. They devoted most of their effort,
during the early years, toward promotion and care of export crops.
As the role of the European administration became more complex, additional
officials, both Dutch and Minangkabau, were assigned to the various territorial
offices. From early on, there were inspectors to assist in the development of the
crops and also the improvement of village agriculture generally. By the end of the
century, these had been joined by education inspectors and other officials directly
involved in local welfare programs.
The total number of European officials assigned to West Sumatra was never
very high, and they were often concentrated in the administrative centers. The
European community included nongovernment people. At the beginning of direct
colonial rule, after the pacification of Bonjol in 1837, there were only thirty-five
European officials assigned to all West Sumatra, and twelve of these were at the
Resident's bureau in Padang.53 A great many more Dutch people resided in West
Sumatra, but they were nongovernment personnel; of these, 109 lived in Padang,
fifteen more in the Lowlands Residency and sixteen in the Highlands. Most worked
for commercial enterprises in connection with the export trade. 54 In 1852, after
the initial bureaucratic expansion caused by the beginning of the forced delivery
system for coffee, some seventy-six Dutch officials were stationed in the highlands
area. They had charge of the more than 400 nagari and 550,000 Minangkabau who
comprised the Highlands Residency. Many of these officials were located in the
few important market and administrative centers, particularly in Bukittinggi.
Another seventy-two private Dutch individuals also worked in the highlands; this
compares with some 756 in the Lowlands Residency (of which 662 were located in
Padang).55 By 1882, there were forty-eight territorial bureaus each with its own
European and Minangkabau staff.56 Unfortunately no statistics are given for the
exact number of European officials then serving in the West Coast Administration.
But the bulk of the administration was still in the hands of the Minangkabau through
the offices of the laras- and nagarihoofd.
The Minangkabau territorial chiefs functioned as part of the adat-style political
structure in their villages as well as part of the Dutch administration. They were
specifically chosen from among the penghulu of their district and could serve only
in that district. Because their selection to leadership had been based on their
traditional position in the local adat aristocracy, they would have no authority in
any other area. Their authority was not recognized even by the inhabitants of a
neighboring district, though a visiting penghulu would probably be granted a cer-
tain amount of deference.
53.	Regeerings Almanak van Nederlandsch-lndie, 1837 (Batavia: Landsdrukkerij,
1838), p. 48.
54.	Ibid., pp. 198-200.
55.	1852 Census, Verbaal, July 13, 1858, No. 35.
56.	Regeerings Almanak 1882, pp. 51-53.47
Supra-Nagari Minangkabau Officials
The territorial administration remained in European hands at the higher levels,
but the Dutch did create a set of upper-level Minangkabau officials outside the
adat system. These officials eventually formed the nucleus for a merit civil service
the members of which could serve anywhere in West Sumatra and later throughout
Sumatra, Borneo, and the rest of the archipelago. The emergence of this "non-
adat" bureaucracy was of crucial importance, because it provided new outlets
through which ambitious individuals could bypass the all-but-frozen village adat
power structure.
To support the administrative network being extended across Minangkabau,
the Dutch needed a corps of minor civil servants--agricultural inspectors and
supervisors, office clerks and secretaries, and petty functionaries to serve as
messengers and in other low-level jobs. All of these jobs offered new access to
wealth and position for the clever and ambitious man and, for the not-so-clever or
ambitious, it was at the least an alternative variant of the perantau, petty trader
pattern. Once established in the civil service, a man could find a place for his
own kemanakan somewhere on the office staff, in the same fashion that a merchant
or artisan would take his kemanakan into his business or place them with a friend.
As a result, families who specialized in civil service jobs developed in the same
manner as, formerly, merchant, artisan, and religious families had grown up in
Minangkabau. One needed only interest sufficient to send a son for training and
then a mamak strategically placed to assure the aspiring bureaucrat a job. Among
the positions available, some were obviously more important in terms of power and
patronage than others.
The most important Minangkabau official in the early period was the jaksa, the
prosecuting magistrate in the Dutch civil and criminal court system. As the Dutch
occupied areas of West Sumatra, they began to introduce a judicial administration
similar to that used on Java. It was based on judicial councils called landraad,
which functioned as courts of first instance for both civil and criminal cases and
were intended to smooth the interaction between the new legal demands of colonial
rule and Minangkabau society. Judgment was often based on a combination of adat
"law” and the newly instituted East Indies civil and criminal codes. The landraad
were composed of local Dutch officials and Minangkabau chiefs, and they ranged
from small, almost informal village level courts to the large regional landraad at the
Assistant Residency and Residency levels. Each of the more important councils
had its own jaksa. He was salaried by the government—receiving at first from
f. 35 per month to f. 75, depending on the importance of the council he served
and the scope of his duties. Minangkabau clerks were also appointed to keep coun-
cil records; they received f. 15 to f. 30 per month. 57 The jaksa's duties were nu-
merous and varied; for example, those of the Head Jaksa of Padang, in charge of
the Residency of the Lowlands, included: serving as public prosecutor and investi-
gator, supervising prisoners, keeping jail registers, arranging delivery of prison-
ers to court, reporting to the Resident at least twice a week on local conditions
generally, and maintaining contact with the top Minangkabau officials of the area.58
The jaksa was not envisioned by the Dutch as merely another indigenous legal ex-
pert. Each judicial council already had its own religious advisor to discuss the
Quranic law which applied to the cases under review; the bulk of the council’s
57.	Report of General de Stuers, May 17, 1826, Verbaal, October 23, 1826, No. 48.
58.	Instructions of General de Stuers, March 16, 1825, Exhibitum, August 24,
1826, No. 41.48
membership was composed of penghulu and government chiefs who presumably rep-
resented adat wisdom.59 Nor was the jaksa merely an indigenous secretary to the
court. He usually acted as the most important advisor to the European presiding
official, who rarely knew or cared much about the case over which he was passing
judgment and therefore depended on the jaksa to give him both a brief and an in-
formed opinion about the ramifications of the affair. 60
The jaksa, then, occupied a position which enabled him to modify the demands
and influence the decisions of both Minangkabau rulers and foreign administrators.
As such, he had many opportunities for personal gain, and although his salary was
high relative to that of other officials corruption was a real problem. 61 The jaksa
had a great deal of patronage, providing jobs for members of his family and for
friends, and in villages where interfamily connections were especially close, he not
only attracted a large number of his own dependents into his and related govern-
ment bureaus, but also many other villagers as well. For example, very shortly
after a man from Kota Gedang in Agam was made the jaksa for Riau, the taxcollector,
opium monopoly administrator, many minor clerks, and a large number of merchants
in the residency capital of Riau all came from the same village.62 Such an occur-
rence was especially common in the early years when many clerks and minor offi-
cials were recruited as apprentices for the government offices and trained on the
job. Influence and connections were more important under such circumstances than
if there was a network of schools which could provide a wide variety of well-trained
candidates.63
The selection of the first few jaksa was apparently very dependent on the opin-
ion of the individual local Dutch administrator concerning the person best qualified,
in ability both to perform his function and to command respect from among his com-
patriots. These jaksa were not penghulu, but many did come from among the im-
portant branch families of the major lineages. For example a Head Jaksa of Padang
came from the collateral branch of an important penghulu lineage in Kota Gedang,
as did the previously-mentioned jaksa of Riau. 69
Many civil service families date their entry into the upper levels of government
administration from the appointment of a relative as jaksa in the 1830s to 1840s.
As the criteria of selection to government service changed to emphasize formal edu-
cation, officials such as the jaksa were able to assure entry of their kemanakan in-
to the secular schools and thus guarantee the family's continued access to high
level jobs. Next to the jaksa the position of warehousemaster (to be discussed
later) was the main building block for the new civil service elite. Of somewhat
less importance were the "indigenous secretaries" to the Dutch controleur, Assis-
tent Residents, and Residents. These men by their proximity to authority could of-
ten influence policy and its execution and they too had important patronage powers.
59.	Ibid.
60.	Governor Sumatra's West Coast Heckler, June 23, 1906, Verbaal, September 12,
1912, No. 66.
61.	Governor Sumatra's Westcoast Meis, March 29, 1860, Verbaal, March 7, 1863,
No. 27.
62.	Nj. H. A. Salim of Kota Gedang, interview, March 1967, in Jakarta.
63.	This does not mean to imply that civil servants as a group did not retain a
continuous advantage; they could usually guarantee entry for their own children
into the government schools.
64.	Elders of Kota Gedang (IV Kota), interviews, October 1967, in Kota Gedang.49
As a result, then, of the Dutch administrative presence in the village and the
consequent interference in local affairs there was a change in the operation of tra-
ditional adat politics. A status quo was created whereby those who already held
lineage titles and those who first became laras- and nagarihoofd had both official
support and also extralegal opportunities to assure that their families retained such
titles. To the Dutch, with their belief that an adat aristocracy did and should ex-
ist, this situation was as it should be. But to the families who in traditional soci-
ety could have hoped to capture the title of penghulu, that possibility was usually
no longer open, although Dutch reports about "extralegal" and "illegal" penghulu
show that it was still possible for some changes to take place within the adat elite.
Fortunately for the middle level families, and probably for the stability of Minang-
kabau society as a whole, the colonial administration also opened new opportunities
outside the hardening village political system. The future success of these fami-
lies was to be found in the new colonial civil service, and its subsidiary organiza-
tions, which rapidly increased in size and importance during the course of the
nineteenth century.CHAPTER IV
ECONOMIC REORGANIZATION: TAXATION
AND THE CULTIVATION SYSTEM
In the precolonial period, village economic life in the Padang Highlands (and
to a lesser extent along the coast) tended to be organized around the major product
of a given village. The plains villagers mainly grew rice and did only a little weav-
ing, metallurgy, or trading. These occupations existed but on the periphery, and
the local village artisan or merchant was often an orang datang, a perantau from
some nearby hill village. Each plains village naturally also grew a little coffee,
pepper, tobacco, chili peppers, fruit, etc., but these crops would be confined to
the fringes of the rice fields and around the houses. The harvests from such crops
would be small and intended mainly for home consumption, although occasionally
some could be traded at the weekly market.
In the hill villages, the pattern was reversed. Because their topography was
in general unsuited for sawah, the hill villages grew dry rice and proportionately
more cash crops, at first mainly pepper, but after the eighteenth century, coffee.
Some villagers supplemented the rice harvest by making pots, weaving cloth, or
working in gold. With the exception of rice, the products which the Europeans
bought in the west coast ports usually came from the hill villages. Most of the
coffee sold in Padang, for example, was grown in the northern areas near Bonjol,
the hillsides of Lakes Maninjau and Singkarak, and the hill villages outside Solok.1
The villagers also supplemented their rice income with a highly developed tradition
of perantau merchants and artisans whose extravillage activity not only relieved
the pressure on the harvest but also generated outside income.
The institution which integrated the economic world of the highlands, binding
the hill villages to the plains, was the weekly market (pekan which means both week
and market in the Minangkabau dialect). Within a given geographic area, the major
market rotated to a different town each day of the week. The markets were not
only centers for economic exchange but for swapping information, where traveling
merchants and artisans brought news and opinions about events outside the village
world. And it was not just established traders who sold at the markets; many local
people earned extra income disposing of their surplus fruit, vegetables, rice,or
handicrafts there.
The nagari derived an important part of its public income from taxing peddlers
who came to trade, with the nagari council charging each tradesman a small sum for
the privilege of participating. The taxes thus collected could be used to finance
village celebrations, repair the council hall, or compensate the penghulu for their
services on the nagari council. (Labor for major projects could be obtained by
levies on the nagari lineages, through an extension of the serayo service which the
members of a lineage owed their penghulu. But projects requiring massive labor
supplies must have been few, if indeed there were any at all.)
1. Report by General de Stuers on the Situation in Sumatra's West Coast, May 17,
1826, Verbaal, October 23, 1826, No. 48.
5051
The arrival of the Dutch in the highlands changed the economic order within
just a few decades. The new rulers had a large standing army and an administra-
tive bureaucracy to support, and consequently needed an organized and regular
supply of food, materiel, and revenue. They were, moreover, determined to use
their superior power and administrative organization to get what they wanted.
Early Revenue Programs: Excise
Taxes, Free Coffee Trade
As with the political institutions, also in the economic sphere the first Dutch
officials thought that they would be able to use existing structures and institutions,
merely diverting the profits from their prior recipients. Nagari excise taxes would
now be organized more systematically; new ones would be instituted, and collections
would be made more certain. Establishing a secure and permanent European pres-
ence also required major investment in buildings and roads to assure the smooth
operation of government. Thus it was decided to recruit labor through corvee
levies based on an enlarged and reinterpreted concept of the existing serayo obli-
gations. Such new programs would take care of daily administrative costs and
needs. Profits would be derived through sales of coffee and other crops, which,
according to the colonial organizers, the now secure and contented Minangkabau
could be expected to grow and sell to the Dutch trading concerns in great quanti-
ties.
Much of the Dutch economic policy and organization before about 1850 was
based on the concept of the Minangkabau as "rational," "economic" people. By
definition, therefore, the Dutch expected them to understand, without being co-
erced, the value of a secure countryside, an orderly government, and a protected
export market. An example of this sort of Dutch thinking was the debate in 1823
over the need for a land tax. Batavia authorities suggested that a land tax similar
to the one already assessed in Java be imposed in the recently pacified areas of
the highlands. Officials recognized that the Minangkabau had never paid direct
taxes on property to anyone, but the Director of State Revenue argued that, as
they were "so far advanced on the road to civilization," the Minangkabau would
certainly understand the need for a tax to finance "good" and "beneficial" govern-
ment. 2 De Stuers and others on the scene were less convinced; they believed,
moreover, that the administrative costs of assessing and collecting such a tax would
be too high.3 4
Rather than introduce an entirely new system of taxation, de Stuers thought
the government should use existing adat-style levies, specifically the various na-
gari "excise taxes" on village activities. Some similar taxes were already being col-
lected by de Stuers' predecessors, for example, levies on selling tobacco, working
iron mines, installing penghulu, and holding cockfights. * De Stuers enlarged the
2.	Director of State Revenue, Batavia, October 27, 1823, contained in E. B.
Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 1819-1890, 3 vols. (The Hague: Bijdragen Reprint,
5th Series, n.d.), 1, pp. 86-87.
3.	General de Stuers, Regulations for the Market Tax, March 10, 1825 and the
Report of General de Stuers to the Governor General, August 30, 1825, Exhibitum,
August 24, 1826, No. 41. The so-called Plakaat Pandjang, or Long Declaration
(see above p. 41), promised, among other things, that no direct taxes would ever
be levied on the Minangkabau or their property.
4.	Proposal of Residents du Puy and Raaff, September 1823, in Kielstra, Sumatra's
Westkust, 1, pp. 84-85.52
scope of the taxes and, in 1825, instituted a tax on the markets in the highlands
areas then under Dutch control. The tax, payable in money or kind, affected
everyone who did any business in the market, from the owner of a permanent cof-
feeshop, to the "housewife" selling her surplus chilies. There was massive local
resistance to the tax, but de Stuers believed that this occurred because the Minang-
kabau had never had a centralized authoritative administration and thus were not
accustomed to delivering taxes to any government. He expected resistance would
be only a temporary problem. But he encountered a more serious resistance in his
dealings with the local penghulu, who were supposed to help encourage their sub-
ordinates to pay taxes quietly. De Stuers thought that the penghulu had agreed
that the tax was a reasonable exercise of government authority, but he found that,
in practice, all cooperation disappeared. Like the Javanese, he complained, the
Minangkabau will agree, when asked, with all government prescripts, but, unlike
the Javanese who will then obey, the Minangkabau will demur and, if pressed, will
flee to the jungle. 5
Seen from the Minangkabau point of view, the tax was an obvious outside en-
croachment on their daily lives, and the way in which it was collected only served
to underscore this fact. There is no indication from the records just how much or
with whom the Dutch consulted before they decided that the market tax was a viable
answer to the need for revenue. A few client penghulu in Padang could hardly
speak for the nagari councils in the highlands, but one suspects that these peng-
hulu are the ones to whom de Stuers refers. Worse yet, the tax was to be collected
by foreigners. The right to collect the tax in a particular geographic area was sold
at auction to private individuals; these usually turned out to be phinese. The Chi-
nese had arrived in the highlands in the wake of the Dutch army, whom they served
as contractors or for whom they performed other functions needed by a new admin-
istration. Though, in contrast to Java, they never gained an important hold on the
economic life of Minangkabau, yet these Chinese must have exacerbated the tensions
between the tax-collecting government and the Minangkabau. 6
In the first assessment, that of 1825, a total of forty-nine markets were taxed--
thirty-four in Tanah Datar and fifteen in Agam. 7 But in the first eight months of
operation, only f. 400 had been collected and that only after the greatest difficulty;
the collectors had repeatedly been chased away by the merchants and petty traders.
In 1826, increased efforts netted f. 800 for the first three months alone, but still
de Stuers believed that the amount collected did not justify the effort required. In
addition to the difficulties encountered in areas where the tax had already been put
into effect, in many other areas, notably along the coast and in the Solok region,
it had not even been introduced. Government monopolies on the sale of opium and
salt also fared poorly; in the highlands, the concessionaire, again usually Chinese,
5.	Report of General de Stuers to the Governor General, August 30, 1825, Exhibi-
tum, August 24, 1826, No. 41.
6.	The 1920 census, for example, recorded only 11,086 Chinese as against 1,505,000
Minangkabau. In Minangkabau, the Chinese remained concentrated in only the larg-
est mercantile centers, dealing in bulk import-export goods or contracting for the
government. Of the total mentioned for 1920, almost 10,000 lived in the eight largest
towns: Padang (5,985); Bukittinggi (539); Sawah Lunto, mainly mine laborers (534);
Payakumbuh (736); Padang Panjang (475); Pariaman (452); Painan (452); and Balai
Selasa (296).
7.	Report of General de Stuers on the Market Tax, Exhibition, August 24, 1826,
No. 41.53
was often beaten and sometimes killed.8
The Dutch in 1825 and 1826 were hot really in a position to enforce any very
unpopular policy, for the bulk of their armies were in Java fighting Diponegoro's
forces. In West Sumatra they had only 263 European troops, under 27'officers,
and another 392 Indonesian troops (non-Minangkabau, colonial army forces),9
mostly stationed in the highlands to protect the six existing government establish-
ments--at Batu Sangkar, Suroaso, Padang Ganting, Tanjung Alam, Bukittinggi,
and Guguk Sigandang--all located in Tanah Datar or southern Agam.10 The Dutch
could not afford to antagonize their client villages unduly, and so the issue of taxes
on the markets was quietly dropped.
Despite the failure of the effort to raise local taxes, the Dutch regime was not
without revenue sources; its major income continued to come from the export tax on
coffee.11 The main economic impetus behind Dutch involvement in the highlands
had been control of the coffee trade, and thus de Stuers thought it better to con-
centrate efforts on increasing coffee production. He anticipated that the profits
from this would take care of administrative costs as well as provide extra revenue.12
Coffee was not native to the Indies but in 1699, the VOC had begun a campaign
to spread its cultivation in Java, in response to an increasing demand in the Euro-
pean market.13 It seems reasonable to assume that VOC factors in Painan and Pa-
dang did likewise in West Sumatra. The contracts signed between the VOC and the
coastal raja in the seventeenth century, though at first directed towards pepper
cultivation, were probably revised to stress coffee when this became a more profit-
able crop. Certainly by the late eighteenth century, coffee had bypassed pepper
as the most important export from West Sumatra, and the eighteenth-century trade
agreements with coastal chiefs specifically mentioned coffee cultivation. 1'f Similar
agreements were later reached with highlands villages when they were absorbed
into the Dutch sphere of influence. In each case chiefs were guaranteed a commis-
sion of about f. 0.25 on each picul produced by their dependents.
Although these agreements did not constitute "forced delivery,” yet the govern-
ment also made it clear that continuation of a chief's favorable relations with the
authorities was largely dependent on the degree of enthusiasm which he showed in
supervising coffee cultivation and expanding production in his area. Government
directives instructed the chiefs to provide for the careful and ordered arrangement
of coffee gardens, to keep records on the number of trees in their districts and to
organize delivery to the government depots.15 The arrangement was quite favor-
able for the various penghulu. In addition to the coffee commissions, they were
8.	Report of General de Stuers on the situation in Sumatra's West Coast, May 17,
1826, Verbaal, October 23, 1826, No. 48.
9.	Ibid.
10.	Report of General de Stuers to the Governor General, August 30, 1825, Exhib-
itum, August 24, 1826, No. 41.
11.	Report of General de Stuers on the Situation in Sumatra's West Coast, May 17,
1826, Verbaal, October 23, 1826, No. 48.
12.	Ibid.
13.	Encyclopaedic van Nederlandsch-lndie (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1917), 2, p. 385.
14.	Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 1, pp. 15-16.
15.	Ibid.54
also in a position to act as the contractors for sales of coffee to the government or,
at least, as the agency through which other contractors must deal if they wished to
buy village coffee.
As the Dutch extended their influence into the interior, in the 1820s, they be-
came more aware of the rather casual and haphazard manner in which coffee cultiva-
tion was undertaken at the village level. This resulted in low quality beans and in
fluctuations from place to place and year to year in the quantity and quality of the
crop. General de Stuers experimented with the establishment of regulated plots de-
voted solely to coffee, hoping that such plantings would result in increased quality
and yields. He reported, in 1826, that he had established thirty gardens with some
10,000 bushes. Local penghulu in the Dutch-controlled coffee areas of Agam and the
XIII Kota were apparently pressured into allotting nagari grazing or vacant land
for coffee and then organizing villagers as a communal labor force.16 Since it takes
coffee trees some five years to mature and bear much fruit, de Stuers* regulated
groves could not be an immediate success in any event. No record exists of what
happened to them.
Despite endemic warfare in the interior and the fact that the major producing
areas in the north were within the Padri sphere of influence, coffee exports in-
creased between 1819 and 1825, from 4,464 piculs to 32,887.17 Dutch officials inter-
preted this as evidence of an enthusiastic Minangkabau response to the commercial
advantages offered by the new order. According to Padang authorities, if the
Minangkabau were interested enough to produce more coffee under existing adverse
conditions, what greater results might not be expected if peace and order could be
brought to the producing areas and an improved means of transportation found to
channel the harvest to Padang.18 Dutch officials did not apparently contemplate
the fact that the increases represented only sales to the government, not produc-
tion. Moreover such sales might be not in spite of adverse conditions in the in-
terior, but rather because of them.
Irrigated rice requires more intensive and constant attention than other crops.
Rice yields would thus be affected drastically by chaotic conditions which kept
peasants away from their fields or destroyed dikes and new seedlings. A bad rice
harvest would force the plains farmers to rely to a greater degree on sales of other
crops, such as coffee, the profits from which could be used to buy foodstuffs.
There is nothing in the records which indicates that the Minangkabau were in fact
showing a greater interest in planting coffee or improving cultivation techniques.
One could expect, then, that once conditions returned to normal, the peasants
would probably return to full-time rice cultivation; coffee sales would drop off un-
less prices were very favorable. The future should have appeared ominous to the
Dutch rather than rosy, for, accompanying the dramatic increase in sales of coffee,
was a corresponding decline in its world market price, from f. 30 per picul in 1819
to f. 12 in 1825.19
By 1831, Padang authorities were indeed concerned about a general decline in
coffee sales, noticeable since 1826; the decline in fact affected the volume and value
16.	Report of General de Stuers on the Situation on Sumatra's West Coast, May 17,
1826, Verbaal, October 23, 1826, No. 48.
17.	H. J. J. L. Ridder de Stuers, "Verslag van Padang 1828 (1. 1825)," Padang,
May-July 1826, KITLV Manuscript, H 726.
18.	Ibid.
19.	Ibid.55
of the whole import-export trade. Added to the decline in coffee prices, unrest in
the interior had increased after 1825 when the troops were withdrawn to Java; this
caused an increasing disruption of trade links between the coffee-producing areas
and the west coast. Although production apparently continued, much of the har-
vest was routed toward the east coast.20 With the renewed hostilities, coffee from
Padri areas in the north was no longer brought south to Dutch-controlled market
centers such as Bukittinggi or Pariaman. Now it too was moved east through the
passes near Payakumbuh and down the Kampar and Siak Rivers to the Malacca
Straits. It seemed to Padang officials, consequently, that Dutch political influence
over all the producing areas combined with a systematic Dutch-controlled collection
network was going to be crucial if the coffee profits were to be guaranteed to Dutch
warehouses.
Establishment of a "Protected Price"
Governor General van den Bosch made a fact-finding visit to Sumatra, in 1833,
to determine the best way to increase Dutch profits from Minangkabau without a
corresponding increase in Dutch administration or military entanglements in the
area. As the Minangkabau were an "energetic people devoted to trade," he hoped
that the government would need only to establish peace and then build a road net-
work which could channel the fruits of indigenous energy into Dutch warehouses. 21
But the government had to work out some means for encouraging producers to bring
the coffee to government buyers rather than sell it to local, Minangkabau middlemen,
who usually went directly to the village to buy. These middlemen were disparaged
by government sources because they raised the final price at which Dutch factors
in Padang must buy the coffee, thereby reducing the margin of Dutch profit on re-
sale to exporters.
The traditional collection method (still operating in the 1830s) consisted of nu-
merous Minangkabau petty traders gathering the harvests from local growers at the
weekly village markets, then usually reselling them to larger merchants in regional
marketing centers such as Bukittinggi. From there bearers carried the coffee, and
other goods as well, to the west coast over treacherous and unsafe trails, so narrow
and steep that not even horses could travel them. Each man carried about 60
pounds, for which he received about f. 0.50 per day in wages. It took about five
days to reach Padang from the collection point at Batu Sangkar. In addition, local
chiefs imposed tolls on those using the trails through their districts, and this, too,
added to the overhead on the coffee.22
Van den Bosch reasoned that, if the government could organize its own trans-
port system relying on levies of corvee labor, it could then undersell the private
traders in Padang. It could afford to offer the producers in the highlands a higher
price because of the money saved in transportation costs. Van den Bosch suggested
establishing a protected price of f. 9 per picul for all coffee sold to government
warehouses, as against the open market price at the time in the highlands of only
f. 6 to f. 8 per picul; local buyers should not be able to offer any more because of
their high transport costs. 23 In van den Bosch's view even by paying the higher
20.	Ibid.
21.	Governor General van den Bosch to Resident Elout, February 21, 1832, in
Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 2, pp. 129-32.
22.	De Stuers, "Verslag van Padang."
23.	Governor General van den Bosch, Memorandum to Commissioner van Sevenhoven,
October 11, 1833, No. 311, in Kielstra, Sumatra's Westkust, 3, pp. 75-76.56
price the government would still realize almost 100 percent profit on resale in Pa-
dang,24 and under such conditions, he believed, forced cultivation would be neither
desirable nor necessary.
The Dutch state trading company, the Nederlandsch Handel-Maatschappij (NHM)
contracted with the East Indies government to establish warehouses at strategic
points in the highlands, which would serve as exchange centers where farmers sold
coffee and bought government salt and opium and also the NHM's imported goods.
The NHM contract guaranteed the company a 5 percent commission on the coffee
which it delivered to the government and also on its sales of government salt. It
could sell imported goods on its own account, and it hoped, in the process, to
undersell goods which came via the east coast from Singapore.25
The government, for its part, agreed to provide transportation for both coffee
and the other commodities the NHM would handle. In this regard, a major road was
planned to connect Padang to the highlands at Padang Panjang, which would be cut
through the Anei Pass, a small chasm through which the Anei River flows. The
road would make possible bulk transport of goods and help cut costs to the govern-
ment in its ongoing competition with native traders. In the interim, the government
bearer service (kuliedienst) would be responsible for handling NHM merchandise,
in addition to other duties related to transport of war materiel and the property of
government bureaus and officials.
The road, through the Anei Pass, constructed as part of this agreement with the
NHM, was a major accomplishment, combining Dutch engineering and corvee labor.
In many places, it had to be carved out of sheer rock faces. The pass itself is
some ten miles long, climbing from 450 feet above sea level at Kayu Tanam to 2,535
feet at its outlet near Padang Panjang.26 Construction of the road brought great
hardship to nearby villages in Agam and Tanah Datar, for villagers ordered to work
on the road often had to travel as much as a day's journey to reach the worksite.
Corvee laborers had to be brought in from the surrounding areas because the re-
gion of the Anei Pass itself was only thinly populated, as there was no land suitable
for settled agriculture and hence no villages. The Dutch decreed that all inhabi-
tants in areas under their control were liable for corvee duty, excepting only
women, "religious officials," and the aged. The laras- and nagarihoofd, working
through the penghulu suku, organized the levies. Each man had to bring his own
food. The village had to arrange for the tools and often transportation to the work-
site as well. 27 Maintenance of the Anei Pass road proved equally burdensome be-
cause frequent heavy rains and flash floods destroyed bridges and caused land-
slides across the road. To alleviate the burden, the government finally agreed
that an individual could pay f. 6 per year, known as the kloofgelden (pass money),
in lieu of personal service. The government then used these funds to hire labor or
to finance the use of convict labor. 28
24.	Ibid.
25.	W. M. F. Mansvelt, Ceschiedenis van de Nederlandsch Handel-Maatschappij
(1824-1924) [henceforth NHM] (Haarlem: Enschede [1924]), 2, pp. 53-54.
26.	Encyclopaedic van Nederlandsch-lndie, 1, p. 51.
27.	A. W. P. Verkerk Pistorius, Studien over de Inlandsche Huishouding in de
Padangsche Bovenlanden (Zalt-Bommel: Norman, 1871), pp. 169 and 171.
28.	Encyclopaedic van Nederlandsch-lndie, 1, p. 51; Verslag van het Beheer en
den Staat der Nederlandsche Bezittingen en Kolonien in Oost- en West-Indie en ter
Kust van Guinea, ingediend door den Minister van Kolonien [more commonly known
as the Koloniaal Verslag], 1863, p. 25 and 1881, p. 75.57
Private sales of coffee in Padang continued despite the predicted advantages of
selling to the government. Much of this "private" coffee, however, probably came
from nongovernment territories. Although van den Bosch had predicted that 50,000
to 70,000 piculs would be delivered to the government each year, the actual poten-
tial production of the government-controlled areas was in fact little more than some
40,000 piculs. Another 40,000 piculs was produced annually in areas outside gov-
ernment influence at this time--particularly the XII, XIII and XX Kota, the Danau
(Lake Maninjau) area and in the southern districts. 29 Van den Bosch himself did
not consider the private sales an immediate problem; the government would not suf-
fer a great loss because it collected a high export tax on private coffee. He coun-
seled patience, believing that later, after gaining full control over the interior and
hence all the trade routes, the administration could raise the export duty so high
that the private traders could no longer compete, and the entire coffee harvest
would fall to the government.30
The NHM was not disposed to wait patiently for the above eventuality; the com-
pany received a commission only on the coffee actually sold to government ware-
houses. The government, meanwhile, continued to urge the expansion of NHM
posts into newly pacified areas, such as Bonjol in the north and the XIII Kota in
the south. NHM officials saw no profit in this, but only an "overextension" of their
already scarce resources. It seemed increasingly clear to the NHM that its ware-
houses were intended to fulfill a political function, that is to serve as concrete sym-
bols of Dutch presence, rather than to meet any specific economic needs. This
suspicion was confirmed when government officials suggested that NHM warehouse
personnel not be overly critical about the quality of the coffee offered for sale, be-
cause to do so might divert even more of the harvest into the private sector. As a
result, NHM officials complained, they had to accept coffee deliveries which were
a mixture of beans in all stages of maturity and all degrees of quality.31
Dutch attempts to establish the NHM as the monopoly supplier of import goods
were equally unsuccessful, for import goods from the east coast continued to under-
sell those carried at the NHM depots. Company officials did not believe they would
be able to counteract this situation in the foreseeable future.32 NHM expenses had
continued high because the company could not depend on the government's promise
of free transport for the goods. The transportation service and its available wagons
and animals had been commandeered to assist in the various military operations in
the highlands; transport was only rarely made available for the NHM's commercial
ventures. As a result, rather than paying for itself, the combined government-NHM
operation in West Sumatra was incurring a yearly debt of almost f. 1 million.33 The
NHM, therefore, refused to extend its commercial activities any farther, and, as the
various warehouse contracts with the government came due, the company refused to
renew them. The last NHM warehouse, the one at Payakumbuh, closed in 1841.
After this in order to sell coffee to the government, growers again had to transport
harvests to the depots on the coast--Padang, Pariaman, or Air Bangis.3lf
29.	Letter of E. Francis, May 8, 1834, in E. B. Kielstra, "De Koffiecultuur ter
Westkust van Sumatra," 1C, 10 (1888), p. 1443.
30.	Governor General van den Bosch to Resident Francis, February 16, 1835, in
Kielstra, "Koffiecultuur," p. 1444.
