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The Cultural Context
The Java War
by Peter CareyIn the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the island of Java was drawn into two European wars—the French Revolutionary (1792-1802) and Napoleonic (1803-1815). Together, these constituted the modern era’s first global conflict.
The Dutch had opened trading links with the East Indies archipelago in the late 16th century, with maps secretly obtained from the Portuguese. Drawn to the cloves, nutmeg and mace of Molucca Islands and the booming pepper trade of Banten, they moved with astonishing speed.
In 1602, they founded the world’s first successful multinational company, the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC). From 1619, this was based in Batavia (present-day Jakarta).
As Dutch trading power grew, their political and military influence spread along the whole of Java’s north coast. By 1680, Dutch influence had been recognised in a series of commercial treaties which gave the VOC key monopolies on the import of opium and Indian textiles and export control of Java’s trading commodities.
If the rise of the VOC as a regional power was the story of the seventeenth century, the next hundred years witnessed the decline and eventual collapse of the VOC. Nowhere was this more evident than in the early 1790s. This was when a bankrupt VOC was drawn into a war with Republican France, forcing it to appeal for military protection to its local Javanese and Madurese allies.4 For the Javanese, the Dutch days in Java were numbered. However, it was precisely in this period, before the arrival of Napoleon’s new Governor-General, Marshal Herman Willem Daendels (in office, 1808-1811), in early 1808, that the most significant changes occurred in Europe. The combination of the industrial and political revolutions in Britain and France transformed the modern world. But these developments were disguised entirely from the Javanese. This was the tragedy of modern Java.
How come? As war transformed Europe, it also transformed Europe’s overseas possessions. During the hard winter of 1794-95 French Republican armies crossed the frozen Maas and Waal rivers and conquered the Netherlands. This led to the Dutch head of state fleeing to London. From his temporary base at Kew Palace, he issued letters known as the ‘Kew Letters’, entrusting all Dutch colonies to Britain for ‘safe keeping’.5 The decision triggered a large-scale deployment of the Royal Navy and the conquest of all Dutch bases outside Java.
The naval blockade of the archipelago’s ports was so tight that hardly any Dutch ships could reach Batavia. Even Daendels himself had to sail on a French privateer (commerce raider) for part of his journey to the Indies via Lisbon and the Canary Islands.6 In July 1810, Napoleon’s annexation of the Netherlands to the French Empire forced the British to conquer Java (August-September 1811). They would retain it until just after the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
These brief occupations transformed the colony. When Daendels arrived in Java on 6 January 1808, he found the island under siege. So rigorous was the Royal Navy’s blockade of Java’s ports that nothing could move along the north coast without attracting the guns of its Indian Ocean squadron. But Daendels thought big. If a coastal highway was strategically impossible, he would use gunpowder to blast a new mountain road through the Priangan Highlands via Puncak Pass and Bandung. And so Daendels’ great trans-Java post road (postweg) was born (1809-10): “no governor had thought of it before him, and I believe none will dare to contemplate it afterwards’’ was one Belgian officer’s comment.
But Daendels’ governorship was not just about roads. It also laid the foundation for the administrative centralisation of the Netherlands-Indies and post-1945 Indonesia. This changed the relationship between the Batavia (post-1942, Jakarta)-based government and the Javanese courts.
Daendels’ 41-month tenure as colonial viceroy left a lasting legacy. He was not in the business of reforming a few archaic practices. He wanted root and branch change. His administration transformed the political and social world of Java. In everything that touched the relationship between the south-central Javanese courts—Yogyakarta and Surakarta—and Batavia, it was clear that Java had entered a new age. Like a depth charge, the impact of Daendels’ presence would be felt long after his mid-May 1811 departure.
There was much that the Marshal did not plan. His sartorial legacy—in particular, his bequest of an alternative military dress code to indigenous courts and the colonial bureaucracy—was a byproduct of his administration.
