Space of the meetings

The Sumatra meetings were held between April and June of 1865 and the Commissioners travelled to nine cities and towns across the West Coast (Westkust) of Sumatra residency (see fig. 1). Der Kinderen was a Dutch colonial jurist who was appointed by the governor-general in Batavia to draw up colonial legislation for 17 regions in the Netherlands Indies. Priority was given to a uniform organisation of the law courts and criminal law issues. In 1865, Der Kinderen decided, after Java and Madura, to focus first on West Sumatra as it was an important region for colonial profit-making. The laws and governance of this region were also complicated because of the 1833 Plakat Pandjang (lang plakkaat; long contract), which will be discussed more fully later, in which the Dutch promised to never change the local institutions of government and law in West Sumatra. However, a mere thirty years later, in the 1860s Der Kinderen argued that this contract had to be changed as the Netherlands had to fulfil its obligations as a ‘civilised nation’. In West Sumatra he and Van den Bossche and a secretary travelled to and held meetings in nine locations to discuss the proposed new laws with local notables appointed by the colonial government.

Figure 1.

Map of West Sumatra. The meetings were held in Fort de Kock (Bukitinggi) on 6 April 1865, Painan on 23 April, Ajer Bangis (Air Bangle) on 10 May, Natal on 11 May, Penjaboengan (Panyambungan) on 15 May, Padang Sidempoean (Padang Sidempuan) on 17 May, Siboga (Sibolga) on 19 May, Padang on 29 May, and Priaman (Pariaman) on 25 June.

Daily office work, the repetitive tasks of the colonial bureaucracy, clerical documents, and the material aspects of paper have increasingly gained importance within the field of legal history.Footnote ⁹ For anthropologists of bureaucracy, similarly, the formal aspects of bureaucratic procedures have been positioned more in the centre of analysis, after they had been a ‘blind spot’ due to their everydayness, their ordinary nature that easily causes them to be overlooked. This literature has shown that meetings, precisely because of their logical nature, their repetitive symbolism, procedures and order are important sites of knowledge production and constitution.Footnote ¹⁰ This attention to the everydayness of bureaucratic and codifying procedure leaves questions open though about the legal-cultural aspects of a meeting held in a space where Dutch law, Malay adat and Islamic syarak (sharia) and their representatives were involved in the decision-making process. The setting of the meeting was largely defined by Dutch law and procedure, yet the impact of the oral nature of adat as well as the Minangkabau balance of the written syarak and oral adat was nonetheless central to the issues discussed and the solutions sought.

All the meetings were held outdoors at a central location of the respective city or the town. At the largest meetings more than eighty local heads and more than ten Dutch colonial officials were present. Other meetings were somewhat smaller. At the meeting of 19 May in Siboga (northern West Sumatra, including Batak regions), for example, the minutes list a number of Dutch officials, including the commissioners, the Resident of Siboga and the Controleur as well as seven Koeria (district) chiefs who were mentioned by name, one Pasar chief also mentioned by name, and a large number of lesser chiefs who were not mentioned by name. A Dutch Secretary wrote down the minutes. The discussions were held in Malay. Soetan Igamo, district chief, spoke up at the start of this meeting declaring that he could read Malay, but that some of the other district chiefs from the Batak regions could not, and offered to translate for them.Footnote ¹¹

Repeatedly, an emphasis was put by the Dutch Commission on the importance of the open character of the meetings. Governor of Sumatra Van den Bossche, who attended all the meetings and did most of the talking, urged the local heads during the meetings to express all their questions and objections. When in Siboga a Batak chief, who received the translation through Soetan Igamo, declared that he agreed with ‘everything’ the Dutch had proposed in the draft regulation, Van den Bossche emphasised in his response that the meeting was not intended to enforce a particular order, but was of an investigative character, and expressed his interest in all opinions and remarks on the draft regulations.Footnote ¹² This stated emphasis on the open character of the meeting, where local notables were encouraged to speak their minds, is important to explore further. After all, Der Kinderen was well aware before he arrived in West Sumatra that he would breach the Plakat Pandjang of 1833. This is exactly what he would do, for example by abolishing tanggung menanggung, translated by the Dutch as the ‘system of solidarity’, in criminal law.Footnote ¹³ Der Kinderen also knew West Sumatra had a matrilineal system, about which internal conflicts existed, but was nonetheless firmly at the basis of local inheritance. This matrilineal system would be impacted greatly by the introduction of a Dutch legal system, based on European patriarchial ideas of property and progeny. Given the pre-ordained nature of some of these legal transformations, why did Der Kinderen travel to West Sumatra in 1865 for nine large meetings? What was the importance of these meetings? What happened there? What kind of local, regional, and colonial encounter was this? Exploring these questions will allow us to study the construction and erasure of legal histories essential to Dutch and Minangkabau self-perceptions, and the processes of lawmaking in a colonial society where legal pluralities were the norm.