31.	Mansvelt, NHM, 2, p. 61.
32.	Ibid., pp. 55-56.
33.	Ibid., p. 62.
34.	Ibid., p. 60.Table 2. Padang Coffee Exports
Year	Piculs	Year	Piculs*	Year	Piculs*
1826	48,437	1862	135,000	1880	130,000
1827	39,684		9,000		3,400
1828	29,371	1863	124,600	1881	106,400
1829	39,703		5,800		2,600
1830	27,697	1864	164,400	1882	99,800
1831	40,200		8,400		2,000
1832	60,794	1865	116,000	1883	141,200
1833	80,753		6,000		3,600
1834	78,581	1866	132,400	1884	88,920
1835	78,837		6,400		1,600
1836	84,823	1867	121,200	1885	101,225
1837	59,920		6,000		1,600
1838	56,295	1868	174,200	1886	50,345
1839	96,180		7,600		800
1840	90,961	1869	154,800	1887	75,528
1841	93,949		6,800		1,170
1842	83,080	1870	157,000	1888	105,290
1843	100,384		6,800		2,100
1844	74,697	1871	162,000	1889	47,166
1845	81,941		8,000		525
1846	66,973	1872	81,800	1890	50,135
1847	58,224		6,200		640
1848	56,101	1873	97,800	1891	58,975
1849	52,833		4,400		550
1850	71,118	1874	121,800	1892	56,186
1851	84,976		5,600		1,530
1852	122,903	1875	131,400	1893	58,817
1853	137,679		6,800		1,415
1854	131,522	1876	138,000	1894	23,278
1855	127,547		3,200		441
1856	128,259	1877	158,000	1895	43,159
1857	190,947		6,200		650
1858	129,121	1878	84,400	1896	45,664
1859	120,259		2,600		1,290
1860	151,057	1879	103,600		
1861	150,000		2,600		
* The top number indicates first class coffee and the lower one, second class.
Source: Encyclopaedic van Nederlandsch-lndie, 2, p. 275.59
Economically, for the Dutch the first two decades of their rule in the highlands
were a standoff and perhaps even a setback. They had invested troops and time
into creating a sphere of influence which should have assured them control over
West Sumatran coffee. But the bulk of the coffee came from the hill villages, still,
in the late 1830s, not fully under Dutch suzerainty. The Dutch adventure was
proving lucrative mainly to the perantau traders who now not only handled export
crops and local sales but also acted as the intermediaries in provisioning the new
European forces. Farmers in the government areas often found it more profitable
to grow foodstuffs to supply the government’s military and civilian personnel than
to grow coffee. This was especially true in the period around 1837, when the final
assault on the Padri dissidents in the north was being carried out and the Dutch
had secure control over the plains. 35
The Dutch tried to halt the trend away from coffee growing by raising the pro-
tected price, but in 1838 less coffee was being sold to the government than in 1835,
before the price increase. Part of the problem was the continuing drain of coffee
to merchants from the east coast in exchange for imported goods from Singapore. 36
Coffee exports from Padang fluctuated throughout the 1830s, and an important fac-
tor in the fluctuation was apparently the degree of pressure exerted by the laras-
and nagarihoofd to channel the coffee harvests to government dealers. In 1833,
after the announcement of a drive to encourage production, local chiefs thought to
ingratiate themselves with the authorities by coercing their dependents into making
large deliveries to the warehouses. But this caused unrest, especially in areas
where private dealers offered higher prices or where other crops were more profit-
able. The Dutch were already busy fighting the Padri and did not want revolt to
erupt behind their lines, so officials cautioned the chiefs against undue pressure.
The precipitous drop in deliveries between 1836 and 1837 was attributed by General
Michiels, the new Resident, to the decrease in pressure on local growers. 37
General Michiels himself conducted a full-scale investigation of the coffee prob-
lem in 1838 and 1839, and he concluded that forced cultivation and delivery were
the only answer. He believed the government should directly control the growers
themselves by establishing links to the penghulu suku. Production could then be
organized by lineage group, making each one responsible for a certain amount.
Forced delivery would have the additional virtue of ridding the countryside of the
thousands of petty traders whom Michiels dismissed as unnecessary "parasites" and
"swindlers," whose only contribution was to raise the ultimate cost of goods. They
should be "forced to return to agriculture."38
The Governor General delayed action on Michiels' proposals because of the cost
involved and also because such a program would be impractical until all pockets of
Padri resistance were eliminated and the territory closely organized directly under
the new Dutch administration. Meanwhile, exports had increased again, reaching a
new peak in 1843, which probably represented the surge caused by Dutch control
over all the producing areas. The government then felt delay had been justified.
But by 1844, exports began declining again, and they continued dropping until
35.	Report of General Michiels on Coffee Cultivation, February 4, 1839, in Kielstra,
"Koffiecultuur," pp. 1450-51.
36.	Ibid., p. 1450.
37.	Ibid.
38.	Ibid., p. 1455.60
the end of the decade. In 1847, Batavia gave Michiels a free hand to reorganize
coffee production and collection along the lines he had suggested in 1839. 39
The Coffee Cultivation System
The 1847 decision by Batavia represented a symbolic watershed in Minangkabau
relations with the outside world and in their historical development as well. The
Dutch had been establishing a skeleton administration in the nagari before 1847,
but there had been no real effort to use it for much more than peacekeeping, occa-
sional corvee levies, and general administration. Some government chiefs had pres-
sured their dependents into growing more coffee, but no specific government policy
had sanctioned such interference in the daily round of village affairs because the
government had believed it unnecessary. In 1847, the government changed its
mind.
Control of cultivation and delivery, however, required a more permanent and
differentiated colonial bureaucracy. It also increased the pressures on the villages
to provide goods and services for the new establishment as well as to satisfy the
specific demand to grow more coffee. Both kinds of pressure were detrimental to
village interests as their inhabitants saw them. Large government establishments
grew up in the important regional centers, especially in the highlands plains areas.
Alongside the burden which this represented, however, it did also provide new mar-
kets for foodstuffs, new needs for transport services, and new bureaucratic job
opportunities. The burden was not the same for everyone, nor for anyone all the
time.
The expansion in the coffee cultivation system directly affected the hill villages
more than the plains. Partly this resulted from the availability of open land in the
hill areas, but also it was a reflection of the nature of coffee itself. Arabics coffee,
a prime coffee much in demand in the European market, came originally from the
Ethiopian highlands. It grew best in areas with cool weather, good rainfall, and
well-drained soil. The sloping hillsides of highlands West Sumatra were thus ideally
suited for its cultivation. The hillsides facing on the Indian Ocean near the coastal
plain proved less suitable, especially those in the southern districts near Painan.
In most of these areas, the hillsides were too steep and rocky, or else they were
too close to the sea so there were no villages nearby to provide labor. In other
areas the soil and climate were apparently unfavorable, as in the Painan area and
farther south.
Most of the hill villages in the highlands had grown coffee since before 1847,
but not in the quantity or with the intensity of care and interest which the Michiels'
plan envisioned. In descending order, pressure would now be applied from the
Dutch controleur (who had general supervision over all cultivation in his region),
to the larashoofd (who coordinated Dutch demands with local leaders), to the nagari -
hoofd (who had to apportion the cultivation tasks among the various suku), and
finally to the penghulu themselves (who, as the mamak for their lineages, worked to
deflect as much of the government pressure from their followers as possible). Poli-
tics and clever maneuvering were at a premium at all levels in this operation; culti-
vation tasks often reflected the relative power position of a family in the village
rather than their ability to spend time growing coffee.
The Dutch offered a commission to the various chiefs at all levels in an effort
to buy their loyalty, but the chiefs, especially the nagarihoofd and the penghulu,
39. Decision of Governor General Rochusen, March 30, 1847, No. 8, in Kielstra,
"Koffiecultuur," p. 1485.61
were also susceptible to direct pressure from their dependents because they de-
pended on their consensus to rule. The individual grower might suffer more or
less interference in his daily life in accordance with the relative position of his
suku within the village power structure and the relationship of his particular
branch within that suku to the penghulu. Much depended upon whether an indi-
vidual chief were more interested in protecting his clients (whether from humani-
tarian reasons or because his position was insecure) or advancing his career with
the Dutch (whether from personal ambition or fear). The opportunities to play
politics or participate in extortion and corruption were many and varied.
Under direction of the controleur, land had to be set aside for coffee groves,
preferably a few large plots worked by family groups rather than the former style
of scattered individual plantings.1,0 The farmer had to terrace the land and clear
it to suit the particular notions of the controleur, who closely inspected each Sep-
tember to check on the progress of new seedlings and to make certain that an appro-
priate cover crop had been planted. 41 The penghulu were encouraged to pledge to
plant a certain number of seedlings each year; Michiels suggested that a reasonable
figure would be 100 trees per year per family unit in each suku, at least over the
first five years.1,2
Statistics sometimes became more important than reality in deciding how much or
where to plant. The villagers and their opinions were often ignored, as was the
suitability of a particular area for cultivation. The driving force of many authori-
ties (especially the controleur and larashoofd) was the need to plant more and more
trees. In some cases, overzealous officials ordered new groves in areas where the
soil was unsuitable, in others in places too far from the villages. New plots were
laid out every year, but many never matured--sometimes they had been planted on
bad soil; sometimes the cover crop had been poorly selected and had choked off the
new seedlings; sometimes officials had ceased close supervision after the initial
planting, and the plots were subsequently neglected. The villagers struck back
at the increased interference by evading work on the coffee fields whenever possi-
ble . A major irritant to them was the continuing government pressure for planting
large regular stands of coffee to be worked in common by all members of the village.
To the Minangkabau, it made more sense to plant coffee in the time-tested manner
and areas--intermixed with other crops, near other fields, in short, on ground
proven suitable by past experience. ^
Planting was not the end of the coffee system's demands on the growers. The
trees had to be topped when they reached six feet in height (usually in the first
year or so) and afterward carefully and continuously pruned. Otherwise, the tree
could develop a tall scraggly growth which bore sparse fruit. The controleur
spurred the government chiefs and the penghulu to supervise these operations.
In March, he himself had to inspect the new trees, count and grade them, and or-
der the culling of inferior ones. '*'* Despite all the time demanded by the young
40.	C. L. Hasselman, "Gouvernement's Koffeecultuur," Encyclopaedia van Neder-
landsch-lndie, 1, p. 274.
41.	General Michiels, Decision on Coffee Deliveries, October 11, 1847, in Kielstra,
"Koffiecultuur," p. 1475.
42.	General Michiels, Report on Coffee Cultivation, February 4, 1839, in ibid.,
p. 1453.
43.	Koloniaal Vers lag, 1853, p. 176.
44.	General Michiels, Decision on Coffee Deliveries, October 11, 1847, in Kielstra,
"Koffiecultuur, p. 1485.MAP 3; COFFEE WAREHOUSES63
trees from the growers, they did not bear fruit for three years, and produced no
sizeable yields for another two after that. Once mature, however, a coffee tree
could be expected to produce good crops for about ten years before the yields
would begin to decline and the tree had to be destroyed.
During his March inspection tour, the controleur estimated the expected yield;
the chiefs would then be held to this estimate. The Dutch soon discovered that
otherwise much of the harvest never reached the government warehouses--it was
sold privately, consumed by the family themselves,or merely neglected on the tree
while growers pursued other interests.lf5 The government announced that it would
accept only processed beans--that is, those which had been dried and hulled. Lax-
ity in processing by growers had been a primary complaint by the NHM in the 1830s,
and the government was determined not to repeat it. Now the controleur held the
chiefs to account for the quality of the beans delivered--broken, green beans mixed
with stones and soaked in water to make them heavy would no longer be acceptable.
The NHM had been in no position to argue about the quality of the beans it received
because, at that time, the government was unable to exert consistent pressure on
the growers. But now the regime had the capability to supervise, and the determi-
nation to do it. This quality control made life for the grower that much more diffi-
cult because he could no longer discharge his cultivation responsibilities merely by
picking all the beans at once and selling them. Now he had to wait for each succes-
sive set of beans to ripen, and then process them. It was a long drawn-out process
which required much effort. According to one estimate by a Dutch observer, for
each picul of coffee delivered to the government warehouse, a family spent some 120
days of labor.1,6
Obviously, if coffee were profitable, the farmers would willingly spend the time
required to grow it according to government specifications. The record indicates
that the peasants did not in fact find coffee especially profitable, unless alternative
sources of livelihood failed. All the force of government sanction had to be applied
to keep up production statistics. The Michiels' regulations provided for a commis-
sion on deliveries not just to the laras- and nagarihoofd, who had received commis-
sions during the era of the "protected price," but also to the penghulu suku. These
chiefs received, respectively, f. 0.20, f. 0.20, and f. 0.50 per picul delivered by
their constituents. **7 This brought the focus of attention and pressure much closer
to the individual grower than had been the case under earlier coffee programs; in-
deed villagers complained constantly about the undue interference. Although pub-
licly described as a "popular culture," in which cultivation was freely organized1*8
and only delivery compulsory, in operation, coercion pervaded the whole system.
As shown above, the controleur and the various chiefs were expected to interfere
in order to organize a more efficiently grown and better quality crop.
The Dutch, from Batavia to Batu Sangkar, viewed West Sumatra in terms of the
coffee it could produce. The administrative apparatus was organized from the very
beginning to assure more coffee. More coffee brought the chiefs more money; the
Dutch believed this would make them more vigilant and enthusiastic. After the
45.	Ibid.
46.	J. van Vollenhoven, Padang en het Couvernement "Sumatra's Westkust": Losse
Cedachten over de Oorzaken van Verval en Middelen tot Herstel der Welvaart (Rot-
terdam: Bladergroen, 1872), pp. 6-8.
47.	General Michiels, Report on Coffee Cultivation, February 4, 1839, in Kielstra,
"Koffiecultuur," p. 1453.
48.	Report of Governor van Swieten, 1852, Verbaal, July 13, 1858, No. 35.64
Table 3. Coffee Warehouse	Purchases	(1867-1869 in piculs)	
Warehouse Locale	1867	1868	1869
Bukittinggi	14,205	13,182	11,011
Baso	9,634	8,784	6,263
Maninjau	4,319	3,836	1,919
Matur	3,618	3,817	2,756
Palembayan	3,830	3,355	2,459
Pisan g	805	520	281
Batu Sangkar	20,513	15,910	25,021
Singkarak	10,389	6,659	11,425
Jambok	5,508	6,994	5,578
Sijunjung	453	388	315
Tanjung Ampalo	1,618	1,324	1,710
Rao - Rao	10,281	12,765	12,388
Buo	3,144	3,221	3,532
Solok	7,796	6,747	8,420
Supayang	4,735	4,740	3,831
Alahan Panjang	2,657	3,240	2,349
Lolo	1,744	1,825	1,045
Padang Panjang	2,659	2,269	2,396
Batu Buagang	3,423	2.692	4,739
Payakumbuh	3,773	3,810	3,259
Guguk	5,423	4,714	4,061
Situjuh	1,649	1,999	1,797
Lari Lam ah	332	510	386
Halaban	3,140	2,543	2,219
Puar Datar	4,107	3, 426	3,310
Suliki	3,761	3,192	3,251
Total	133,516	122,462	125,721
Source: Verbaal, January 3	, 1872, No	. 10.	65
1840s, as the coffee-cultivation system developed, the debate was less about whether
or not to supervise cultivation than hbw to do it and who should do it. Entries in
the daily registers of local Dutch and Minangkabau officials for the 1860s indicated
that punishments were imposed for neglect of duties associated with coffee cultiva-
tion in the same way as for failure to perform corvee tasks.1,9 From the very begin-
ning, the Michiels system was considered, at least by local-level authorities, as
similar to a corvee requirement. A Dutch high official of the 1860s interpreted the
farmers' evasion of coffee work as a result of the "independent nature" of the Mi-
nangkabau, combined with the lack of an existing tradition of corvee labor; he did
not view their reluctance as the result of any economic hardship. He regarded the
"sheer obstinacy" of the Minangkabau as the major obstacle to increased coffee pro-
duction, saying that they tried to circumvent any regulation whatever, if the gov-
ernment initiated it. The police rolls were filled with the names of villagers charged
with failure to perform required labor duties--a situation which the official regarded
as without equal elsewhere in the Indies. 50
The peasants had real economic grievances, however--the Dutch officials to the
contrary. The coffee system, at the least, prevented them from spending time on
other more profitable or necessary endeavors, and, at worst, it caused severe eco-
nomic dislocation. In the 1860s, for example, an epidemic of cattle sickness killed
a large proportion of the buffalo and cattle herds in the highlands, animals impor-
tant to the Minangkabau farmers not only for food but also as draft animals. The
rapid spread of the disease, which affected mainly the highland plains areas, was
attributed to government insistence that cattle be penned in communal corrals to
free open grazing land for planting coffee.51
In an effort to include the plains villages in the coffee-cultivation system, the
government had wanted to open the nagari nonsawah land for coffee planting.
Since that land was already being used as free pasture for cattle, officials decided
that the cattle could be corralled and food could be brought to them. The plains
areas grew most of the rice produced in West Sumatra, and the death of the cattle
and their consequent loss as draft animals meant that less land could be cultivated
as sawah. Rice harvests declined.52 Even without such major disasters, time spent
on coffee cultivation generally cut into the time needed for growing food or for
other activities crucial to the farmer's daily existence--for example, weaving or
part-time peddling. Not only did the peasant often have to neglect his rice crop
because he worked in the coffee groves, but even worse, the money earned from
the final sale of the coffee harvest would probably not be sufficient to cover the
cost of the extra rice or other products he had to buy as a result of his lost time.53
In the hill villages, peasants grew little wet rice anyway, but they had to rely
on their other crops to provide enough income to buy rice from the plains. For
them, the time spent on coffee might better be spent on a more profitable crop or
on an activity such as metallurgy or trade. Moreover, the government coffee price
49.	C. Lulofs, "Koffiecultuur en Belasting ter Sumatra's Westkust," 1C, 26, 2
(1904), p. 1642.
50.	Verbaal, June 3, 1863, No. 2.
51.	Van Vollenhoven, Padang en het Gouvernement, p. 3; Lulofs, "Koffiecultuur,"
p. 1643.
52.	Koloniaal Verslag, 1869, p. 145. The harvests dropped from 4,689,000 piculs
in 1867 to 3,500,000 in 1868.
53.	Van Vollenhoven, Padang en het Gouvernement, pp. 6-8.66
was often too low compared to its open market value as well as compared to the rela-
tive cost involved in producing it. 51* As a result, even after the system of forced
delivery was instituted, coffee continued to be sold to private merchants who of-
fered better prices than the government warehouses. 5“ Other crops were also in
increased demand as export items, in particular, nutmegs, tobacco, gambir, gutta
percha, and cassia. These were handled by the private sector.
The numerous petty traders and middlemen who had previously dealt in coffee,
and who van den Bosch and Michiels had predicted would be forced to return to
more "useful" (i.e., agricultural) pursuits, merely switched their attention to the
other exportable crops. If government coffee prices were relatively low, the peas-
ants preferred to concentrate on other crops. This process widened the export
base of West Coast agriculture (which the government considered a good thing) but
at the same time decreased the production of coffee (which the government did not
like). 56 The major coffee areas, the hill villages in the highlands, were also the
areas of the greatest merantau activity. Many young men left these villages every
year, thereby increasing the burden on those remaining. Pressure from local chiefs
to keep such men on the land would only have caused intense economic hardship and
contributed to local discontent and unrest.
Reorganizing the Economic Infrastructure
The coffee-cultivation system disrupted village life not simply through its de-
mands for greater harvests, but also because it was part of an intensified adminis-
tration which needed roads, buildings, and transportation facilities in order to
operate effectively. To this end, the new administration required a guaranteed
and available labor force, organized to serve the government through corvee levies.
At the same time that the various village and district chiefs had agreed to encourage
greater production among their dependents, they had also agreed to provide labor
and materials to construct the warehouses needed to store that harvest and the
roads to bring it to the regional collection centers. 57 The local residents were al-
ready liable for building homes and offices for the Dutch bureaucrats who were the
mainstay of the new regime.
The villages of the highlands plains might be able to escape most of the inter-
ference in daily life which the coffee cultivation itself entailed because they rarely
had enough land suitable for coffee. But they could not avoid the demands for cor-
vee service which were connected with the new coffee-directed administration. The
populous rice villages had the human resources upon which a corvee system is based.
Also, the major Dutch building projects were located in the administrative capitals--
Batu Sangkar, Bukittinggi, and the others--each located in the heart of a sawah
plain.
As with the first major work project, the Anei Pass road, so too the rest of the
transport network relied heavily on labor recruited from the plains villages. A
54.	Z. H. Kamerling, "De Vroegere en Tegenwoordige Toestand van Handel,
Nijverheid en Landbouw op Sumatra's Westkust, en de Vooruitzichten daarvan voor
de Volgende Jaren," 1C, 17, 2 (1895), p. 1070.
55.	Ibid. By the end of the century the open market price was f. 30 per picul
compared to the government price which had remained at f. 15.
56. Report of the Governor for 1853, Verbaal, March 22, 1858, No. 53.
57. General Michiels Report on Coffee Cultivation, October 26, 1847, in Kielstra,
"Koffiecultuur," p. 1475.67
second road to Padang was constructed along the former main trail to the highlands,
that heading east behind Padang, over the hills to Lubuk Selasih (near Alahan Pan-
jang), and then north to Lake Singkarak. It was planned to tie the potential coffee
producing areas of the southern highlands to Padang. Though not so difficult a
construction job as the Anei Pass road had been, nonetheless, the new road followed
a long and difficult path which stretched some thirty-six miles through relatively
unpopulated area before reaching the highlands plateau. 58 The other roads con-
structed about the same time were also built between important (or potentially im-
portant) highlands coffee areas and the west coast ports--from Rau to Air Bangis;
Maninjau to Tiku,and Pulot-Pulot to Painan. These roads made possible bulk trans-
port of coffee and other items to Dutch-controlled ports in the west; the government
confidently predicted that henceforth the bulk trade would be diverted away from
the Malacca Straits. 59
The first traffic along the roads consisted mainly of vehicles on government
business. During the early years, few private individuals contracted for the ser-
vices of the pedati (buffalo cart) and packhorse corps which had been organized in
response to government needs for transportation of provisions, coffee, import goods,
and military materiel. Minangkabau merchants from the highlands or Padang not
only lacked the resources to hire the new services, they as yet operated on a scale
too small to make bulk transport worthwhile. The old trails were more convenient
and were faster than the new roads, which detoured around hills and canyons. In-
dividual travelers and petty traders, who walked to market, continued to use these
old paths (and still do today). But larger Minangkabau merchants soon began to
appear, and they had an interest and a capacity for using the improved transporta-
tion for bulk produce. Moreover, the titled aristocrats created by government de-
sign no longer walked but rode.
As new export products developed in response to world demands, private trad-
ers needed the carts and horses to get their goods to the harbors. The Minangka-
bau officials of the new regime rode horseback when touring their areas. 60 Trans-
portation itself, therefore, became an important business as the coffee delivery
system and private enterprise extended into all parts of West Sumatra. Large num-
bers of pedati plied the roads between the coast and the upland producing areas,
bringing coffee to the sea and import goods to the highlands. Subsidiary businesses
appeared all along the routes in order to service the transport network--coffee
houses and rest stations for the drivers, grass-sellers and water carriers for the
animals. 61 All of these small business ventures were run by Minangkabau, many of
whom, no doubt, had formerly eked out a living in the forests through which the
roads passed. Now they could supplement a meager living earned from selling fire-
wood, fruit, resins, and other forest crops by providing services to travelers and
traders. In addition, they could sell their own produce more easily because they
did not have to carry it all the way to a market town to find a buyer; they sold to
one of the traders who passed by on the new roads.
58.	Encyclopaedia van Nederlandsch-lndie, 1, p. 51.
59.	Report of Governor van Swieten, 1854, Verbaal, March 22, 1858, No. 53.
60. Report of Governor van Swieten, 1852, Verbaal, July 13, 1858, No. 35.
61. Memorie van Over gave, Governor Heckler, Verbaal, April 21, 1911, No. 8.
When the railroad was constructed from Padang to Bukittinggi, Payakumbuh, and
Sawah Lunto at the turn of the twentieth century, it created much economic disloca-
tion in those areas which had become dependent on servicing the pedati transport
system for their livelihood.68
The availability of transport and the development of other export crops besides
coffee benefitted highlands merchants as well. Although slower to enter the field
of dealing in wholesale, bulk commodities, Minangkabau families from hill villages,
especially in Agam, began to emerge as large "merchandising firms." By pooling
family resources, both capital and expertise, and using the influence exerted by
relatives in the government service, these families managed to amass great wealth
and create regional merchant dynasties. The dynasties were maintained through
carefully managed marriage alliances which brought together the necessary re-
sources, both human and financial, into one large family cluster of interests. 62 As
Dutch rule spread into other areas of Sumatra, the wealthy merchant families, close-
ly allied to civil service families which ran the administration, followed in the colo-
nial wake.
In addition to roads, the Dutch needed to have numerous buildings constructed
to serve as offices, homes, warehouses, and covered market places. As part of the
agreements they had exacted from local penghulu in the 1820s and later, the Dutch
required that the villagers build these buildings free of charge. The government
did not even provide materials or tools beyond certain specialized items, such as
the iron works and scales for coffee warehouses. The coffee warehouses had to be
built to exacting specifications; at the laras level, for example, they had to have a
storage capacity for at least 2,000 piculs (roughly 274,000 pounds) of dried coffee
beans. This represents a good-sized structure, as coffee beans are bulky. At the
Assistant Residency level, warehouses had to hold 6,000 piculs (about 822,000
pounds). The government agreed, for its part, to build the main highlands ware-
house at Padang Panjang, a project which would probably have burdened local vil-
lagers beyond the point of endurance. As it was, the first building program called
for fifteen major and sixty-six minor warehouses. 63
The Dutch needed not only warehouses but also homes and offices for the offi-
cials who supervised the cultivation system and the regional administration. Each
larashoofd demanded his own residence and office in the territorial center for when
he had to confer with Dutch officials. To make matters worse, local officials, both
Dutch and Minangkabau, often misused the corvee levies, demanding in some cases
extravagant architectural styles and decorations which increased the already onerous
task. Laras- and nagarihoofd were guilty of using corvee labor to work their
personal fields or improve private property. 65
The burden of this compulsory construction fell hardest in relative terms, on
only a few geographic areas and social groups in Minangkabau. In the underpopu-
lated districts, which typically were the hillside areas where coffee was cultivated
most intensively and also where roads were more difficult to maintain, villagers
might have to spend four times as many days on corvee duty as in the more popu-
lated plains areas.66
62.	An example of this is found among several merchant families in the IV Kota
district of Agam--particularly among families in Koto Tuo and Sianok. Elders of
IV Kota, interview, October 1967, in Koto Tuo.
63.	Kielstra, "Koffiecultuur," pp. 1483 and 1485.
64.	Verkerk Pistorius, Inlandsche Huishouding, pp. 158-59.
65.	Koloniaal Verslag, 1863, p. 21.
66.	Ibid., 1881, p. 76. The only available figures are those from 1881 which is
rather late in the century but at the same time there was less new construction then
so the figures may err in the direction of being too low. These figures show thatTable 4. Corvee Labor Levies in 1880
Location	Number of Men		Number of Days for Each Type Work				Average Days Work per Laborer for the Year 1880
	Able-bodied Males	Owers of Corvee	Bridge Maintenance	Road Maintenance	Public Works	“Uittry Total Works	
Padang Lowlands							
Southern Division	20,113	16,413	9,094	60,616	234	69,944	about 4
Padang Environs	6,800	6,259	3,290	12,447	--	15,737	2 to 3
Air Bangis/Rau	11,282	8,732	--	104,250	1,260	105,510	12
Pariaman	30,550	24,077	28,024	135,650	6,472	170,146	7
Padang Highlands	173,937	130,317	--	1,295,961	--	1,295,961	about 10
Source:	Koloniaal Vers lag, 1881, p. 76.70
People in the lower socioeconomic groups were the most affected, both because
they could not take advantage of the loopholes available to upper-level people and
also because they could least afford the time lost to their daily struggle for exis-
tence. Bureaucrats and government chiefs, rich merchants with connections, and
important adat dignitaries escaped corvde themselves and could also use their influ-
ence to gain exemptions for many members of their families. Toward the end of the
century, records show that 25 percent of all the ablebodied men in the highlands
who were liable for corvee duty had obtained legal exemptions from service. 67
Those who could afford it, hired someone to work in their stead. Traders and mer-
chants in urban centers usually paid a fee to the government in lieu of actual ser-
vice. Many of the perantau traders and artisans doubtless managed to avoid both
service and payment because they moved around so much. 68
Another aspect of the reorganization of the economic infrastructure was govern-
ment attention to increasing food production, in particular rice. This resulted in
interference in the affairs of agricultural families in the highlands plains in much
the same manner as coffee cultivation had bothered the hill villagers. The Dutch
viewed the sawah of Minangkabau not only as sources of food for the members of
the new West Sumatra administration but also for Java. Feeding West Sumatra itself
was not a major problem because the number of new nonagricultural residents was
never very large. These consisted mainly of Dutch government officials and mer-
chants, Chinese contractors, military forces, and all the related families. As for-
eigners to Minangkabau, they had no land nor could they get any to provide them
with rice. Added to these aliens were the numerous Minangkabau traders and
others who flocked to the urban centers hoping to profit from the new colonial or-
der. The increase in the nonfarming population raised the prices for rice. The
farmers, however, did not react to the increased market as favorably as the Dutch
had expected. Through the 1840s, long after the end of the Padri war, whose dis-
ruptions had made farming difficult, Padang continued to import as much as 70,000
piculs of rice per year. This occurred despite a fairly high local market price for
rice in the highlands. 69
Dutch officials were determined to reverse the rice-import trend by forcing
growers in the highlands plains to pay more careful attention to their sawah. Dur-
ing the early years, therefore, the Dutch pressured Minangkabau chiefs to extend
ricefields into hitherto unclaimed wasteland, to improve irrigation, and to supervise
planting more closely in order to increase harvests. Dutch officials argued that
close government supervision was necessary because otherwise the Minangkabau
peasant would not be careful about the best planting times or the proper use of fer-
tilizer. 70 More important than supervision over growing methods was control over
marketing. Although Padang had been importing rice from outside West Sumatra
in the 1840s, during the same period the highlands were, in fact, exporting rice,
each corvee laborer in Padang served two to three days; whereas each man in Rau
served twelve days.
67.	Ibid. The total number of ablebodied men was listed as 174,000.
68.	Ibid., 1858, p. 18; 1881, p. 75. The option of buying off corvee was initiated
on a regular basis in Padang in 1858, but de Stuers had allowed it earlier through
individual arrangements with the government.
69.	Ibid., 1850, pp. 81-82.
70.	P. Th. Couperus, "Aanteekeningen Omtrent de Landbouwkundige Nijverheid
in de Residentie Padangsche Bovelanden," TBC, 5 (1856), pp. 286-96.71
but to the eastern ports.71 As the Dutch gained more control over the highlands
and its markets (partly as a result of the new road system), they could channel a
much greater percentage of the rice harvest to the west coast. Consequently, by
1850, the government reported that Padang was exporting rice--some 90,000 piculs,
most of which went to Java. 72
Lack of sufficient cheap transportation made it difficult for dealers to offer
prices which would attract more peasants to work for increased rice yields. During
the early years, much of the available transportation was taken up by the coffee
deliveries. 73 Later, in the 1860s, just when it seemed that rice might become an
important export crop, the highlands were hit by the cattle sickness which devas-
tated the supply of draft animals and cut down on the rice harvest. 7<t Subsequent-
ly, rice never recovered its importance as a major export crop. Between 1858 and
1866, rice exports had reached as much as 130,000 piculs in one year, but this had
declined to only 20,000 in 1878 and to 10,000 by 1881. 75 By the early twentieth cen-
tury, West Sumatra was a rice-importing area. 76
Like the hill village farmers, those of the plain apparently turned their atten-
tion to other pursuits than those which the government wanted. Perhaps the culti-
vation requirements of such crops as copra, cassia, and tobacco made them more
profitable for the time spent when compared to clearing more land for rice (or cof-
fee). Whatever the reason, as rice cultivation declined these crops were increas-
ing. 77 Other peasants preferred to leave agriculture entirely and pursue different
occupations. 78 Apparently, many villagers preferred to buy rice with the profits
made from other forms of enterprise.
