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Nusakambangan in context: Life and labour conditions in a late colonial penal plantation in the Netherlands Indies, 1905–42

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Klaas Stutje
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Abstract

This article examines the history of the Indonesian penal island of Nusakambangan between 1905 and 1942, based on quantitative and qualitative archival research. It compares labour conditions of inmates in Nusakambangan to those of workers in private plantations to intervene in a decades-long scholarly debate over the colonial state's role in managing labour conditions in the late colonial period. In a second part, this article describes everyday life on the island from an inmates’ perspective. While several imposed rounds of classification determined the inmates’ prospects of survival, corruption crucially created space for negotiation between inmates and guards, making the ‘ill-disciplined prison’ function.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 1-2 , June 2022 , pp. 57 - 79
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Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2022

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Footnotes

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, Ulbe Bosma, Zhanna Popova, and Matthias van Rossum for their invaluable criticisms and comments.

References

1 Verslag van het gevangeniswezen over het jaar 1928: deel I [Report of the penal system for the year 1928: Part I] (Pekalongan, 1929), p. 12.

2 Nationaal Archief, Den Haag (NL-HaNA), Ministerie van Koloniën: Openbaar Verbaal (Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal), inventory no. 2.10.36.04, no. 2417, abstract of a report by Chief Inspector De Vogel of the Burgerlijke Geneeskundige Dienst, Aug. 1921.

3 Until today it is home to seven penitentiaries, including one Super Maximum Security Prison.

4 A fourth way to contextualise Nusakambangan, concerning its public image and reputation, is explored in an earlier article: Stutje, Klaas, ‘From across the water: Nusakambangan and the making of a notorious prison island’, International Review of Social History 64 (2019): 1–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Cribb, Robert, ‘Convict exile and penal settlement in colonial Indonesia’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 18, 3 (2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yang, Anand A., ‘Indian convict workers in Southeast Asia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’, Journal of World History 14, 2 (2003): 179–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Shiraishi, Takashi, ‘The phantom world of Digoel’, Indonesia 61 (1996): 93–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shiraishi, Takashi, The phantom world of Digul: Policing as politics in colonial Indonesia, 1926–1941 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2021)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Suwardi, Purnama, Koloni pengucilan Boven Digoel [Exile colony Boven Digoel] (Jakarta: Agung Hikmah Nya, 2003)Google Scholar; Mrázek, Rudolf, ‘Boven Digoel and Terezín: Camps at the time of triumphant technology’, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 3, 2–3 (2009): 287–314CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nobuto Yamamoto, ‘Print power and censorship in colonial Indonesia, 1914–1942’ (PhD diss., Cornell University, 2011); Chandra, Elizabeth, ‘From sensation to oblivion: Boven Digoel in Sino-Malay novels’, Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia 169, 2–3 (2013): 244–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Shiraishi, ‘The phantom world of Digoel’; Shiraishi, The phantom world of Digul, pp. 18–19, 30, 59; Mrázek, ‘Boven Digoel and Terezín’; Chandra, ‘From sensation to oblivion’; Cribb, ‘Convict exile’, pp. 13–14.

8 Anne Marie Christien Bruinink-Darlang, Hervormingen in de koloniale periode: verbeteringen in het Nederlands-Indisch strafstelsel in de periode 1905–1940 [Reforms in the colonial period: Improvements in the Netherlands Indies penal system in the period 1905–1940] (Arnhem: Gouda Quint, 1993).

9 About Nusakambangan in recent decades, see Sulton, Muchamad, Sodiq, Ibnu and Suryadi, Andy, ‘Perkembangan Lembaga Pemasyarakatan Pulau Nusakambangan Kabupaten Cilacap’ [Development of the Correctional Facility of Nusakambangan Island, Cilacap regency], Journal of Indonesian History 7, 1 (2018): 45–55Google Scholar.

10 Zinoman, Peter, The colonial Bastille: A history of imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 16–17Google Scholar, 35–7.