Plakat Pandjang: A promise broken

Commissioner Der Kinderen left for West Sumatra in 1865 aware of the thirty-year old pledge to ‘entirely not’ (in het geheel niet) change the adat in this region.Footnote ¹⁴ On 25 October 1833 the Dutch had made this promise in a publication that was applicable to all ‘peoples of the Padangs Upper- and Lower Lands’:

This publication, which came to be known as the Plakat Pandjang (Long Contract), was crucially not in line with the general Dutch approach when it came to legislation and law in other economically important areas of the Indonesian archipelago. Not only did the Dutch promise to leave family law alone, which was quite common, but the treaty also explicitly mentioned that criminal law would be administered according to the local ‘laws and adats’ (wetten en adats) by their ‘own heads’ (eigen hoofden) without interference from the colonial government.Footnote ¹⁶ As stated in the Plakat Pandjang, the promise was made in the context of the West Sumatran Padri War, in which the Dutch with the proven method of divide and rule claimed to be protecting the adat leaders against the orthodox Islamic Padris: ‘With immense sacrifice of money and people, the Government has supported you and freed you from those who want to change and destroy your religious and ancestral laws and customs.’Footnote ¹⁷

Even though the Dutch made it seem, in 1833, that they would be protecting the adat against Islam, this was more a strategy than truth, and moreover the result of an erroneous presumption by the Dutch that Minangkabau matrilinity was essentially in conflict with Islam.Footnote ¹⁸ Europeans regarded the historically powerful Minangkabau Kingdom as the ‘ancestral home’ of the Malays and blamed Islam for its downfall.Footnote ¹⁹ Islam, however, had already been in Minangkabau since the sixteenth century, where it had spread mainly through the surau, the men's houses of the matriclan where the young men lived and received their education. The Islamic system of Sufi brotherhoods led by syekhs, specifically those of the Syattariyah tarekat (stream), fit rather easily within the existing surau system.Footnote ²⁰ In the surau, adat and Islamic education were combined, and Islamic legal institutions were ‘adatised’. For example, the Arabic word warith (heirs) was translated into Minangkabau as warih (waris), which means matrilineal heirs.Footnote ²¹ The Minangkabau also established a number of larger Islamic schools, to which students travelled to and from throughout the region. These schools were led by male tuankus (teachers), who also served as village advisers.Footnote ²² These religious schools also fit easily within another Minangkabau tradition; that of the merantau, where young Minangkabau men were expected to travel for a period and receive their education in various locations and places.Footnote ²³

The Minangkabau had been a central node in a transregional Indian Ocean network. Growing demand for spices such as cinnamon and coffee led to an increase in trade and wealth for the Minangkabau at the end of the eighteenth century. This was also a period marked by the increasing prominence of neo-Sufi groups who advocated stricter adherence to Islam. But as Christine Dobbin has noted, ‘back to syariat’ was simultaneously a claim to protect international trade networks and to solve commercial conflicts more easily.Footnote ²⁴ During this period, a number of Islamic schools were erected. These schools were each connected to different tarekats, such as the Naqsyabandiyah, Syattariyah and Qadiriyah. On top of commercial interests, the reformist movements also started to engage with the daily lives of Minangkabau Muslims. This touched on the subject of matriarchal houses and inheritance law and led to fierce discussion and debate within Minangkabau communities.Footnote ²⁵

The tension between Minangkabau traditionalists and reformist Islamic leaders, however, was minor compared to the impact of a new group, the Padris,Footnote ²⁶ who started preaching a Wahhabi-inspired Islam at the end of the eighteenth century. They rejected all adat and were particularly disapproving of matrilineal inheritance and matrilocal residence.Footnote ²⁷ They also rejected the belief system of the Sufi Muslims, and also more moderate reformists, and they violently conquered villages. The tensions led to a civil war in Western Sumatra during which the Padris burned down traditional longhouses, and murdered adat leaders and the royal family of Pagaruyung.Footnote ²⁸ In 1821 the Dutch made a pact with the adat leaders (the ‘traditionalists’) and sent in an army. In 1832 they believed they had defeated the Padri leader Imam Bonjol.Footnote ²⁹