Absorption into the Indies economic sphere, for all the burdens it brought, also
opened new horizons for many Minangkabau. In addition to an enlarged export mar-
71.	Ibid., p. 294.
72.	Koloniaal Verslag, 1850, pp. 81-82.
73.	Report of Governor Arriens, Verbaal, June 3, 1869, No. 2.
74.	Koloniaal Verslag, 1869, p. 145.
75.	Kamerling, "De Vroegere," p. 1074.
76.	Memorie van Overgave, Governor J. Ballott, Verbaal, April 5, 1916, No. 15.
77.	Ibid.
78. The wide variety of Minangkabau occupations is displayed in some statistics
contained in Koloniaal Verslag, 1875 (pp. 12-13); out of a total population of slight-
ly less than 850,000 there were:
salaried government chiefs	874	handicraftsmen	4,278
unsalaried government chiefs	148	agriculturalists (includes	
adat chiefs	2,380	fishermen and cattlemen)	242,040
recognized religious men	5,903	shipbuilders	215
village headmen	15,349	shippers	1,190
haji	4,010	miners	68
wholesale merchants	111	salaried officials	568
retail merchants	10,983	wage earners	12,155
artisan (entrepreneur)	1	household servants	951
artisans (self-employed)	2,463	soldiers	0
pachter (state monopoly contractors)	59	miscellaneous	5Table 5. Rice Harvest, 1867-1868
Locale	Piculs of Padi		Rice	Price per Picul
	1867	1868	1867	1868
Padang Highlands	4,089,000	3,138,000	f. 3.35-7.50	f. 3.00-8.50
Padang Environs	121,000	87,000	5.35-6.90	6.26-8.00
Southern Division	377,000	421,000	5.50-7.00	7.00
Pariaman	429,000	275,000	7.09-7.67	8.66-9.66
Air Bangis/Rau	192,000	191,000	2.25-8.00	2.61-7.00
Total	5,208,000	4,112,000		
Source:	Koloniaal Verslag, 1869, p. 145.73
ket for local produce, there was a demand for local skills elsewhere in the archi-
pelago. Many village gold and silver smiths joined the swelling ranks of the peran-
tau who left West Sumatra and set up businesses in Java, Borneo, and other parts,
of the Dutch East Indies. The wares of those who remained home were collected by
these adventurous villagers and then carried to places beyond West Sumatra where
there was a great demand for fine jewelry, woven gold cloth, and other items of the
Minangkabau cottage industries. 79 Local industries sometimes suffered because of
the ties to the colonywide economic system; for example, Minangkabau preferred
cheaper imported coarse cloth goods to those produced locally. 80 But there were
two sides even to this problem, for the weavers of Silungkung and elsewhere could
now obtain high quality European thread and dyestuffs which improved the quality
and value of the better grades of cloth which they wove. While the cheap European
yardgoods might undersell local coarse goods, the market position of the higher-
quality local cloth improved. 81
The benefits of the new markets and transportation accrued mainly to those
able to organize relatively large-scale collection and distribution businesses. Many
families located in or near important market towns developed profitable merchandis-
ing businesses using connections which reached into numerous administrative levels
and geographic areas. Their massive wealth, relative to that of other families and
sometimes even of chiefs, assured them of position and power within the colonial
society and thus enabled them to take advantage of the benefits which that society
offered.
New Bureaucratic Opportunities
The coffee delivery system was the most important aspect of Dutch activity in
Minangkabau. For the Minangkabau themselves, in addition to the economic oppor-
tunities and disruption which it created in the village, the coffee system also opened
new bureaucratic positions. Jobs in the local coffee administrative and supervisory
apparatus were staffed almost entirely with Minangkabau civil servants. A whole
bureaucratic organization began developing as a result of the coffee system, with
the warehouse as its focus. From the beginning, the warehouses and their sub-
sidiary collection places were run by Minangkabau; the only European was at the
headquarters warehouse for the highlands, located in Padang Panjang. The initial
Michiels decision had created five district warehousemasters (pakhuismeester),
eleven subdistrict warehousemasters, and forty additional clerks to be distributed
among the various warehouses. 82 All were Minangkabau.
The warehouses were not only the visible core of the coffee system but also
central institutions Within the towns and villages where they were placed. Schools
were often housed temporarily in them, as were government offices. In the smaller
villages the warehousem aster was usually the first, and often the only, man in the
village who was literate in Malay, the bureaucratic language of the Indies. For
this reason, he often gave lessons to local children, either individually or as part
of an organized local school. The warehousemaster had to be at least partly literate
and have a rudimentary knowledge of bookkeeping because he kept all the records
79.	Report of the Resident of the Padang Highlands, van der Hart, Verbaal,
July 13, 1858, No. 35.
80.	Report of Governor van Swieten, 1852, Verbaal, July 13, 1858, No. 35.
81.	Verkerk Pistorius, Inlandsche Huishouding, p. 37.
82.	Kielstra, "Koffiecultuur," pp. 1484-85.Table 6. Coffee Warehouses: Michiels' Decision October 11, 1847
Number of Warehouses		Location	European Warehouse- master		Minangkabau Personnel	
				Warehouse master	Assistant Warehouse- master	Clerks
Major	Minor					
	1	Padang Panjang		1		2
1		Padang Panjang	1		1	6
2		Batu Sangkar		1		3
	2	Buo			1	2
	3	Tanjung Ampalo			1	2
	4	Singkarak			1	2
3		Bukittinggi		1		3
	5	Maninjau			1	2
	6	Sungai Puar			1	2
	7	Bonjol			1	2
4		Payakumbuh		1		3
	8	Suliki			1	2
	9	Halaban			1	2
5		Solok		1		3
	10	Supayang			1	2
	11	Alahan Panjang			1	2
15	16	Totals	1	5	11	40
Source:	Kielstra, "Koffiecultuurp. 1485.75
for coffee production in his district. Local European officials in nearby administra-
tive centers usually kept separate tallies of their own, but this was merely to pro-
vide a double check on the honesty of the warehousemaster--his books were the
master set.
There were of course numerous opportunities for corruption, extortion, and
graft available for warehouse personnel. According to Michiels' original regulations,
for example, the individual grower had to deliver his coffee himself in order to be
paid. This had been intended to minimize the chances for extortion by the various
local chiefs, 83 but often resulted in a grower having to wait several days at the
warehouse center because the warehousemaster was visiting some other warehouse
for which he was responsible. This could be expensive for the grower, both in
terms of time lost and in money used to pay for food and lodging. 8I* If the ware-
housemaster were willing to overlook the irregularity, arrangements could be made
with a broker and the peasant could go home, or perhaps avoid coming at all. For
a small sum, the warehousemaster was almost always willing.
The coffee which continued to leak from the system into the private sector prob-
ably did so with the knowledge and doubtless also the assistance of the warehouse-
master. Records had to be altered to explain why the deliveries were not as high
as the estimates had been earlier, when the controleur visited the fields. It would
be an easy matter, however, for the books to show that several hundred piculs of
"rotten beans" had had to be "destroyed." The warehousemaster received f. 20 per
month which put him on the same level with the nagarihoofd in most areas, but con-
sidering the amount of his responsibility and training and the numerous opportuni-
ties available for graft, this salary was too low.85 Being a warehousemaster or even
one of the other, lesser warehouse personnel was a lucrative position, and families
were very eager to have one of their number oil the payroll. The warehousemaster
held an important patronage-dispensing position, each coffee-delivery area needed
numerous assistants, clerks, secretaries, day laborers, and others to staff and
service the local warehouses. A single warehousemaster could thus provide many
jobs for relatives and friends.
Unlike the laras- or nagarihoofd, the warehousemaster need not be a native of
the district where he worked. In fact, many of them, especially in the early period,
came from a small area of Agam, an area in which there had developed a large pool
of men literate in Malay. Moreover, many men from Agam already held positions in
the civil service and could influence selections for the opening coffee bureaucracy
jobs.
In addition to the positions associated with the warehouses, Minangkabau could
also get related jobs as crop inspectors. These positions, called koffee mantri, had
existed before on a kind of ad hoc basis arranged by the local controleur, but they
became more numerous beginning in the 1870s. The creation of a systematic and
organized corps of inspector-overseers was in response to prevailing government
views that constant malingering on the part of both grower and chief was contribut-
ing to a perceived decline in coffee production. It was believed, in government
circles, that more uniform supervision and pressure from officials was needed. The
Dutch administrative official in charge of cultivation, the controleur, was the obvious
83.	General Michiels, Decision on Coffee Deliveries, October 11, 1847, in Kielstra,
"Koffiecultuur," p. 1485.
84.	Van Vollenhoven, Padang en het Couvernement, pp. 6-8.
85.	Verkerk Pistorius, Inlandsche Huishouding, p. 102; Verbaal, August 23,
1870, No. 6.76
person, but he was often responsible for a geographic area so large that he could
devote but little attention to the details of coffee production in any one part. More-
over, numerous administrative tasks usually tied him to his headquarters, leaving
him few opportunities to visit the villages and make Dutch presence felt directly.86
Padang rejected suggestions for creation of a corps of European overseers,
which, it believed, would greatly increase administrative costs in salaries without
the assurance of any corresponding revenue increase. Some Dutch officials suggest-
ed also that European interference in local affairs tended to offend the local people.
If Minangkabau personnel were used, however, they would not only be more familiar
with local customs, but would also receive a lower payscale than Europeans of the
same rank. The inspectors would not be assigned to villages in their home districts,
and this would remove them from the pressure of family ties and adat obligations
which often made the nagarihoofd and penghulu ineffective guardians of the govern-
ment's interests. A system of Minangkabau inspectors was thus established in 1874;
seventy-nine men were initially appointed, divided into three classes. The new local
inspectorate was fully Minangkabau-staffed and served directly under Dutch con-
trol--in no way subordinate to any Minangkabau chief whether government- or adat-
appointed. Their direct connection with the Dutch officials gave the inspectors a
great deal of authority in coercing peasants and village leaders. 87
There were still problems in supervising village cultivators more closely, for
the coffee groves were sometimes scattered over many plots, and often located out-
side the villages entirely. Many more officials had eventually to be appointed than
had been anticipated. 88 The inspectors were chosen mainly from among the students
at the secular elementary schools. Training at these institutions, however, stressed
bureaucratic skills, such as writing and simple arithmetic, with no attention given
to agricultural techniques. As a result, the coffee inspector often knew a great
deal less about the cultivation he was supervising than the peasant, which naturally
undermined local respect for the new officials. In turn, this tended to decrease
their credibility as government overseers organizing village coffee production effi-
ciently. 89
Subsequently, similar supervisors were appointed to check on other export
crops such as cinchona, tobacco, cloves, and cinnamon. They also became increas-
ingly involved in regulating rice planting and other aspects of village agricultural
activity. Because of their ties to the controleur and their knowledge of the individ-
ual villages in which they worked, they began acting as general agents of the gov-
ernment--reporting on local opinion and attitudes. In some places they exercised
more authority and commanded more popular respect than the larashoofd himself.90
They were moving from mere agricultural "experts" to administrators; this trend
became more pronounced as the government bureaucracy became more complicated
and the administration began to rely more and more on the literate civil servants
rather than the illiterate chiefs. The chiefs, despite pressure from the government,
rarely bothered to acquire more than a smattering of education, and many not even
that. It is understandable therefore that, by the end of the nineteenth century, the
Dutch placed more trust and more authority in the hands of the growing Minangkabau
civil service than in the old adat-oriented administration.
86.	Chief Inspector Pies, March 12, 1878, Verbaal, August 13, 1878, No. 1.
87.	Report of Governor Netscher, Verbaal, October 14, 1874, No. 31.
88.	Resident of the Padang Highlands, Canne, to the Governor, December 5,
1877, Verbaal, August 13, 1878, No. 1.
89.	Governor Netscher, January 10, 1878, Verbaal, August 13, 1878, No. 1.
90.	Governor Heckler, June 23, 1906, Verbaal, September 12, 1912, No. 66.CHAPTER V
SECULAR EDUCATION IN THE 1840s TO 1860s:
THE ERA OF LOCAL INITIATIVE
Both political administration and the coffee cultivation program opened oppor-
tunities for Minangkabau literate in Malay to advance within the colonial system.
Typically, those who responded most enthusiastically were the social and geograph-
ic groups traditionally associated with the merantau process--that is, middle-level
socioeconomic groups, particularly from hill-country villages. Geographically, the
villages tended also to be located in areas important for coffee cultivation. The
intensity of Minangkabau interest in bureaucratic jobs increased as it became more
obvious that here was another important means to power, prestige, and wealth.
Compared with many other archipelago groups, the Minangkabau had an additional
advantage in that their own language was almost identical with the so-called Bazaar
Malay which had become the lingua franca of Dutch diplomacy, administration, and
commerce in the Indies since the days of the VOC.
Before about the 1870s, the Minangkabau element in the colonial bureaucracy
was small and, with the exception of the warehousemaster, jaksa, and, perhaps,
the so-called "indigenous secretary," the jobs did not attract more than lower-
middle level groups. Established, well-to-do merchant or artisan families usually
preferred to follow their traditional vocations, though recognizing the advantages
which the new, colonial situation presented. Specifically, such families found that
a smattering of secular education could often be useful to their own pursuits; once
children had acquired enough skill to keep the books or copy correspondence, they
withdrew from school to enter the family business. The Minangkabau chiefs, both
government-appointed and adat, rarely displayed more than a perfunctory interest
in education, because their own positions were generally guaranteed by the colonial
government regardless of individual qualifications.
Conflicting Dutch and Minangkabau perceptions about the role of school training
often caused irritation between them. The Dutch liked to idealize secular education
as a general civilizing force which would produce enlightened chiefs and reliable
bureaucrats, while the Minangkabau approach was more practical. Families were re-
luctant to invest scarce resources in sending a child to the secular school unless
the probable financial return was better than that already available from appren-
ticeship in a traditionally recognized occupation.
Nevertheless, a certain number of Minangkabau did display an early interest in
secular education, studying at first privately as apprentices in government commer-
cial or administrative offices. Beginning in the mid- 1840s, and largely on the per-
sonal initiative of a single Dutch official, secular schools were established in various
nagari in the highlands. The first of these was located in the regional administra-
tive centers of the upland plains and in the coffee-producing centers in the hill
areas. Supervised and financed by the nagari themselves, the only Dutch involve-
ment was the occasional guidance offered by an interested controleur. That indi-
vidual schools might seem "inadequate" by Dutch pedagogic standards and that
many disappeared entirely after operating only a year is not surprising; what is,
7778
is that so many survived and even expanded. Those that did, did so because they
filled a particular local need; they provided another, increasingly recognized,avenue
for advancement outside the ever more static village social and political system.
The first indication of the quiet success of secular education came in 1852 in a
report which Governor van Swieten submitted about the expanded bureaucracy
needed by the forced coffee-delivery system. The new network of warehouses
established in 1847 had to be staffed by literate Minangkabau skilled in bookkeep-
ing, and to van Swieten's amazement, rather than being hard-pressed to find such
people, all the positions were filled immediately. He was doubly impressed because
there had been no government policy directed toward educating the Minangkabau
for the civil service,1 and their training had taken place in spite of colonial policy
rather than because of it.
Local Interest vs. Government
Policy: The Case of Padang
The importance of Minangkabau initiative in the rise of secular education in
West Sumatra is illustrated by the fate of the first totally government-supported
school, founded in Padang in 1825 by General de Stuers. As part of his gen-
eral program for controlling Minangkabau, de Stuers wanted the heirs of the coastal
nobility to attend a secular, Dutch-run Malay-language school. He hoped thereby
to produce a literate and "civilized" class of chiefs who would better appreciate and,
therefore, better uphold the Dutch government. To placate fears of the local peo-
ple that their unsuspecting children would be kidnapped into Dutch culture, de
Stuers appointed the Islamic advisor to the Padang judicial council (a Minangkabau)
to supervise the school. 2
The Dutch regime in Padang financed the new school's entire operations, pro-
viding f. 50 per month in 1824 and increasing this to f. 60 in 1825. Some 80 pupils
enrolled, but it soon became clear that their families sent them out of deference to
the government, not because they believed the education was necessary or even
useful. The teacher, a Christian missionary named Evans, soon clashed with the
chiefs because he refused to allow pupils to read the Quran in class. The chiefs
withdrew their children, and, in 1828, rather than force the issue, the government
decided simply to close the school. 3
As the headquarters of Dutch operations from before the nineteenth century,
Padang, by 1825, was already developing into a relatively cosmopolitan and urban
center. But its permanent residents were, to a large degree, untouched by these
developments, remaining among the most tradition bound and aristocratic minded
of the West Coast people.
1.	Report of Governor van Swieten, February 12, 1852, Verbaal, June 15, 1852,
No. 3.
2.	General de Stuers, Instructions of March 16, 1825, Exhibitum, August 24, 1826,
No. 41.
3.	Report of Governor van Swieten, February 12, 1852, Verbaal, June 15, 1852,
No. 3. Padang had had a government-subsidized mission school dating from 1819,
but its concern had been directed at the local Christian population. Pupils were
mostly army children (non-Minangkabau), local Chinese, and pagan people from the
nearby offshore islands such as Mentawei. Algemeen Verslag van den Staat van het
Schoolwezen in Nederlandsch-lndie 1827-1833 (Batavia: Hoofd-Kommissie van Onder-
wijs, n.d.) , p. 49.79
The government school, then, had been directed at exactly the segment of the
population with the least need or desire for literacy, arithmetic skill, or the other
attributes associated by the Dutch with "civilized behavior." The coastal chiefs
were concerned only that the Dutch honor the traditional lines of chieftaincy in
appointing new rulers. The chief could hire some petty functionary to write letters
and keep records if that were needed, and, at this early stage of administrative de-
velopment, it probably was not. It soon became apparent that the Dutch would not
alter established patterns of succession just because a prospective heir could not
read. In this general atmosphere, it is not surprising that the school soon closed.
The clash with the teacher only provided the justification for withdrawing the chil-
dren from what the chiefs already considered a useless and time-wasting institution.
Secular education obviously was not merely a matter of providing schools but one
of appealing to particular local interests and needs.
First Success: The Highlands in the 1840s
The first and most successful of the Minangkabau secular schools, known popu-
larly as the nagari schools, were founded in the Padang Highlands in the 1840s,
initially at the instigation of a particularly energetic and concerned Dutch official,
C. P. C. Steinmetz, Resident of the Padang Highlands from 1837 to 1848. Steinmetz
believed that Minangkabau youth should be exposed to the values of education,
which included, in his view, not just reading, writing, and arithmetic, but "civil-
ized behavior," "good hygiene," and other aspects of a "European style of life and
culture." His original intent in beginning the schools was as much to create good
citizens as to fill any particular jobs in government or private life. 4 Residents had
a great deal of independence in local policy making, and, thus, Steinmetz could
carry out his program without prior approval from the Governor. In fact, he in-
formed Governor Michiels only after the project was well underway, and then only
because Michiels had inquired about it.
The initial nagari schools were established in such small and unlikely hill vil-
lages as Puar Datar, Rau, and Matur, as well as in market and administrative cen-
ters of the upland plains, such as Bukittinggi, Batu Sangkar, and Solok. In either
setting, however, the pupils most interested in the schools came from middle-level
families who wanted the skills as stepping stones to new or better jobs, jobs which
they hoped would improve the whole family's socioeconomic position in the village.
The Dutch role in the nagari school operation was minimal, consisting at most
of occasional visits by the controleur, if he were personally interested in the opera-
tion of the school. In West Sumatra, however, Dutch officials were few, and
most of them were strategically placed to facilitate supervision and control of the
coffee harvest. Often their offices were located in small hill villages, isolated from
neighboring districts by rugged hills and narrow passes. Even to supervise the
coffee crop was difficult under such circumstances, and though the controleur
might instigate the establishment of a nagari school, afterwards the villagers were
on their own.
The nagari school idea devised by Steinmetz served as the model for most sub-
sequent schools in the region until the early 1870s, when the central government
4. The major source of information on Steinmetz's plans and their success comes
from a collection of his papers published in: H. E. Steinmetz, "Inlands Onderwijs
van Overheidswege in de Padangsche Bovenlanden voor 1850: De Grondlegger, Zijn
Invloed and Zijn Persoonlijke Bemoeienissen op dit Gebied," TBC, 64 (1924), pp.
303-20.80
finally decided to assert its control over education in Sumatra's West Coast. During
the early period, the chiefs, both government and adat, acting through the nagari
council, would first find a building with enough extra space, usually the nagari
council hall or the local coffee warehouse, and the villagers would make the tables,
chairs, and any other furniture needed.5 A literate villager, usually the warehouse-
master or a secretary in the local government bureau, acted as the first teacher,
and was generally paid from the nagari treasury. In most cases, no tuition was
charged, but pupils usually had to buy all their own school supplies and whatever
food or clothing they might need. 6 Many parents, especially in the early years, be-
lieved this burden was too great for the perceived benefits, and in some areas, were
able to pressure the nagari council into buying the school supplies and, sometimes,
into providing a clothing allowance as well. 7
The basic curriculum was divided into four levels: pupils began with reading
in the fourth (lowest) class; added writing in the third; simple arithmetic in the
second; and copying essays, bookkeeping, geography, and advanced arithmetic in
the first. All instruction was given in the Malay language beginning in the lowest
grade. This differed from the usual practice on Java, and it was possible because
Minangkabau and Malay are essentially the same language.8 Religion as a subject
was specifically excluded. Pupils were also explicitly forbidden to wear European
clothing. Steinmetz was very sensitive to the often-expressed fear among Minang-
kabau villagers that the secular schools were meant to convert pupils to Christianity
and draft them into the Indies army. Suspicions lingered, however, though such
religious and cultural qualms about the secular schools tended to be expressed most
often by members of the village establishment, people who had no interest in the
education offered anyway. 9
Unlike the abortive Padang government school, the highlands nagari schools
were open to whoever wished to attend, regardless of status or position.10 Though
the curriculum had been designed to provide basic skills which would contribute to
the overall progress of the villagers and make them better "citizens,"11 bureaucratic
needs and opportunities heavily influenced its subsequent development. The sub-
jects which received the most attention were those needed by aspiring bureaucrats,
particularly such skills as copying documents and keeping books. In practice,
overwhelming attention was given to copyist techniques, to the detriment of com-
prehension of the documents being copied.
5.	Regulations of Resident Steinmetz concerning Indigenous Education, November
24, 1843, in Steinmetz, "Inlands Onderwijs," pp. 206-9.
6.	Ibid.
7.	Letter of Steinmetz to the Governor, April 16, 1844, in ibid., pp. 310-11.
8.	Steinmetz Regulations, in ibid., pp. 206-9. It is also possible that the "Malay"
language referred to by Steinmetz was actually Minangkabau Malay rather than the
Bazaar Malay used in Java. The Dutch tended to apply the term "Malay" when re-
ferring to the Minangkabau people during the early period of their occupation, and
they may have called the local language that as well.
9.	Interviews: Batu Sangkar, August 26-30, 1967; Payakumbuh, November 21-24,
1967; Solok, November 2-6, 1967; Padang, August 1967.
10.	Report of Resident of the Padang Highlands Steinmetz, in Steinmetz, "Inlands
Onderwijs," pp. 311-12.
11.	Steinmetz Regulations, in ibid., pp. 205-9.81
Many villagers had apparently already recognized that opportunities existed
with the colonial bureaucracy. By 1846, only three years after the first schools
opened, seventy-five pupils had already graduated and been placed as clerks in
government bureaus and in the offices of larashoofd or had become supervisors
over cultivation activities.12 Most had probably already received some education
before they entered the nagari school. The Arabic script taught at some surau,
for instance, could be used for Malay-language texts as well as for the Arabic-
language Islamic texts. Many government documents meant for dissemination among
village level officials in Sumatra in this early period were transliterated in Arabic
rather than Roman script.
Many nagari school pupils withdrew after only a year or two. Often these were
from chiefly families and did not need to be literate, while others entered trade and
needed only a smattering of bookkeeping techniques or literacy. Nor was a diploma
necessarily required for a job in the colonial bureaucracy; influence, luck, and
other intangible factors continued to be important. It was a financial burden to
keep a child in school, despite the free tuition, and there was no guarantee that
a diploma would be worth more in the long run than four years as an apprentice to,
say, a textile dealer. And in the latter instance, one had the additional advantage
of earning money while learning the trade. For whatever reasons, many pupils
left before completing the four year course, although the number varied from time
to time and place to place. Statistics are either incomplete or nonexistent, but in
1846, for example, 106 of the 416 pupils enrolled in the highlands schools had left
"before completing the prescribed course of study."13
By 1846, there were eleven of these autonomous nagari schools. Five were
located in regional headquarters towns in the upland plains—Bukittinggi, Batu
Sangkar, Payakumbuh, Sijunjung, and Solok. The other six were in the main
towns of important hill-country coffee districts--Bonjol, Maninjau, Sungai Puar,
Buo, Singkarak, and Puar Datar.ll* Survival was difficult because members of
nagari councils were rarely the people with the most to gain from a secular educa-
tion, and thus schools often were starved for funds. Their fortunes often depend-
ed on the amount of pressure that could be exerted on nagari councils. This in
turn depended on the vagaries of family politics, whether those who wanted secular
schools were in a position to pressure their penghulu and through them the laras-
and nagarihoofd.
Although Steinmetz had argued that Batavia should pay the costs of educating
the people to staff its civil service, all attempts to gain government funding failed.15
In 1848, a Royal Decision authorized the Governor General to spend f. 25,000 a year
to train Javanese notables as civil servants, but the ruling Council of the Indies
rejected efforts to apply this to Sumatra's West Coast, as this was outside the scope
of the original decree.16 From the purely economic point of view, Batavia could
undoubtedly see that Padang did not lack trained Minangkabau under the existing
education arrangements, so why spend money when it was not necessary? Develop-
ments in the nagari school, especially in the highlands, were thus left almost com-
pletely to local initiatives.
12.	Report of Resident Steinmetz to the Governor, April 16, 1844, in ibid., p. 311.
13.	Ibid.
14.	Ibid., p. 311.
15.	Report of Resident Steinmetz, in ibid., pp. 311-12.
16.	Verbaal, June 2, 1852, No. 4 and June 15, 1852, No. 3.MAP 4: HAGAR! SCHOOLS83
Expansion in the 1850s: A
Teachers' Training Institute
In the early 1850s, schools were founded in towns in the Lowlands Residency,
including the territorial administrative centers of Painan (school opened c. 1855),
Pariaman (c. 1854), Padang (c. 1853), and Air Bangis (c. 1854). At the same time,
schools were opened in the northern interior at the regional center of Lubuk Sika-
ping and the villages of Panti and Talu in the northern rim of hills. Though geo-
graphically part of the highlands, these three villages were administered from the
lowlands center at Air Bangis until late in the nineteenth century, and the founding
of the schools was probably part of developments taking place in the Lowlands Resi-
dency. In the late 1850s, schools opened at two other coastal villages, Asam Kum-
bang (c. 1859) and Pelangi (c. 1858). 17
The Batavia government, though it still refused requests for financial support
to the nagari schools, did agree, in the 1850s, to establish a state-supported Normal
School in West Sumatra to provide more uniform and intensive training for prospec-
tive teachers. Batavia, however, was not yet prepared to invest more than a token
amount in educating the Minangkabau, and opposed on financial grounds proposals
for a full-fledged Dutch-run Normal School like that in Surakarta, on Java. It
would agree only to an experimental school with ten pupils and a Minangkabau head-
master. 18
The school would be established in Bukittinggi, the most dynamic commercial
and administrative center in the highlands and the one which was considered the
most removed from the jealousies and petty rivalries which supposedly characterized
life in other highlands centers.19 Bukittinggi was also the center of the coffee-
delivery network for the important northern producing areas, as well as the head-
quarters for the Dutch administration of the Highlands Residency and the Agam
Assistant Residency. As such, it provided an eminently suitable atmosphere for
aspiring civil servants. Although Padang would also have been suitable, Dutch
officials expressed fears that its cultural atmosphere was not sufficiently Minang-
kabau ,20 though their real misgivings might have been that, once drawn into the
commercial life of Padang, the pupils would no longer be interested in returning to
the highlands as school teachers.
Batavia had at first suggested that pupils from Sumatra should just be sent to
the Surakarta Normal School, but the Resident in Bukittinggi contended that "no
qualified youth with a proper upbringing" would be willing to leave home for two
years to go there. 21 A more important drawback of the Surakarta institution was
that its curriculum was arranged for Javanese language speakers and Javanese cul-
ture areas, and would be ill-suited to Sumatra-oriented teachers or their needs.
The Resident, who was evidently an admirer of Rousseau, feared, moreover, that
17.	The date in parentheses indicates the first year the school was recorded in the
colonial educational reports; one assumes that this represents the first full year of
operations for that school.
18.	Verslag van het Inlandsch Onderwijs in Nederlandsch-lndie, 1866 (Batavia:
Landsdrukkerij, 1867), pp. 2-4. Hereafter cited as VIO.
19.	Letter of C. A. Buddingh, April 26, 1855, Verbaal, July 14, 1856, No. 7.
20.	VIO, 1866, pp. 1-3.
21.	Resident of the Padang Highlands to the Governor of Sumatra’s West Coast,
November 17, 1855, Verbaal, July 14, 1856, No. 7.84
the unspoiled Sumatrans would be contaminated by the unfamiliar and, he implied,
decadent customs of Javanese culture which they would encounter in Surakarta. 22
Dutch officials also worried that the teacher trainees might very well use their ex-
pensive education for non-teaching careers, and they wished to remove as many
temptations as possible.
The Bukittinggi Normal School (in Dutch called the Kweekschool Bukittinggi)
was officially founded by government decree on April 1, 1856. Assistant Resident
van Ophuijzen from Solok was transferred to Bukittinggi to act as general super-
visor over the institute and its curriculum. He was chosen because, according to
the Governor, he had displayed special interests and ability in Malay education,
which meant in essence that he spoke Malay fluently and could easily read and write
it in Arabic characters, the alphabet commonly used in Minangkabau. 23 The actual
day-to-day operations of the Normal School were under a Minangkabau headmaster,
Abdul Latif. Brother of the Head Jaksa for the Highlands Residency, Latif owed
his appointment more to political influence than proven pedagogic ability. 2k
The decision to leave most school operations up to the Minangkabau headmaster
meant that the Normal School was quickly domesticated to serve local interests and
abilities rather than Dutch plans. Van Ophuijzen, perhaps, had sufficient interest
and ability to take the time to direct the institute very closely, but succeeding
Residents did not.
As first formulated, the Normal School had a very extensive and ambitious cur-
riculum patterned after the more affluent Surakarta institute. Entering students
need not have graduated from a nagari school, but they had to be at least fourteen
years old and already possess some ability to read and write in Malay and to do ele-
mentary arithmetic. The three-year curriculum included reading and writing in
Malay (in both the Arabic and the Roman alphabets), geography, surveying, book-
keeping, letter writing, and the proper format for official reports. These subjects
would prepare students to teach in a nagari school and there to train children to be-
come "proper and competent chiefs and civil servants." The Dutch government
would pay the teacher’s salary, buy the school furniture, and provide an allowance
for each pupil. The teacher's duties not only included classroom instruction but
also supervision of the pupils' daily behavior, dress, and hygiene out of class. It
was envisioned as a rigorous and all-encompassing training, and the Assistant Resi-
dent was instructed to supervise it carefully, checking that the teacher followed
his prescribed duties to the letter.25
The largest single group of students came from neighboring Agam, although a
few were from Tanah Datar, Solok, and even Padang. A significant number came
from families of chiefs, but these were not always the majority; a large number of
merchant families were also represented--the rest being artisans, clerks, and oth-
ers. Children who were in line to succeed to lineage penghuluships could not en-
roll on the grounds that they would be unable to serve full terms as teachers.
By 1863, teachers at nine highland nagari schools had received at least some
education at the Normal School. Two others were teachers in Benkulen,26 and
22.	Ibid.
23.	Ibid.; VIO, 1866, pp. 2-4.
24.	Interviews in Kota Gedang (Latif's home village), October 1967; Herman,
"Het Onderwijs in Nederlandsch-Indie (Historisch Overzicht Sedert 1816)," TNI, 1
(1868), p. 477.
25.	Verbaal, July 14, 1856, No. 7; VIO, 1856, pp. 73-78.
26.	VIO, 1863, pp. 196-236 and 249.85
Minangkabau teachers later spread to other parts of Sumatra in the wake of newly
established Dutch administrations. (One exception was the Batak areas, which
needed people who could teach in the local language.) The Governor in Padang ini-
tially limited the Normal School quota of ten pupils to people from the highlands, on
the grounds that the institute had been established specifically to train teachers for
the schools there. He thus denied admission to pupils from Benkulen, Lampong,
Palembang, and even the Lowlands Residency, unless there was an unfilled va-
cancy ,27 but under pressure from other Sumatran officials, he eventually had to
assign quotas to nonhighlands areas. In 1866, of the ten pupils enrolled five came
from the highlands, two from Tapanuli, one from Padang, one from Pariaman, and
one from Air Bangis/Rau. Nonetheless, most students still came from the highlands
area, and, indeed, from the immediate Bukittinggi vicinity. According to one re-
port , this was because the chief secretary to the highlands Resident, a man from
nearby Kota Gedang, used his position to assure entry for members of his own
lineage. 28
The great attraction of a Normal School education, Dutch plans to the contrary,
did not stem from any desire by Minangkabau to become school teachers. During
the first decade of its operation, the institute enrolled some forty-nine pupils, but
of the twenty-eight graduates, only twelve actually took up teaching positions.
Families soon discovered that the controleur and other officials gave preference to Nor-
mal School pupils when hiring civil servants, especially for jobs as cultivation su-
pervisors, secretaries, and top warehouse personnel. A Dutch education inspector,
J. A. van der Chijs, bitterly concluded from the state of affairs that the govern-
ment believed that any more or less literate Minangkabau was good enough to serve
as a teacher, but better educated Minangkabau should be reserved as officials or
assistants to Dutch administrators. 29
Considering the rudimentary level of education offered in the nagari school, it
is not surprising that students from the teachers' institute had an important advan-
tage in competing for jobs as warehousemasters, jaksa, and other important civil
service positions.30 Nor, considering the value of administrative jobs both in terms
of money and opportunities for patronage, is it surprising that graduates preferred
these jobs to teaching.
An additional appeal of the Normal School, from the Minangkabau viewpoint, was
that the government actually paid pupils to attend, so that families need invest no-
thing of their own in order to participate in the new experiment. Pressure for ad-
mittance was especially strong from families in nearby Agam. Here the merantau
drive was also strongest traditionally, and any proven means of advancement was
eagerly sought. Power and influence in Dutch government circles were important
factors in facilitating admission. Many of the pupils, as a result, came from Kota
Gedang, near Bukittinggi--the home of the Head Jaksa, the Resident's private secre-
tary, and the former headmaster of the Normal School itself. 31 The nagari school
in Bukittinggi was also one of the best in the highlands, so that children from the
area received a preparation for advanced education that was objectively better than
their competitors from other highlands schools.