However, the fact that uniforms continue to play such a significant role in Javanese society is a testament to his extraordinary influence. He turned Javanese society upside down, offering new ways of acquiring status. He imported what British historian Norman Hampson has called ‘the nationalisation of honour’. This mirrored the French Revolutionary dictum that ‘it is no longer one’s birth which gives honour but one’s service to the state’. The first governor-general to hold a military rank, he set a precedent that would resonate into the modern period. Here he reflected a contemporary trend in Europe: the militarisation of European monarchies and the tendency for European rulers to wear military dress while on official duties.
By the time Java was restored to the Dutch on 19 August 1816 to make the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815-1830) strong against a resurgent France, the commercial dealings of the former Dutch East India Company (VOC) had been replaced by the beginnings of a modern colonial state. Over the following century, its reach would spread across the Indonesian archipelago, reducing the power of the local rulers and establishing Dutch authority in every corner of present-day Indonesia.
As the influence of the West continued to penetrate ever more deeply into the lives of ordinary Javanese people, events in the Middle East also shaped the fortunes of both the local populations and Dutch colonists. The 18th and 19th centuries witnessed an increase in Ottoman Turkish influence in the East Indies and the number of Arab migrants from the Hadhramaut (present-day South Yemen) settling in the archipelago. The quickening tempo of pilgrim traffic across the Indian Ocean also exposed Java’s inhabitants to the turbulent events in the Middle East. Here, a French Republican army briefly occupied Egypt and Syria (1798-1801) before the puritan Wahhābhīs overran the holy cities of Islam (Makkah and Madinah) (1803-1812). The insights gained from pilgrim traffic were shared with Diponegoro and his top commanders.
This exposure to Ottoman civil and military institutions explains Diponegoro’s emulation of the ranks and regimental names used in the Ottoman army for his military formations. Thus, his elite bodyguard troops, who wore turbans of different colours and had regimental banners with serpents, half-moons and inscriptions from the Qur’ān, were arranged in companies with names such as Bulkio, Turkio and Arkio, directly modelled on the Bölüki (from bölük, a squad or troop), Oturaki, and Ardia Janissary corps regiments of the Ottoman sultans.
Although attempts have been made to portray Diponegoro as a khilafist, there is nothing to indicate that he had any interest in furthering this goal. Rather, his religious aims in the Java War were deeply anchored in Javanese Sufi Muslim belief systems, Islam having reached the archipelago through Muslim traders from western India in the late 12th and early 13th century.
This form of Islam coexisted in harmony with pre-Muslim beliefs in an immanent spirit world, as well as Vajrayana Buddhist and Hindu religious systems inherited from the archipelago’s great pre-Muslim empires, including Srivijaya (7th-11th century) and Majapahit (1293-circa 1527).
The Ottoman Empire—despite its fading glory—inspired Muslims with an admiration for the one Islamic state which had seemingly withstood the might of Christian Europe. This example stiffened the resolve of the archipelago’s Muslim rulers and Islamic divines in the face of Western imperial expansion. This was especially the case in Java, where the nascent power of the new United Kingdom of the Netherlands, created by the major European powers in 1815 in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, came closest to defeat. This happened during the five-year struggle known as the Java War. From its outbreak in July 1825 until their final defeat in March 1830, the Javanese rebels waged a guerrilla war across large swathes of Central and East Java. This displaced over a third of the six million strong population and caused the death of 200,000 more.
The main protagonist in this conflict was a Javanese prince from Yogyakarta: Pangeran Diponegoro.
Founded by its dynamic first ruler, Mangkubumi (reigned 1749-92), Yogyakarta initially flourished. Shortly after the treaty which had divided Java in February 1755 between Surakarta and Yogyakarta, oral tradition has it that Mangkubumi asked his Surakarta counterpart to choose between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’—wadhah (‘container’) and wiji (‘seed/essence’)—concerning the cultural style of his new court. This was to ensure that, when the Mataram kingdom was split, the two halves could evolve with clearly distinct cultural patterns. Faced with this choice, oral tradition asserts, Mangkubumi opted for the former, namely wadhah (container), thus implicitly leaving his Surakarta rival the possibility of developing a more “modern” court style through the evolution of wiji (essence).