Tuanku Imam Bonjol, a high-ranking Minangkabau ulama and religious leader, had become ‘the locus’ of the Padris when the Dutch started to intervene in the civil war. By that time, he had already conquered a number of regions, including the (previously non-Islamic) Batak regions.Footnote ³⁰ The Plakat Pandjang was signed in 1832, when the Dutch were under the impression that the Padri War was over, because they had successfully sided with the adat leaders. The civil war, however, would continue for another five years, at which point both sides decided to unite against the Dutch and their colonial army of European and Javanese soldiers.Footnote ³¹ Imam BonjolFootnote ³² fought from Fort Bondjol against the Dutch between 1833 and 1837—his heroic actions led to his valorisation as one of Indonesia's national heroes. He died in exile in Manado, North Sulawesi.

During the course of the civil war, Bonjol began a process of rapprochement with the adat leaders. In his memoirs he wrote that when he heard that the Wahhabi had been defeated in Mecca, he reconsidered his strict interpretation of Islam. He called a large meeting in Alahan Panjang with all tuanku, hakim, basa and panghulu, and declared that he would no longer oppose the adat leaders. According to his memoirs, all attending subsequently declared that they would follow the laws of the adat basandy syarak: shariah as the basis of customary law.Footnote ³³ The Agreement of Mount Marapalam of 1837 decided that ‘adat is based on the syarak, the syarak is based on adat’ as two ‘equal foundations’ of the Minangkabau; a declaration that would become a powerful expression used in orally sharing and discussing adat issues.Footnote ³⁴ As Hadler observes, ‘Padri capitulation was not a result of Dutch pressure but, rather, a response to ideological shifts in Mecca and a remorseful desire of a Padri leader to find a compromise between Islam and the customs of the matriarchaat.’Footnote ³⁵ Pragmatically, Imam Bonjol had also secured his son's future. Naali Sutan Cianago, who had fought with his father against the Dutch, but obtained, after the war, a position within the colonial civil service as the tuanku laras of Alahan Panjang district. It was in this capacity that Cianago attended one of the meetings in 1865 that are central to this article.Footnote ³⁶

Finding common ground

Although it is a myth that the Dutch defended the matriarchy against the padris, they did make a promise to the adat leaders, in the treaty of 1833, that they would not intervene at all in the laws, customs, and the law courts of Western Sumatra. It was this promise that Der Kinderen wanted to breach, and for this he needed a successful range of meetings and convince the West Sumatran heads; in that sense the meetings fulfilled the role of being a ‘managerial process of “stabilization”’.Footnote ³⁷ Rather than a meeting between strangers or opponents, therefore, the meetings were presented as an open space for discussion. Iza Hussin in her work on treaty-making in British Malaya shows that although the Malay and British elites did not share a ‘system of language, meaning, expectation’ and their interactions featured ‘misunderstanding and mistaking’, results were reached through negotiation simply because both parties needed each other.Footnote ³⁸ In addition to needing each other, I argue that there were also certain shared systems of understanding that created space for conversation and negotiation. Common ground was sought, with varying degrees of success. It is therefore relevant to not only explore where there was strategic action, miscommunication or sabotage, when colonialism was made procedural, but also how this happened through moments of shared interests and understanding.

First of all, this was a meeting of bureaucrats. All the attendees were involved in the daily execution of colonial rule that had gradually intensified over the past thirty years. The everydayness of colonial bureaucracy involved a constant need to clarify and streamline daily tasks. Despite this happening at a relatively low level, acts by local actors had a political impact on the formation of bureaucracies across colonial empires.Footnote ³⁹ In Sumatra, this is, for example, quite clear during the meeting in Natal, in the northern tip of West Sumatra. Toeankoe Besaar of Natal on one hand rejects a proposed change in a legal tradition, as discussed below, but also signals that he would like to get clarity on which laws or adat apply, and for that reason would agree to the colonial regulations, because he: ‘[felt like] a sailor at open sea who does not own a compass to determine his course’.Footnote ⁴⁰ These small interventions became consequential, as in this case, a request for clarity allowed the Dutch to gradually define which laws would apply and how.