27.	Verbaal, November 16, 1865, No. 45.
28.	VIO, 1866, p. 10. By the 1860s, the former Kota Gedang headmaster of the
school had apparently retired.
29.	Report of van der Chijs, in VIO, 1866, pp. 6-8.
30.	VIO, 1856, p. 72; VIO, 1863, p. 195.
31.	VIO, 1866, p. 10; interviews, October 1967, in Kota Gedang.86
In fact, however, the education at the Normal School was probably not all that
"advanced," in many respects differing little from what pupils could get in a good
nagari school. The Minangkabau headmaster himself certainly had no particular
training in pedagogy and only a superficial knowledge, at best, of many of the
other subjects in the broad curriculum he was supposed to teach. He himself had
never received any advanced training,32 and his teaching staff consisted of ad-
vanced pupils and former graduates, none of whom had received any extra training
elsewhere. At most, the teacher at the European elementary school in Bukittinggi
would occasionally tutor the Normal School staff and students.33 Teacher training
was, as a result, more a process of shared ignorance among instructors and pupils.
Dutch Assistant Inspector for Native Education, J. J. van Limburg Brouwer, visited
in 1872 to report on education in West Sumatra, and he professed himself "shocked"
by the condition of the Normal School. He believed that an important reason for the
school not meeting the standards of other Indies Normal Schools was its lack of mate-
rials, such as maps, textbooks, etc. But he also discovered that no one, neither
Dutch nor Minangkabau, cared enough about the school even to provide a permanent
building for it; classes were still being held in the anteroom of the local adat coun-
cil hall.34 There were no regular exams, although occasionally a local Dutch official
might hear the students' lessons, and students spent most of their time learning to
read and write by rote.35
Nevertheless, however deficient the content of its education, mere attendance
at the Normal School qualified its graduates for better jobs than those available to
a nagari school graduate.
Nagari Schools in the 1860s:
Problems of Record Keeping
The best (and often the only) detailed information on individual nagari schools
appears in the colonial records for the years 1863 to 1869. During those years,
detailed statistics on student enrollment, family backgrounds, schoolteachers, and
financial arrangements were apparently solicited from the various controleur in West
Sumatra. Not all complied with the request in the same way or even consistently
every year, but incomplete returns are better than none, and they are the only
statistical evidence of any kind about education in West Sumatra during the nine-
teenth century. The results of the controleur's reports were sent to Batavia where
they were published in a yearly compendium on indigenous education in the Indies,
the Verslag van het Inlandsch Onderwijs in Nederlandsch-1ndie. The published re-
port was the only information on indigenous education forwarded on to the Minister
of Colonies, except for occasional documents needed to support particular debates.
The education reports are deficient in many respects. If they record the num-
ber of pupils who "left school" in a given year (and often they do not), they rarely
indicate how long these pupils had attended or if they were considered "educated"
on leaving. Though often the family background is provided for those enrolled, it
is not indicated for those who left so that it is difficult to tell which families kept
pupils in school to completion and which did not. It is never clearly stated whether
32.	Report of Inspector van der Chijs, in VIO, 1866, pp. 6-8.
33.	VIO, 1870, p. 58.
34.	Report of Assistant Inspector for Indigenous Education J. J. von Limburg
Brouwer, March 26, 1872, Verbaal, November 23, 1872, No. 30.
35.	Ibid.Table 7. Total Pupil Enrollment in Nagari Schools
School Location 1855	1856	1857	1858	1859	1860	1861	1862	1863	1864	1865	1866	1867	1868	1869
Padang Highlands
Batu Sangkar
Bonjol
Buo
Bukittinggi
Halaban
Lolo
Lubuk Sikaping
Payakumbuh
Palembayan
Panti
Puar Datar
Rau
Solok
Talu
Padang Lowlands
Air Bangis
Asam Kumbang
Batang Kapas
Indrapura
Padang
Painan
Pariaman
Pelangi
Sungai Limau
Tiku
Trusan
Total
13	16	28
10	36	40
	12	13
16	9	36
	4	4
	18	16
37	37	36
	13	25
17	20	31
110	113	110 16
30	25	32
233	303	287
24	30	30
38	34	24
9	29	37
53	38	57
4	4	4
17	17	8
36	37	50
25	25	25
36	21	31
27	32	32
38	40	40
122	124	111
23	27	24
57	75	82
46	33	33
46	49	41
601	615	629
24	32	38
26	33	45
	20	20
32	26	26
56	43	100
4	4	13
	20	42
21	21	40
56	48	54
23	17	27
32	21	16
20	18	20
38	52	61
12	14	12
135	. 124	134
33	34	34
57	49	55
34	35	38
		45
		38
55	69	61
658	680	919
61	59	46
	17	17
	19	29
63	54	56
36	40	50
	27	11
22	20	14
97	97	51
44	50	64
38	22	15
67	52	46
29	18	9
18	12	4
18	17	9
58	53	38
13	2	
237		132
39	39	26
70	35	
39	38	
80	45	
44	38	
55	51	30
1128	805	647
31		60
20		24
32		26
80		81
40		43
15		9
15	tJ	17
57	P	40
35	r+ P	31
52		51
15	c	17
53	3	32
10	P < P M*	18
9		4
9	P	
31	cr »—*	5
101	a>	191
28		37
28		31
661	717
Source:	Algemeen Onderwijs Verslag; Verslag van het Inlandsch Onderwijs.88
the person whose occupation is being given is the "father” or the "mamak," an im-
portant distinction in determining the actual position of the child in society. One
must assume that it was probably the mamak simply because the reports often indi-
cate that the "sons" of chiefs usually became chiefs upon the death of their "fath-
ers." This clearly must refer to a kemanakan-mamak relationship, not a son-father
one. Sons of chiefs did not succeed their fathers; a chief was succeeded by his
nephew. One assumes then that the records indicate the occupation of the pupils'
"father" in the sense of his "guardian," that is mamak, rather than his actual blood
father. Within the reports themselves, terminology is not consistent; whereas one
official may report in great detail about the actual occupations (listing carpenters,
merchants, goldsmiths), another (or even the same one the following year) may say
only that a certain number were in business for themselves (particulier) as opposed
to working for the government or "farming." The occupation of "farmer" is itself
misleading since the other information given makes it quite clear that these families
were "farmers" only in that they made their living from agriculture rather than
trade or artisanry. The same carelessness of terminology occurs in dealing with
students who left school. Sometimes what happened to them is spelled out but more
often the record indicates merely that they entered trade, went home, etc.
The reasons for inclusion or exclusion of certain items are never clarified, nor
is there any mention of why the reports were being sent at all. As mysteriously as
they began, in 1869, local statistics ceased to be included in the colonial education
reports. Moreover, the published reports began to cover three-year periods rather
than being issued annually, as before. Apart from an occasional mention, the indi-
vidual schools of West Sumatra again drop from view. But, for the brief period of
the 1860s, one has enough information to draw individual portraits of most of the
schools and relate them to the different geographical and cultural spheres of Mi-
nan gkabau.
The Hills: Schools in Coffee Country (the 1860s)
From the 1840s, the nagari schools in the hills had tended to coincide with the
areas of important coffee establishments. In purely practical terms, such areas had
jobs for graduates and also a literate person (the coffee warehousemaster) to serve
as a teacher. Because penghulu and government chiefs received commissions on the
coffee delivered by their constituents, the coffee country chiefs tended to be more
affluent than their colleagues elsewhere. They could contribute to schools, or at
least allow their portion of nagari council funds to be spent to this end, without
great financial hardship. Moreover, social structure in the hill villages was less
rigid. Less distance separated penghulu from dependent, and he was consequently
more susceptible to pressure from below. In the hill villages, many penghulu fami-
lies also participated in the merantau tradition, and, as a result, they had a greater
community of interests with other families of their lineage. All these factors con-
tributed to the success of the nagari schools located in otherwise unremarkable little
hillside villages, a success which is the more remarkable when one discovers that
the only comparable schools elsewhere in Sumatra were those in the few relatively
"urban" administrative and market centers of the highlands.
The first four hill country schools were established in Buo, Puar Datar, Rau,
and Bonjol, in the early 1840s. All four villages were formerly centers for the Padri
movement. Buo (sometimes referred to as Lintau Buo), Bonjol, and Rau had each
harbored a famous leader of the Padri. Puar Datar is located over a small mountain
spine from Bonjol and was the site of an important fort constructed by Imam Bonjol.
Each village was the warehouse center for an important coffee-producing region.
Warehouses were located in Bonjol and Buo in 1847. Rau and Puar Datar each had89
one by the late 1850s, though in the case of Puar Datar, there had been one in
nearby Suliki since 1847.
The village of Rau is located far on the northern fringes of the Minangkabau
world, where Minangkabau melds into the sphere of the Mandailing Batak. Here on
a small intermontane rice plain, Padri leader Tuanku Rau had established a fortified
surau from which he carried his brand of militant Islam north into the pagan Batak
country and west to the commercial centers of the coast near Air Bangis. The dense
Panti jungle tended to isolate Rau from the rest of the highlands and focus its com-
munications to the north and west. The Dutch accentuated this by building a road
between Rau and Air Bangis in the 1850s. The area (known as Pasaman or Ophir)
was administratively part of the Lowlands Residency until 1891, when it was inte-
grated into the Highlands administration and its headquarters established at Lubuk
Sikaping.
The Rau area was extensive but underpopulated: only 15,000 people were re-
corded in 1852 . 36 Rau had an established school by 1845. In this case, the connec-
tion with coffee production was clear, for in 1844 the Resident had reported to the
governor in Padang that more Minangkabau personnel would be needed to supervise
local cultivators before the government could expect any important harvests from
the Rau districts. 37 The inhabitants responded enthusiastically both to education
and to coffee. In 1847, the closest government coffee area was at Bonjol, some 80
kilometers to the south, but by 1860, Rau itself had become one of the major pro-
ducing centers of the highlands. 38
The school at Rau was small but effective. In the early 1850s, it averaged about
sixteen pupils divided among three levels. 39 The villagers built a separate building
to serve as a schoolhouse in 1858 and soon afterward hired a graduate of the Bukit-
tinggi Normal School to serve as its teacher. The school was financed by levies on
the nagari treasuries of surrounding villages, and these funds were used to pay the
teacher and provide all the school supplies. 1*°
The Rau school must have transformed the local community. The largest single
group of pupils, some 20 percent, came from agricultural backgrounds, but upon
leaving school, an overwhelming number became traders. No one returned to the
land. One suspects that the Dutch road to Air Bangis had opened new commercial
opportunities to the interior districts near Rau. Many "graduates" of the school
also found jobs as clerks, coffee supervisors, and petty government functionaries,
such as "vaccinators." The children of traders and small businessmen provided
another 5 percent of the pupils and those from religious families a relatively large
7 percent. An interesting fact about the composition of the student body was the
wide variety of family backgrounds from which the pupils came. No one group had
an obvious monopoly over entry to the school; this was true of other hill villages
also.
36.	Verbaal, July 13, 1858, No. 35.
37.	Ibid.
38. Verbaal, May 14, 1860, No. 42.
39. Verbaal, July 14, 1856, No. 7.
40.	Unless otherwise noted, the information, statistics, and judgments on the
schools for the period of the 1860s have been compiled from the volumes of the
Verslag van het Inlandsch Onderwijs. Individual citations will not be made unless
they concern a particular point found in specific reports.Table 8. Parents' Backgrounds--Highlands Schools 1860s (in percent of total enrollment)
School Locale	Merchant / Private Business	Artisan	Maritime	Agriculture/ Landlord	Wage Earner	Penghulu	Lesser Adat Functionary	Religious	Government Chief	High Government Official	Clerical Official	Supervisory Official
Normal School												
Bukittinggi	32	3				12	17	2	31	3		
Hill Villages												
Rau	5			20	3	1	2	7	3			
Bonjol	7			2		17	2	2	5			
Puar Datar	6	5		11		25			39	8	3	2
Buo						11			79		5	5
Lubuk Sikaping		4		18		34		25	15			6
Panti	8			15		8		8	38			
Talu				15		23	7	8	1			
Halaban		1		22		44	5	12	16			
Administrative Centers												
Bukittinggi	15	13		7		16	7	4	18	7	1	2
Payakumbuh	8	5		26	2	23	2	1	26	3	1	2
Batu Sangkar						29			31			
Solok		2		56	5	14			16	1	2	5
Source:	VIO, 1863-1869.91
The recorded statistics for Rau demonstrate some of the general problems in the
school records for the period. Of the forty pupils listed as having attended the
school, twenty-two said that their guardians' occupation was "deceased." Another
problem is the vagueness of the statistics about the fate of students who left school.
Although the reports, as noted, record that most graduates went into trade or gov-
ernment service, the actual statistics presented are almost meaningless. Of the
fifty-one students mentioned as having left school between 1863 and 1869, it is said
only that eight were "educated." Another ten were expelled for lack of interest,
and two died.
Unlike the case with many plains or coastal villages , in the Rau area several
chiefs had attended the school. At least four of the larashoofd and one nagarihoofd
had received a smattering of education, sufficient to be worth noting in the official
record as local literati. Though few in absolute numbers, the five semieducated
government chiefs of Rau nonetheless represent one more than reported for the
populous plains area surrounding the urban center of Payakumbuh. Seen in this
context, the number assumes more significance and helps explain why the nagari
councils in the Rau area villages were more willing to assume the burden of educat-
ing the area’s children. The chiefs kept close watch over the school and its teacher.
They were particularly irritated because the teacher kept his class hours rather ir-
regularly and had to be pressured to spend time teaching.
South of Rau, beyond the thick jungle and on the other side of a narrow and
rugged mountain pass is the village of Bonjol. A thin, mountain plain next to a
shallow broad river provided the base upon which Imam Bonjol had built his reli-
gious movement and for a decade resisted Dutch incursions against his mountaintop
fort. Unlike the families at Rau, the people of Bonjol were less interested in secular
education. The school established in the 1840s later closed unnoticed, to be re-
opened in 1863. It was supported by levies on the inidividual laras- and nagari-
hoofd, f. 4 and f. 1.50 per month respectively. This may account for the fact that
the greatest single group of pupils (some 17 percent) came from penghulu and gov-
ernment chiefs' families. This in turn helps explain the singular lack of "successful"
alumni. Most pupils returned home, after having attended for some time. A few
took jobs as clerks for local chiefs, but none entered the Dutch bureaus. It is pos-
sible, though there is no specific reference to it, that the adat types who dominated
the school enrollment had frozen other, perhaps more interested, groups out of the
school. In villages elsewhere, one sometimes finds that adat dignitaries came to re-
gard school attendance as a prerogative of their class--despite the fact that they
never used the training they got and had no intention of doing so when they en-
rolled. In any event, the records about Bonjol are too scanty to provide any real
evidence.
Puar Datar, in the 1860s, was probably a much smaller village than Bonjol, but
its inhabitants displayed more interest in the local school. Their land is almost en-
tirely steep hillsides where mainly dryfield agriculture, particularly coffee cultiva-
tion , is practiced. A steep and winding valley trail connects the village to Suliki
farther down country and eventually to Payakumbuh on the plain. But standing in
the ruins of Imam Bonjol’s Puar Datar fort, on a small rise at the edge of the village,
one looks off into a vast distance of rugged hills and inaccessible little valleys.
Puar Datar had an ideal geography and climate for coffee. But in terms of its
school, the important characteristic of the village society was not coffee cultivation
so much as the large group of perantau merchants who traditionally left the village
each year. The success of the school established in the early 1840s is attested to
by the large group of bureaucrats who sent their children there in the 1860s. These
men had joined the bureaucracy after their training at the Puar Datar school a dec-
ade or so earlier. Some 13 percent of the pupils came from bureaucratic families,92
and another 11 percent from artisan and commercial backgrounds. Though in a rel-
atively sparsely populated area, the Puar Datar school had an enrollment which ri-
valed that of more populous areas, such as Solok. The villagers had built the
school of wood, with glass windows and a thatched, ijuk roof, and it was one of the
most magnificent in all the highlands. Puar Datar's essential character as a peran-
tau village is further reflected in the wide cross-section of the community which
sent pupils to its schools. In 1865, the controleur suggested that he might consider
literacy a factor in ratifying future appointments for penghulu; twenty-three heirs
to such titles signed up the following year. But in general the penghulu had not
otherwise been an overwhelming segment of the school pupils.
Of the four villages, Buo is located in the most agriculturally rich area, on a
broad plain surrounded by hills situated roughly midway between the major high-
land plains of the Lima Puluh Kota and Tanah Datar. It had a school in 1846, but
this had apparently closed down shortly afterward, to reopen in 1865. It was not a
particularly successful operation partly because well-to-do families were charged
tuition for their children, which tended to discourage enrollment from among mer-
chant or other affluent groups. Almost all pupils came from families of chiefs, ei-
ther government or adat. Attendance was irregular because few families could see
any return on their investment. During the five years when records were kept,
only one pupil was placed in government service, one went on to the Normal School,
and two went to the medical institute in Batavia--not an especially outstanding rec-
ord for a total enrollment of 106. The others, upon leaving school, entered "no de-
terminable employment"; in other words, they returned home.
From the beginning Buo had been an important coffee area, but in other re-
spects it differed from such northern regions as Puar Datar and even Rau. It had
served as the headquarters of one of the top adat figures in the old Pagarruyung
administration, and thus it had had close ties to the traditional aristocratic life of
the Minangkabau court. During the Padri movement, the local Muslim leader, Tuan-
ku Lintau, though a follower of Imam Bonjol, had generally directed his own appeal
more toward winning over the "royalist" faction than toward destroying "infidel"
adat practices. People from the Lintau/Buo area have always been associated with
the perantau merchant tradition and the area has historically had contact with the
outside through the east coast rantau. In the 1860s, however, the "adat aristo-
cratic elements" apparently controlled the school. Partly, it seems, this occurred
because the perantau merchants and artisans who were interested in education sent
their children to the school in Payakumbuh where many families had relatives. 1,1
Three new schools were established in the northwestern coffee regions in the
1850s--at Lubuk Sikaping, Panti, and Talu. Of the three, the one at Lubuk Sika-
ping seemed to attract the most local interest. Its pupils came from a wide variety
of backgrounds, though heavily concentrated in penghulu, lesser adat functionary,
religious, and agricultural families. The chiefs collected funds for the school by
making levies on the population, which created some resentment, and finally led to
government intervention to stop it. Of the twenty students who left school during
the six years covered by the reports, nine were termed "educated" and the rest
"disinterested." None apparently entered either government service or trade,
though one went on to the medical institute in Batavia. In 1869, the chiefs decided
that the teacher, a former Normal School student, was unqualified (after six years
of service in the school), and they discharged him. They also discontinued their
own financial contributions. The school closed.
41. Interviews, Lintau/Buo, November 1967; Taufik Abdullah, Schools and Politics:
The Kaum Muda Movement in West Sumatra (1927-1933) (Ithaca: Cornell Modern In-
donesia Project, 1971).93
The school at Panti had existed since at least 1854, but, until 1864, had only
twice had more than ten students. The teacher had studied at the nagari school in
Rau but was not considered especially well-educated himself. The bulk of the stu-
dent body came from chiefly or agricultural families. In 1864, the last year the
school was mentioned, the educational report recorded "no report received" from
Panti.
Talu differs from the other centers under discussion because it apparently nev-
er became an important coffee-collection center, though geographically located in
the heart of northern coffee country. Situated on a large fertile rice plain, its
population preferred sedentary agriculture to the merantau, and Talu children were
not encouraged to seek nonagricultural livelihoods. Geographically, Talu belongs
with the hill-country region, but its mentality and aristocratic life-style had more
in common with distant lima Kaum, a satellite of Batu Sangkar, than with hill vil-
lages, such as Rau or Puar Datar. Most of the Talu students came from agricul-
tural, religious, and penghulu families. But unlike Rau, where pupils used the
school as a training center for future employment as officials or traders, in Talu
pupils tended to return home to their families. Because they did not use their new-
ly acquired knowledge, they quickly forgot it. Enrollment at the school suddenly
increased when the local controleur pressured the chiefs to send their own depen-
dents. Such pupils, however, did not regard school training as a condition for
success in life and made only indifferent progress in their studies. The only educa-
tion which had any positive value in local eyes was that given in the village surau;
other education was an unnecessary and sometimes expensive frill. 42 There were
government jobs available, but they were filled more often by the teachers at the
Talu school than by the pupils, with a resulting constant turnover in the school's
staff. In the six years reported, 48 of the 111 pupils enrolled left school--47 re-
turned home and one went to Mecca. None was considered to be "educated" upon
leaving. They had attended out of deference or fear that the Dutch wanted to see
at least token enthusiasm for education; the chiefs did not want to upset their cor-
dial relations with the new regime. Personally, however, they had no regard for
school.
The school at Halaban, though only opened in 1862, had been established in a
more receptive environment than some others which had been in operation longer.
The village is near the Lintau/Buo area, and, in fact, Tuanku Lintau had fled to
Halaban when the Dutch attacked his headquarters in Lintau during the Padri peri-
od. Less rich in land than Lintau/Buo villagers, Halaban natives could see the pos-
sibilities which secular education could offer. Most pupils came from agricultural,
chiefly, and religious families, but they came, not out of a sense of obligation (as
at Buo), but because they wanted to leave the village. The school grew rapidly,
and many of its graduates entered the government service or continued their educa-
tion elsewhere. Those enrolled tended to stay on for several years, perfecting
their penmanship and recitation. From 1863 to 1869, 235 pupils were enrolled but
only eighteen left—five joined the government service, two went on for advanced
education, three were removed, two fled, and one died. The local people had pride
in their school and built a separate schoolhouse in the grand manner with glass win-
dows and a tile roof. Pupils had to buy their own school supplies but, unlike the
case with Talu, this did not significantly discourage enrollment.
The last of the schools to be opened in the coffee areas was that in Palembayan,
north of Lake Maninjau; it began operations in 1867. Enrollment was high, averag-
ing about thirty-three. This is especially impressive considering that, unlike many
42. VIO, 1863, pp. 212-14.94
other schools, in Palembayan pupils had to pay tuition, f. 1 per month. The teach-
er was a local warehouse official who had studied at the Padang nagari school.
These nine schools may seem frail foundations on which to build a new "enlight-
ened" society, but not if seen in the perspective of developments elsewhere in West
Sumatra. Most of the Minangkabau people lived, not in the hill villages but in the
large rice plains, and yet not one of the rice-plains villages had even established
its own school much less kept it in operation. The achievement of the hill villages
was truly noteworthy, and it demonstrates the importance of a local merantau tradi-
tion to the success of secular education.
The villages with long-established traditions of perantau merchants, artisans,
or even religious men made the earliest and most efficient use of the secular schools,
absorbing them into existing patterns of nonagricultural activity. The wealth which
coffee provided for the nagari treasuries enabled such hill villages to finance schools
and teachers. Coffee money alone was not enough to assure success. The extensive
coffee areas to the south of Lake Singkarak, for example, did not display a similar
push toward secular education. The southern areas differed in social structure
from those of the north which probably explains their record in education. In the
south, the village leaders were often called raja, indicative of their role as para-
mount chiefs who could exercise quasi-autocratic authority over their dependents.
These chiefs were less in step with the interests of their subordinates, probably be-
cause the distance between them in the social hierarchy was significant. Schools
appear in these areas only at the end of the century and even then they are few
and are the results of Dutch government planning rather than local initiative.
The Highland Plains: Schools in
Administrative Centers (the 1860s)
The only schools located in the major rice plains areas of the highlands were
established at the Assistant Residency seats--Batu Sangkar, Bukittinggi, Payakum-
buh, and Solok. These schools dated from the 1840s. Though settlements had
existed in these areas before Dutch arrival, their development as "urban" commer-
cial and administrative centers occurred during the colonial era as a result of con-
nections with the Dutch regime. Many Minangkabau from surrounding areas, espe-
cially perantau artisans, merchants, and speculators, crowded to these rapidly
growing towns. As a result, the original families, though often still recognized as
the pro forma ruling elite, had in fact lost control over local affairs.
Batu Sangkar, Bukittinggi, Payakumbuh, and Solok each served as the head-
quarters for regional Dutch bureaus. They were as such more cosmopolitan and
dynamic, and their inhabitants had more immediate contact with Dutch influence and
colonial opportunity than was true in most other parts of West Sumatra. A combina-
tion of various factors, therefore, caused the four towns to develop rapidly in the
nineteenth century as commercial and governmental centers, attracting large tran-
sient populations, many of whom provided services to the new European establish-
ment. Among such people, there was probably a much greater sensitivity to the
kinds of opportunities available beyond the usual life of the village. They had al-
ready left their home village once in search of a new livelihood, and this made sub-
sequent moves that much easier. Moreover, the concept of extra training as a means
to extra income was well-established in perantau families such as these.
Bukittinggi, the seat of the Assistant Residency of Agam also served as the
headquarters for the Padang Highlands Residency and had, therefore, that much
more importance and activity as compared to other regional centers. The nagari
had expanded greatly after its selection as the center for Dutch military operations95
against the Padri in the 1820s. The building of Fort de Kock, and its use as the
garrison fort for Agam and the whole northern region, attracted immigrants from
the rest of the area who hoped to prosper by provisioning first the military and
later the civilian establishment. The original village and its inhabitants were soon
overshadowed and often brushed aside. This created a continuing irritation which
hindered relations among the various residents of the town, especially as the origi-
nal villlagers withdrew ever deeper into crusty traditionalism.
Blessed with a cool, dry, upland climate and located on the edge of a major rice
plain, Bukittinggi was an ideal location for the Dutch headquarters. A market cen-
ter from pre-Dutch times, under the Dutch Bukittinggi became the most important
communications and transportation focus in the highlands, the hub for the road net-
work and later the railroad as well. Not only were people attracted to work directly
for Dutch bureaus, but also artisans, food dealers, and other service-industry peo-
ple flocked to the town. The varied and essentially urban nature of the population
was reflected by the student body of the local nagari school. They came from a
wide variety of families fairly evenly distributed among government chiefs, peng-
hulu, bureaucrats of all levels, merchants, and artisans, with a sprinkling of agri-
cultural and religious families. Bukittinggi's role as a perantau center is shown in
the relatively large proportion of merchant (15 percent) and artisan (13 percent)
families represented among the student body of the nagari school.
Founded in the early 1840s, the Bukittinggi nagari school had immediately at-
tracted local interest. Of all the highlands schools in the 1840s, Steinmetz had
found the Bukittinggi one had the best students in terms both of devotion to their
studies and progress that they made.1,3 Its enrollment showed a fairly steady rise
between 1854 and 1869, beginning at twenty-one and reaching eighty-one by the end
of the 1860s. Those who came generally attended regularly and, on leaving, they
entered government service; only a few became traders and, reportedly, no one
simply returned home or was discharged for lack of interest. These early educa-
tion reports provide the first indication of Bukittinggi's future development as the
focus for those interested in the new civil service and secular education generally.
The area north and west of Bukittinggi had long been important for perantau trad-
ers and artisans, and, by the end of the nineteenth century, it would be known for
its teachers, doctors, and civil servants as well. Few students in the Bukittinggi
school came from the rice villages of the nearby Agam plain (or even from families
of the original Bukittinggi village itself); rather they were from villages in the foot-
hill areas nearby--Koto Tuo, Balingka, Kota Gedang, Sianok. Such villages had
only small areas for growing wet rice because they were hemmed in by the rugged
hills stretching from Lake Maninjau to Mount Singgalang. Their inhabitants had
long and often famous traditions as perantau goldsmiths, merchants, carpenters,
and weavers. Prospective students from these villages usually had perantau rela-
tives in Bukittinggi with whom they could live while attending school.
The Bukittinggi area's wealth also came from its being the major collection cen-
ter for one of the largest coffee-producing regions of the 1860s. Chiefs in the
nearby foothills had high incomes from the coffee commissions.1*1' Large merchant
families had developed through servicing the coffee transport system and dealing
in other export materials produced or collected in the area. Most of the civil ser-
vants and professional people among the Bukittinggi elite came from these villages
and had attended the nagari school. Some, as children, had walked daily from their
village to Bukittinggi to attend school; they left home before dawn and returned
43.	Steinmetz, ''Inlandsch Onderwijs," p. 311.
44.	Verbaal, January 3, 1872, No. 10.96
late in the afternoon. In the process, they might cover ten or twenty miles a day.
As a result, they would be unable to assist at home, in the fields or with other
family enterprises. This made their education a double burden on the family--first
the direct expense and second the lost labor.
A large proportion of the commuting students came from the relatively nearby
village of Kota Gedang, located opposite Bukittinggi across the vast, deep canyon
called the Ngarai. This canyon borders Bukittinggi on the south and west, sepa-
rating it from the foothills of Mount Singgalang. Proximity was not the only advan-
tage of the Kota Gedang students. Several nagari school teachers of the 1860s were
also Kota Gedang natives, and they eased the way as well as provided a constant
stimulus, encouraging village families to send children to the school.
The Bukittinggi school had a good reputation among the Minangkabau because
its students were so successful at getting good jobs or gaining admittance to ad-
vanced educational institutions, specifically the Normal School. As a result, the
school attracted many students from elsewhere in the highlands.1*5 Because Bukit-
tinggi was the center of a large colonial bureaucracy and the location of the Normal
School, its nagari school was strategically placed to display to prospective pupils
the wide variety of colonial opportunities. Students could see in their daily sur-
roundings how secular education could serve as a stepping stone to advancement
through government or private service. Not only that, but when they "graduated,"
they had more easy access to these jobs because they often had been in contact
with prospective employers for some time.
Payakumbuh, the Assistant Residency seat of Lima Puluh Kota, has a different
character from that of Bukittinggi, in large part reflecting the different geographic
character of its immediate surroundings. Whereas Bukittinggi is physically close to
the hill country, home of the dynamic perantau elements, Payakumbuh is more in
the center of its large rice plain, the lima Puluh Kota. Socially, the adat traditions
of the Lima Puluh Kota plain have tended to emphasize chiefly privilege, and most
villages in the area follow rigid hierarchies of chiefs exercising aristocratic preroga-
tives and firmly controlling their followers. The villages in the immediate area of
Payakumbuh, in contrast to those near Bukittinggi, did not have well-developed
merchant and artisan family traditions, but rather depended on rice cultivation for
which ample good land was immediately available. The chiefs apparently enrolled
their children in the Payakumbuh school in large numbers, but not from any interest
in education as such. They regarded school as part of the perquisites and privi-
leges of their exalted station. Their enthusiasm was generally minimal and their
attendance a sometime thing. In 1863, the Assistant Resident for Lima Puluh Kota
suggested in a public speech that, because the government paid its representatives
(that is the various village chiefs) well, it had the right to expect them to take ad-
vantage of the nagari school and get the kind of education which the government
believed they needed to fulfill their duties. At the same time, they should assure
that their heirs did likewise.1,6 As a result, nagari school enrollment suddenly rose
to 100, but attendance continued to be irregular, and, by 1866, the total enrollment
had dropped back to about fifty. The chiefs had decided that the government would
not or could not enforce the Assistant Resident's threat.1,7 The chiefs themselves
disagreed with the Dutch opinion that they needed to be literate. From their point
45.	VIO, 1863, p. 222.
46.	Ibid., p. 224.
47.	VIO, 1869, p. 267.97
of view, they could always hire a secretary to do such menial tasks as writing re-
ports and keeping records.118
Payakumbuh was less important as a trading center than Bukittinggi. Though
the town is located on the main route to the east coast, a major Dutch aim of the
nineteenth century was to divert all trade from the eastern ports to Padang. Inso-
far as they were successful in this effort, Payakumbuh lost significance as a com-
mercial center. Nonetheless, it still formed the hub for activities in the Lima Puluh
Kota. The pupils in the nagari school came from a wide variety of backgrounds,
though the heaviest concentration were from penghulu (23 percent) and government
chief (26 percent) families. Payakumbuh's administration and commercial sectors
contributed small but significant numbers of pupils--merchants (8 percent), arti-
sans (5 percent), and bureaucrats (6 percent). Another 26 percent of the pupils
came from neighboring agricultural families.