Java in February 1755 between Surakarta and Yogyakarta, oral tradition has it that Mangkubumi asked his Surakarta counterpart to choose between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’—wadhah (‘container’) and wiji (‘seed/essence’)—concerning the cultural style of his new court. This was to ensure that, when the Mataram kingdom was split, the two halves could evolve with clearly distinct cultural patterns. Faced with this choice, oral tradition asserts, Mangkubumi opted for the former, namely wadhah (container), thus implicitly leaving his Surakarta rival the possibility of developing a more “modern” court style through the evolution of wiji (essence).
Diponegoro—whose name means ‘light of the country’—was born in 1785. The eldest son of thethird sultan, Hamengku Buwono III (1812-14), but born of a secondary wife, he had witnessed the humiliation of his father’s realm at the hands of both Daendels and Raffles. The British interim administration had been especially devastating. During their five-year interim rule (1811-1816), the British attacked no less than four courts: Palembang, Bali-Buleleng, Bone in South Celebes (Sulawesi) and Yogyakarta.
This led to the loss of irreplaceable manuscripts (many are now in the British Library
These included one particularly revered prophetic manuscript, the Serat Surya Raja, written by the Second Sultan of Yogyakarta at the turn of the Javanese century (AJ 1700/AD 1774) and regarded as a royal heirloom (pusaka-Dalem). Other cultural assets included heirloom daggers (kris) with hilts and clasps set with precious stones. Amongst these were the personal weapons of the sultans of Palembang and Yogyakarta, now in the Royal Armoury Collection in Windsor.
The brutality of the British assault on Yogyakarta on 20 June 1812 shocked contemporaries. Diponegoro’s great-uncle, Prince Panular (c.1771/2-1826), described in heart-wrenching detail how the Shetland-born Residency Secretary, John Deans, had posed with his cavalry sabre while mutilating the body of the slain Yogyakarta army commander, Raden Tumenggung Sumodiningrat, in his private mosque. Javanese chronicles, written in macapat verse, are typically sung in public gatherings. But grown men break down when called upon to sing the passage relating to Sumodiningrat’s death and despoliation. Such savagery provided the context for Diponegoro’s own decision to wage a holy war (jihad) against the Dutch in 1825.
Unusually for a member of the Javanese aristocracy, Diponegoro spent his childhood in a village environment. Adopted at birth by his great-grandmother, the widow of Yogyakarta’s charismatic founder, Sultan Mangkubumi, he was taken, aged seven, to her Tegalrejo country estate three miles northwest of Yogyakarta. A lady of great piety, she proved a stern stepmother to the child prince, teaching him to mix with Javanese of all classes, in particular farmers and santri (students of Islam).
In his 1,150 folio-page autobiographical chronicle (babad), written in exile in Manado over nine months in 1831-32, the prince evoked the rigorously simple life she led among the farming communities around Tegalrejo.
A leading member of the Shaţţārīyya Sufi mystical order (tarekat) in Yogyakarta with four murshid (teachers) linking her to the order’s founder in Java, Syekh Abdul Muhyi (born 1650), she was the pivot around which Shaţţārīyya mystical teachings were disseminated in the Yogya court community of Diponegoro’s youth.
The dowager queen consort introduced Diponegoro to the mystical teachings of Islam, particularly the
study of tasawwuf (Sufi mysticism). He would pursue this to the end of his days. By then, he had become a teacher conferring ijazah (certificates of mystical attainment) on his pupils in Fort Rotterdam, Makassar, in the early 1840s.
He was also taught to withstand great physical hardships, embarking on long journeys on foot to local religious schools and places associated with the spirit guardians of Java in his teens.