To a certain extent, all attendees of the meetings also had a certain interest in maintaining the status quo and streamlining the plantation economy and the legal system that was their joint responsibility. There was an awareness of the legally plural context in which they functioned, and the opportunities it afforded for what Nurfadzilah Yahaya has described as ‘creating their own legal domains’.Footnote ⁴¹ The shared interest in orde en rust (peace and order) is especially visible when we look more closely at the discussions surrounding the theme of the legal authority of the village heads. On 15 May 1865, during the meeting in Penjaboengan (Groot and Klein Mandheling) several notables, among whom were the Jang die Pertoean of Kotta Siantar and Dja Bagon of Menangbing, make known that according to them the kampong heads should be given some legal authority in minor cases. The Dutch secretary noted in the minutes that a ‘lively discussion among governor and named heads’ followed. He did not record this discussion verbatim, unfortunately, but he summarised the opinions expressed by the heads:

The interest in the legal authority of the kampong heads here is clearly driven by the potential threat to the profits of the colonial cultivation system. In Mandheling with its many coffee plantations, this was especially relevant. Governor Van den Bossche and Commissioner Der Kinderen were susceptible to this argument: ‘After consultation with the Governments’ Commissioner, the Governor told the heads who were at the meeting that their remarks and thoughts would be considered carefully, and that already it could be said that they contain much value, and that therefore their wishes would be met as far as possible.’ In this moment, when the interests of the Dutch and the Minangkabau heads came together in the service of economic profits, the meeting immediately became more productive, the discussions have more content, and they look more like a real exchange of ideas, than at other moments that we will discuss further below.

Second, all those attending were men. Although the Minangkabau had a matrilineal system when it came to land and (parts of) inheritance, this did not mean that all power was also in the hands of women. At these kinds of meetings, a colonial space, women were not invited, just as there were spaces within Minangkabau society to which women did not have access or where they had no influence over decision-making. It was with ease that all the men participating in these meetings spoke about the fate of women in certain criminal law issues, in the absence of women representatives. For example in Priaman on 25 June, there was a ‘lively discussion’ on the issue of women committing adultery, and it was one of the few moments that the local heads were not rather swiftly silenced by the Governor:

Here, again, we observe an exchange of information and views, in a relatively open atmosphere. Although Van den Bossche did not agree with all aspects of the adat—he was not so much concerned about the fate of the women as of that of their children—there was a common understanding among the male Minangkabau leaders and Dutch officials alike of the position of women in society and agreement about the punishment for adultery.Footnote ⁴⁴ This shared understanding went beyond general ideas about women in Minangkabau society. Governor Van den Bossche also spoke here from personal experience; he was unmarried, but had at least three children with two local women. Both the attending Minangkabau men as well as Van den Bossche were enmeshed in local family life, including having children, albeit under very different circumstances.Footnote ⁴⁵

Third, all attending Dutch and Minangkabau men shared a discourse of progress and the conviction that education for men of certain classes was important. The long tradition of merantau—travelling to distant schools to receive education—continued under colonial rule. The possibility of gaining a better position within the colonial government through Dutch eduation was illustrated at the meeting in Ankola by the presence of translator and teacher Willem Iskander, who came from the area and had been trained in the Netherlands. At the time of the meetings Iskander had just returned from the Netherlands. From around the mid-nineteenth century, a relatively high number of Minangkabau men (compared to other Indonesian regions) went to the Netherlands for higher education.Footnote ⁴⁶ Ideas of progress and civilisation were also central to the meetings. A number of the Sumatran attendees referred to certain parts of West Sumatra as being more ‘developed’ than others, especially the Batak regions, which were considered ‘less developed’ compared to the Minangkabau.Footnote ⁴⁷

Finally, all attendees shared their belief in one God. At each meeting there was an explicit reference to religion. God was a central part of the gatherings, and implicitly the emphasis that Christianity and Islam had the same God. Although these points of convergence—shared ideas about bureaucracy, gender, civilisational progress, and religion—may seem obvious, the meetings foreground the marked and unmarked ways in which common ground, however temporary, was crucial to the workings of the law and legal transformation. A close reading of the minutes enables us to see these moments of connection where there was more space to go in depth in the discussion and make decisions seemingly collectively and with consensus.