Unlike most highlands areas, in which school financing came from nagari trea-
suries or levies on chiefs, in Payakumbuh, the parents of the pupils had to contrib-
ute to the cost of the teacher's salary.1,9 An important reason for this was that
Payakumbuh chiefs did not have as much extra income from coffee commissions as
those in parts of Agam and other areas. Although located in an important popula-
tion center, the Payakumbuh warehouse collected, for example, only 3,773 piculs
of coffee in 1867, as compared to the 14,205 and 20,513 collected in the same year
in Bukittinggi and Batu Sangkar respectively. Solok, which in many respects re-
sembled Payakumbuh in its general social and economic configurations, likewise col-
lected only small amounts of coffee--7,796 piculs in 1867. 50
Enrolling children at school meant a greater expense for Payakumbuh families
and required a correspondingly greater interest in Western training. As shown by
the reports, local chiefs had little motivation and most middle-level families in the
villages could do well from rice cultivation. The semiagricultural villages of the
foothills were located rather far away, which would have imposed the additional
costs of room and board on pupils' families, though many from the village of Halaban
did come to the school. One such village, Puar Datar, already had its own school
anyway and others, such as Suliki, soon established them. Payakumbuh had tradi-
tionally been a strong center for religious education. After the harvest, boys and
young men from the neighboring villages usually went to spend time training in tare-
kat lore at one of the many local centers. For people living and working in a tradi-
tional, village agricultural environment, such education had more meaning than
learning how to add numbers or copy government documents. From its beginning
in the 1840s, the nagari school had not attracted many dedicated pupils. Most made
only indifferent progress and showed little interest. Education was not a valued
commodity in the community, and it made no difference in one's position in village
society. Boys often left school to marry wealthy women, and turned their backs on
secular training. 51
48.	Viewing it all in retrospect, the present-day penghulu have argued that their
ancestors thought that attendance at the nagari school implied collaboration with a
kafir government. Interviews, Payakumbuh, November 21, 1967. (Apparently
working as a nagarihoofd and accepting coffee commissions does not in their view
constitute "collaboration.")
49.	VIO, 1877, p. 182.
50.	See Table 3 in Chapter IV.
51.	Steinmetz, "Inlands Onderwijs," p. 311.98
When pressed about their disinterest, parents pleaded poverty, but the social
and economic structure in the area around Payakumbuh were probably more likely
factors. Those who were interested in the new opportunities open to the secular
"educated” person did apply themselves to their studies. Upon leaving school,
they could find jobs in the coffee warehouses and other government enterprises.
The vast majority, however, merely withdrew. From 1863 to 1869, of the sixty-
eight students who left the school--seven entered government enterprises, two be-
came traders, two went on for advanced education, six were withdrawn by their
families, three were dropped for absenteeism, forty were expelled for "laziness,"
and seven "ran away." For families in Lima Puluh Kota rice villages, secular educa-
tion had no relevance. At a time when the chiefs complained that their villages were
too poor to send children to school, the local tarekat centers were building large
impressive mosques, surau, classrooms, and dormitories. Families were donating
lands for the perpetual upkeep of the religious foundations. 52 Religious training,
especially that available in the closed company of the local tarekat community, had
more meaning for their future lives and needs than arithmetic.
Batu Sangkar owed most of its development as an important town to the Dutch
occupation. The traditional center of the Tanah Datar plain had been at nearby
Pagarruyung, site of the Raja's court. As the heart of the former Minangkabau
kingdom, Tanah Datar also had other locations with traditional importance--among
them Buo, Lima Kaum, and Sungai Tarab, each the site of an important royal minis-
ter or advisor. In military terms, however, the Dutch found the small kampung of
Batu Sangkar a better place for their fort, Fort van der Capellen, the first major
Dutch garrison in the interior. A market and commercial center of fair size grew
around the settlement, especially as the coffee trade took on increased importance
in the 1840s and 1850s. The decline of Pagarruyung as a center after the Dutch
occupation undoubtedly contributed to the rise of the new town around Batu Sang-
kar. Many Minangkabau who would have been found around the court now trans-
ferred their operations to the center of the new regime. The hills near Batu Sang-
kar favored large coffee crops and nearby towns produced handicrafts which were
important trade items.
Compared with Payakumbuh and Bukittinggi, however, Batu Sangkar remained
a smaller, less "cosmopolitan" place. Many of its inhabitants did see the nagari
school as a new opportunity, however. Over half of the students belonged to fami-
lies of government chiefs or penghulu, and, unlike the Payakumbuh students, those
in Batu Sangkar used the school as a training ground, often for jobs in the govern -
ment service. Enrollment climbed steadily, and those who came tended to attend
regularly. On completing their education, the students entered trade or joined the
civil service, particularly the staffs of the coffee warehouses. Not everyone had a
favorable view of secular education, however. As elsewhere, many of the tradi-
tional aristocracy found it an unnecessary expense. This was especially the case
with those from surrounding rice villages (such as Lima Kaum), for whom attending
school meant either commuting or else taking lodging in town. Since such villages
were not historically homes for perantau merchants, artisans, etc., village families
only rarely had relatives living in the town of Batu Sangkar, and thus children
would have to board with strangers--both expensive and undesirable. Education
imposed unnecessary burdens and financial hardships for such families who had no
plan to use the training which their children might receive. 53
52.	Interviews, Syekh of two tarekat centers near Payakumbuh, November 21 and
23, 1967.
53.	Verbaal, July 14, 1856, No. 7.99
Solok, south of Lake Singkarak, is traditionally considered the home of the most
conceited and arrogantly aristocratic of all the Minangkabau. This quality proved
the bane of many a schoolteacher’s career. The first teacher complained that his
pupils were so surly, they did not learn their lessons. 54 During van Ophuijzen's
tenure as Assistant Resident for Solok in the early 1850s, the school offered an ex-
tensive and high-quality curriculum, made possible by his own special tutoring of
students.55
The overwhelming proportion of the students (some 56 percent) came from agri-
cultural families, with another large segment from penghulu (14 percent) and gov-
ernment chiefs' (16 percent) families. There were also several from bureaucratic
backgrounds (8 percent) and even from wage earners' (5 percent) families. What-
ever their backgrounds, however, few pupils showed a real interest in applying
their education. In 1867, for example, twenty-six children left school; one became
a clerk and the other twenty-five returned home where they "soon forgot that little
they had learned."56 The school was financed by general donations administered
through the nagari treasury. But the chiefs belittled education as an effort un-
worthy of their status. Even when the Assistant Resident proclaimed it a duty of
every chief to encourage local parents to send their children to school, the effort
had only small results. The chiefs themselves had no education and they could not
believe it had any intrinsic value. Merchants and traders, who displayed an in-
creasing interest, were hindered by the great distances between their villages and
Solok.
Solok itself had probably less commercial importance than Payakumbuh; it was
an area with deeply entrenched and wealthy landholding families. A broad rich
sawah plain which surrounds the town on all sides provided sufficient livelihood and
gave little impetus toward trade or other nonagricultural pursuits. For these fami-
lies, aristocratic privilege was a keenly appreciated and jealously guarded posses-
sion. The prevailing attitude apparently dictated that Western education, because
of its connection to the colonial rulers, conferred a certain amount of prestige, and
hence school should be reserved to those with "noble" blood. At the same time,
however, there was no interest in spending a great deal of time at school or attain-
ing any particular proficiency in the skills which it provided. 57 Enrollment rose at
a steady rate, but the futures of departing students varied little between 1863 and
1869--almost to a man they went home and picked up the threads of their former
lives in the village elite.
The administrative centers on the plains were hybrid communities in which the
most dynamic elements often were foreign--either ethnically so in the case of the
Dutch or geographically so in the case of the perantau. Perantau Minangkabau
from hill villages settled in these centers in increasing numbers, and they married
local women here. The children of such unions were often the most interested and
constant pupils at the local nagari school.58 They were also often the kemanakan
of merchants, since a perantau often married the sister of a business associate. In
any event, the woman was not usually from a notable family because such families
54.	Steinmetz, "Inlands Onderwijs," p. 311.
55.	Verbaal, July 14, 1856, No. 7.
56.	VIO, 1867, p. 185.
57.	Interviews, Solok, November 1967.
58.	Many of the educated people of Batu Sangkar, for example, had fathers from
Kota Gedang in Agam. Interviews, Kota Gedang, October 1967.100
did not encourage their women to become second wives to middle-class, perantau
merchants. The children were rarely heirs to a chieftaincy. They grew up in an
atmosphere which stressed achievement--in commerce, artisanry, or service--rather
than birth.
The schools themselves were sometimes controlled by the native-born elites, the
district and family chiefs, men who rarely recognized any value in secular education,
though the more "enlightened" of them might be prepared to tolerate its presence.
Given the social and economic structure of the plains villages, probably few of these
local chiefs' client families were particularly interested in education either. Bukit-
tinggi is an exception; many of its satellite villages were areas of marginal rice cul-
tivation, and their people had therefore more interest in alternative means to a liv-
ing. The nagari treasuries of the four centers were probably well endowed by
virtue of the important regional markets which were held weekly in the four towns;
where merchants and restauranteurs were assessed rent for the space they occupied.
The relatively large Dutch establishment in each center could provide a constant
pressure on the chiefs to demonstrate their commitment to the regime by maintaining
the secular schools. But it is significant that no other schools were established in
the plains. Plains villages unlike hill villages generated no independent desire to
establish their own schools. Children whose futures were planned around the year-
ly cycle of wet-rice agriculture had no need for literacy, arithmetic,or "civilized
behavior."
Schools on the Coast: The Administrative
Centers (the 1860s)
The coastal port centers of Painan, Padang, Pariaman, and Air Bangis had had
a longer history of foreign contact and interaction than the highlands villages and
towns. Their autocratic princes had learned that accommodation to outside forces,
whether from Aceh or Europe, was usually to their financial and political advantage.
The Dutch pampered the coastal raja and played up to their pretensions, preserving
the status quo and the air of aristocratic society which this entailed. As a result,
the attitude among coastal rulers proved at the most hostile, and at the least ambiv-
alent, toward the concept of the nagari school, especially if the raja were supposed
to pay the costs. The coastal raja were even less susceptible to pressure from their
constituents than the most "aristocratic" highlands penghulu. In the highlands vil-
lages, the groups most interested in the nagari schools were the middle-level arti-
sans, merchants, and upwardly mobile families generally. On the coast, such groups
were nonexistent among the permanent residents who formed the raja's own depen-
dents. The middle-level people (merchants, artisans, service people) were outsiders
and were usually under Dutch jurisdiction. They were thus only peripherally the
responsibility of the chiefs. This ambiguity in jurisdiction helps explain one of the
major differences between coastal and highlands schools--more direct government
influence and support was available for the coastal schools.
The success of the nagari schools in the highlands, especially in seemingly in-
significant little villages, was an obvious embarrassment to the Dutch officials of
Padang, the center for government operations and the largest town in West Suma-
tra. The chiefs, for their part, saw nothing of value in education and forthrightly
refused to provide any funds so that others might attend. The Padang rulers ar-
gued that, unlike the highlands chiefs who had access to extra money from the coffee
cultivation system, they had no extra funds available for such extravagances as
Western education. 59 The fact that the Dutch governor found this complaint reason-
59. Report of Governor van Swieten, February 12, 1852, Verbaal, June 15, 1852,
No. 3.Table 9. Parents' Backgrounds--Lowlands Schools 1860s (in percent of total enrollment)
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School Locale	Merchant /] Business	Artisan	Maritime	Agricultur Landlord	g u 05 W P bo 05 S	Penghulu	51 8| CO g <D 3	Religious	Governmer	High Gove Official	o p-H 05 ■2 58 o	Supervisoi Official
Port Centers												
Padang	1					2		2		1	5	
Painan	9	6	3	19	i	29	i	4	2	2	2	1
Pariaman	25	7	2	14	i	5		2	6	1	7	
Air Bangis	8			6		64			16			
Trusan	5	1		4		63		1	9	1	2	1
Coastal Villages												
Pelangi	3	1	17	66		3		6				
Batang Kapas	1	3	4	59		13		7	6		1	3
Asam Kumbang									53		8	
Sungai Limau	9	3		10		4	15	7	8			
Tiku			22	49		22			6			
Source:	WO, 1863-1869.
o102
able indicates that the coffee-cultivation system was (or, more correctly, was
thought to be) a very lucrative operation for the highlands nagari and their chiefs.
The Padang administration agreed to help finance a school for local children if the
chiefs would construct the building. 60 The rationale behind government financing
was that qualified Minangkabau were needed in the expanding colonial bureaucracy.
In Java, the government paid to educate prospective civil servants, and so the
Governor General agreed to do so in West Sumatra--but only along the coast, not
in the highlands. 61
Though the chiefs did not care about education for their families, obviously
many Padang residents did. Their children had apparently already received some
training elsewhere because when the school opened in 1853, fifty-nine of those who
enrolled were immediately placed in advanced classes. 62 Many of these were doubt-
less children who had studied in highlands schools earlier, and then come to live
with relatives in Padang. Others had probably studied privately; merchants and
government officials often ran private tutoring sessions for relatives or the children
of friends. The advanced pupils were not children from local aristocratic families,
in any event, because with rare exception none of these had so much as looked at a
book since the school fiasco of 1826. 63
As with perantau elsewhere, men from the highlands villages whose careers had
brought them to Padang almost always soon married a local woman. According to
highlands adat, a woman could not leave her family's house--even to accompany her
husband. If a man planned to spend any time at all in a new place, he would marry
locally; this gave him a permanent and convenient base of operations. Many of the
pupils in the Padang school (as had been the case in highlands market centers)
were undoubtedly the children of such marriages. Many others were children who
had been sent to Padang to live with relatives in order to attend the large school.
As it became known in highlands villages that one could obtain high quality educa-
tion in Padang, many more families sent their children. According to Dutch stan-
dards, the Padang school had the best teaching staff and equipment. 6lf By the
1860s, the government was paying the salaries for two teachers and several teach-
ing assistants. School enrollment reached 237 in 1864, but in 1865 the building
burned and, for the next three years, education in Padang floundered. It recov-
ered again by 1869. Almost all pupils from the school who "graduated" entered
trade or the government service, especially the coffee warehouse bureaucracy.
Painan, the territorial center for the southern coast, had been the first point
of Dutch commercial activity on the West Coast. Padang surpassed it already by
the late eighteenth century because of its superior harbor and closeness to the
main highlands sources for export goods. Painan, however, remained an important
commercial center for its own area and had a significant perantau population, a pop-
ulation which quickly accepted the idea of secular education. The natives of Painan,
particularly the raja, showed only nominal interest and refused to contribute to
school upkeep. The teacher was paid by the Dutch administration, and, in 1869,
the long unfinished schoolhouse was also finished with a government subsidy.65
60.	Ibid.
61.	Verbaal, June 2, 1852, No. 4.
62.	VIO, 1854, p. 227.
63.	Report of Governor van Swieten, February 12, 1852, Verbaal, June 15, 1852,
No. 3. See also above pp. 78-79.
64.	Verbaal, July 14, 1856, No. 7.
65.	VIO, 1869, p. 146.103
Pupils at the Painan school came from a wide variety of backgrounds, typical of
a commercial center. Those who left school usually entered the public service as
clerks and petty bureaucrats; several became teachers in nearby villages. For ex-
ample, between 1863 and 1869, of the twenty pupils reported as leaving school, two
became petty bureaucrats, one an assistant to the warehousemaster, one a teacher,
three went home, two went to Padang with their families, and one died.
Pariaman, located north of Padang, is on the edge of a broad coastal rice plain,
giving it a more agricultural orientation than either Padang or Painan. The hill
country at the edge of this plain was potentially important coffee land but, by 1860,
had remained undeveloped. 66 Pupils at the Pariaman school came from a wide varie-
ty of backgrounds, the largest single group being agricultural (14 percent) and
commercial (25 percent), representing a fairly strong interest in both the town and
the surrounding rural areas. Despite the rather aristocratic organization of local
society, the raja barely went through the motions of enrolling their children. They
did use the school in their own particular way, however, extorting money from local
hamlets whose families wanted to send their children to the school. 67
Air Bangis, the northernmost port town in West Sumatra is on the very fringes
of Minangkabau culture. Pupils in the local school came overwhelmingly from chiefs'
families--both penghulu (64 percent) and government chiefs (16 percent). Nine of
the twenty-two pupils who left school between 1863 and 1869, were considered "qual-
ified," but, reportedly, none took government jobs or did anything else that re-
quired the education they had presumably received. School enrollment meanwhile
dropped steadily throughout the decade. The chiefs became increasingly disgrun-
tled at the "useless burden" of supporting the nagari school and withdrew their own
children as a measure of protest. In 1864, fourteen of the pupils were from chiefly
families, and by 1866 it had dropped to just four.
Trusan, though no longer an important administrative center by the 1860s, re-
sembled the other port towns in that its raja had been a former ally of the VOC, and
as a result, his family retained numerous perquisites, chiefly those of pomp and cir-
cumstance. Like Air Bangis, most (72 percent) of its school children came from
chiefs' families, mainly those of penghulu (63 percent), the others being spread
among a wide variety of occupational backgrounds. The teacher was a close rela-
tive of the Trusan raja, which seemed to be his major qualification for the job. The
chiefs sent their children solely because they believed it a duty, not because it had
any independent value. The sense of duty proved fleeting, and enrollment declined
steadily after 1862.
The profiles of the port centers reenforce the notion that a "successful" school
resulted from ambitious and interested middle-level families. In growing urban cen-
ters such as Padang, Painan, and Pariaman, which attracted many highlands mer-
chants and other ambitious types, the schools served as the keys for opening new
careers, in government service, and for improving old ones, by becoming more
"modern" merchants. In declining port towns, like Trusan, Air Bangis and appar-
ently also Indrapura (the records are scanty but indicative), the schools became the
preserve of disinterested but status-conscious chiefs' families. The merchant ele-
ment here was smaller and more quiescent, the more dynamic elements having al-
ready moved to the major and growing ports where the real activity was now taking
place. The children of the aristocracy in either event attended only to gain what-
ever possible distinction could be acquired by attendance at a secular school. At
66.	Verbaal, May 14, 1860, No. 42.
67.	VIO, 1863, p. 207.104
this early date, however, Western education as such conveyed little independent
prestige of its own. It was mainly a tool required for a very few specific jobs.
Coastal Villages: A Quasi-Maritime Environment
Several schools were opened in the late 1850s and early 1860s in small coastal
villages. The people here were mainly in maritime occupations or rice cultivation.
Generally, these villages provided infertile soil for the nagari school. The coastal
villages were not particularly prosperous on the whole, and they were ruled by
small cliques of aristocrats who claimed that their ancestors had been given the ter-
ritory by the Raja of Pagarruyung. Such villages did not, as a rule, have well-
developed middle-range families who contended for power with the penghulu (gener-
ally known as raja on the coast), and as a result there was an important gap be-
tween the chiefs on top and the peasants below. Of the five schools which appear
in the records in the 1850s and 1860s, three--Pelangi, Batang Kapas, and Asam
Kumbang--closed before 1869; the other two--Tiku and Sungai Limau--dropped
from the record and one must assume that they too closed.
The Pelangi school drew mainly from agricultural (66 percent) and maritime
(17 percent) families, but there is no indication that pupils used school training to
find other livelihoods than those pursued already by their elders. Generally, no
one really seemed to care about the school and few bothered to come regularly. In
1865, the building collapsed and was not rebuilt. No one apparently even noticed
that it was gone.
The Batang Kapas school, farther up the coast, came to almost the same end;
its building collapsed in 1867. Most pupils at the school (59 percent) came from
agricultural families and another 19 percent came from chiefly backgrounds. With
only the rare exception, those who left school did not do anything with whatever
training they had received. The records mention that from 1863 to 1869, eighty-one
pupils left school; one became an assistant warehousemaster and one a clerk; the
rest went home. After the school collapsed, the only regular pupils were four Chi-
nese children, and the Batang Kapas chiefs felt it an untoward burden to finance
the education of these foreigners. The school was closed.
Asam Kumbang is located near the foothills behind Painan. The majority of pu-
pils (53 percent) came from the families of government chiefs. But they attended
classes only irregularly, and apparently they never did anything with what little
training they managed to acquire. The school closed in 1867 because everyone con-
cerned agreed it was a waste of time.
The pupils at the school in Sungai Limau, a coastal village north of Pariaman,
came from a wide variety of backgrounds. Agriculture and traditional adat or reli-
gious positions, however, accounted for a large percentage (36 percent), with gov-
ernment chiefs another 8 percent. In 1865, the school disappeared from the records;
no reason was given. The same happened with the Tiku school a few miles farther
up the coast. Both schools had opened in 1863. Tiku was in a coffee-growing area
and some 49 percent of its school children came from families engaged in growing
coffee. The records, however, give no indication what, if anything, the pupils did
with the training.
Unlike the small village schools in the highlands, those on the coast did not
serve as a ladder for social or economic change. The coastal villages, by and large,
did not have traditions of merantau. They were not pressed by excess populations
seeking to enter trade and artisanry as an alternative to marginal rice cultivation.
Along the coast, income was supplemented by maritime activities--fishing or ship-
ping. Although a shipper operates much like a trader, in the sense that he pro-105
vides a service, at the same time these men operated out of their home villages
rather than moving to some other town and setting up a new residence.
The Nagari School and the Community
The record of the nagari schools appears poor at best if measured by outside,
"objective" criteria such as attendance, textbook quality, or teachers’ capabilities.
If, as conventional wisdom tends to suggest, only those who "collaborate" can bene-
fit from colonial society, then by that measure too the schools are also a failure, for
the "tools of the regime" (the penghulu and government chiefs) rejected secular
education. Despite the seeming odds of poor finances and official disinterest, how-
ever, families who wanted secular education were able to get it and were then able
to use what they had gotten to good advantage. When set against the background
of West Sumatran society at mid-century and given all the factors which militated
against education, the nagari schools' accomplishments assume a greater significance.
To get an education under the outwardly adverse circumstances prevailing in
village schools required determination and stamina. The issue of the nagari school
often became involved in the more general problems of the relationship, and specifi-
cally the mutual obligations, between the chiefs and their dependents. Because the
laras- and nagarihoofd were, in many ways, recent modifications and extensions of
a traditional adat system of penghulu government, the resolution of the school prob-
lem in a particular village reflected the configurations or traditional lines of compe-
tition and conflict in that village. In hill villages, where social distances were small
and movement between the middle and top layers of society correspondingly easier,
pressure could be exerted on chiefs to provide schools for their followers. The
needed funds were available through commissions from coffee harvests and levies
on local markets. But not all coffee villages or market towns followed the pattern.
Villages where middle levels showed the most interest in secular education tended
to be those where merantau, that is learning a trade in order to pursue it outside
the village, was the most highly developed.
"Success" or "failure" when applied to the nagari schools thus depends on the
perspective from which one wishes to view them. From the Dutch government view-
point , one which emphasized attendance records, quality of instruction, beautiful
buildings, and plentiful textbooks, almost all the nagari schools were "failures."
But, to be fair, the Dutch had no right to condemn education in West Sumatra be-
cause it failed to measure up to their standards. The government had steadfastly
refused to supply the funds which would have made such standards attainable. In
1857, for example, the Governor General had ruled that funds could not be used
for local schools whose teacher had not been educated at a government institution.68
By the 1860s, many nagari schools had teachers who had in fact been trained at
the government operated Normal School in Bukittinggi. But, in 1864, the Governor
General decided that, because the people of West Sumatra paid no direct taxes,
government money could not be used to finance schools there.69
At the same time, however, schools in the Batak areas to the north of Minang-
kabau were receiving large measures of government aid--in addition to the money
already provided by the Protestant Mission Society which operated the schools.
The government’s rationale for its subsidy was that secular education lessened the
68. Decision of the Governor General, October 8, 1857, Verbaal, April 24, 1858,
No. 21.
69. Decision of the Governor General, March 1, 1864, No. 5, Verbaal, May 24,
1864, No. 38.106
danger of Islamic conversions among the pagan Bataks, hence making administration
of the area that much easier. This view was based on the conclusions drawn by Mis-
sion Society ministers in Tapanuli. In 1856, one of them had written to the Governor
General that the spread of Islam from Minangkabau was threatening the political sta-
bility of Tapanuli. The Governor of Sumatra's West Coast, under whose jurisdiction
Tapanuli fell at the time, immediately decided to neutralize the threat by providing
alternative "social training" in the form of government-run secular schools. He
proposed a total of f. 4,440 for ten village schools; this included a salary for the
Christian missionary who would serve as the supervisor for education in Tapanuli.
The state would also provide teachers' salaries and all school supplies. 70 By 1863,
f. 6,795 was being spent each year by the government to maintain eleven schools in
Tapanuli. On the other hand, in the Minangkabau area, of the twenty-eight schools
in existence, money was available for only the Padang, Pariaman, and Trusan nagari
schools and the Bukittinggi Normal School. 71 In Benkulen, Bangka, and Lampung,
the government also paid teachers' salaries and provided educational materials to
village schools during this period. 72
The nagari school therefore developed as a domestic Minangkabau institution.
Its operation in any given community reflected the political and social structure of
that community. What pupils learned reflected the dominant local perception about
what they needed for their future lives. Sometimes this attitude stressed arithmetic
and literacy, sometimes Quranic recitation; the importance of the nagari school to
the community varied accordingly.
Chiefs, whether penghulu, laras- or nagarihoofd, did not need education to be-
come chiefs or carry out their duties as chiefs. Despite all Dutch efforts to the
contrary, this remained the case. One governor in the 1850s, exasperated at the
total illiteracy of the chiefs, thought to pressure them into sending their heirs to
school. He decreed that, henceforth, population registers and other local records
would have to be kept by the chiefs rather than the controleur. He believed that
if a chief's work required literacy, then chiefs' families would have to take a more
personal interest in education. In fact, though the chiefs briefly acquiesced to the
implied threat to their position by enrolling their heirs in school, they hired private
secretaries to deal with the matter of record keeping. And so did their successors.73
In merantau villages, almost always in or on the edge of the rugged hill coun-
try, chiefs often showed a more active interest in education--not because they were
chiefs and believed it had value to their administration of the village but because
their families needed a means to supplement incomes derived from rice cultivation.
Their interest was a function of the "minus" agricultural area in which they lived.
In such villages even heirs to the penghulu's title often joined the migration to the
rantau during their youth, earning a living as trader or artisan. Commercial fami-
lies, whether or not they were also chiefs' families, were among those who first
recognized the value of understanding the European business techniques--an un-
derstanding which could be at least partially gained at the nagari school. Knowl-
edge of these matters was especially important for those whose businesses brought
them in contact with the Dutch economic sphere; for the smaller, marginal trader
such knowledge had correspondingly less value. The petty trader needed educa-
70.	Verbaal, August 3, 1857, no. 6.
71.	VIQ, 1866, pp. 17-18.
72.	ViO, 1862, p. 215.
73.	"Welk Middel Men ter Westkust van Sumatra te Baat Neemt om de Waarde van
het Lager Onderwijs Beter te Doen Schatten," TNI, 2, 1 (1858), pp. 39-40.107
tion neither to aid his own affairs nor to assist him in dealing with Dutch contacts
(he had none).
For the lower middle-level families, however, secular education could represent
an alternative to their traditional occupation, rather than a means for improving it.
As the Dutch bureaucracy expanded, Minangkabau families could see that being a
clerk in a minor office might lead to becoming a secretary to the controleur or ware-
housemaster . Moreover, it became apparent that having a relative inside the civil
service would be an advantage when dealing with the Dutch arid could provide an
important source of position and income. Having a relative with a government
bureau also gave a family an advantage over others when new jobs became available.
The high position held by Kota Gedang families in civil service posts and in the pro-
fessions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries stemmed from their
early recognition of the value of government service. They used their acquired in-
fluence carefully in order to assure that their heirs and followers would continue
to gain admittance to the best schools and jobs. They began early and it paid off
handsomely.
Because the nagari schools were operated locally and served local interests, it
is not surprising that the style and content of instruction followed Minangkabau
rather than Dutch ideas of pedagogy. Dutch inspectors complained that pupils
learned by rote and that promotion was based on various subjective considerations
rather than objective exams. One inspector condemned nagari school education as
being focused on the "mindless copying of official documents" and the perfection
of penmanship. Pupils memorized texts but could not comprehend the subject mat-
ter. 7k It would be fair to ask this inspector in turn how many Dutch officials to
his knowledge ever needed or wanted their secretaries' opinions about the subject
matter of a letter. One could even argue that many Dutch officials probably pre-
ferred that their transactions remain confidential; few clerks would be able to dis-
cuss documents they had transcribed if they couldn't understand the content.
Most clerical jobs did not require comprehension of documents; scribes and secre-
taries in Dutch bureaus were nineteenth-century equivalents of today's typewriters
and photocopy machines.
Nagari school education followed the same pattern as traditional education avail-
able in the village surau. In the surau, boys learned to recite the Quran and to
write out passages in beautiful Arabic characters. They memorized but never un-
derstood. Even the most learned ulama rarely knew the Arabic language (in which
most Islamic religious texts were written) well enough to read and understand an
unfamiliar book, or sometimes even the Quran itself. He was considered learned by
virtue of his long years spent memorizing lectures given by other ulama who them-
selves often only barely understood what they taught (having learned it in turn
from yet other semiliterate ulama). The same techniques were admirably suited for
the nagari school. One need only substitute the Malay language and official reports
for Arabic and the Quran. Moreover, since Malay was written in Arabic characters,
the transition was not even all that great. Steinmetz had found in 1846, for exam-
ple, that pupils who had had some prior study with a village Islamic teacher could
skip the first grade of the secular school. 75
74.	J. J. van Limburg Brouwer, "Het Gouvenemental Inlandsch Onderwijs op
Sumatra," TNI, 5, 2 (1876), pp. 6-10.
75.	Report of Resident Steinmetz to the Governor, March 4, 1846, in Steinmetz,
"Inlandsch Onderwijs," p. 311.108
As the surau served different purposes depending on the interests of the pu-
pils , so too did the nagari schools. 76 Few boys who went to the surau intended to
become ulama, nor would they remember for very long what they had learned. It
was part of the process by which one became a proper citizen, an enlightened mem-
ber of the community. One attended more or less according to individual interest,
did what work one wanted,and left whenever one felt sufficiently "educated." Na-
gari school pupils and their families, not surprisingly, saw secular education in the
same terms. The chiefs, if they showed any interest in it at all, saw it as part of
the "finishing process," nominal attendance being one of the things an aristocrat
in colonial society was expected to do. Like the surau training, it conveyed no
tangible benefit, had no utilitarian function. The nagari school, in contrast to the
surau, was divided into specific grades which were meant to represent levels of
achievement. But, in fact, here too the comparison with the surau was not all that
different. As with the surau, all students studied together in one room--each
"grade" practicing more or less the same "assignments" with the only difference
being their degree of competence in executing them. Advanced students helped
tutor their juniors, exactly as in the surau. If a student believed he had learned
all that a particular teacher could convey, he might move on to another school,
particularly one in a large center such as Bukittinggi or Padang. The tradition of
the wandering student was already a well-established one in Minangkabau; religious
scholars had always traveled from one ulama to another learning the speciality of
each. Like the religious scholar, the secular school pupil left school, establishing
himself as a teacher or taking a government or trade position, when he believed he
had learned enough or when there was a suitable opening available. "Graduation"
from either type of school was a personal and subjective decision made by pupil and
teacher, not the result of passing some comprehensive exam.
Unlike the surau, however, the secular school had meaning for only a limited
sector of society. All Minangkabau were Muslims and all respected the skills and
training of the ulama. But secular education was like learning a trade; it was im-
portant for earning a livelihood but had almost no meaning in terms of general per-
sonal development as a Minangkabau. Prestige came from other factors--the chiefs
already had it by virtue of their birth, the high official or large merchant by vir-
tue of his achieved position. Literacy might be the tool for achieving prestige but
it was not particularly praiseworthy in and of itself.
The nagari school performed a function in Minangkabau society, but that func-
tion was determined not by Dutch administrative notions but rather by Minangkabau
desires. Various elements in society used education or ignored it in accordance
with their own evaluation of its usefulness to them.
76. This comparison of the surau and the nagari school should not be taken to mean
that they represented two mutually exclusive alternatives. Pupils who attended the
secular schools still went to the surau classes, which were usually conducted in the
late afternoon or early evening. The subsequent decline of the traditional surau in
the twentieth century occurred more from the new developments in the Islamic com-
munity as a whole than from secular school competition.CHAPTER VI
EDUCATIONAL REORGANIZATION IN THE 1870s:
THE GOVERNMENT ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
AND ADVANCED EDUCATION
The nagari schools had been "successful" in their own terms, that is, they had
provided new skills for groups in Minangkabau which, whether because of their geo-
graphic location or their social position, found traditional routes to success insuffi-
cient . But the nagari schools had not generated great enthusiasm from all or even
most parts of the population. They provided no sure guarantee of access to top-
level bureaucratic jobs, for such positions were few and influence was still an im-
portant factor; nor did the nagari schools have any independent prestige which
could stimulate interest in attendance for its own sake. The closest proximity to a
prestigious institution was the Normal School in Bukittinggi, whose "graduates"
often achieved high-level bureaucratic jobs as warehousemasters and jaksa. Upper
middle level ambitious families showed more interest in formal education after the
establishment of the Normal School.
From the Dutch point of view, the nagari school should have been regarded as
"successful" in the sense that administrators did not have trouble finding suitable
secretaries, clerks, and other petty officials to handle the lower bureaucratic jobs
which required literacy. Only a few important positions in the administration were
open to Minangkabau, and the Dutch administrators still preferred to appoint liter-
ate men from families with connections to the colonial regime. Not all of these had
studied at the nagari school or even at the Normal School.
The appearance of the nagari schools had not resulted in a rigid structuring
of education in West Sumatra. Pupils did not have to complete a specific curriculum
to qualify for specific jobs. The criteria for obtaining these were fairly subjective,
and family influence remained important. Warehousemasters, in the early years, for
example, were often related closely to the penghulu families or village hierarchy.
Their appointment may have been the result of influence, in recognition of high
status or a means of neutralizing a potential threat to village stability.
