Continuity in Dutch Slavery in Indonesia

Slavery and cultural creativity in the Banda Islands

"In his influential edited volume Slavery, bondage and dependency in Southeast Asia, Anthony Reid suggests that long-term slave-based systems of production were absent from agriculture in Southeast Asia, and had an ambiguous presence at best in other areas of economic activity. The argument he presents suggests that indigenous slavery in the region merged into a 'kind of serfdom or household membership', a situation that continued after the arrival of Europeans whose slave-holding practices were profoundly shaped by the local traditions they encountered: 'slavery in the European colonies owed more to the Southeast Asian environment than to European legal ideas'. Reid's analysis is insightful and his conclusions persuasive. But he also notes a single exception to this general picture: 'the Dutch perkenier sys tem for producing nutmeg in Banda with hundreds of slave labourers on large estates'. The nutmeg estates of the Banda Islands, in eastern Indonesia, provide a rare unequivocal example of a slave mode of production in Southeast Asia, and its sole instance in an agricultural context. The islands have a similar status within estab lished accounts of slavery in Asia more generally. While some degree of geographic and historical variation is usually acknowledged, European slavery practices in Asia are regarded as distinct from colonial slavery in the New World, where European sys tems were imported wholesale. Against this conclusion, the perkenier system in the Banda Islands has been described as a form of exploitation 'unheard of in Asia', one that represented a 'Caribbean cuckoo in an Asian nest'. In other words, Dutch nutmeg cultivation in the Bandas constituted a New World style system of slavery operating in an Asian context.

This paper questions these depictions of slavery in the Banda Islands. I contend instead that slavery in the nutmeg estates was consistent with the general picture described by Reid, where 'the Southeast Asian character of slavery always asserted itself. Key traits include the prominence of domestic households in economic and social terms and the existence of spheres of slave autonomy, along with diverse opportunities for manumission. The perkenier system (Dutch perkeniersstelsel) for producing nutmeg and mace was certainly one of very few historical situations where Asian slaves worked on European-owned farms or plantations... One critical shortcoming, of most interest here, was that the Dutch administration failed to isolate slavery in the nutmeg estates from broader practices existing elsewhere in the Indonesian archipelago...

Established views suggest the islands were transformed absolutely by the VOC conquest, in which much of the pre-conquest population was killed or driven from the islands to be replaced by imported slaves labouring in nutmeg estates. Bruno Lasker, an important early scholar of slavery in Southeast Asia, refers to the Bandas as the site of an 'iniquitous colonial experiment' whose 'unforeseen legacy' involved the creation of a uniquely out-of-place population, one he characterises as the 'social residue' of colonialism. Yet the bulk of the contemporary population today declares itself to be meaningfully Bandanese, a perspective enacted in part through a range of ceremonial and ritual activities viewed as inherited from the pre-conquest era...

While the Bandas provide a Southeast Asian example of a remnant island population enslaved (in part) within plantation estates, in this case an exotic commodity was not introduced for cultivation; this immediately distinguishes the per ken from both New World plantations and those in late colonial settings in Asia. The Bandanese enslaved in the islands following VOC conquest were cultivating a forest product they had themselves developed for trade many generations before, and doing so in their own lands, now under Dutch authority. The essential method remained much the same, though intensified: an understorey of nutmeg trees protected from strong winds and harsh sun by a semi-closed canopy of larger trees (notably Canarium spp., known locally as kenari). The newly enslaved Bandanese were not simply 'labour' in the perkeniersstelsel - they were the original silviculturalists and traders of the islands whose expertise was recognised and utilised by the VOC. Enslaved Bandanese were deliberately distributed about the islands to make use of their expertise in cultivation and spice production, with several hundred individuals initially exiled to Batavia being returned to the Bandas for this very purpose...

As Roy Ellen notes, 'the political economy of Banda had been transformed, but with the aim of main taining a pattern of production and export that had preceded it'. In short, key elements of the pre-conquest life-world of the Banda Islands remained of vital importance under VOC rule and in fact formed the very focus of the Dutch presence...

Alongside a proportion of the remaining Bandanese, the VOC initially sourced slaves through their established trading presence outside the archipelago (e.g. on the Coromandel and Bengal coasts of India). But it was not long, however, before local markets and suppliers were emphasised, especially in the eastern archipelago, where slaves became available in increasing numbers. The slave trade in the Maluku region - where the Banda Islands are found - was longstanding, consisting mainly of people seized in raids on enemy villages. This trade intensified dramatically after the arrival of Europeans, most notably the Dutch...

In practical terms, the Dutch administration in the Bandas seems to have been unable to isolate slavery within the perkeniersstelsel from wider related socio-cultural practices that were long established in the region. Perken boundaries quickly became porous economically, demographically and culturally, as Company-purchased slaves intended for the estates (the perkenslaven) blurred with the privately owned slaves of perkenier households. I suggest that it ultimately becomes difficult to separate the use of slave labour in support of spice production from that which served household economies. At times, the latter even appears to challenge the dominance of the for mer. In this sense the social practice of slavery in the Banda Islands can be said to have eluded VOC control, and exhibits key features that Reid argues were endemic throughout the archipelago and Southeast Asia. In this respect (as in many others), the 'firm grip' the VOC may have sought in the Bandas proved elusive here, as elsewhere.