Adat as argument

Despite a number of shared commonalities, the minutes reveal that there were more moments when there was tension and disagreement between the Sumatran and Dutch officials, especially when discussing adat in criminal law. The adat tanggung menanggung, or solidarity system, in particular turned out to be a dead-end conversation as the Dutch aimed to introduce a system of individual instead of communal responsibility. Van den Bossche passionately argued that the solidarity system was in fact Islamic and that the abolishment of this system would be a rightful return to the ‘old adat’. During the meeting of 29 May 1865, in the largest West Sumatran city Padang, he emphasised his views when explaining article 1 of the proposed draft regulations: ‘The so-called solidarity system, or the adat tanggung menanggung, which has generally come into vogue here, should be abolished and there should be a return to the original adat, which says that every person is responsible for his own deeds and not for those of others.’Footnote ⁴⁸

The issue was, of course, that there was not something like the adat, because adat was an unwritten, living law that responded to change in Sumatran society. There were also different kinds of adat with various terms signalling what kind of adat was used. Adat that changed due to decision-making, for example, was called adat nan diadatkan.Footnote ⁴⁹ When the Sumatran heads attempted to explain this during the meetings, they were met with ignorance and arrogance on the part of the colonial officials. On 25 June 1865, at the meeting in Priaman the proposal to abolish the solidarity system met the most resistance. A discussion arose in which Bagindo Tan Linbang, the laras head (larashoofd) of V Kotta, argued that when a thief cannot pay back the value of stolen goods to the victim, the thief's kampong should do this instead. To this Van den Bossche responded: ‘But that is not what the old adat says; according to the old adat each and everyone has to pay their own debts and pay for their own misdeeds, as follows from the principles: beroetang, membaijar; tangan menantjang, bakoe memikoel enz.’Footnote ⁵⁰ Bagindo Saleh, laras head of Oelahkan responded to this by explaining: ‘The adat tanggung menanggung does belong to the traditional Malay adat. The cited principles, instead, have more resemblance to the Koran.’Footnote ⁵¹ Maharadja Nando, laras head of Mangong argued: ‘The cited principles belong to the original adat tanggung menanggung (the custom of who bears the responsibility), that have come into vogue at a later time (adat jang di abatkan).’Footnote ⁵²

The local heads thus pointed out to Van den Bossche, a self-declared expert on Sumatran adat, that there were inconsistencies in his explanation of the existing solidarity system, in which the murderer's community was involved in payments to the victim's community. Van den Bossche wanted to convince the meeting of his belief that the solidarity system was an infringement on what he calls ‘the old adat’ and that the abolishment of the system would therefore mean a protection of adat. When he did not succeed in convincing the meeting he turned to Bagindo Saleh and asked incredulously if he would be willing to pay for his relatives if they committed a murder. The Dutch clerks noted Bagindo Saleh's response: ‘Named head answers that this would depend on the circumstances, but that he would certainly be willing to pay in certain instances.’ This short dialogue between Bagindo Saleh and Van den Bossche reflects the latter's lack of understanding, and unwillingness to understand, certain legal concepts followed by Bagindo Saleh.Footnote ⁵³ Reading the minutes almost a hundred and fifty years later in an archive, it is also this exchange that stands out most in the files; for a short moment the format of the minutes changed, the tensions and stakes of what was discussed during a meeting about regulations surfaced; the formal became personal.

Whereas Van den Bossche emphasised that the abolishment of the solidarity system would be a return to adat, in other places the Dutch conversely argued that the ‘old adat’ had to be changed, because the area ‘had blossomed’ (in bloei was gestegen) and the laws were to be adapted to the new circumstances. The liberal lawyer and newcomer to the colony, Der Kinderen, used this metaphor of blossoming and transformation to argue for the introduction of colonial legislation as being similar to the fluid, ever changing, nature of adat. Ten years after the meetings, in 1875, when Der Kinderen returned to West Sumatra and visited the same places as before to enact the new colonial legislation, he also explicitly referred to adat. During one of his speeches, Der Kinderen was standing at the same place where the meeting was held ten years ago and reminded the Sumatran leaders of the large, old waringin tree (see fig. 2) that had been there:

Ten years ago we found shelter under the broad branches of this old waringin that later fell over. Some of you might think that the adat will be sidelined because of the new legislation. But those who say that have not thought about it long enough, because if they did they would understand that when a people develops more, the laws will also change. That is why in your traditions the hadat nan di hadatkan exists next to the hadat nan benar. The new laws that I now give you in the name of the Government, are like the hadat nan di hadatkan.