By the 1870s, colonial administration itself was beginning to change, to become
more "modern" and less "traditional." Objective criteria and competent training
were becoming more important for both Dutch and Minangkabau officials. At the
same time, the Dutch regime was being intensified in Riau, Bangka, Kalimantan,
East Sumatra, and other western archipelago areas recently absorbed into the colo-
nial administration. Geographic expansion alone opened many new jobs, for example
as opium office administrators, cultivation inspectors, tax officials, warehouse per-
sonnel, clerks, secretaries, and teachers. Teachers became especially important
as the Dutch government began to regard education as the means for integrating
local elites into the colonial order. The Liberal philosophy, rampant in Holland and
the Indies by the 1870s, emphasized the role of private enterprise and education's
place in providing the climate for such enterprise to flourish. Businesses were
being reorganized and expanded to operate on more "modern," rational lines. This
undoubtedly stimulated Minangkabau to organize their own activities in accord with
the new, modern Dutch models. Written records, bookkeeping, reports, and corre-
109110
spondence were becoming more important in business, whether run by Dutch or
Minangkabau entrepreneurs, and the nagari schools were seen as inadequate in
providing the necessary training.
Most nagari schools were in a poor financial condition. Teachers were poor and
preferred to take jobs in the government service, whenever possible, rather than
continue teaching. Textbooks and other materials were practically unavailable.
Standards varied widely from place to place, and there was no way to enrich the
curriculum because the Normal School itself operated on much the same educational
level as a nagari school. The new government interest in education, which began
in the 1870s, to a certain extent solved the purely institutional problems by making
government funds available to the nagari schools and by reorganizing the Normal
School into a major center offering education on a par with the best normal school
anywhere in the Indies. The Minangkabau, especially townspeople, began to look
with new interest at the schools. They could see that education had more purpose
and content, and they realized that it was becoming a real entree into colonial offi-
cialdom and society.
The new government elementary schools of the 1870s and afterwards had a stan-
dardized curriculum. They had new Malay language textbooks, which had recently
been published in the Indies and were designed for local elementary school systems.
The schools acquired more prestige in large measure because they began providing
an "education" rather than merely "training." The Dutch government began ex-
pressing more official interest in education generally. This in itself conferred a
great deal of prestige on the schools in the eyes of ambitious families, and to a cer-
tain extent in the eyes of village notables as well. More and better advanced educa-
tion was also available. The Indies Medical School which had formerly trained only
doktor djawa (a sort of combination medical corpsman and sanitation inspector) was
slowly reorganized into a regular institute for training doctors. Teachers were
given the chance to take advanced training in Holland. A wide variety of advanced
educational opportunities in Batavia were opening to Minangkabau who did well at
local schools, including the chance to attend European schools in which the medium
of instruction was Dutch. Ability in Dutch conveyed a great deal of prestige in
local eyes, but not until well into the twentieth century did it become an important
criterion for the civil service. Education was becoming a respectable alternative
path, on a par with being a rich merchant in terms of its economic prospects, and
with being a learned ulama in terms of its prestige. By the late nineteenth century,
according to Minangkabau villagers, three occupations had overwhelming status:
angku doktor, angku laras, angku guru (lord doctor, lord larashoofd, lord teacher).
The appearance of doctors and teachers on such a list was a new and significant de-
velopment .
The increased interest in education reflected a general change in attitude among
Minangkabau in middle- and upper-level families. Education no longer represented
the mere acquisition of useful tools of the trade; it was becoming one of the require-
ments for participation in the Dutch-Indies society. To the extent that a given fam-
ily had decided that the most important sector of society was the Western (or "mod-
ern") sector, to that extent did members of the family press to enter schools and
acquire an education. In the course of the late nineteenth century, Minangkabau
who accepted this ideal were continuously increasing in numbers.
Changing Currents in Indies Society
The changing nature of education in West Sumatra is attested to in the transfor-
mation from the nagari school, run by and for the Minangkabau without much con-
cern or interference from the Dutch, to the government elementary school, in whichIll
Dutch attitudes, and physical presence as well, were greatly felt. The government
elementary school itself was part of the Indies-wide standard educational system; it
no longer represented a local answer to local needs. These changes in turn were
part of more general currents and attitudes present in the Indies in the last quarter
of the nineteenth century. In the 1870s, West Sumatra, as the other so-called Outer
Possessions (meaning everything but Java and Madura), was being increasingly in-
tegrated into one systematic colonial administration--an administration which also
displayed more interest in all aspects of local society and its organization.
During the 1870s, the administration which had previously been developed from
Java was extended to the rest of the archipelago. The so-called Liberal Era, in
which private enterprise and its needs were extolled at the expense of the former
state economic system, had new demands and needs. Planters expected the state to
provide them with a well-developed economic infrastructure in the form of roads,
railroads, police organizations, medical facilities, and post offices and to handle the
administrative tasks competently so that business' own essentially commercial job
would be smooth and easy. As business rationalized its own operations, the colo-
nial regime likewise rationalized and unified its administration. Direct Dutch rule
was gradually extended to all areas of the Indies, organizing them as a part of one
system. During this period, for example, the numerous treaties with the indepen-
dent coastal Minangkabau raja and the assorted individual accommodations which had
been made with interior rulers (as for example Sungai Pagu) were transformed into
the same style of larashoofd government prevailing elsewhere in West Sumatra. All
areas were now absorbed under the same judicial and legal regulations which had
been in force in most of the highlands since at least mid-century.
The development of a full-blown and modern administrative structure required
many more Minangkabau officials with better skills--and semiliterate men for the
numerous middle and lower echelon posts upon which the weight of such a structure
rested. Systematic taxation, an increased scope for the state monopolies of opium
and salt, and innovations in population registry and supervision all required more
personnel. The railroads being built in West Sumatra, and in the rest of the Indies,
needed clerks and conductors. The newly organized regions of northern and eastern
Sumatra needed indigenous officials. Minangkabau perantau civil servants, who had
a relative head start in education, came along in the baggage of the Dutch colonial
officers and took positions in the indigenous ranks of the new administrations. Be-
cause of the nagari schools, the Minangkabau had gained at least a generation head
start over most of the rest of Sumatra's peoples in the competition to provide offi-
cials for the bureaucracy. During the late nineteenth century, the most important
resource which Minangkabau provided to the newly integrated archipelago-wide colo-
nial system was a corps of civil servants, doctors, and professional men. Education
combined with the tradition of merantau aided the Minangkabau in the competition
with other ethnic groups for positions with the government.
The quickening interest in secular education benefitted from another important
aspect of the changing colonial world of the 1870s. Not only did the new Dutch re-
gime have a genuine need for trained civil servants, but, at the same time, the Lib-
erals, who exercised increasing control over colonial policy, gave the regime a phil-
osophic bent which favored spreading education not just to meet specific bureaucratic
vacancies but as part of a greater civilizing program. In 1867, for example, an Edu-
cation Office was established as part of the new Department of Education, Religion,
and Industry. This indicates not only the interest in education per se but demon-
strates a more general Liberal inclination to merge education and religion as part of
more general economic development.
Having created an office, one of whose jobs was indigenous education, the Indies
administration now had a bureaucratic interest in fostering education among Indone-112
sians. In 1872, an Inspector of Education was appointed for the first time for the
Sumatra/Borneo Territories, including West Sumatra. Much of his attention was in
fact devoted to Minangkabau, and his headquarters were located in Padang. The
first appointed inspector, J. J. van Limburg Brouwer, was determined to transform
the nagari schools into models of educational theory and practice. An English ob-
server, J. S. Furnivall, commented somewhat cynically that the whole development
of indigenous education in the Indies was the result of creating a group of Dutch
bureaucrats, who had an "almost irresistable inclination to justify their position and
magnify their own importance, [and therefore] were impelled to foster the establish-
ment of schools and increase the number of pupils. . . .,,:i Though perhaps over-
stated , certainly the importance of bureaucratic advocacy should not be forgotten
when examining the educational developments of the 1870s and after.
As education became a growing subject for bureaucratic interest, it naturally
assumed a new importance and prestige among colonial administrators. Such feel-
ings were quickly transmitted to Minangkabau officials and villagers, and in turn
were reinforced by the obvious availability of more opportunities based on secular
education. The new government elementary school acquired an importance as part
of a large Indies system, something which the locally oriented nagari school had
never had. The Minangkabau graduate 0f one of the new West Sumatra elementary
schools could, in the nature of things, expect to serve in Medan, Pontianak, or
Jakarta, not just in Palembayan, Rau, or Bukittinggi. More important, he could
enroll at an advanced institute and become a well-paid schoolmaster, a medical
doctor, a lawyer, or a high-level bureaucrat with a certain amount of administra-
tive responsibility. In short, school graduates could now reasonably expect a
better-paying job with more responsibility than that of a clerk to the local laras-
hoofd, as had often been the fate of nagari school graduates before. Upper middle
level families that had formerly stuck to their pre-established merchant traditions
became increasingly interested in education and government service. Being a doc-
tor in Bukittinggi or the director of the opium monopoly for Riau, for example, pre-
sented economic and prestige possibilities which rivaled those available to either a
gold dealer or a coffee transport contractor.
Education came to be viewed with new eyes because of its increased benefits.
Whereas, in the period before the 1870s, education in Minangkabau had been almost
wholly an indigenous development, thereafter it became more and more a product of
currents flowing throughout the whole Indies world. But at the same time, though
the opportunities offered the Minangkabau were increasingly tied to Indies-wide
conditions, the response which they displayed to these opportunities were ever the
consequence of local interests and initiatives and local evaluations of the opportuni-
ties. The educational zeal of the Minangkabau continued to derive from internal
factors not external pressures.
The Government Reorganizes the Institutional Structure
Prior to the 1870s, the Dutch administration had not taken an important part in
the operation of the nagari schools particularly in the highlands. Its major contri-
bution to education had been the establishment and financing of the Normal School
in Bukittinggi (1856). But even that institution had eventually become domesticated
into Minangkabau society, serving essentially Minangkabau ends and being run to
suit Minangkabau interests. Individual Dutch officials had on occasion tried to "re-
form" particular nagari schools, feeling perhaps that proper pedagogy and sufficient
1. J. S. Furnivall, Netherlands India: A Study of Plural Economy (Cambridge:
University Press, 1967), p. 220.113
textbooks were the means to an "enlightened" and "educated" citizenry. But in the
village world of most of West Sumatra, Dutch presence was felt only on occasion and
then only briefly. If the local constituency did not exert pressure for improved
teachers or schoolbuildings, the chiefs could usually avoid the issue with an out-
sider like the controleur. The Padang administration, reflecting a general disinter-
est in indigenous education which emanated from Batavia, had not been disposed to
force the issue. Nor had it provided any general guidelines which the controleur
would be expected to enforce. Government interest was concentrated on the culti-
vation system and the economic and political situation generally. The establishment
of the Office of Education and the 1872 appointment of van Limburg Brouwer as in-
spector for Sumatra greatly altered the situation. Over the course of the 1870s,
the individual nagari schools were reorganized as government elementary schools.
A Royal Decree, issued in March 1871, publicly placed responsibility for indige-
nous education in the hands of the Dutch regime. Government-sponsored Normal
Schools would be established in all areas of the Indies in order to provide sufficient
teachers to man a comprehensive network of elementary schools. The schools would
be organized according to a standard curriculum, and pupils would have to pass
standard tests. Individual schools would no longer, as in Minangkabau, be adminis-
tered by local chiefs according to local interests and abilities. Each government
elementary school would be controlled by a school commission consisting of a Euro-
pean (either a local official or where there were none, a private entrepreneur) and
several of the "foremost natives of the area,"2 which would oversee the daily opera-
tions of the school according to standards set by the newly formed Office of Educa-
tion. Although the Minangkabau chiefs remained the most numerous element of the
board, the European member would obviously be the most important because he
represented the power of the purse.
The government would now set standards and demand that they be met. Under
the new organization, the state treasury would pay all school costs both for the vil-
lage elementary schools and for the Normal School.3 4 This was a radical new depar-
ture, for only six years previously, Batavia had dismissed a recommendation that
the government finance schools in the various Minangkabau districts as being com-
pletely unjustifiable. ** Under the new system, the government still did not agree to
anything grandiose. It would subsidize the existing nagari schools, but only those
which qualified. As the schools improved, they would be integrated into the Indies-
wide public school system. How many (if any) new schools would be founded at
state expense, the government was not prepared to say.
This is not to imply that all local differentiation and initiative were now gone or
that all areas of the Indies would have exactly the same schools, as determined by
Batavia. The character of a given village was retained in the local school commis-
sion. As finally established in West Sumatra, the school commission usually con-
sisted of three people: the chairman was the head of the Minangkabau administra-
tion (larashoofd or nagarihoofd); the secretary was the local European official
(usually a controleur), or a private individual if there were no official; the third
member was a penghulu of the village, representing the nagari council. The school
board members need not themselves be literate and, with the exception of the Euro-
pean official, apparently they rarely were. 5 As a result, many of the same local
2.	Royal Decision of March 22, 1871, Verbaal, March 31, 1873, No. 43.
3.	Ibid.
4.	VIO, 1866, p. 25.
5.	J. J. van Limburg Brouwer, "Het Gouvernemental Inlandsch Onderwijs op Suma-
tra," TNI, 5, 2 (1876), pp. 19-20.114
political factors which had affected the nagari schools continued also to influence
the operation of the government elementary schools.
In order for a nagari school to qualify as a government school, it had to have
a graduate of the Normal School as its teacher. 6 Since government inspectors dis-
approved of the quality of education being offered at the current Bukittinggi Nor-
mal School, this was to be reorganized along the lines of other government operated
teachers’ training institutes in the Indies. New regulations, issued in Batavia in
December 1872, provided for a Dutch headmaster and assistant headmaster, with a
Minangkabau serving as the second assistant headmaster, and additional Minangka-
bau teaching staff. The former head of the Normal School, Chatib Labeh, was un-
ceremoniously demoted to an elementary school teacher--not even receiving one of
the lesser Normal School staff positions. 7
The Normal School, already the most prestigious of the various educational in-
stitutions in West Sumatra, was made even more desirable. Its students received
increased perquisites and allowances under the new system, despite the fact that,
at the same time, enrollment was increased from ten to fifty. There was now free
room and board at the school plus a monthly allowance--f. 15 for seniors and f. 12
for underclassmen. 8 That this allowance was more than generous in local terms can
be understood when it is compared to that of the nagarihoofd in most nearby vil-
lages; they received only f. 20 per month in 1872. 9
The Normal School became known popularly as the Sekolah Radja, or Prince's
School; this is a useful way to distinguish it from the pre-1872 Normal School. The
nickname may have derived, as some assert, from the Acehnese princelings sent
there, in later years, to gain a bit of European polish, but it is more likely that the
comportment of its Minangkabau pupils first gave rise to the label. Sekolah Radja
students clearly did not regard themselves lightly. They dressed in fine clothing
of European style. Each had an individual room in the long dormitory building
attached to the school complex, and there were servants assigned to look after their
needs. The school had been built as a showcase for Dutch efforts to improve local
"civilization," and, according to one account, it compared favorably with any sec-
ondary school in the Netherlands itself.10 In their free hours, the students walked
proudly through the streets of Bukittinggi; one old man related nostalgically that
street vendors and other lesser beings would give way before the strolling students,
proof positive of the latter's lofty status.11 Moreover, they studied a wide variety
of subjects designed to produce "cultivated" and "well-versed" teachers who could
serve as fitting examples to all the residents of the town to whose school they would
later be assigned. One European observer commented that the effect of all this
privilege was sure to produce "dandified" Minangkabau who fashioned themselves
after the outward aspects of European culture with very little understanding of its
inner values.12
6.	Director of Education, January 17, 1873, Verbaal, June 5, 1873, No. 30.
7.	Director of Education to the Governor General, October 29, 1873, Verbaal,
February 4, 1874, No. 9.
8.	VIO, 1872, pp. 1-3.
9.	Governor of Sumatra's West Coast, December 17, 1872, Verbaal, January 28,
1876, No. 20.
10.	M. Buys, Twee Jaren op Sumatra's Westkust (Amsterdam: Akkeringa, 1886),
p. 50.
11.	Interview, Sekolah Radja graduate, Bukittinggi, October 1967.
12.	Buys, Twee Jaren, p. 55.115
The curriculum at the new school encompassed all manner of learning--Dutch,
Malay, penmanship, arithmetic, geometry, Indies geography and history, Dutch his-
tory, natural science, surveying, drawing, draftsmanship, agricultural techniques,
pedagogy, singing, and physical education.13 It is small wonder that the pupils
thought themselves magnificent beings when compared to the "simple" village trader
or farmer. Competition for entrance was exceedingly intense, and one had to have
a sponsor, generally a parent or mamak, who was connected to the Dutch establish-
ment in some way in order to get in. A merchant could usually gain entrance for
his family members by virtue of his wealth and his consequent informal ties to the
establishment. The early nagari schools, and to a limited extent the old teachers'
institute, could not have matched this new school as a conveyer of status and pres-
tige. Even a few chiefs began to reconsider their earlier derogatory feelings about
sending their dependents to school. But, by and large, students had to have a
certain amount of prior education at a local school and those who did (mainly middle-
level families) were still in the majority at the Sekolah Radja.
The advantages open to the Western educated still rarely outweighed those al-
ready conveyed by virtue of high birth and wealth to the notables in the important
plains villages. The families who in traditional practice had scorned the merantau
ideal continued to scorn outside employment even if in the relatively more presti-
gious locale of the government office. But the Sekolah Radja, and later the other
advanced education institutions, did begin to attract more upper middle-level fami-
lies, often families which had formerly relied on trade. Even penghulu families
from semi-merantau villages (such as Kota Gedang near Bukittinggi) became more
interested in the possibilities of high-ranking civil service jobs and professional
positions (such as doctors). Penghulu families were to a certain extent handicapped
because of their relatively late entry into education, and those who showed the most
interest were often families which had already indicated a vague willingness to at-
tend the nagari school.
Admission to the Sekolah Radja was heavily weighted in favor of families which
had already achieved rank in the civil service--as jaksa, warehousemasters, admin-
istrative aides. Such families had long since pioneered the way to educate their
children in order to assure their admittance to Dutch-organized institutions. These
families were already operating in a semi-European environment; much more so than
the penghulu families whose greatest interest continued to be in the traditional vil-
lage scene.
Pupils from West Sumatra were eligible for advanced teachers' training not only
at the Bukittinggi Sekolah Radja but also at institutes being established elsewhere.
A colony-wide Normal School, which would bring together advanced students from
all parts of the archipelago, was established in Batavia, in an effort to standardize
the education being offered in Indies elementary schools. This may have been part
of a Dutch desire to standardize the Malay language taught in the village schools.
The government wanted to increase use of Riau-Malay, a well-developed language,
and end reliance on Bazaar Malay, an uneducated polyglot which varied widely from
region to region.llf The total quota for the Outer Islands at the Batavia Normal
School was to average some 100 per year, of which Minangkabau and the people
from the Moluccas received the largest portion--20 pupils each.15 The only area to
rival West Sumatra, then, in numbers of pupils was the heavily Christian Moluccas,
13.	IHO, 1878-1882, p. 35.
14.	Encyclopaedia van Nederlandsch-Indie, 2, p. 655.
15.	Verbaal, January 31, 1871, No. 30.Table 10. Geographic Origin of Sekolah Radja Pupils
Area of Origin
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Sumatra's West Coast/Nias	25	35	59	94	1	21	34	56	37	43	40	83 2	6	35	43	40
Benkulen	5	9	8	17	1	6	5	12	5	5	11	16 1	6	5	12	4
Lampung	5	1	4	5	-	1	1	2	3	-	2	2	2	-	2	-
Palembang	5	2	-	2	-	2	-	2	-	-	9	9 1	2	2	5	4
Riau/Sumatra's East Coast	5	1	5	6	-	2	-	2	4	-	2	2	-	-	-	2
Bangka	3	-														
Billiton	2									i	3	4 1	3	-	4	
Aceh	Me	-	1	1	-	1										
Totals	50	48	77	125	2	33	41	74	49	49	67	116 5	19	42	66	60
* No quota. Acehnese were		admitted above and beyond quota limit for total enrollment.														
Source: Verslag van het	Inlandsch		Onderwijs		1877	-1882	. PP	. 78-	79,	and	1888-	1892, p. 57.				
116117
a place where missionaries had been working for generations to assimilate the indig-
enous population to Western civilization by means of education.
Students from the Bukittinggi Sekolah Radja were also eligible to continue their
education in Holland. Each year a Dutch teacher in Amsterdam, D. Hekker, would
take several Indonesian students into his home to drill them in Dutch and European
customs. Such students were being trained to qualify in the exams for European
headmaster, that is, to teach in a school where Dutch was the language of instruc-
tion rather than in the common Malay village school. The first student from the
Bukittinggi school went to Holland in 1877.16
Even though only a small-scale operation, this chance to study in Holland, like
that for advanced education in Batavia, was important because it represented a new
opportunity for Minangkabau children. In the same way that the road system and
the civil service in West Sumatra had opened more possibilities for the inhabitants
of the highlands to travel to other areas in Minangkabau or nearby Sumatra, now
the new educational system was providing a colony-wide scope of operations. At
the same time, the new opportunities for teachers helped set them apart, at a high-
er level from the rest of the society by virtue of their now-unique training; partic-
ularly their formal training in Dutch. In the 1840s to 1860s, the nagari school
teacher had really hoped to get out of teaching and become an administrative offi-
cial, and, at the first opportunity, he did so. After the 1870s, however, teaching
had more prestige and teachers received better salaries, both of which helped make
teaching a desirable career in itself, not just as a stepping stone into jobs with the
civil administration.
Under the reorganized educational system in West Sumatra, then, the govern-
ment elementary schools had less trouble finding qualified teachers. Government
support assured teachers of adequate salaries regardless of where they taught.
Before the 1870s, teachers' salaries at the nagari schools in the highlands had
averaged about f. 20 per month, many places paying much less, depending upon
local interest and generosity. Low salaries had been an important deterrent to
teaching, and the Dutch had been unable to pressure nagari councils into raising
them even in the few instances when they had tried to do so. The chiefs usually
insisted that education was an obligation of the Kompeni, that is, the Dutch govern-
ment , and not of the local people.17
The Government Elementary Schools
The nagari schools had been renamed government elementary schools, an indi-
cation of new government interest in their development. In theory, the post-1871
elementary schools offered more intensive and standardized education. Guaranteed
financial support and continuous government supervision were designed to insure
high quality education. The visible changes were probably not all that rapid or
indeed all that extensive. In the first place, the school commissions still represent-
ed the Dutch idea of the community's leaders--Dutch-appointed larashoofd or nagari-
hoofd, the controleur, and the local aristocracy, the penghulu. The board member-
ship was obviously weighted completely toward the ''aristocratic" status quo. As
noted earlier, the Dutch administration continued to believe that adat government
was the best government for Minangkabau, that changes in penghulu-ships repre-
sented extralegal activities, and that birth was the most important criterion for
selecting district leaders. The Royal Decision of 1871, which had placed the burden
16.	Verbaal, June 9, 1879, No. 9.
17.	Director of Education, January 17, 1873, Verbaal, June 5, 1873, No. 30.Table 11. Elementary Schools in Sumatra
Location	1878	1888	1898	1908	1909 (subsidized)
Government Elementary Schools Padang Lowlands	10	14	11	13	
Padang Highlands	14	18	21	27	
Tapanuli	14	20	19	20	
Benkulen	7	9	9	12	
Lampung	1	3	3	7	
Palembang	2	5	5	14	
Jambi	-	-	-	2	
Sumatra's East Coast	-	1	1	11	
Aceh	-	2	1	14	
Riau	1	1	3	5	
Bangka	1	2	2	4	
Total	50	75	75	129	
Private Indigenous Schools Padang Lowlands	6	3	11	33	40	(11)
Padang Highlands	2	-	6	38	62	(52)
Tapanuli (Missionary)	9	64	152	390	470	(399)
Benkulen	-	-	1	1	2	(1)
Lampung	1	-	-	-	-	
Palembang	-	1	3	19	36	(33)
Jambi	-	-	-	6	6	(2)
Sumatra's East Coast	-	-	-	-	29	(26)
Aceh	-	-	1	9	10	(3)
Riau	-	-	-	-	-	
Bangka	-	-	-	-	-	
Total	18	68	174	486	655	(527)
Source:	Report of Inspector Grivel, Verbaal, September 7, 1910, No. 32.119
of education on the colonial government rather than local initiative, had specifically
stated that education was needed for the "children of the indigenous chiefs," al-
though others were not specifically forbidden to enroll.18
But the fact of government financial support, at the same time, helped counter-
act chiefly dominance over the schools' operations. Before the 1870s, the nagari
council had often had to finance the school from what the members considered to be
their own earnings, but this was no longer true. Although chiefs might have no
more inclination to accept education for themselves, they now had less reason to ob-
struct the progress of others. Unfortunately the records in the education reports
for the 1870s to 1890s and beyond do not give in great detail the composition of the
student body nor what became of them upon graduation, or departure, from school.
The occasional notation in a specific report does tend to confirm, however, that
there had been little change from the previous period in the types of families most
actively seeking education for their children. A notable exception to this is that
many of the pupils represented the second and third generation of civil service fam-
ilies. In the era of the nagari school, trading and agricultural families often sent
children because they wanted to break into the civil service; once having joined the
government succeeding generations continued the tradition. Though the records do
not indicate the occupations of parents, corroborating evidence is available from fam-
ily histories, and it tends to show that once one member had joined the civil service,
his children and nephews usually followed the pattern. This was not a new pattern,
for merchants and artisans who specialized in particular items, for example cloth or
gold, usually all belonged to one family in the village. If several such families ex-
isted they usually intermarried,thus establishing large dynasties in their particular
calling within the village. Sometimes these family groups had branches linked by
marriage in other villages. The goldsmith in Kota Gedang married a girl from a
goldsmith's family in Kota Gedang; when he went to the rantau in Padang, Medan,
or Batavia, he married another woman, again usually one from a goldsmith's fam-
ily. This is only natural, of course, because his most important contacts would be
within his professional community. The rising civil service dynasties, if such they
may be called, followed the time-honored pattern, substituting only a new occupa-
tion.
In the process whereby the government took over operation of the nagari school,
the Minangkabau clearly were the victors. They had for years been demanding gov-
ernment assistance in running their schools, but Batavia had always refused. Now,
when Batavia decided that tuition would have to be charged at the new schools to
help defray the costs of education, the Minangkabau demurred. They upheld their
objection, because the 1871 regulations stated that, in places where free education
had formerly been offered, government schools could not now charge tuition. Since
levies on either the chiefs, the population, or the nagari council, rather than tui-
tion, had previously supported the nagari schools, the villagers how argued suc-
cessfully that the new government elementary schools fell under the provisions of
the decree and should not charge tuition.19
The government announced that schools qualifying to become government ele-
mentary schools would be completely funded from the state treasury. Teachers
would receive f. 30 per month, with raises at ten and twenty years service to f. 40
and f. 50 respectively. An assistant teacher would be appointed for every thirty
students enrolled at the school; he would receive a salary of f. 25 per month.
18.	Royal Decision, March 22, 1871, Verbaal, March 31, 1873, No. 43.
19.	Royal Decision of May 3, 1871, Verbaal, May 26, 1871, No. 19.MAPS: GOVERNMENT ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 1880121
Teacher trainees could be hired at f. 15 per month to assist at particularly crowded
schools. 20
The knowledge that the government would assume the cost of operating the local
schools resulted in a wave of new ones being opened all over the highlands and, to
a lesser degree, along the coast as well, where they tended to be schools which had
been closed earlier. Nine schools appeared between 1871 and 1877, five in the vicin-
ity of Solok. This area had shown very little interest in education previously, ap-
parently because the chiefs maintained firm control over village affairs and showed
no particular inclination to organize education. Probably few villagers in the area
would have used the schools in any case; most people earned a substantial living
from wet-rice cultivation already. The new schools were not all in rice villages,
however; one was at Sulit Air, which had previously had a nagari school, and the
others were at Tanjong Balik, Supayang, Talang, and Sungai Lasi. One was opened
at Padang Panjang, the important military and communications center at the upper
entrance of the Anai Pass, and another at Matur, a small trading community near
Lake Maninjau. Along the coast, a new school opened at Balai Selasa, an agricul-
tural and export center south of Painan. After operating on its own for about a
year, each school then applied for a subsidy from the government, leading to even-
tual incorporation into the government system.
The government, however, was selective, taking only those schools with quali-
fied teachers. In 1873, for example, only seven nagari schools were recognized as
the first government elementary schools: Talu, Rau, Bukittinggi, Batu Sangkar,
Solok, Payakumbuh, and Pariaman. 21 This was twelve less than the Assistant In-
spector of Indigenous Education in Padang had recommended. The Governor Gen-
eral had decided that the teachers at the twelve rejected schools--Painan, Trusan,
Maninjau, Matur, Palembayan, Bonjol, Singkarak, Buo, Sijunjung, Halaban, Puar
Datar, and Muara Labuh--were not qualified Normal School graduates. Therefore,
the government could not legally pay their salaries, and the schools did not become
government elementary schools.22 By 1882, however, all the remaining schools had
been accepted as public schools, although in many cases they had apparently not
changed teachers. 23
The fact of government subsidy had caused a slight geographic shift in the
pattern of school placement. Prior to the 1870s, most schools had been concentrated
in the hills to the north of Bukittinggi and the hilly areas east of Lake Singkarak.
Now they appeared in the most "aristocratic" areas south of Solok and along the
coast. The social backgrounds of the pupils themselves are difficult to establish.
The records give only the totals rather than individual schools and then only in
three major divisions: civil servants/ aristocrats; private enterprise/traders; and
agriculturalists. The figures are only available for the 1870s, so one cannot even
determine if the ratio between the three groups was changing.
The few general discussions and reports on education do indicate that the socio-
economic backgrounds of the pupils had not changed that much. Van Limburg Brou-
20.	Report of Assistant Inspector for Indigenous Education van Limburg Brouwer
to the Director of Education in Batavia, June 30, 1872, Verbaal, June 5, 1873, No.
30.
21.	Decision of the Governor General, March 14, 1873, Verbaal, June 5, 1873, No.
30.
22.	Report of the Assistant Inspector of Indigenous Education, Padang, June 30,
1872, Verbaal, June 5, 1873, No. 30.
23.	VIO, 1878-1882, p. 21.122
wer, the Inspector of Education, said that, although in the highlands the children
were those of village notables and respected members of the village (apparently in
the sense of "successful," that is to say wealthy), along the coast the pupils were
almost entirely from the trading families in the towns. 2I* Since such trading families
were usually perantau from the highlands or their descendants, obviously the local
notable element had not changed its mind about the value of secular education.
Small highlands villages in the hills, although without European officials, continued
to establish successful schools on their own initiative, a fact which amazed some
Dutch officials who believed that the "educational development of a people is a ques-
tion of centuries." 25
An important clue to the general nature and progress of education in West Suma-
tra during the latter nineteenth century appeared when the government proposed
in 1892 to divide elementary education into two different categories of schools--First
Class Schools for notables and wealthy men, and Second Class Schools for the gen-
eral public.26 Though it might seem to represent a step forward for education, in
Minangkabau it actually had the opposite effect. The regulation stipulated that
Second Class Schools could have only three grades and should teach subjects useful
in daily life in the village. The existing elementary schools in Minangkabau had
five fully developed grades and were geared toward helping students from non-
notable families escape from the daily life of the village. For an education suited
only to the village milieu one went to the village surau not the elementary school.
According to one Dutch education inspector, in other areas of the Indies pupils
rarely continued beyond the lowest classes, and thus the institution of a Second
Class School would probably improve education for them. In West Sumatra, he said,
not only was this not the case, but the idea of the First Class School was clearly
unworkable. Children of the local chiefs rarely attended school at all, and, if they
did, they went to the village elementary schools, taught in Malay. This differed
from Java where notables' children sometimes attended the European elementary
schools. 27
The debates over reorganizing education in West Sumatra provide strong sup-
port for the assumption that, even after 1870, it was not the chiefs or notables that
sought education. The belief lingered in notable circles that education was meant
for those families needing outside help to survive--a kind of reverse snobbery by
which illiteracy indicated aristocracy and economic self-sufficiency. The Dutch,
however, clung to the idea of a literate class of Minangkabau aristocrats. In 1909,
the Director of Education wanted to establish Second Class Schools in West Sumatra
just for the sons of chiefs and other village notables. The local Inspector of Educa-
tion reported that he could not find enough notable families who were willing to send
their children to be able to fill even one schoolroom. If high status schools were
established, he said, they would be filled with the children of the middle families
who continued to put pressure on the education system to expand. 28
24.	Van Limburg Brouwer, "Gouvernemental Inlandsch Onderwijs," p. 3.
25.	N. Graafland, "De Reorganisatie van het Inlandsch Onderwijs," Verslagen van
het Indisch Cenootschap (1889), p. 100.
26.	Royal Decision on Indigenous Education, 1892, Verbaal, September 23, 1892,
No. 13.
27.	Inspector of Education van Ophuijzen to the Director of Education, December
23, 1901, Verbaal, March 24, 1902, No. 19.