As noted, Coen's original social vision for the Banda Islands was for an émigré settler-colony dominated by a class of independent Dutch burgers. But a far more diverse society actually emerged in the islands, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, its 'chief inhabitants or burghers were listed as comprising Europeans, Batavians, Ambonese, Ternatens and Chinese, in addition to regular in-migrants including Tanimbarese, Balinese, Butonese and Buginese, and 'many emancipated slaves'. Freed slaves, or mardijkers as they came to be called by the Dutch, constituted a large section of the population of all major settlements in the archipelago. Originally this term referred to manumitted slaves and their descendants associated with the earlier Portuguese presence. Usually Christian converts of Asian (particularly Indian) origin, the group was enlarged during the seventeenth century 'by mestizos and/or migrants from other parts of Asia', many of whom were freed slaves from within the archipelago. Doubtless the mardtjker population of the Bandas had a similar character...

The predominance of the household economy is a major element in Reid's depiction of European slavery practices in the archipelago as more influenced by existing regional patterns than able to impose European ones. The productive activities of slaves in Southeast Asia before the arrival of Europeans were integrated with the domestic or household realm of their owners, a situation that continued with the European presence. For Reid, this forms a clear contrast to the slave mode of pro duction seen in the New World - again, with the exception of the perkeniersstekel...

It appears that perken slaves exercised a degree of autonomy over their gardening activities, a situation that has been documented in contexts of colonial slavery else where. Indeed, standard conceptions of a 'slave mode of production' in the New World are themselves sometimes problematised by historical evidence of slaves culti vating their own food plots and independently selling surplus food. It is highly likely that perken slaves in the Bandas were involved in similar private market-oriented activities (almost certainly so in regard to kenari). In any case, the economic character of their labour cannot be wholly reduced to the production of nutmeg and mace for the VOC...

As with the cultivation of gardens, participation in inter-island trading offered direct benefits to slaves, including opportunities to escape from servitude: '[trading] afforded slaves the opportunity to become both affluent and mobile and a slave-sailor-trader soon earned his freedom or freed himself. Reid highlights the existence of diverse opportunities for manumission as another persistent feature of pre-colonial slavery. He notes that slaves 'often succeeded in buying themselves out of slavery with the money they accumulated in their own time'. That this applied in the Banda Islands once again points to continuities between the shape of slave holding practices in these islands and those elsewhere in the region, notwithstanding the presence of the perkeniersstelsel.

It seems clear that slavery in the Bandas Islands had a far wider significance than supporting intensive production of nutmeg in the perkeniersstelsel. A dense web of relations came to link perkeniers and slaves across diverse realms of social life, inside and outside the perken. Perkenier households became enmeshed with private and per ken slaves not just economically but socially, culturally and demographically, a situ ation that applied to European slave-holders throughout the archipelago. Indeed, Reid suggests that the most common function of European-owned slaves during the earliest period of the European presence involved various forms of 'domestic ser vice', in particular 'to display (and if necessary defend) the wealth and status of the owner'. This provides further evidence of the European adoption of extant Southeast Asian patterns of slavery. Here again, parallels are evident in the Banda Islands...

The VOC itself encouraged mixed marriages in 1633 after abandoning plans to import Dutch women to Batavia, in addition to turning a blind eye to 'irregular unions'. By the beginning of the eighteenth century Valentijn observed: 'there is hardly a single Hollander of any consideration in Java that does not have a concubine'. Reid notes that by the early nineteenth century, the trade in women through out the region 'came to resemble a large-scale "marriage market'", which provided a large proportion of the female population of the British Straits Settlements.

Importantly, the exercise of some level of agency by the women involved should not be discounted. Campbell and Alpers argue that servile labour in both Asia and Indian Ocean Africa often sought to ameliorate their conditions and status by secur ing a position in the dominant society that could be improved over time. If skills in sailing and trading offered such strategic possibilities for male slaves of the perken, concubinage and marriage would have formed potential routes for social mobility open to women, particularly where their children were to be 'born into important families' - which in the Banda context meant the perfcen-holders. Reid stresses con tinuities with pre-European slavery in this realm, observing that opportunities for upward mobility and an easier life appear to have been far greater for women than men...

Indeed, the rarity of slave revolts in Asia (and Indian Ocean Africa) has been attrib uted to the fact that most slaves were women 'often involved in intimate relationships ith their owners, and frequently offered greater opportunity to assimilate into the dominant society than male slaves, they were reluctant to take risks that might damage their children's interests'...

One suggestion in local terms is that labour contracts of this sort were only entered into by people of little social standing - not just impoverished, but lacking recourse to any kin who could assist them. This view sits alongside highly gendered perspectives of labour mobility valorising the exercise of a spiritually potent masculine agency in actively pursuing knowledge (ilmu) and good fortune (rejeki) through self directed travel. By contrast, tales abound of Dutch labour recruiters and their local assistants using dark powers (ilmu hitam) to coerce or trick the contract people into leaving their communities of origin. These recruiters are said to have targeted women in particular, in the street or marketplace, magically robbing them of their normal level of awareness (often using a secret touch). Full consciousness would be restored upon reaching the Banda Islands, at which time their signed contract would be brandished and their situation inescapable. The marked gender imbal ance among contract labour is often represented as a clever Dutch ploy to attract the arrival of free male labour migrants. A local aphorism invariably cited in this context suggests where there's sugar, there're ants' (adagula, ada mir). While such accounts appear rather dismissive of feminine agency, they are also somewhat recup erative of the status of female ancestors, who some suggest may well have been individuals of some status before becoming ensorcelled"