Figure 2.

Photograph of a waringin tree in Sumatra, c.1877–79 (Leiden University Libraries, KITLV no. 7097)

Many of you will remember the large waringin tree, that, when we held that large meeting here over ten years ago, spread its branches and leaves over us; that tree had lived for a long time, it was old, very old, and finally fell down, and it cannot protect us from the sun anymore. But, in its place a young tree will be planted, and this tree will grow old too and protect the people with its wide branches and leaves from sunshine and rain, until that tree will become old and fall, die and be replaced by yet another tree.

This is similar to the hadat and the laws: slowly they penetrate the soul of the people providing guarantees of justice and safety, but they also get old, the people progress in their development, the adat and laws do not fit the circumstances anymore and have to be replaced. That is how the new laws, which I have brought here now, will replace outdated customs and institutions and in their turn, these new laws too will change, and will have to be replaced.Footnote ⁵⁴

After the speech Der Kinderen and those gathered planted a new waringin and the penghulu read a prayer.Footnote ⁵⁵ Der Kinderen exclaimed in Dutch and after that in Malay:

Der Kinderen spread the first three scoops of soil around the sapling, followed by the governor, the European officials, military commanders, the indigenous heads, and finally ‘most of the ladies’.

During the 1865 meetings, ideas about the fluidity of adat provided not only the Dutch with an argument to transform existing customs, but this was a process that a variety of local elites also sought. Through a recourse to fluidity, they inserted their interests and concerns in this space, revealing local differences. That the matrilineal inheritance law, for example, was not undisputed in West Sumatra appears from the minutes of a number of meetings. Family law issues, such as marriage, divorce, property and inheritance were generally touched as little as possible by the Dutch, as had also been their strategy in Java.Footnote ⁵⁷ Matrilineal inheritance (adat pusaka) was applicable through the harato pusako—the property of matrilineages under a lineage head, which comprised of land and houses, but also titles and jewelry. Harato pancaharian, to the contrary, was property that was obtained by an individual during his lifetime and which was inherited by the male lineage.Footnote ⁵⁸ For many Sumatran notables, the potential interference with this adat was a concern and thus the issue was brought up in most meetings. During the public meeting held with the local chiefs of Ajer Bangis and Ran on Wednesday 10 May 1865, for example, the laras head of Tandjang Batang declared that he ‘entirely’ (ten volle) approved of the proposed regulations and considered them to be ‘of the highest importance to the well-being of land and the people’ (van het hoogste belang voor het welzijn van land en volk), but he added that he hoped that it was not the aim of the government to make any changes in the adat poesaka (matrilineal inheritance) of the Malay inheritance traditions. Van den Bossche assured him that this would not happen.Footnote ⁵⁹

At the meeting in Natal, however, the Toeankoe Besaar of Natal proposed to change the ‘old adat poesaka’ so that the inheritance of a man would from then on go to his children. He argued that this way of inheriting would be more in concurrence with the ‘laws and regulations of the religion followed by the population of Natal’. Toeankoe Batahan responded by stating that in his region, in Batahan, a coastal town a bit more south, the ‘old adat’ was followed, and that there was no wish for a change in this adat. He did add, carefully it seems, that a change, however, would not meet opposition (gene tegenkanting) if the colonial government would want to introduce this change. The input from the two local heads shows that there were regionally different interpretations of the inheritance law, and we can see glimpses of the tense history around this issue. Van den Bossche responded to both these remarks equally carefully, hinting that the colonial government was not a proponent of matrilineal inheritance, but said that ‘however useful’, a change in the inheritance law could only take place with the ‘collaboration of all stakeholders. If the entire population would be in favour of such a change, then the heads could inform the colonial government of this.’Footnote ⁶⁰ In the minutes of the meetings it is clear that the Dutch preferred to not engage, let alone intervene, in matrilineal inheritance issues.Footnote ⁶¹ Since there were local differences on the subject, it was relatively easy to return the issue to the local heads of the region by telling them that they first had to find agreement amongst themselves.