28.	Inspector of Education Grivel to Director of Education, November 30, 1909,
Verbaal, September 7, 1910, No. 32.123
New Opportunities for Advanced Education
The growing commitment of the Dutch to education led to new opportunities for
Indonesians to obtain advanced training in certain fields in addition to teaching. A
significant feature of such training was the opportunity (and indeed the necessity)
to learn Dutch. The government elementary schools like their predecessors, the
nagari schools, had only offered Malay-language instruction. For many Minangka-
bau, the most important advanced institute was that created by the reform of the
Indies Medical Institute, the STOVIA (School tot Opleiding van Indische Artsen).
Originally established in Batavia in 1851 in order to provide medical corpsmen for
the various rural areas, the institute's graduates (see above p. 110) were basi-
cally public health technicians; they were not even government officials of any
standing. By training, they represented little more than an indigenous herbalist
with a European veneer. The only real medical technique they learned was vaccina-
tion and perhaps some pharmaceutical skill. Though upon graduation they were
called "doktor djawa," the "doktor" was an honorary title only; they were not really
physicians. 29
Some Minangkabau had attended the institute from the very beginning (two
arrived in 1856, for example),30 but graduation from there apparently did not as-
sure them of any better job in the West Sumatra health service than that already
available to the student from the nagari school. The records of the 1860s indicate
that many of the nagari school graduates entered the health service as "vaccina-
tors," apparently acquiring whatever "medical" training they needed on the job.
Study at the STOVIA did have certain advantages; students' expenses were paid
by the government, including the cost of traveling to Batavia. After 1864, the
school was reorganized, and students subsequently received a living allowance dur-
ing their studies. Graduates could now become independent medical practitioners
rather than merely assistants, but they remained a part of the government service.
The only difference was that now they served directly under the head of the re-
gional government in the area in which they worked.31 Even so, the doktor djawa
continued to occupy a relatively low position in the civil service; the title and job
carried little prestige and were not the object of much competition among West Suma-
tran families.32
In 1898, another reorganization of the STOVIA took place, expanding its size
and scope. Students now had to have a good knowledge of Dutch before being
accepted, and the curriculum was expanded to include advanced medical and physi-
cal sciences. Before graduation, students had to serve as interns in the military
hospital (to which the school had long been an adjunct). 33 The STOVIA now gradu-
ated "doctors" not "medics." Of the 183 students who had enrolled in the STOVIA
between 1874 and 1900 only some seven had been from West Sumatra, but in the
period from 1900 to 1914, at least 36 of the 200 pupils enrolled were Minangkabau. 39
29.	Ontwikkeling van het Ceneeskundig Onderwijs te Weltevreden, 1851-1926 (Wel-
tevreden: Kolff, 1926), pp. 1-5.
30.	Ibid., p. 4.
31.	Ibid., p. 5.
32.	Ibid., p. 6.
33.	Ibid., pp. 26-30.
34.	Ibid., pp. 349-59. There is a certain amount of difficulty determining which
students were in fact Minangkabau since the only indication given in the enrollment124
The doktor djawa had become Angku Doktor. Professional medicine was now open
to Indonesians, and many Minangkabau soon perceived that it would be a prosperous
and prestigious career. Families that had already been literate for one or two gen-
erations, in many instances now turned to medicine. This included both families
that had joined the civil service as well as those continuing in more traditional occu-
pations such as merchants. At the same time, some very wealthy, and even notable,
families that had shown no prior interest in education began to consider the STOVIA
a worthwhile venture.
Another form of advanced education which attracted the Minangkabau were the
new courses designed specifically to train indigenous officials (called ambtenaar to
distinguish them from clerks). These aspiring officials learned some Dutch as well
as Malay. After the turn of the twentieth century, special schools were established
called OSVIA (Opleiding School Voor Inlandsche Ambtenaaren), but before then,
Minangkabau were trained as ambtenaar at the Sekolah Radja in Bukittinggi. Bata-
via then decided to admit an extra ten pupils to the school each year specifically
for training as ambtenaar, and special courses were added to the curriculum for
their benefit. For the most part they took the same courses as the future teachers
but they omitted the last year--in which the teachers practice teaching in the attached
elementary school. 35
The government had hoped that the larashoofd would send their nephews to the
school for training as district leaders, but in fact most of the pupils in the ambte-
naar courses were the children of merchants, teachers, and civil servants. Not one
was the kemanakan of a larashoofd--although four were sons of larashoofd. The
chiefs continued to rely on the knowledge that their nephews would succeed to the
chieftaincy regardless of prior training. It is a measure of their recognition of the
value of education, however, that they now often sent their sons to school, most
commonly, sons whose mothers were not related to important families, and thus who
had no independent future already assured to them.36
Promising Minangkabau students could also continue their education on Java at
the OSVIA school there. The prospects for such aspiring civil servants improved
greatly after 1914, when the West Coast administration was reorganized to a govern-
ment based on a merit civil service rather than notable families. The larashoofd and
nagarihoofd were replaced by demang and assistant demang, men who, theoretically
at least, owed their positions to their training. These men could serve anywhere
in the Minangkabau area, and also in the other Malay speaking territories, such as
East Sumatra, Riau, and Kalimantan. The position of demang was administratively
no higher than that of larashoofd had been. But unlike the larashoofd, the demang
had been chosen for his objective qualifications and therefore he commanded more
prestige than a local aristocrat. He was truly a member of the Dutch administrative
circle and participated in the Dutch-Indies Society.
Already, by the turn of the century, the West Sumatra schools were beginning
to produce more educated people than the current administrative system could ab-
list is birthplace. Many village names were not listed in the available gazetteers so
it was impossible to determine where they were located. Also many Minangkabau
were born outside West Sumatra, the children of perantau fathers. The actual num-
ber of Minangkabau may have been much higher than the figures given indicate.
35.	Decision of the Governor General, January 25, 1901, Verbaal, March 4, 1901,
No. 54.
36.	Governor Heckler to the Governor General, October 17, 1907, Verbaal, Octo-
ber 21, 1908, No. 44.125
sorb. More children sought admittance than could be accommodated in the govern-
ment schools. This contributed to the growth of numerous private secular schools,
which were opened by graduates of the secular schools who could not find other
jobs. By 1910, for example, the number of such private schools located in West
Sumatra was already half of the total for all Java,37 and they were so successful,
that one Governor suggested closing the government schools and subsidizing the
private schools instead because more private schools could be financed for the same
amount of money. 38 The number of Minangkabau interested in Western education
was expanding geometrically following the lines of the extended family clusters.
One educated man would stimulate his children and his nephews to attend school
and they in turn their own children and nephews. What started as a small trickle
in the 1840s and 1850s had developed into a modest flood by the 1900s.
Socioeconomic Backgrounds of Students
For the period of the 1870s and after, information about pupils' family back-
grounds is scarce, for those attending elementary school it is all but nonexistent.
But through interviews with village elders, it is often possible to compensate for
this lack of statistical data and, at least, to determine what kinds of local families
had children who received advanced training at, for example, the STOVIA or Seko-
lah Radja. This limits the survey to only those who stand out by virtue of their
later status as successful teachers, doctors, or high officials, and often shows more
about the village itself than about its intellectual families. In villages where there
is an aristocratic distaste among the upper ranks for leaving village life (whether
as merchant or doctor) one can find out very little about the educated elite, some-
times not even if there was one. The very nature of the secular educated elite,
moreover, means that it cannot be found in the village because its members have
spread out over Indonesia. The people who know best about the education of the
villagers are most likely the very ones who are no longer there. But despite all the
limitations, interviews do bring to light information on the background of the secu-
lar educated elite and, in most cases, the profiles differ little from those established
for the 1860s.
Pariaman, a wealthy but aristocratically oriented coastal community, had at
least three students who graduated from the Sekolah Radja in the early years. One
was the nephew of a penghulu (his son in turn became a trained economist and was
governor of West Sumatra between 1966 and 1978). The second was nephew of the
larashoofd of Pariaman and the third the nephew of a rich man but the son of an
ordinary villager (orang biasa). The village notables of Pariaman, however, could
not really remember details concerning any of these families, which tells something
about the low importance attached to education and also that these particular fami-
lies were apparently not especially well known. The notables could remember much
better the aristocratic prerogatives of families in the district, which were the origi-
nal settlers,and where they had come from. They also knew about the large local
copra merchants, copra being the leading export and mainstay of the area since the
late nineteenth century. Pariaman has an acquired reputation as the home of many
school teachers, but the local establishment could not explain why this should be so
or even verify that it was so. Education proved to be a subject to which they de-
voted little thought. 39
37.	XY, "Het Inlandsch Onderwijs ter Sumatra's Westkust," Koloniaal Tijdschrift,
2, 1 (1913), p. 396.
38.	Governor Heckler, Letter, June 23, 1906, No. 2874, Verbaal, September 12,
1912, No. 66.
39.	Interview, elders of Pariaman, November 15, 1967.126
Table 12. Family Background of Pupils: 1872
Schools	Notable/ Civil Servant	Trade/ Private Business	Agriculture	Total
Government Elementary Schools				
Total Minangkabau	241	405	316	956
Total Java	2758	2780	3535	9051
Municipal Elementary Schools (Subsidized and Unsubsidized)				
Padang Lowlands	84	87	133	304
Padang Highlands	368	178	345	891
Total Minangkabau	452	265	478	1195
Total Java	1825	453	2560	4861
Source: Verslag van het Inlandsch Onderwijs J		1872, pp.	47 and 84.	
Table 13. Family Background of Pupils: 1873 and 1877				
Schools	Notable/ Civil Servant	Lower Classes	Chinese	Arab
Government Elementary Schools				
Padang Lowlands, 1873	98	477	93	2
Padang Highlands, 1873	306	1227	1	11
Padang Lowlands, 1877	158	1134	75	
Padang Highlands, 1877	411	1227		30
Nonsubsidized Nagari Schools
Padang Lowlands, 1873	48	78	34
Padang Highlands, 1873	86	53	17
Padang Lowlands, 1877	20	72	17
Padang Highlands, 1877	52	94	17
Source:	Verslag van het Inlandsch Onderwijs, 1873-1877, pp. 58 and 114.127
In Sulit Air, a small merantau village high in the hills overlooking Lake Singka-
rak, the first Normal School graduate was the son of a tailor and the nephew of a
surau instructor. He was able to get into school through the good offices of his
father-in-law who was a very rich man of the area. Although in theory the Normal
School was for children of high parentage, in fact, so long as someone would be
"responsible" and so long as the prospective student could pass the required en-
trance exams, it was possible for anyone to get in. The larashoofd family of Sulit
Air did not display any particular interest in education until well into the 1930s.
And even then it was only in a modest way and family members rose no higher than
as lesser civil servants. The most famous man from Sulit Air was H. Zainal Abidin
Achmad, onetime chairman of Parliament in the postindependence period, who gradu-
ated from a religious school and came from a long line of merchant-haji families on
both sides. The people of Sulit Air continued to hold to their tradition as perantau
merchants throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and even now
live abroad some ten months out of every year, returning home in a great noisy,
wealthy caravan each Puasa.1,0
In Matur, which did not open a school until about 1876, education caught on
rapidly. Matur is located high above Lake Maninjau in hilly country where the
sawah must be terraced and irrigated with the water from small swift mountain
streams. Though Matur did not have a school before the 1870s, once established
it grew in enrollment almost immediately. Matur pupils had a special interest in be-
coming teachers; first one and then another child gained admittance to the Sekolah
Radja, each then smoothing the way for the others to follow. The success of the
first few also provided a model for others to emulate. For a relatively crowded area
like Matur, becoming a teacher soon proved to be a better livelihood than remaining
in agriculture. According to villagers today, by the 1920s every family had at least
one teacher, and this provided an important educational resource for young children
in the families. The quick success of the Matur school was in large part due to the
fact that the first teacher was the larashoofd of Matur. He himself was self-taught,
but he believed that for a village like Matur, the land squeeze could only be over-
come by education, which would allow village men to leave and join the government
service. Almost no one had enough land in Matur, and even the penghulu pushed
their dependents to enter the school, one for example having four sons who gradu-
ated from the Sekolah Radja. After the mid-1920s, the villagers of Matur became
less interested in the Normal School, which probably reflected the increasing scar-
city of all kinds of government jobs at that time; new teachers had only the alterna-
tive of setting up a private school. Although families in other villages began to
switch to careers as doctors and lawyers about this time, this was apparently not
true of Matur, though no one could think why.Ifl
In Painan, a port town on the southern coast, the families that had traditionally
worked for Dutch merchants tended to display the most continuing interest in educa-
tion, especially the advanced education available at the Sekolah Radja. Other than
by their long-time Dutch ties, these families were not particularly distinguished,
that is, they had no "aristocratic" bloodlines. The most impressive civil service
dynasty originated on one side from a jaksa and the other a warehousemaster. An-
other series of three families all began as ordinary agriculturalists, in the sense of
substantial "farmers" rather than peasants.1,2
40.	Interview, village leaders of Sulit Air, November 3, 1967.
41.	Interview, retired teachers, Matur, November 16, 1967.
42.	Interview, village leaders of Painan, December 4 and 6, 1967.128
The main center for the secular educated elite continued to be the small villages
in the hills surrounding Bukittinggi. These villages still had not established schools
of their own--although in 1908, one of them , Kota Gedang, did set up its own schol-
arship fund to train teachers for a proposed village school. Generally pupils walked
over to Bukittinggi or else boarded with family members there. Since these villages
were by and large merchant or artisan centers, most families had relatives in Bukit-
tinggi with whom children could stay while attending the large government elemen-
tary school there. Koto Tuo, in the foothills of Mount Singgalang, is renowned for
its merchant families, and it is from the wealthy merchant dynasties that the first
Koto Tuo people with advanced education come. Civil service dynasties sprang up
suddenly. In one generation, the men were merchants and the women married mer-
chants; in the next, all the men were teachers or government employees. In one
Koto Tuo merchant family, for example, there were four sons of whom two were
teachers, one an assistant demang, and one the foreman for the coal mine at Saw ah
Lunto. The next generation maintained the tradition, becoming teachers, engineers,
etc. The first doctor from Koto Tuo was also the son of a rich merchant family.
One of his brothers was a civil servant and another carried on the family merchant
tradition. The daughter married the man who later became the demang of Sulit Air.
The doctor had two daughters (by different wives) both of whom entered medical
school and each of whom married a professional man (one a lawyer and the other a
doctor).1,3
The village of Sianok, next to Kota Gedang and across the Ngarai from Bukit-
tinggi, was another rich merchant community. The first doctor in the village came
from a long line of merchants; his son also became a doctor. The other two early
doctors also came from merchant families. None of them had any apparent connec-
tions with local penghulu or nagarihoofd families. 1,‘'
The information on backgrounds for all the villages is very sketchy at best, but
the essential patterns of education emerge even so, and they differ little from those
established by the 1860s. Areas which had a press of population on the land tended
to show more interest in secular education. For example, the village of Maninjau on
Lake Maninjau was thickly populated, and by the late nineteenth century it had
used all its available land. Pupils had to be turned away from the school, and if a
pupil were expelled, his relatives came immediately and protested vehemently. But
only six miles away, a village which still had much good sawah land did not have
enough pupils to fill a classroom regularly.1,5 The highlands hill villages with their
traditional interest in merantau and their more open society continued to show a cor-
respondingly greater interest in education than the plains and coastal areas. The
highlands itself showed a relatively greater interest in secular education than the
coast. By the early twentieth century, the ratio of the population of the coast to
that of the highlands was 4 to 9, but the pupil ratio was 1 to 9. **6 Along the coast,
the prejudice against learning a "trade" (any trade) remained. In the novel Sftti
Nurbaja, one of the characters, a penghulu of Padang, wants to send his son to the
STOVIA. His sister remonstrates with him. There is no need to learn Dutch, she
says, if one can attain rank without it.
43.	Interview, nagari council IV Kota, September 1967.
44.	Ibid.
45.	H. W. Stap, "Een Statistiek in de Onder-Afdeeling Oud-Agam, Afdeeling Agam,
Sumatra's Westkust," TBB, 52 (1917), pp. 151-52.
46.	H. Colijn, Advisor on Administration for the Outer Islands, April 24, 1909,
Verbaal, September 7, 1910, No. 32.CHAPTER VII
THE GENEALOGY OF THE NEW ELITE:
A CASE STUDY
As mentioned earlier, a major problem in determining the course of secular edu-
cation in the nineteenth century and its impact on the villages and people of Minang-
kabau is the lack of data. The available evidence suggests that middle-level mer-
chant and artisan families, that is to say, those groups with an already developed
merantau tradition, were the ones who took advantage of secular education, and
that, conversely, the families of penghulu and government chiefs showed less in-
terest. But it is difficult to document this.
One way to overcome the lack of documentation is to examine genealogies of the
families that became successful in the civil service and the professions in the twen-
tieth century and then work back along the path by which they achieved those
positions. This is difficult because many families apparently do not keep a written
genealogy and even if they do only the women's children are listed, because only
they belong to the matrilineage. Constructing a genealogy which takes into account
the occupations of the men, whether brothers or husbands, uncles or fathers, is
thus no easy task. But gather the family women around the kitchen fire or the men
around a table over a cup of coffee, and one can eventually pull out of their collec-
tive consciousnesses an almost complete background of the various village families,
for at least several generations back.
Tracing Minangkabau genealogies is interesting not just for the light it sheds
upon the rise of particular bureaucratic or professional families, but, at the same
time, for what it tells about Minangkabau society itself. One can see through the
genealogies, for instance, how the matrilineal organization could be as easily manip-
ulated to multiply the options of a given youth as to check his progress (the impli-
cation in many twentieth-century novels). The system is not as rigid as is often
portrayed, and once a few rules of the game are learned, a youth can play upon
the family situation, often to his great advantage.
An interesting insight that comes out of the genealogies, one which might not
otherwise be suspected, is the importance society actually attaches to a child's
father. This is not with regard to his role as "father" necessarily, but rather in
the wider terms of the advantages which liaison with his family brings to the moth-
er's family (which is, of course, the future child's own family). Descriptions of
Minangkabau and its matrilineal society often give the impression that the father
is only a shadowy figure who sneaks into the house at night and is gone by day-
break. This is patently not the case. The father apparently has always had an
important position, as an advisor in the councils of his wife's family as well as with
regard to the future of his children. The marriage tie in some respects was con-
tracted with the man's family because of a belief that it would most likely benefit
the expected children. The maternal uncle is important, of course, especially in
negotiating and arranging major rites concerning the child's future, as for example
his marriage. But the child in Minangkabau does have two sets of equally impor-
tant "parents" either of which can help him in his future life and both of which are
members of larger families which also recognize a certain obligation toward him.
129130
The genealogies also show the extent to which families tend to cluster into
groups based on marriage ties. Ideally, a young man marries the daughter of his
maternal uncle; her lineage is often the same as that of his own father, which keeps
everything in the family. Certain families as a result tend to intermarry frequently
from one generation to the next, and most of their principal relationships are with
each other rather than with branches within their respective lineages. This makes
it difficult to compile the genealogy of a whole matrilineage, because each subunit
knows mostly about the members of its own immediate circle and those of the group
with which it intermarries; but it may not know exactly where the common link is
between its own branch and the others in the matrilineage. Members know they
are related to other branches directly because they have the same penghulu (and
indeed quarrel constantly over the position), but often they cannot document the
connection with names or even the generation in which the direct link existed.
Since villages tended to require that each man marry a girl from his own village,
almost everyone is distantly related to everyone else, especially in the smaller vil-
lages. They refer to themselves as "cousins."
The families that are actually tied by marriage bonds usually cluster into simi-
lar socioeconomic groups--merchants, religious scholars, adat notables, etc. Two
families of cloth merchants, for example, will tend to intermarry, and this virtually
predetermines that children and nephews will become cloth merchants also, serving
the useful purpose of keeping the business and its trade secrets within the family.
Because certain family groups become so tightly intermarried, the lines between
matrilineal and patrilineal relatives become cloudy, making obligations to children
that much more inclusive. Whatever way one wants to figure a relationship, most
members of either family have some responsibility for the child. Such clustering
proved very important when the value of secular education and opportunities of the
civil service were first recognized. After someone in a family cluster decided that
secular education was important, whether because it was useful in wholesale com-
merce or in becoming a jaksa, the ideas were quickly disseminated through the
whole family cluster. Children were reoriented toward school training rather than,
or in addition to, the traditional apprenticeship in the family business. When one
family member broke into the civil service, he used the opportunity to share his
good fortune with a clutch of his immediate relatives.
The success of the first families in education and the government service, stim-
ulated other village families to emulate them, and also to seek marriage relationships
with them. In this way, the scope of educational interest and opportunity for jobs
spread in waves out from the original cluster through its related families and into
the village as a whole. The more tightly interlocked village families were by mutual
marriage relationships, the easier the new idea would spread. In addition to the
traditional clusters of merchants, some villages now developed clusters of bureau-
crats, doctors, or school teachers. Such families often specialized in a particular
kind of "intellectual profession" in the same way as other families specialized in a
particular trade.
The penghulu had their own mutually supportive and interlocking clusters
based on other notable families, which doubtless helped reinforce aristocratic preju-
dices, and may explain why an enthusiasm for secular education did not get started
in such clusters. With few links to these clusters becoming imbued with an interest
in secular education, the penghulu had few direct contacts with its successes.
Within notable clusters, position was conferred by right, and education was at best
a rite of passage on the road to becoming a village notable. In the 1920s, when
secular, Dutch-language education became an important criterion of elite status,
many laras- and nagarihoofd families began to place more emphasis on school atten-
dance. But their essential attitude toward it remained unchanged.131
By taking as a case study one village which developed an overwhelming interest
in secular education in the nineteenth century, one can see how the various factors
mentioned above operated in practice. The genealogies of village families which
moved into the civil service or the professions diagram how the stimulus reached
out along family lines in an almost geometric progression, spreading through the
village.
Introducing Kota Gedang
The various elements which coincided to produce a drive for secular education
among the highlands Minangkabau were nowhere more strongly concentrated than
in the village of Kota Gedang, located across the Ngarai canyon from Bukittinggi
(capital of the Assistant Residency of Agam and the Residency of the Highlands).1
An eighteenth-century center of perantau goldsmiths, by the early 1900s, Kota
Gedang had a territory-wide reputation as the home village of many indigenous colo-
nial bureaucrats--villagers served as jaksa, warehousemasters, tax officials, etc.,
throughout Sumatra and Kalimantan, and some held posts in Batavia as well.
A 1915 report estimated that 165 men from Kota Gedang were then serving as
officials with the civil service, seventy-nine of them outside Minangkabau. It is
also noteworthy that seventy-two of the 165 were listed as fluent in Dutch, indica-
tive of a fairly advanced education. 2 By 1940, the village had attained even greater
fame as the birthplace for doctors, lawyers, and engineers,, men who constituted a
large number of the small preindependence contingent of professionally trained
Indonesians. By 1942, for example, forty sons of Kota Gedang had graduated as
doctors from the STOVIA. In the late 1960s, an observer reported that one out of
every eleven natives of Kota Gedang was a sarjana (a general term for any graduate
of an advanced educational institution, that is, beyond high school). 3 4 Advance-
ment in the Dutch world did not mean collaboration with it; two of the most famous
prewar nationalists also came from Kota Gedang families--Haji Agus Salim and Sutan
Sjahrir. The first Indonesian woman educator and journalist, Rohanna Kudus, who
predated the well-known Kartini by more than a decade, also hailed from Kota
Gedang.
These accomplishments, remarkable by any measure, are the more amazing from
a village that in 1852 had a population of only 2,500, many of whom were family re-
tainers or servants. ** Kota Gedang was a village so small and agriculturally insig-
nificant in Dutch terms, that no controleur was ever posted there. Moreover, de-
spite its intellectual achievements, the first school located in the village itself was
founded only in the early twentieth century, long after similarly small villages, such
as Puar Datar or Sulit Air, had their own schools. Prior to that time, the youth of
Kota Gedang walked to Bukittinggi each day to attend the nagari school and the
Normal School. The trip required stamina. Though a distance of only a few kilome-
ters measured in a straight line, the path is rugged and crosses the deep Ngarai
canyon, into whose sheer chalk cliffsides are cut steep steps and tortuous trails.
1.	Much of the following is based on information gained through field research con-
ducted in Kota Gedang during September, October, and November 1967. For most
of that period, I lived in the village with the family of a semi-retired doctor.
2.	K. A. James, "De Nagari Kota Gedang," TBB, 49 (1915), p. 193.
3.	Aman Makmur [Padang], September 17, 1967.
4.	Report of the Resident of the Padang Highlands, 1852, Verbaal, July 13, 1858,
No. 35.132
Only those with the desire created by intense interest or necessity could be ex-
pected to continue this trip day after day and year after year until graduation.
Those with relatives living in Bukittinggi could arrange to board there, but these
were only the lucky few. Most civil servants and merchants from Kota Gedang who
worked in Bukittinggi also made the daily trip.
The Perantau Tradition
The village of Kota Gedang is a ghost town today, serving mainly as a retire-
ment home for pensioned officials and a nursery for the few remaining grandchildren.
Only some 900 people are year-round residents. Most of the large family houses are
permanently shuttered and barred. Kota Gedang died, a victim of its own success,
an ironic twist to the questing spirit of its historic perantau artisan and intellectual
ancestors. The twentieth-century concept of a supraethnic society in which a
Minangkabau can live happily in Jakarta, Medan, or Makasar, never returning to
his home village, created a new generation of perantau, who took their families
abroad with them and rarely returned for so much as a visit to the ancestral home.
Previously, only the most "adventurous" Minangkabau woman ever left her family's
house, even to accompany her husband abroad. Thus men must always return to
visit their families, and the village was always their permanent home. Since about
the 1920s, however, young people have been growing up on the rantau in Java
proudly asserting their Kota Gedang heritage and yet never having seen the village
itself. By the 1960s, such young people are the second generation born on the ran-
tau. The perantau ideal is not new for Kota Gedang, but, as with many other Mi-
nangkabau villages, it no longer serves as a means for sustaining family life in the
marginally agricultural Kota Gedang. Now it has become a way to avoid the village
entirely and usually forever--except for the romantic few who come home again to
die and be buried with their forebears.
Before Kota Gedang withered away, it had traditional significance in its own
small, and perhaps a trifle self-important, way. Along with neighboring Sianok, it
was considered the parent village of the IV Kota confederation--encompassing the
main villages of Sianok, Kota Gedang, Tabek Surajo, and Guguk, plus their numer-
ous satellite hamlets. Federation leadership had historically alternated between
Kota Gedang and Sianok. When the Dutch arrived, however, they conferred perma-
nent paramountcy on Kota Gedang and named it the seat for the IV Kota laras dis-
trict. Thus, whether by accident or clever manipulation, Kota Gedang was assured
continuous access to any opportunities which might derive from association with the
new order.
None of the villages of the IV Kota had sufficient rice land to sustain a desir-
able living standard. Almost all families had to pursue other trades: in Kota Ge-
dang, the most common was as a gold or silver smith, 5 and in neighboring villages
it was mainly as merchants or peddlers. The whole IV Kota area had a highly devel-
oped perantau tradition before the Europeans came. In Kota Gedang, the perantau
life was pursued by almost all males. Village families had numerous slaves and re-
tainers who tended to daily agricultural tasks, and the women provided whatever
general supervision was needed over the fieldwork. Men were free to practice their
perantau occupations unburdened by domestic obligations. Their habit of traveling
throughout the region served them in good stead later when the colonial regime re-
quired those serving the foreign bureaucracy to be willing to accept jobs in the
newly acquired territories--Aceh, Riau, or Kalimantan.6 Such an open-minded
5.	Ibid.
6.	D. Gerth van Wijk, "Een Menangkabausche Heilige," TBG, 24 (1877), pp. 224-25.133
approach to geographic mobility contrasted sharply with the natives of other vil-
lages and towns, such as Padang. Though cajoled and threatened by turn, the
natives of Padang refused to let their sons leave home, deeming it a tragedy beyond
recall for a man to die elsewhere than in his mother's house, not to mention the
shame attached to leaving home to earn a living.
In Kota Gedang, and indeed much of the IV Kota area, yearly harvests could
barely support even the immediate relatives of the richest penghulu. Perantau life
was idealized and a stigma was often attached to a youth, even the heir to a peng-
hulu-ship, who stayed home. A perantau was usually expected to succeed on his
own without family capital. 7 The impressive and new Indies-style homes which still
stand in Kota Gedang provide mute testimony to the perantau's successes. And
even today, successful sons of Kota Gedang continue sending money home to build
ever more modern family houses, though they may never come to see them, nor will
anyone else ever live in them. Yet the testimony is apparently necessary,for it
proves one's success on the rantau and acknowledges one's ties and, by implica-
tion, one's obligation to the home village.
The people of Kota Gedang claim they are unsuited by temperament to the kind
of interpersonal dealings required of good merchants; rather, they say, they in-
cline more to the individual life of the skilled craftsman—or latterly, the intellec-
tual. Though genealogical evidence contradicts their contention of a traditional
indifference to trade, the fact that such a belief is now part of village conventional
wisdom is an interesting commentary on the extent to which the inhabitants have
divorced themselves from past values. Whereas artisanry is still regarded as a no-
ble profession, villagers tend to regard merchants with a bit of disdain.
Kota Gedang and the Dutch
The experience of Kota Gedang residents at the hands of the Padri just prior to
the Dutch arrival probably preconditioned them to value a stable colonial order.
The nearby village of Koto Tuo, reputedly an historic offshoot of Kota Gedang and
hence subordinate to it, became a Padri center fairly early. The first major Dutch
military establishment in Agam was Fort de Kock, established in 1825, on the out-
skirts of Bukittinggi. Kota Gedang was caught geographically between the two ,
opposing forces. It was also the holy center for a tarekat brotherhood, precisely
the kind of eclectic Islam most hated by the Padri. The village had a shrine to an
early eighteenth-century syekhsupposedly born miraculously from a village virgin. 8
Obviously, it was a ready target for the religious puritans of Koto Tuo, supported
by ambitious adat leaders, who no doubt were long resentful of their subordination
to Kota Gedang penghulu in ritual and prestige matters.
It is charged by outsiders, and accepted by some Kota Gedang villagers them-
selves, that the village opted for the Dutch side early in the hostilities of the 1820s.
Detractors assert that the Dutch promised that henceforth Kota Gedang would re-
ceive favored treatment, and that this explains its subsequent success in the civil
service. Even if the charges of calculated collaboration are true, however, they do
not explain fully the subsequent developments. The Dutch provided other villages
equal and perhaps greater opportunities for both education and public service, but
these villages did not display the same interest.
7.	Personal interview with the penghulu's councils of the IV Koto, in Koto Tuo,
September 28, 1967.
8.	Van Wijk, "Menangkabausche Heilige," contains a full account of the syekh
and his life.134
Kota Gedang villagers had a preexisting predilection for looking outside the
village. While other villagers of the IV Kota continued as merchants and often used
the Dutch coffee system as the springboard for developing large merchandising en-
terprises, many families in Kota Gedang gradually gave up their traditional voca-
tions as craftsmen or merchants and began new ones as government servants. This
does not seem to have been solely on economic grounds, that is, because gold work-
ing or trade had become significantly less profitable after the advent of the Dutch.
In many other parts of the region Minangkabau in similar occupations were able to
profit from the new internal and external markets being opened up, especially
through coffee. Although Kota Gedang itself was not a major coffee-producing vil-
lage because it lacked land, the surrounding area was ideal coffee country--in the
foothills near Mount Singgalang and on the uplands around Lake Maninjau. In vil-
lages such as Koto Tuo and Balingka, large and prosperous merchant families de-
veloped. These villagers only really turned to secular education as an alternative
path beginning in the 1920s and 1930s, perhaps as a reflection of the generally de-
pressed economic situation of that time.
Kota Gedang, as the administrative center for the IV Kota nonetheless bene-
fited from the new money being generated by the coffee system. The foremost
local example of this was Radjo Mangkuto, who had charge of transport arrange-
ments for coffee produced in the whole IV Kota area and much of the surrounding
region. He became so wealthy as a result that he chartered a ship to make the pil-
grimage to Mecca, and afterward he continued to Holland where he presented King
William III with several gold objects crafted in Kota Gedang. Radjo Mangkuto's
brother, Abdul Rahman, was the Koto lineage penghulu (the Datuk Dinagari), but,
more important, he was the first jaksa of Bukittinggi (1833-68). Another brother,
Haji Abdul Latief, became head of the first Bukittinggi Normal School when it
opened in 1856. The combination of an entree to the Dutch regime and easy access
to education, all supported by great family wealth, was carefully used. From this
nucleus, there developed one of the major clusters of civil servants and professional
men in Kota Gedang.
As has been noted before, in the early era of secular education, families viewed
school training as another skill like smithing; something to be learned but used to
pursue essentially traditional goals. Attending school did not fundamentally change
one's views or one's value system. Education was not, as it were, an "experience"
it was equivalent to an "apprenticeship." The family of the Datuk Dinagari in Kota
Gedang was no exception to this. They used their education and the positions it
brought them in the Dutch regime as part of a power play within village politics.
The village was still the major arena of activity for all families whether they were
high colonial officials or wealthy landed notables. By the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury, this had changed. The second generation of Western-educated officials and
intellectuals began looking outward to Sumatra and the Indies as a whole. Their
sphere of action enlarged and village affairs assumed lesser importance. Though
still concerned about their prestige vis-lt-vis other villagers, the new elite had less
interest in running village affairs, except perhaps after retirement.