11 Zinoman, The colonial Bastille, pp. 24–8.

12 Alan Lester, Imperial networks: Creating identities in nineteenth century South Africa and Britain (London: Routledge, 2001); Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and race: Aryanism in the British Empire (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).

13 For instance: Christian G. de Vito and Alex Lichtenstein, ‘Writing a global history of convict labour’, in Global convict labour, ed. Christian G. De Vito and Alex Lichtenstein, (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Rajesh Rai, ‘The 1857 panic and the fabrication of an Indian “menace” in Singapore’, Modern Asian Studies 47, 2 (2013): 367–9.

14 Clare Anderson, Subaltern lives: Biographies of colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 24.

15 Clare Anderson, ‘Convicts and coolies: Rethinking indentured labour in the nineteenth century’, Slavery & Abolition 30, 1 (2009): 93–109. See also Anderson, Subaltern lives, p. 18.

16 Taylor C. Sherman, ‘Tensions of colonial punishment: Perspectives on recent developments in the study of coercive networks in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean’, History Compass 7, 3 (2009): 669.

17 David Arnold. ‘Labouring for the Raj: Convict work regimes in colonial India, 1836–1939’, p. 207; and Stacey Hynd, ‘“… a weapon of immense value”? Convict labour in British colonial Africa, c.1850–1950s’, in De Vito and Lichtenstein, Global convict labour, pp. 253–5. See also Yang, ‘Indian convict workers’, pp. 182–3.

18 Jan Breman, Taming the coolie beast: Plantation society and the colonial order in Southeast Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989); Ann Laura Stoler, Capitalism and confrontation in Sumatra's Plantation Belt, 1870—1979 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985). See also Erwiza Erman, ‘Miners, managers and the state: A socio-political history of the Ombilin Coal-Mines, West Sumatra, 1892–1996’ (PhD diss., University of Amsterdam, 1999); Erwiza Erman, ‘Generalized violence: A case study of the Ombilin Coal-Mines, 1892–1925’, in Roots of violence in Indonesia: Contemporary violence in historical perspective, ed. Freek Colombijn and J. Thomas Lindblad (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002), p. 107.

19 Jan Breman, Koelies, planters en koloniale politiek [Coolies, plantation owners and colonial politics] (Dordrecht: Foris, 1987), p. 164; translated as Taming the coolie beast: Plantation society and the colonial order in Southeast Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989). See also Richard B. Allen, ‘Slaves, convicts, abolitionism and the global origins of the post-Emancipation indentured labor system’, Slavery & Abolition 35, 2 (2014): 329.

20 V.J.H Houben and J. Thomas Lindblad, Coolie labour in colonial Indonesia: A study of labour relations in the Outer Islands, c.1900–1940 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), p. 7; Taylor C. Sherman, ‘Tensions of colonial punishment: Perspectives on recent developments in the study of coercive networks in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean’, History Compass 7, 3 (2009): 669; A. Kamphues, ‘Na Rhemrev. Arbeidsomstandigheden op de Westerse ondernemingen in de buitengewesten van Nederlands-Indië’ [After Rhemrev: Labour conditions on Western enterprises in the outer-areas of the Netherlands Indies], Economisch- en Sociaal-Historisch Jaarboek, vol. 51 ('s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1988), pp. 299–337; V.J.H. Houben, ‘Labour conditions on western firms in colonial Indonesia: Outline of an approach’, Economic History Yearbook 36, 1 (1995), pp. 93–105.

21 Verslag over de hervormingen van het gevangeniswezen wat betreft het jaar 1905 [Report of penal system reforms for the year 1905] (Batavia, 1907), p. 35.

22 This is relatively late in comparison to colonial India, where David Arnold observes a shift in 1838, but early in comparison to British colonial Africa, where Stacey Hynd sees a shift in the 1930s: Arnold. ‘Labouring for the Raj’, pp. 201–2; Hynd ‘”… a weapon of immense value”?, pp. 258–9, 263.