His stepmother’s example also quickened his practical skills, such as his ability to read character from the study of faces (ilm al-firāsa),financial acumen, and capacity for honest administration.
An autodidact and keen chess player, the mystic prince tempered his asceticism with a sharp intelligence which impressed even his Dutch adversaries. He rolled his cigarettes using maize corn bracts (rokok klobot), had a liking for vintage South African wine (Constantia), and loved songbirds. Everywhere he went, he sought secluded areas for meditation, often by fast-flowing streams and rivers. Towards the end of the war, when he was hiding out in mountain fastnesses near the West Java border, he described how he liked to go down to the bank of a nearby river to watch the crocodiles bask in the morning sun.
Following his great-grandmother’s death in October 1803, he built himself a personal retreat—Selorejo (‘stone of prosperity’)—to the northeast of his Tegalrejo estate. Here, he meditated on a special seat made of four upturned Dhyani Buddhas on an artificial island shaded by a banyan tree, surrounded by a semi-circular pond filled with turtles and fish. This mix of religions was common for early 19th-century Javanese, and the prince found no problem following the practices of his Sufi Islamic mystical order at a meditation retreat filled with Buddhist and Hindu statuary taken from nearby Hindu-Buddhist temples.
In 1805, at the age of 20, Diponegoro made a significant pilgrimage to the southern coast of Java. This marked his coming of age as a young man.
There, meditating in caves and holy sites near the thunderous surf of the Indian Ocean, he received the early visions. These foretold his future role as a Javanese ‘Just King’ (Ratu Adil). a ruler who would restore the moral balance of the Javanese world. We know of these visions from the detailed descriptions in the prince’s autobiographical chronicle. Convinced of his destiny to ‘raise up the high state of the Islamic religion in Java [mangun luhuripun agami Islam wonten ing tanah Jawa sedaya]’, Diponegoro came to see himself as an agent of purification. But he was no Islamic reformer. Instead, he saw himself as a defender of an old order in which Javanist belief systems associated with the goddess of the Southern Ocean, Ratu Kidul, and other potent spiritual
protectors of the south-central Javanese rulers could coexist alongside the teachings of Islam.
The future Java War leader was always torn between his inner life as a mystic and his visionary calling as a political and military commander.
These, however, were exceptional times. The world of Diponegoro’s youth in the late 18th century—the seemingly ageless Java of custom and tradition—had been destroyed in the political ‘tsunami’ of post-Revolutionary Europe. The years between 1816 and 1825 were particularly dire for the Javanese peasantry. The newly restored Dutch government, recently bankrupted by French occupation, sought to restore its threadbare finances by extending the system of tollgates in the Javanese countryside. Run by Chinese tollgate keepers recently arrived from southern China with no fluency in Javanese or Malay, these lit the powder keg. In mid-July 1825, as Diponegoro’s estate became the epicentre of resistance, the Javanese countryside erupted in an anti-Chinese pogrom. The targets were the 25,000-strong Chinese community living in the tobacco- and coffee-growing areas of southern Kedu and the cotton and flax-weaving centres of eastern Bagelen. Coffee plantations, tollgates, and government tax offices were all targeted, with the Chinese residents fleeing to the provincial capital, Magelang, and the relative safety of Dutch-held cities on the north coast.
This became the prelude to the Java War, involving the hard-pressed rural communities. Already suffering from prolonged periods of drought, famine, and cholera in 1821, many supported popular expectations of a coming Ratu Adil.
The massive eruption of Mount Merapi in late December 1822 and the appearance of the greatcomet of 1825 on 15 July, just five days before the outbreak of the war, seemed to confirm these hopes. Meanwhile, the larger than life presence of Diponegoro in the minds of Javanese villagers and members of the Islamic religious communities was quickened by his frequent journeys on foot through the countryside.