In using the idea of what adat was as an argument during the meetings, the Sumatran elites were either attempting to protect their legal traditions or saw a possible gateway into changing certain adat traditions they did not observe to be fitting to their own sub-region. The two Dutch actors used the idea of a fluid adat as well to advance their own agenda of wanting to introduce Dutch laws and abolish certain adat altogether. Van den Bossche and Der Kinderen used opposing arguments about adat to reach the same conclusion that a colonial regulation of the legal system was needed. Van den Bossche argued for a return to the ‘old adat’ by removing Islamic influences. Der Kinderen was in favour of changing the local legal traditions, arguing that change and fluidity was inherent to adat. This discrepancy in both Europeans’ reasoning, while still reaching the same conclusion, was not necessarily orchestrated, but rather reflects their very different backgrounds. Van den Bossche was an ‘oudgast’, a long-term resident of the Indies with ties to local society and Sumatra in particular. He was personally invested in the idea of protecting adat against the influences of Islamic law. Der Kinderen was a relatively recent arrival in the colony, who strategically used his interpretation of the fluid nature of adat as a rhetorical tool in order to abolish parts of it.Footnote ⁶²

Adat translated

The broader concerns about the preservation of adat and conflicting ideas about its fluidity eventually led to moments during the meetings where the translation of specific Malay legal terminology to Dutch became key sites for codification.Footnote ⁶³ The ‘colonizing significance of translation and mistranslation’ becomes apparent in the minutes.Footnote ⁶⁴ On 6 April, the Djaksa tutulair Datoe di Negrie Rang Kaija Besar in Fort de Kock (Bukitinggi) asked ‘in the name of a number of heads’ specific questions about legal translation in the regulations which would be drafted in both Malay and Dutch. He questioned the difference between moord (murder) and manslag (manslaughter) and explained that according to the Malay adat there were three different ways in which a person could lose their life due to the actions of someone else: ‘amat, sacboe and ghatta’. The severity of the crime decided the punishment. In this instance, Van den Bossche responded by saying that Dutch criminal law had a similar divide, because there was murder (moord), malicious manslaughter (doodslag met voorbedachte rade) and manslaughter caused by an accident or carelessness (doodslag door toeval en onvoorzichtheid). Only the first one would lead to the death penalty. According to the minutes, the Djaksa agreed on this translation. In this instance, through the (Western) process of translating word-for-word the meaning of Malay legal ideas immediately transforms and is at risk of getting lost in translation. In the tradition of the Shafi'i school of law, commentarial translation was more common, in which the translator took on a significant role and wrote extensive commentaries, especially in instances where Islamic law was translated to local languages.Footnote ⁶⁵ The minutes of the Sumatra meetings, therefore, show a collision between the European way of translating with the more collective and contextual local traditions of translation.

Even more striking, though, during the Sumatra meetings translation is a moment of colonial negotiation and imposition, where the meaning of local legal concepts is being purposefully changed through the act of translating. This is most visible in the minutes when an issue arose about the term bangon, which the Dutch translated as ‘blood money’ (bloedgeld), and were planning to abolish as being part of the solidarity system, to replace it with monetary compensation. The Djaksa explained that bangon was not to be replaced with compensation money, because a compensation price always had to be paid for the life of the victim if the murderer continued to live. Van den Bossche insisted that only the judge could decide if and how much compensation money the relatives of the victim would receive. In the end they came to an agreement, according to the minutes, that the Sumatran heads, who served as judges in the colonial law courts, were allowed to continue using the word ‘bangon’ in the courtroom even though this would from then on refer to compensation money instead of blood money.

There is an interesting dynamic going on in this colonial encounter, precisely because there is no other outcome possible than the full introduction of the Dutch criminal law system. There is little to no space for negotiation on the part of the Sumatran leaders, and no real attempt on the part of the Dutch officials to try to understand the Minangkabau criminal law traditions. The suggestion that this is a meeting and therefore a space of exchange as opposed to an imposition of new laws is constantly put forth in the minutes. Yet, in this moment of legal translation what happened was actually a discussion about the translation of existing Minangkabau legal terminology into Dutch legal concepts, making the earlier meanings of the Malay terms disappear. Minangkabau law was being erased to a greater degree, because their concepts and terms were given a different meaning and content. This was more than a meeting where things got lost in translation; this was a case of active erasure through translation.