23 Verslag over de hervormingen van het gevangeniswezen wat betreft het jaar 1905, pp. 3–14.

24 NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 478, report of a meeting of Inspecteur van het Boschwezen and Directeur van Justitie, 22 and 23 Oct. 1906, p. 6.

25 According to Lindblad base rates of coolie wages in East Sumatra in 1912 were 35 cents for a male and 28 cents for a female worker per day: J. Thomas Lindblad, ‘Coolies in Deli: Labour conditions in Western enterprises in East Sumatra, 1910–1938’, in Houben and Lindblad, Coolie labour in colonial Indonesia, p. 74; see also Hynd ‘“… a weapon of immense value”?’, p. 263. In directly comparing costs of contract and convict labour employed by governments, we have to keep in mind that it was less attractive to a government department to create an infrastructure for hiring, housing and controlling contract labourers than to use the existing labour supply and facilities of the Department of Justice, in the form of convict labour.

26 Note that many of the statistical reports used for this article were produced in the printing workshop in the regional prison of Pekalongan, Central Java.

27 Verslag over de hervormingen van het gevangeniswezen wat betreft het jaar 1905, pp. 3–14.

28 Verslag over de hervormingen van het gevangeniswezen wat betreft het jaar 1906–1907 [Report of penal system reforms for the year 1906–1907] (Batavia, 1909), pp. 7–9.

29 NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 478, letter of Resident of Banjoemas to the Directeur van Landbouw, 2 Nov. 1906.

30 This observation is in line with what Sulton et al. described for Nusakambangan in the 1980s, when it functioned as a tempat sampah (rubbish dump): Sulton et al., ‘Perkembangan Lembaga Pemasyarakatan Pulau Nusakambangan’, p. 51.

31 Terance W. Bigalke, Tana Toraja: A social history of an Indonesian people (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2005), pp. 51–63.

32 Statistiek van het gevangeniswezen in Nederlandsch-Indië over het jaar 1913, samengesteld bij het hoofdkantoor van het gevangeniswezen [Statistics of the penal system of the Netherlands Indies for the year 1913, compiled by the Bureau of the Penal System] (Weltevreden, 1919), pp. 86–7. 1913 is the only year from which we have detailed statistical information about ethnic groups on the island.

33 Verslag van het gevangeniswezen over het jaar 1927: deel I verslag [Report of the penal system of the year 1927: Part I report (Pekalongan, 1928), p. 1.

34 Yang, ‘Indian convict workers’, pp. 196, 205, 207.

35 See also Cribb, ‘Convict exile’, pp. 2–3.

36 Voorstellen van den Directeur van Landbouw betreffende de oprichting van eene gouvernements-caoutchouconderneming in het Gouvernement Atjeh en onderhoorigheden [Proposals of the Director of (the Department of) Agriculture concerning the establishment of a government's caoutchouc enterprise in the Government of Atjeh and Dependencies] (Batavia: Landsdrukkerij, 1905); John Drabble, Rubber in Malaya 1876–1922: The genesis of the industry (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 29–30.

37 Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau. Deel 2, afdeeling 2: Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden [Announcements of the Bureau of Administrative Affairs of the Outer Possessions, compiled by the Encyclopedic Bureau. Part 2, section 2: Atjeh and Dependencies (Semarang: Van Dorp, 1915), p. 163.

38 NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 478, report of a meeting of Inspecteur van het Boschwezen and Directeur van Justitie, 22 and 23 Oct. 1906, p. 6.

39 Verslag over de hervormingen van het gevangeniswezen in Nederlandsch-Indie over de jaren 1916–1920 [Report of the penal system reforms of the Netherlands Indies in the years 1916–1920] (Pekalongan: Centrale Gevangenis, 1926), p. 40; Verslag van het Gevangeniswezen over het jaar 1928, deel I, p. 36; Caoutchoucbedrijf op Noesa Kambangan, verslag over 1927 [Caoutchouc company on Noesa Kambangan: Report for 1927] (Pekalongan: Strafgevangenis, 1928). Nusakambangan produced a tiny proportion of the total Indies rubber output, after 1909 this was always less than 1 per cent.