In the 1860s and 1870s, however, families still competed on an essentially vil-
lage level. The cluster of families which surrounded and supported the Datuk Dina-
gari used their associations with the Dutch, their prestige as people who know their
way around the new order, and the massive wealth they had gained from coffee
deals, to engineer the election of one of their kemanakan, the new Datuk Dinagari
(Djunaid) as the larashoofd of the IV Kota in 1872. They wrested the position from
the lineage which had held it since the Dutch arrival in the 1820s.
The incumbent lineage, that of Piliang/Datuk Kajo, had apparently suffered a
financial crisis after the preceding Datuk Kajo had squandered the family's resources135
on gambling and high living. 9 Nonetheless, the change in larashoofd to a new line-
age created a great deal of turmoil and Djunaid eventually resigned. The Datuk
Kajo family regained its former position. The Datuk Dinagari family continued
among the most important of the village’s families, but its significance was in terms
of high civil service positions and, later, importance in the professions, especially
medicine and law. Its sole reminder of the brief whirl in local adat politics is an os-
tentatious two-story European-style mansion built to house larashoofd Djunaid. The
house is filled with overstuffed European furniture, mementoes of European acquain-
tanceships, and other tokens of high office--curiously symbolic that the family was
more adept and at home in the Dutch sphere of the civil service than in the adat
sphere of village politics, and perhaps more accepted in the former as well.
The Civil Service Dynasties10
The story of Djunaid represents an early stage in the development of the new
Kota Gedang elite. Increasingly, attention was directed not at the adat competitions
of the village but at the colonial politics of the supravillage world. Genealogies of
these families provide specific examples of how the interest in education accelerated
from one generation to the next. The first man who gained a position in the bureau-
cracy, typically a jaksa or warehousemaster, was often trained on the job because,
in the early years, there was as yet no nagari school in Bukittinggi. Why a partic-
ular individual was selected for a post is unclear, but obviously he had had contact
with some Dutch official and had impressed that person with his competence. Jaksa
and warehousemasters were important positions requiring competence and a sense of
responsibility. The jaksa served as the controleur’s or Assistant Resident's right
hand man in local decisions, and functioned as an objective commentator on local
problems. He had to be an outsider, unconnected with the village adat establish-
ment and hence not subject to it. The warehousemaster was responsible for coffee
collection, the core of the cultivation system, in his district, and often worked with
only little supervision from the nearby controleur.
One of the major families of civil servants and later professional men were mem-
bers of the Datuk Dinagari branch of the Suku Koto. They were the descendants
of the previously mentioned Abdul Rahman, jaksa of Bukittinggi. He married a
Kota Gedang girl and had two sons, both of whom were jaksa--one at Palembayan
and one at Riau (the future father of Haji Agus Salim). Abdul Rahman’s daughter
married a Kota Gedang man who was warehousemaster at Batu Sangkar. Abdul Rah-
man also married a Padang girl, from whom he had two sons: a teacher and the first
stationmaster of the rail depot in Padang. His kemanakan included five boys, none
of whom excelled in government or private life with the exception of Djunaid, the
future larashoofd. Of his nieces, however, three married jaksa from Kota Gedang,
one married a warehousemaster, and one an official in the comptroller's bureau.
The only son of Abdul Rahman's brother Abdul Gani, the coffee contractor, was
also a jaksa, in Padang. Abdul Rahman's brother Haji Abdul Latief, the head of
the Normal School, had one son who held no position. Among Abdul Rahman's
9.	Verbaal, January 22, 1875, No. 19.
10.	In the course of my field research in Kota Gedang, I compiled bilateral genealo-
gies of about a dozen important lineages. Most are complete for four or five genera-
tions, in other words, back to the arrival of the Dutch in Kota Gedang. The infor-
mation on the civil service dynasties and the comparative comments on the artisan,
penghulu, and other families have been drawn from these genealogies. Because the
charts themselves are very bulky, they have not been included in this monograph.136
grandchildren and grand-nephews were a teacher, an engineer, three doctors, two
medical technicians, two district officers, three jaksa, and eleven lesser government
officials. But of these, it was as much the father as the mamak who determined
their futures. For example, one niece married a man who was jaksa in Bukittinggi
and, of their five sons, three were also jaksa (two of these were head jaksa), one
was a district officer, and the fifth had a private business. Another niece, how-
ever, married a man of wealth but no vocation and, of her three sons, one taught
school and one was a clerk.
This illustrates the point made earlier about the importance of the father in rais-
ing the children and influencing their careers, despite the apparent contradiction
this raises with the matrilineal family structure. In practice, it seems, the role of
mamak was traditionally more crucial in matters regarding marriage of female chil-
dren, distribution of harta pusaka and other matters governing strictly lineage
affairs. But he had less immediate interest or control over his sister's children
than their own father. If the father could not help the children, or if he had died,
or had divorced his wife, then the uncle would assume primary responsibility for
the children.
The case history of a family in the Datuk Radjo Nando branch of the Sikumbang
lineage illustrates also the role the father could play. Neither the matrilineal family
nor its usual marriage partners represented important village literati until one mem-
ber, Abdul Halim, was chosen nagarihoofd. He used his position to get three of his
sons appointed as government officials and two others accepted by the STOVIA (only
one graduated). Abdul Halim's sister married a man without government position
but, by relying on her brother, three of her four sons became doctors. Another
sister married a teacher and, of her six sons, one was a doctor and one a district
official. But not all in the family group developed the same interest in secular edu-
cation. A brother of Abdul Halim was a haji, an indication at least of wealth if not
religious conviction, and none of the haji's sons went into any profession or worked
for the government. There is no information about the financial status of this fam-
ily vis-a-vis other village families. Wealth, as indicated by the title of haji, might
have tempered an interest in outside employment. Prior to Abdul Halim's genera-
tion, the women in the Datuk Radjo Nando branch had produced few children, and
the lineage seemed in danger of dying out. This, among other things, meant that
supplemental income would be less crucial. The rapid increase in family member-
ship in Abdul Halim's generation suggests that economic necessity might account
for the sudden interest in schools and government jobs.
The genealogy of the Datuk Bahano Kajo branch of the Piliang lineage contains
two subbranches with different histories. Until just before World War II, the men
of one remained exclusively goldsmiths and the women married goldsmiths. The
members of the other branch, which retained the penghulu-ship, had no professions
or vocations; all lived off family properties and, if they had any independent accom-
plishments, no one can remember them.
A striking change in family orientation could take place in one generation. The
Datuk Palindih branch of the Sikumbang lineage went in one step from all goldsmiths
to none. One of the men married the sister of the larashoofd Datuk Kajo, which
gave the family a connection to the Dutch establishment, but this does not of itself
explain why the overwhelming push toward secular education arose nor why it was
so complete. In the family cluster, the first generation of nongoldsmiths included
two jaksa, a demang, a treasury official, and a teacher. The next generation had
eight doctors, many government officials, several engineers and lawyers. It was
not until very late, however, that members of the larashoofd family itself exhibited
any particular inclination toward advanced education. In the 1920s their children137
were attending the privileged Dutch-language schools as a matter of course. The
last larashoofd (then demang) was the first to send his children to these schools,
and, of his eleven sons who were educated before the war, one became a doctor,
one a veterinarian, one a lawyer, and one a demang.
The case of the Datuk Maradjo branch of the Piliang lineage illustrates the fairly
common combination of merchant and civil-service careers. The family which had
the most success in the government were descended from a merchant father. Of
his three sons, one became the warehousemaster in Batu Sangkar and another a
merchant. The daughters married nonofficials and their children likewise held no
position. The sons' children on the other hand included thirteen males, of whom
there were three jaksa (two hoofdjaksa), two district officials, two teachers, and
two officials in the opium office. Four others were successful merchants and one
became a goldsmith. In the next generation, every male either held a government
position or was a professional man. Two units of the family had close ties to Riau,
holding at once the position of demang, head jaksa, and two posts in the opium of-
fice. This geographic concentration illustrates how one person could open the way
for all his relatives. Many relatives also went to Riau as merchants.
Some Considerations
The brief discussion of some Kota Gedang families illustrates how the members
of one village adapted to the colonial reality which existed after the 1830s and how
they fit the new opportunities to traditional needs. Very early on, certain families
perceived that the advent of Dutch rule could be advantageous, and discovered that
power, prestige, and wealth could be gained in ways other than through the total
collaboration of the adat rulers in coastal and plains villages. By using the tradi-
tional skills of intra- and interfamily politics to achieve new objectives, Kota Gedang
families attained the same goals. Whether through force of necessity or shrewd
evaluation, these families realized that the future lay in access to the growing na-
tive civil service rather than in the village adat structure. They pragmatically set
about acquiring the necessary skills and contacts.
At first, some tried to use the new positions in traditional ways, that is to im-
prove family chances in local politics and to acquire more village land. But by the
early twentieth century, the new educated elite had opted out of the village entirely
and had entered the greater world of the Indies society; village affairs were left to
molder in the hands of the few who were too traditional to change, too comfortable
in their accustomed molds, or too unenergetic to make the transition. In the words
of wits on the rantau: the "Menang" (i.e., winners) have all left the village and
only the "kerbau" (buffalos) remain.
Why Kota Gedang more than any other village identified the new trend and dog-
gedly pursued it is a complex and not totally explicable phenomenon. Other villages
had geographically better access to nagari schools. Kota Gedang children did get a
crucial early entree into the Normal School, important less as a training ground for
teachers than as a means to become high-level civil servants. Kota Gedang had
early and close ties to the Dutch bureaucracy, but other villages also had ties.
However, in Kota Gedang it was not the larashoofd family, the usual point of con-
tact with Dutch officialdom, which had the most important relations with the Dutch
but rather another lineage, which had direct ties in the form of jaksa and ware-
housemasters. As elsewhere, the larashoofd family in Kota Gedang displayed little
or no real interest in the alternatives provided by secular education. But this fam-
ily held no monopoly on access to the Dutch, and hence did not discourage the
chances of others who might want to join the colonial world. If in other villages,138
this was not the case, it could explain why, despite otherwise similar opportunities,
these villages did not develop like Kota Gedang.
An important factor in Kota Gedang's rise was its entry into the upper levels
of the civil service almost immediately. Families recognized that the positions of
jaksa and warehousemaster were crucial ones and worked mightily to attain them.
Appointments above the level of clerk required direct contacts as well as education
in nagari school. The people of Kota Gedang early had a channel into the teachers'
institute, whose graduates most easily became important civil servants, and Kota
Gedang's geographical proximity to the center of Dutch administration in the high-
lands gave it an added advantage over the villages of the northern coffee regions.
By 1900 advanced education required a knowledge of Dutch as well as formal aca-
demic subjects, and Kota Gedang children were pushed from an early age to acquire
proficiency in Dutch and excel at elementary school so that they would be assured
of a place in the roster of the advanced schools. Many families began sending their
children to Jakarta in the 1920s, because competition for entry into schools there
was less intense and the opportunities for advanced education and government jobs
greater. Kota Gedang's merantau tradition meant that families usually had a rela-
tive in one of the larger cities with whom the prospective student could board.
Other highlands villages also developed civil service dynasties, though on a
smaller scale. The pattern resembled that of Kota Gedang: families with good con-
tacts could place educated members in the upper level of the civil service, but
others had to be content with lesser posts and hope that talent and seniority would
eventually be rewarded. None of these villages, however, can match Kota Gedang
in the singleminded use of position in the government to pull others along with them.
The major lineages of Kota Gedang developed an esprit de corps which included all
the residents. Secular education and government service became accepted hallmarks
of success. And, more importantly, individuals felt a communal not just a familial
responsibility to help others reach the upper echelon. So long as anyone was left
behind, it was an embarrassment to the rest.11 As a result, anyone who wished to
enroll in the nagari school or the Normal School could always find some "relative"
who had a high position and was willing to serve as his "sponsor."12 The Dutch,
for their part, proved agreeable to a loose interpretation of "parentage" when quiz-
zing prospective Sekolah Radja pupils about their family backgrounds. Family
status was actually less important in the nineteenth century than it became after
the "broadening" of the education base under the Ethical Policy of the twentieth
century. By that time, however, sufficient numbers of Kota Gedang people had
government posts to assure that, whatever conditions were imposed on admission,
the village children would not be barred.
The close-knit feelings of Kota Gedang families reflect both the force of cir-
cumstance and historical tradition. A marginal agricultural village, Kota Gedang
did not develop a deeply entrenched landed elite with aristocratic pretensions which
might have separated them from society at large or lower-ranking members of their
own lineage. Many heirs to the penghulu-ship in Kota Gedang spent their own
youth on the rantau helping supplement family wealth. In some families, however,
the process of Dutch rule did create a new, leisured class of penghulu, secure in
their posts and less and less interested in outside chances, a class of idle rich
11.	Personal interview with Iljas St. Pamenan of Kota Gedang, in Jakarta, Febru-
ary 27, 1967.
12.	These relationships were cast in kinship terms, even when there were no blood
ties.139
derisively called the Angku Senang ("lords of pleasure," or playboys) by the
other villagers of Kota Gedang.
The feeling of mutual self-interest was not wholly spiritual but also resulted
from the extensive intermarriage among lineages in the village. Everyone was sup-
posed to marry someone from the village. Although many perantau males married
outsiders, they had an obligation to marry a girl from Kota Gedang as well. In
1920, a girl from Kota Gedang was formally disinherited by her family, and the
nagari council, for eloping with a Javanese.13 In fact children of a Kota Gedang
father and alien mother would often return to Kota Gedang to marry. Thus the
talent that was "lost" for one generation was "returned home" in the next.
A way to measure the growth of the secular education ideal is to follow the for-
tunes of the lineage penghulu-ships. During the nineteenth century, many artisan,
merchant, and civil service families showed a great interest in marrying into a peng-
hulu family, but after the turn of the twentieth century, this became less common.
By about the 1920s, after families had begun leaving the village permanently and were
no longer operating within the adat environment, the position of penghulu itself
became less attractive. Many families never filled vacancies after a penghulu's
death, or else they conferred the title on a noted doctor or government official in
the hope that after his retirement he would return to Kota Gedang and look after
family interests. Fewer and fewer people lived in Kota Gedang with passing gener-
ations. Because government was increasingly a matter for civil service officials,
the penghulu became decorative but almost useless institutions. Even their pres-
tige was gone, with doctors, demang, or professors considered of greater impor-
tance. As a result, the marriage pattern, to a certain extent, reversed itself.
Whereas, formerly, families of goldsmiths sought to marry a daughter to a peng-
hulu, now families of penghulu hoped to marry a daughter to a doctor. This illus-
trates the final resolution of nineteenth-century developments--the lineage peng-
hulu, assured of their jobs by a Dutch-style adat, become obsolete when the adat
administration ceases to have any meaning in practical terms. Penghulu families
have often found it difficult to overcome this decline in position created because
they chose to ignore the supravillage world and its opportunities in the nineteenth
century. By the twentieth century the headstart gained by other families was
often too great.
13. "Adatvonnissen (1920)," Adatrechtbundels, 20, pp. 143-46.CHAPTER VIII
EPILOGUE: MINANGKABAU IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
By the turn of the century, the increasing numbers of Minangkabau desiring
civil service or other government-related careers intensified the pressure on the
Dutch administration to enlarge local schools and admit more pupils. Although for-
merly, reading and writing Malay plus good "references" had assured graduates of
eventual appointment to higher positions, by the early twentieth century so many
qualified applicants were available that literacy in Dutch was becoming a new stan-
dard for employment in the upper echelons. This resulted more from upgrading the
requirements for existing jobs than opening new, higher-level jobs to Minangkabau.
The Indies administration had not expanded enough to absorb all the elementary or
even secondary school graduates.
The demand to learn Dutch became so great among the Minangkabau that anyone
with the slightest knowledge of the language would establish a backyard school giv-
ing crash courses to aspiring civil servants and professionals. Those who had any
influence with the Dutch government pressured to gain admittance for their chil-
dren in the various European elementary schools in West Sumatra. In 1909, it was
reported that over one-third of the total pupils at the European schools in West
Sumatra were non-European, and without the stringent quota system governing ad-
mittance to these schools, the proportion would have been even higher.1
In an ironic twist of fate, the Dutch regime's growing recognition of the need
for increased secular education for Indonesians adversely affected the educational
opportunities in Minangkabau. In 1892, the government had again decided to coor-
dinate administrative responsibility and reorganize education in all parts of the
Indies. Now teachers, assistants, and regional inspectors were to be established
more systematically in the whole archipelago and more directly under the govern-
ment's auspices, with indigenous schools divided into first- and second-class levels.2
The result of this decree in West Sumatra, however, was to downgrade the existing
schools, which were declared second-class schools, though in fact they offered
better education than most schools of this level elsewhere. The new plan allowed
only the children of chiefs and notables to attend the new "high quality," first-
class schools, the reason being that there they would be groomed for rule. The
projected number of second-class schools (called volksschool, or people's schools)
was determined by the number of administrative districts in a given province, re-
gardless of population density or the desire of the inhabitants for education.
Thus, Jambi, which had about sixty-seven pupils per school and an absentee rate
of 30 percent, was granted schools in the same proportion as Minangkabau, which
averaged 150 pupils per school and an absentee rate of only 8 percent.3
1.	Report of the Inspector of Education for Sumatra's West Coast, Grivel, March
22, 1909, Verbaal, October 18, 1910, No. 23.
2.	Royal Decree on Indigenous Education, 1892, Verbaal, September 23, 1892, No. 13.
3.	Inspector of Education Grivel to the Director of Education, November 30, 1909,
Verbaal, September 7, 1910, No. 32.
140
i141
The new "liberal" policy benefitted districts where education was relatively
underdeveloped, while in areas such as Sumatra’s West Coast, it tended to under-
cut the progress already achieved by denying any new schools until all other areas
had received their quota. Pressure thus increased on the existing West Sumatra
schools to such an extent that, in some places, only the upper civil service families
could assure their children entry to even the government elementary schools.
In West Sumatra, part of the pressure was relieved by the numerous private
schools which sprang up in response to increased interest in education--in 1912,
in the city of Padang alone, there were twenty-three private schools (receiving no
government subsidies) with a total of 1,200 pupils. This compares, for instance,
to a total of fifty-three such schools for the whole of Java and Madura during the
same period. 11 At the same time, religious schools were staging a massive comeback
after decades of decay, because parents believed that any education which imparted
literacy would enhance the prospects for employment. These schools had also en-
larged their curricula, and pupils now learned to read and copy government docu-
ments in Malay, using both the Arabic and the Roman scripts. As the twentieth
century wore on, some of these surau would be transformed into semisecular schools
Dutch officials feared that the resurgence of religious schools might lead to a more
general revival of Islamic antigovernment activity. 4 5 In the event, these fears
proved justified.
An important cause of antigovernment activity in Minangkabau, whether under
religious or secular leaders, was the widespread unemployment among former pupils
of the various schools. Not only did the government not have sufficient jobs in the
West Sumatra administration but at the same time, increased education elsewhere '
was producing local recruits to fill jobs formerly open to perantau literati from Mi-
nangkabau. The unemployment problem was becoming apparent well before 1900.
An ex-Governor of the West Coast, H. D. Canne, complained, in the 1880s, that
the unemployed Minangkabau scholastics had begun to encourage villagers to agitate
directly with the government for redress of any grievances. They suggested that
villagers send complaining letters to government officials--letters which the unem-
ployed scholars then wrote on the villagers’ behalf, for a small fee.6 The employ-
ment crisis later spread to graduates of the upper-level schools as well. In the
1920s, Governor Whitlau cautioned that a politically dangerous situation was build-
ing because, after overcoming great competition to enter school in the first place,
pupils found that, on graduation, they "had achieved only an uncertain future."7
In such a situation, obviously, families which had already achieved a position
in the government service had great advantages. Whatever the regulations govern-
ing schools and jobs, men with connections could arrange that their children and
nephews received favorable attention. Whereas in the nineteenth century, the
Dutch administration had frozen entry into the adat elite, one could now see a par-
allel development with regard to the bureaucratic elite.
4.	XY, "Het Inlandsch Onderwijs ter Sumatra's Westkust," Koloniaal Tijdschrift,
2, 1 (1913), p. 398.
5.	Memorie van Overgave, Resident of Sumatra's West Coast, Le Febvre, Mailrap-
port, No. 2904/* 19.
6.	N. Graafland, "De Reorganisatie van het Inlandsch Onderwijs," Verslagen van
het Indisch Cenootschap (1889), p. 92.
7.	Memorie van Overgave, Governor of Sumatra’s West Coast, Whitlau, April 1926,
Mailrapport, No. 2488/'26.142
Not only did civil service families have a greater chance to enroll children in
West Sumatra schools, but, by virtue of their networks of relations outside Minang-
kabau, they could send children to other areas and thus take advantage of the rela-
tively lower competition there. A 1909 report by the education inspector for the
West Coast area concluded that such was indeed happening in Aceh. The govern-
ment had recently erected fifteen schools there only to find the greatest number of
pupils were not in fact Acehnese. The inspector believed that many of these non-
Acehnese students were in fact Minangkabau. 8 Many men from Kota Gedang, for
example, served in the civil administration for Aceh, and their children did attend
school there. These included not only their children by Acehnese wives but, in
many cases, their children brought from Kota Gedang as well. The Dutch were
understandably disturbed by this, because they had planned the schools as train-
ing centers for the Acehnese elite.
To a certain degree, important merchant families, because they had contacts
throughout the western archipelago and similar close ties with the civil service,
could place their children in government schools. Beginning in the 1930s, such
families were indeed becoming more and more interested in advanced education.
For example, two villages in the IV Kota, Agam, had their first STOVIA graduates
in the 1930s. All four students (one from Sianok and three from Koto Tuo) were
children from rich merchant families that had not previously displayed any particu-
lar interest in education. 9
As part of an administrative reorganization in 1914, the Dutch regime wanted
to replace the old quasi-adat larashoofd and nagarihoofd with a new, merit civil
service administration made up of graduates from the secular schools and the new
civil service academy, the OSVIA. Daily village administration would be "returned
to the true village leaders"--the core penghulu, or founding families. The govern-
ment planned to absorb the former larashoofd who were qualified into the new ad-
ministration as demang (the civil service title for the equivalent position) and then
post them to areas outside their former nagari. Padang officials discovered to their
dismay that the larashoofd were almost always too ill-qualified to handle the new ad-
ministrative functions, and, in many cases, they were totally illiterate.10
During the nineteenth century, rather than study themselves, the chiefs had
simply hired former nagari school pupils to serve as their private secretaries and
treat any aspect of administration which required literacy. Consequently, the
graduates of the new civil service courses had been overwhelmingly the children of
merchant and civil service families. In 1907, for,example, only four of the fifteen
candidate officials at the Bukittinggi Civil Service Academy were the children of
larashoofd, and, more important, not one was the heir (kemanakan) of a larashoofd.
Even those chiefs who saw value in secular education expected that the future of
their kemanakan would be assured by virtue of birth. If they sent anyone to
school, therefore, it would be a son.* 11
With the 1914 reorganization, the chiefs' job security should have disappeared,
but Dutch officials continued to prefer the kemanakan of larashoofd even over a
8.	Inspector of Education Grivel to the Director of Education, November 30, 1909,
Verbaal, September 7, 1910, No. 32.
9.	Interviews with the elders of the IV Kota, October 1967, in Koto Tuo.
10.	Resident of Sumatra's West Coast Le Febvre to the Governor General, July 6,
1918, Verbaal, March 4, 1919, No. 23.
11.	Governor of Sumatra's West Coast Heckler to the Governor General, October 17,
1907, Verbaal, October 21, 1908, No. 44.143
more educated middle-level villager. The Dutch professed to believe that, unless
they had appropriate bloodlines, new officials would carry no weight in the village
--even though they served outside their home nagari. Nonetheless, the majority of
OSVIA graduates continued to be of commoner origin (orang kebanyakan).12 Obvi-
ously, this situation would create difficulties for the regime, if not immediately,
then certainly in a few years when graduates fully realized that their education
made little difference.
In addition to Dutch predilections for aristocratic demang, they also allowed in-
cumbent larashoofd to continue in office until death or retirement. Only then would
a demang be appointed to the district. As a result, few positions were available for
the new OSVIA graduates. One official predicted, in 1908, that the vacancy rate
would be only about three positions per year, while the Bukittinggi OSVIA alone
graduated some ten candidates each year.13
The OSVIA graduates were over-qualified for most other civil service posts.
Also the upper-level jobs in the indigenous ranks of the administration were deter-
mined by seniority rather than formal education. The Indies government, mean-
while, had abolished many top positions both by ending the coffee cultivation sys-
tem and as part of a more general economizing drive in all departments.ll* The
upper-level civil service families, though they could provide their children with a
quality education, might not be able to assure them of a good job. Surely it is no
accident that an interest among Kota Gedang civil service families in enrolling their
children in the professional schools (specifically the STOVIA) appeared during these
same first two decades of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century, few,
if any, people from Kota Gedang had even enrolled at the doktor djawa school. Be-
tween 1900 and 1910, the village had two graduates. In the next decade, eleven
students from the village graduated from the STOVIA, and, during the remaining
years before the war, another twenty-seven.15 The competition to enter the
STOVIA was especially keen, and only those with top qualifications and good con-
tacts in government circles could be sure of matriculation.
In the early twentieth century, at a time when many more elements in the Mi-
nangkabau population were awakening to the values of a secular education, the
opportunities for obtaining it were perceptibly decreasing, as the Dutch concen-
trated on education for the more underdeveloped areas. Academic entrepreneurs
established private schools, many of which were short-lived, and some villages es-
tablished community schools, reminiscent of the early nagari schools. One such
village was Kota Gedang, which, in 1910, collected an education fund by assessing
each family 3 percent of its income. The money was used to build a local Dutch
language elementary school and to send Kota Gedang youth to the Netherlands to
train as teachers.lS In some areas, lineage families banded together to raise
money to send their more able members to school in Batavia, and even Europe. In
many ways, the families' response resembled the traditional practice of staking
promising adolescents to careers as artisans or merchants. These local solutions,
however, could not completely defuse the tense atmosphere created by the over-
supply of interest and undersupply of opportunity.
12.	Memorie van Overgave, Governor Whitlau, 1926, Mailrapport, No. 2488/'26.
13.	Verbaal, October 21, 1908, No. 44.
14.	Governor of Sumatra's West Coast Heckler to the Governor General, October 17,
1909, Verbaal, October 21, 1908, No. 44.
15.	Interviews in Kota Gedang, October and November 1967.
16.	Ibid.; and XY, "Inlandsch Onderwijs," pp. 402-3.144
Through a combination of native wit, good fortune, economic necessity, regional
family networks, and a tradition of seeking the future outside village society, many
Minangkabau families arrived in the twentieth century in a better position than most
other people in the Indies. The 1840s graduates of the West Sumatra schools had
played the colonial game with great profit to their families and, in so doing, had
pointed out the path of opportunity to others. Those who took up the challenge
were the same families that had traditionally lived on the geographic and economic
margins of Minangkabau life. Historically they had needed extra money and pres-
tige to overcome the handicaps of being born in a family or village which did not
have quite enough to achieve the ever-beckoning dream.
The Minangkabau entered the civil service, not in the spirit of the upper-class
Javanese who were acculturated to the glory of service in the bureaucracy of the
king (whatever his ethnic group), but more in the spirit of the entrepreneur who
must first identify the name of the game and then play it to the greatest personal
advantage. It was money and patronage and the power it brought which beckoned
to the families of villages such as Kota Gedang, not some intangible glory inherent
in serving an all-powerful ruler.
The Dutch government only occasionally helped the Minangkabau attain educa-
tion in the nineteenth century, and then usually through the efforts of individuals.
Men, such as Steinmetz or van Ophuizen, inspired certain villagers at certain times
to begin the educational experiment, but it was local situations and interests which
determined the ultimate success or failure of these attempts. When the interested
Dutch officials were transferred, the interest in education remained in those areas
where it filled a recognized local need. In other areas, however, the students wan-
dered away when the officials' backs were turned. It was, therefore, the Minangka-
bau people themselves who created the great intellectual flowering which would be
evident to everyone else later in the twentieth century.
The Minangkabau came to grips with the new, secular, colonial order on their
own terms; they took what they needed and adjusted it to their particular (and
sometimes traditional) purposes. Though they worked for the Dutch regime, they
did not identify their fate with that of the colonial order, as was often the case
with the Christians of Indonesia. Many Minangkabau were famous and ardent na-
tionalists, organizing autonomous non-European activities before other, often more
vocal, people had come of age. From the beginning, the educated elite of Minangka-
bau had the self-confidence and self-assurance to stand alone without the Euro-
peans. When it came to open warfare in 1945, the Minangkabau quickly identified
the new path and strongly supported the Republican forces. The mountain fast-
nesses of West Sumatra provided the site for the Emergency Government of the Re-
public after the Dutch occupied Java, in 1948, and captured the Revolutionary lead-
ership in Yogyakarta.
Clever manipulation and a unique interpretation of the ground rules established
by the colonial regime assured the Minangkabau of their ultimate success. A small
and weak people, they managed not only to avoid being swallowed up by a more
powerful one, but also to use the very strength of the colonizer to the advantage
of the colonized. Without the integrated administrative network with which the
Dutch governed the Indies, the Minangkabau would not have become the common
figures they are in Indonesia today, prominent on all levels and in all areas of
archipelago life. When the Dutch regime began to waver and the new opportunity
appeared, the pragmatic Minangkabau were the first to abandon the sinking colo-
nial ship.GLOSSARY
Adat
Anak Buah
Bodi Caniago
Cerdik Pandai
Chatib
Darat
Datuk
Demang
Doktor Djawa
Haji
Harta Pencarian
Harta Pusaka
Imam
Induk Nagari
Jaksa
Kaum
Kemanakan
Body of lore and traditional customs which governed the
organization and operation of precolonial society. In this
case usually referred to as the Adat Minangkabau.
A person's followers or dependents. In Minangkabau, usu-
ally the constituents of the penghulu suku or the mamak.
One of two political traditions of Minangkabau. It stresses
an egalitarian approach to the relationship among penghulu
and between penghulu and their followers.
The "intelligentsia" of the nagari.
Adat religious functionary.
The upland interior of Minangkabau. More specifically it
means the heartland where the Minangkabau ethnic group
originated, in opposition to the rantau.
Honorific title for a penghulu.
Post-1914 title for a district chief in West Sumatra, theoreti-
cally chosen on the basis of ability rather than birth.
Graduate of the Indies Medical Institute in the period before
1900. Not a trained physician but rather a medical techni-
cian.
Title of address for a man who has completed the pilgrimage
to Mecca.
The goods and wealth which a man acquires by his own
labors during his lifetime.
The goods and wealth which belong in common to one matri-
lineal family unit. Usually abbreviated to pusaka.
Religious leader of a community, either a village or a lineage.
More recently used to refer to the particular leader of a spe-
cific mosque, such as the Imam of Bonjol.
"Mother nagari" of a nagari federation. Usually took prece-
dence in rituals and in confirming penghulu in its dependent
nagari.
Public prosecutor and attending investigator established by
the Dutch to advise them on legal matters in West Sumatra.
Group.
Term for sisters' children. Also used to refer generally to
one's dependents.
145146
Koto Piliang
Ladang
Laras
Larashoofd
Luhak
Mamak
Merantau
Nagari
Nagarihoofd
Orang Datang
OSVIA
Patut
Pedati
Pegawai
Penghulu,
Penghulu Suku
Penghulu Pucuk
Perantau
Pusaka
Rantau
Saw ah
Serayo
STOVIA
Suku
Surau
One of two political traditions of Minangkabau. It stresses
a hierarchical arrangement among penghulu and a more
authoritarian approach to dependents.
Nonirrigated, generally hillside, fields.
Territorial districts set up by the Dutch in the nineteenth
century. (Also refers to the two adat political traditions,
Bodi Caniago and Koto Piliang.)
Dutch-created position. Ruler over a laras district.
One of the three original Minangkabau settlements, called the
Luhak nan Tigo--Tanah Datar, Lima Puluh Kota, A gam.
Term for maternal uncle. Also used to mean guardian and
leader of a lineage group.
The process whereby young men leave their village in search
of fame and fortune.
Historic political unit of Minangkabau, usually comprised of
a major village and its satellite settlements. Ruled by a na-
gari council composed of the community's penghulu.
Dutch-created position. Ruler over a territorial subdistrict.
Outsider who came to live in the village and was adopted by
local lineage as an associated person.
Opleiding School Voor Inlandsch Ambtenaar. Training school
for Indonesian officials.
That which is morally proper.
Buffalo-drawn cart used for hauling bulk goods.
Official.
Head of a matrilineage.
Paramount penghulu in a nagari. Generally associated with
the Koto Piliang adat style.
The individual who leaves home to merantau.
See harta pusaka.
Fringe areas of the Minangkabau. More generally it means
any area outside Minangkabau or just any area outside one's
home village.
Wet-rice fields.
Traditional labor service owed by members of a lineage to
their penghulu.
School tot Opleiding voor Indisch Artsen. Indies Medical
Institute, formerly the doktor djawa school.
Matrilineage.
Lineage Quranic school or Islamic study center under the
guidance of an ulama.147
Tam bo
Tarekat
Ulama
Traditional chronicles of Minangkabau.
Literally, the "way" or "path," refers to mystical Islamic
brotherhoods in which members seek union with God under
the guidance of a holy man.
Religious teacher.