Materiality of the minutes

Having presented the meetings as an open space for conversation, Van den Bossche and Der Kinderen were invested in continuing in this mode after the meetings had ended. Equally important to the Dutch agenda was keeping the memory of the meetings alive, to remind everyone of the collaborative process they made it out to have been. The minutes of the 1865 meetings (fig. 3), therefore, had to be signed for approval by all the attendees. This was time consuming—Der Kinderen wrote in one of his letters impatiently that not all minutes had been returned yet, because they were still in the residencies ‘to be signed’—but it was a completion of the process he insisted upon.Footnote ⁶⁶

Figure 3.

First page of the minutes of the meeting held in Ajer Bangis on 10 May 1865. (Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, Besluit 22-9-1871, no. 59. Reproduced with permission)

It would take ten years between the meetings and the return of Der Kinderen to the region to implement the new legal system. The physical and material aspects of Der Kinderen's strategy—in line with the nine meetings across Sumatra's West Coast and the signatures on the minutes—was central to reaching this goal.Footnote ⁶⁷ In addition to the signed minutes of the meetings, Der Kinderen's report of his return visit in 1875 was another way of controlling the narrative. The report was attached to the national Colonial Report in the Netherlands, a narcissistic fest in which Der Kinderen himself was the central hero. He wrote repeatedly about how content everyone was with his new regulations and how satisfied the people of Sumatra's West Coast were with Dutch colonial rule. Gala dinners were held, with flags, streamers, parties and speeches:

After that, folk games (volksspelen) started ‘among thousands and thousands celebrating, without any disturbances’. In the evening the resident organised a gala reception ‘in my honour’ where also local heads appeared and ‘thousands of natives surrounded the house of the resident’. On his own initiative, Der Kinderen printed and distributed 600 copies of his speech, in Arabic script. Der Kinderen presented himself almost like a religious leader, not uncommon amongst the liberal colonial lawyers around that time in the Netherlands Indies (and elsewhere). Liberalism and spreading the rule of law (rechtsstaat) had an almost religious character to these lawyers, which they effortlessly combined with colonial power grabs.Footnote ⁶⁹

Another aim of the tour was the legitimisation of the new legislation. To build or expand support for these reforms, the local heads had to feel that they had been heard ten years ago and that that these new regulations were a good development. As discussed, explicit references were made to the ‘renewed adat’ with the help of the symbolism of planting a tree to replace the old waringin. At each gathering in 1875, Der Kinderen reminded the attending heads of the meetings how they had expressed support of the reforms ten years earlier. During the visit, local officials were trained by the well-known Javanese jaksa (prosecutor) Hadiningrat who accompanied Der Kinderen.Footnote ⁷⁰ Through publishing and writing, Der Kinderen consciously built an archive of the formation of the new legislation which had to be continued and become part of the legal and archival knowledge of the region. Next to the loud and visible ceremonies accompanying the introduction of the new laws, there was therefore also a material aspect to ensure the continuation of Dutch legal rule: copies of the regulations addressed to the heads and officials were bound in sturdy linen embossed with the Netherlands royal crest in gold. Printed copies of the regulations were presented in three local languages. There was an incredible formalism to this process, with each copy personally signed by the Resident and with the name of the recipient inscribed on the first page. Der Kinderen thought that this would increase the value of each copy to ‘those who received it’ and that it would have ‘a higher probability of becoming part of the archive of the official involved and therefore will be passed on to his successor’.Footnote ⁷¹

Whether these regulations were indeed kept carefully and became part of the archives of West Sumatran heads is unclear, but we do know that the minutes themselves were kept, at least by one Sumatran notable: Sutan Cianago, the son of Imam Bonjol. He kept the minutes of the meeting in Fort de Kock and gave them later as a gift to a Dutch official together with a text about abuses committed by the Dutch colonial government, and the ill treatment he himself received. Not only did Cianago keep the minutes, but he also combined them with his father's memoirs and his own memoirs into one manuscript, which was published in 2004 as Naskah Tuanku Imam Bonjol;Footnote ⁷² it was no coincidence that these three texts were kept together, as is shown in the following comments by Hadler on Cianago's memoirs:

Sutan Cianago's voicelessness in the face of his position is also reflected in the minutes of the codification meetings: minutes that he kept, preserved and passed on to send a message to the colonial govenment—minutes of meetings where his own voice was not heard. During the meeting in Fort de Kock that Cianago attended, he stayed silent. For him, it was the materiality of the minutes and its archival power that spoke and that revealed the devastating consequences of the meetings, of the procedures, of colonialism.