40 NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 478, letter of Directeur van Justitie to the Gouverneur-Generaal, 26 Nov. 1906, p. 6; see also Breman, Koelies, planters en koloniale politiek, pp. 74–5.

41 ‘In Tropisch Siberië III’, Indische Courant, 16 Oct. 1922.

42 For instance, Houben and Lindblad, Coolie labour in colonial Indonesia; see also Marc Buggeln, Slave labor in Nazi concentration camps (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 3–4.

43 NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 478, letter of Directeur van Justitie to the Resident of Banjoemas, 8 Mar. 1907.

44 Hs., ‘Naar Tropisch Siberië III’, Indische Courant, 16 Oct. 1922.

45 ‘Op Noesa Kambangan’, De Preanger-Bode, 19 Oct. 1907; ‘Het schooiers-welvaren’ [Beggar's paradise], Het Nieuws van den Dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië, 12 Jan. 1909.

46 See also V.J.H. Houben, ‘The quality of coolie life: An assessment of the labour conditions, 1910–1938’, in Houben and Lindblad, Coolie labour in colonial Indonesia, p. 117.

47 Verslag van het gevangeniswezen over het jaar 1927: deel II verslag, pp. 118–19.

48 H. van Kol, ‘Reisbrieven’ [Travel letters], De Locomotief, 30 Nov. 1911.

49 Hs., ‘Naar Tropisch Siberië III’, De Indische Courant, 16 Oct. 1922.

50 Colin Barlow, The natural rubber industry: Its development, technology and economy in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 51.

51 Kamphues, ‘Na Rhemrev’, pp. 308–10; see also Stoler, Capitalism and confrontation, pp. 34–5.

52 NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 2417, abstract of a report of Hoofdinspecteur De Vogel of the Burgerlijke Geneeskundige Dienst, Aug. 1921.

53 The term ‘situational agency’ is derived from Arunima Datta, ‘“Immorality”, nationalism and the colonial state in British Malaya: Indian ‘coolie’ women's intimate lives as ideological battleground’, Women's History Review 25, 4 (2016): 587–8.

54 Hs., ‘Naar Tropisch Siberië III’, De Indische Courant, 16 Oct. 1922.

55 Compare for example the position of enslaved African divers in the Americas, in a remarkable essay by Kevin Dawson, ‘Enslaved swimmers and divers in the Atlantic world’, Journal of American History 92, 4 (2006): 1327–55.

56 NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 478, letter of Directeur van Justitie to the Resident of Banjoemas, 8 Mar. 1907; ‘Noesa-Kembangan’, De Locomotief, 18 Jan. 1909; H. van Kol, ‘Reisbrieven’, De Locomotief, 29 Nov. 1911; ‘Noesa Kambangan IV’, Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, 26 Sept. 1916.

57 See for instance, ‘Nogmaals over gevangenistoestanden’ [Again about prison conditions], in Overzicht van de Inlandsche en Maleisch-Chineesche Pers 21 (Weltevreden, 1921), pp. 397–8; ‘Gevangenistoestanden’ [Prison conditions], in Overzicht van de Inlandsche en Maleisch-Chineesche Pers 51 (Weltevreden, 1921), pp. 508–9.

58 Z., ‘Het schooiers welvaren’, Het Nieuws van den Dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië, 13 Jan. 1909; H. van Kol, ‘Reisbrieven’, De Locomotief, 30 Nov. 1911; ‘Uit Tjilatjap’, Preangerbode, 17 June 1915; see also Stoler, Capitalism and confrontation, p. 45.

59 ‘In Tropisch Siberië III’, De Indische Courant, 16 Oct. 1922; F. Sträter S.J., ‘Noesa Kembangan’, St. Claverbond 1, Jan. 1920, p. 66.

