This article discusses the different uses of mandatory labour services, or corvée labour, in nineteenth and twentieth century Indonesia. While slave labour, coerced cultivation and other forms of... Show moreThis article discusses the different uses of mandatory labour services, or corvée labour, in nineteenth and twentieth century Indonesia. While slave labour, coerced cultivation and other forms of involuntary colonial labour have been elaborately studied, these much more pervasive and diverse types of mandatory services have not yet received the attention they deserve. The article argues that in Indonesia corvée labour became foundational to the exercise of modern colonial governance and the organization of the colonial state and its fiscal capacity, so foundational, in fact, that it impeded much of the aspirations of colonial civil servants to replace coerced services with monetary taxes. Studying corvée, it shows, elucidates otherwise hidden strategies and practices of the organization of colonial statecraft and governance. As such, corvée labour played a pivotal role in how colonialism unfolded and was experienced. Show less
This article investigates the implementation of direct taxes in colonial Indonesia between roughly 1870 and 1930, to widen our understanding of colonial governance and fiscal state building. It... Show moreThis article investigates the implementation of direct taxes in colonial Indonesia between roughly 1870 and 1930, to widen our understanding of colonial governance and fiscal state building. It examines the various connotations given to taxation by colonial politicians and statesmen, and elucidates how these were developed and experienced rather differently in practice. Taxes became rooted in local patterns of customary law, indirect rule, and constant negotiation between colonial officials, local indigenous rulers, and subjected taxpayers. This demonstrates that local, colonial institutions did not have the weight and capacity state officials claimed they had, and that in colonial context, bottom-up practices of negotiated governance and consultation, that deliberately ignored the rules of fiscal bureaucracy imposed from above, were pivotal to taxation. Show less
This article investigates Dutch colonial practices on the Moluccan island of Seram in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Seram’s mountainous interior was the domain of ungoverned,... Show moreThis article investigates Dutch colonial practices on the Moluccan island of Seram in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Seram’s mountainous interior was the domain of ungoverned, peripatetic Alfurs who engaged in headhunting. For a long time, they were rendered untouched by colonialism and administered through coastal intermediaries. After 1900, renewed imperial-civilizational vigour demanded the direct incorporation and ‘civilization’ of Seram’s stateless spaces. A series of expeditions subjected the Alfurs to registration, categorization, and taxation, which this article argues were seen as pivotal, moralizing tools of colonial social-engineering, used to inscribe subjected people into the state and instil compliant and ‘productive’ behaviour. However, rather than a replacement of indigenous orders with European modernity, colonization produced a hybrid fusion of colonial strategies of domination with indigenous cultural practices of state-evasion. This article demonstrates that colonial governance was a site of interaction, in which colonial developmentalism and modernity were actively negotiated and challenged. Show less
Taxation was at the core of colonial exercises of governance, state-building and state-society relations. This dissertation analyses taxation in colonial Indonesia between 1870 and 1940. In an era... Show moreTaxation was at the core of colonial exercises of governance, state-building and state-society relations. This dissertation analyses taxation in colonial Indonesia between 1870 and 1940. In an era of continuous expansion and reform, colonial statesmen envisioned a full-fledged tax state of equivalent and just forms of tax-payment in accordance with fair laws, a transparent administration and benevolent governance. They saw taxation as an important tool in the project of constructing a modern empire, ‘disciplining and improving’ its subjects and unifying and reforming the state. However, despite intricate law-making processes, shrewd strategies of data accumulation and registration, and a sophisticated bureaucratic machinery, the colonial state in Indonesia had limited success in realising its ambitions. On the ground, taxation was controlled by local elites and driven by processes of negotiation, mediation and subversion of the state apparatus. Rather than imposing a Western model of taxation on the colony, the resulting system became an amalgam of Dutch and local interests, while the state itself became increasingly mixed with the local structures and practices it was supposed to change and replace. Instead of a force of extraction and reform, taxation provided an arena for contesting the colonial state.Based on extensive archival research and traversing the Indonesian archipelago from Aceh to the Moluccas, this dissertation unveils the diverse administrative realities of colonial Indonesia as created by colonial officials, intermediaries and subjects. By focusing on taxation, it demonstrates how colonial governance was experienced as hybrid and malleable, thereby contributing to broader academic debates about colonial statecraft, fiscal policy and the consequences of colonial rule. Show less
