Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Indonesia’s most remarkable writer, once wrote a piece entitled The Book that Killed Colonialism. In it, he stressed the importance of Eduard Douwes Dekker’s 1859 novel Max Havelaar, which highlighted the misery wrought on Indonesians by the policy of forced cultivation. This book energized the liberal movement in the Netherlands, eventually leading to new, more ethical colonial policies, including Western education for Indonesians.
Well, if a book can kill colonialism, then why shouldn’t a town be able to? That town is Bukittinggi. The back-story is the coffee trade and the scene is the Padri War.
Since the advent of Westerners arriving in West Sumatra, coffee as an export commodity had been thriving. To begin with, the Dutch held sway only in Padang and the surrounding coastal area. The coffee plantations were far inland. Then the Padri War broke out.
The war was ignited by a group of Wahabi-inspired clerics, recently returned from the Middle East. They insisted on the brutal implementation of fundamental Islam in the Minangkabau region. However, the clerics met resistance from traditional chiefs called the Kaum Adat. The war raged for decades.
In 1821, the embattled Kaum Adat asked for support from the Dutch in Padang. The Dutch were keen to help in order to safeguard their coffee supply chain and to gain power in areas where coffee was grown.
To strengthen their military position, the Dutch built the Fort de Kock in 1833 in the middle of the Agam plateau; the local Agam people named this colonial town Bukittinggi. The Dutch defeated the clerics in 1837.
To boost the economy, using the export of coffee as the backbone, the Dutch built infrastructure including schools and coffee warehouses, and trained locals to run the coffee-related businesses as well as the administration of the local government. The Minangkabau people were dragged into the modern era, giving birth to a class of Dutch-speaking local teachers, civil servants and intellectuals. This class and its offspring would later play a leading role in Indonesian independence.
A notably large proportion of Indonesian intellectuals involved in the struggle for independence were in some way related to Bukittinggi and nearby Koto Gadang, including Bung Hatta (1902-1980), Abdul Muis (1883-1959), Tan Malaka (1897-1949), Agus Salim (1884-1954) and Sutan Sjahrir (1907-1966).
Bung Hatta was a co-founder of the nation. Along with Bung Karno, he proclaimed and signed the declaration of Indonesian independence in 1945.
Tan Malaka was an underground fighter and a prolific writer. One of his books, Madilog, is still widely read. He also had the first clear vision of the country’s future, in 1925 writing an essay entitled Toward the Republic of Indonesia.
Both H. Agus Salim and Abdul Muis were activists in Sarekat Islam, the commercial-turned-political organization that spread nationalism all over the archipelago. Sutan Sjahrir was the first Indonesian prime minister. He played a key role in the 1946 Linggarjati agreement — the first negotiation between the Dutch and the formally declared Indonesian nation.
The Minangkabau people and their culture maximized the hidden benefits of Dutch rule, at least in part resulting in a consequence unintended by the colonialists: Indonesian independence.
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