60 ‘Op Noesa Kembangan’, De Preanger-Bode, 19 Oct. 1907.

61 ‘Het mes in Indië’ [The knife in the Indies], De Indische Courant, 12 Aug. 1929.

62 Breman, Koelies, planters en koloniale politiek, pp. 123–4; Stoler, Capitalism and confrontation, p. 59.

63 ‘Een Nederlandsch eiland voor dwangarbeiders’ [A Dutch island for forced labourers], De Hollandsche Revue 17–1, 25 Jan. 1912, pp. 6–8; Statistiek van het gevangeniswezen in Nederlandsch-Indië over de jaren 1915–1918 [Statistics of the penal system of the Netherlands Indies for the years 1915–1918] (Pekalongan: Centrale gevangenis, 1919), pp. 38–9.

64 Sherman, ‘Tensions of colonial punishment’, pp. 667–9; Zinoman, The colonial Bastille, p. 37; ‘Preface’, in De Vito and Lichtenstein, Global convict labour, p. xv.

65 NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 478, letter of the Bosopziener to the Houtvester of Banjoemas, 24, 25 and 26 Oct. 1906.

66 NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 478, letter of the Houtvester of Banjoemas to the Resident of Banjoemas, 14 Oct. 1906.

67 For example, ‘Noesa Kambangan III’, Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, 22 Sept. 1916.

68 ‘Moord op een Europeesche opzichter’ [Murder of a European overseer], Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, 6 Nov. 1916; NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 478, letter of the Houtvester of Banjoemas to the Resident of Banjoemas, 14 Oct. 1906.

69 NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 478, letter of the Houtvester of Banjoemas to the Resident of Banjoemas, 14 Oct. 1906.

70 ‘Noesa-Kembangan’, De Indische Courant, 23 June 1923.

71 NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 478: Schedule with the letter from the Resident of Banjoemas to the Directeur van Justitie, 19 June 1906; Statistiek van het gevangeniswezen in Nederlandsch-Indië over het jaar 1913, pp. 86–7; Verslag van het gevangeniswezen over het jaar 1928: deel I, p. 12.

72 NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 478, Staat dari adanja pesakitan-pesakitan.

73 People were counted as a group when they escaped on the same day, and were arrested on the same day and location.

74 ‘Van de Westkust’ [From the Westcoast], Het Nieuws van den Dag voor Nederlands-Indië, 18 Oct. 1917; ‘Beruchte moordenaar’ [Notorious murderer], Preangerbode, 15 Oct. 1921;’Noesakembangan’, Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 17 Aug. 1926; ‘Een vreemde bende’ [A strange gang], De Indische Courant, 8 Sept. 1927; ‘Gemengd Indisch Nieuws’, Het Nieuws van den Dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië, 24 Jan. 1929.

75 ‘Rooftochten van ontvluchte gevangenen’ [Rampages of escaped prisoners], Indische Gids II (1925): 1109.

76 ‘Uit Tjilatjap’, Het Nieuws van den Dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië, 23 Sept. 1919; NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 478, letter of the Houtvester of Banjoemas to the Assistent-Resident of Tjilatjap, 21 Mar. 1906, p. 3.

77 NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 478, report of a meeting of Inspecteur van het Boschwezen and Directeur van Justitie, 22 and 23 Oct. 1906, p. 13.

78 Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië 657, 17 Nov. 1915.

79 Benedict R.O'G. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (London: Verso, 2007), pp. 121–31.

80 Bruinink-Darlang, Hervormingen in de koloniale periode, pp. 75–83.

81 NL-HaNA, Koloniën / Openbaar Verbaal, 2.10.36.04, no. 2417, abstract of a report of Hoofdinspecteur De Vogel of the Burgerlijke Geneeskundige Dienst, 18 Oct. 1921, pp. 11–12.

82 See also Zinoman, The colonial Bastille, pp. 16–17, 35–7.

83 Kamphues, ‘Na Rhemrev’, p. 299; see also Zinoman, The colonial Bastille, p. 36.