The trigger for war, when it came, was minor: a highway project demarcated with studied insolence by the Dutch-appointed prime minister, Raden Adipati Danurejo IV, across the prince’s Tegalrejo estate. An armed stand-off precipitated a Dutch military expedition which torched his residence, forcing Diponegoro to flee with his 600-strong following who had gathered at Tegalrejo from his apanage lands around Yogyakarta to protect him from Dutch attack. They soon followed him to his meditation cave south of Yogyakarta. There, the prince set up the standard of revolt. It was Thursday, 21 July 1825—the Java War had begun.
As Diponegoro’s emissaries carried news of his rebellion to every corner of the Javanese-speaking areas of the island, the war spread like lightning to what are now the present-day provinces of Central and East Java. In quick succession, the prince received key local allies at his Selarong cave headquarters, each of whom received new Arabic names and titles as commanders in the holy war or prang sabil. This was a delegated affair loosely coordinated by Diponegoro at the centre. Influential regional leaders took the initiative in their localities. Amongst these were the family of the respected apostle of Islam, Sunan Kalijaga.
Hailing from Java’s north coast near the ancient mosque city of Demak, this family included Diponegoro’s most feared female army commander, Nyai Ageng Serang.
On the night of 2/3 September, she cut a 300-strong Dutch column to pieces. Only 50 cavalrymen escaped back to Semarang with their Dutch captain. The Madurese pikemen auxiliary troops were spared as fellow
Muslims, but they lost their uniforms and their equipment. The rest, mainly sailors from a Dutch frigate, De Javaan, were dragged out from the column and flayed alive. Such scenes were repeated throughout the main theatres of war, which stretched from Banyumas in the extreme west to Ponorogo in the east.
Yogyakarta itself was closely invested, and its inhabitants starved, most slipping out at night to join the prince’s army.
As they scrambled to regain the initiative, the Dutch lived through anxious days. Unexpected reinforcements came with the return of a Dutch expeditionary force under De Kock’s deputy, Van Geen, which had just completed a campaign against the sultanate of Bone in South Celebes(Sulawesi). This saved the colony’s third city, Semarang. But it was not enough to turn the tide. The whole first year of fighting witnessed a seesaw between the almost equally matched Dutch and Javanese forces. Nearly two years
were lost before De Kock and his military advisers developed a winning strategy, namely the combined use of temporary battlefield fortifications—the so-called benteng system(benteng stelsel)—and a significantly increased number of mobile or flying columns.
Why did it take the Dutch so long? Part of the answer must be sought in the glaring inadequacies of the Dutch colonial army. Lacking resources, its officers took time to understand the nature of the war they were waging.
During the first two years, 6,000 infantry were deployed with a further 1,200 artillery and cavalry against Diponegoro’s 20,000 battle-hardened troops. There were no reserves. Although close to 2,400 men were sent out from the Netherlands during 1826 to replace those killed and wounded, they could not be immediately deployed because of their lack of knowledge of the terrain and the challenges of the climate. At the same time, their classic European military training also poorly prepared them for the counter-insurgency warfare they were called upon to fight. Attrition rates amongst these newly arrived troops were also very high.
Many succumbed to disease soon after their arrival in Java: of the 6,000 European infantry on active service in south-central Java between July 1825 and April 1827, 1,603 or 27 percent had perished by the end.
The small number of European troops made it difficult for the Dutch commanders to take the offensive against Diponegoro’s fast-moving forces. Nor was the presence of large numbers of native auxiliaries much help. Apart from the Madurese, particularly the Sumenep pikemen, they were of doubtful military value.
Their increasing addiction to opium and their insistence on bringing their wives and families on campaign greatly complicated the logistics of moving Dutch mobile columns through enemy-held territory, turning what should have been a tight 500-strong fighting force into a lumbering juggernaut which looked more like a baggage train than a military formation.
This was not a European war of sieges and set-piece battles, nor a Napoleonic-style campaign of swiftly marching armies and decisive battlefield encounters. It was a guerrilla conflict marked by ambushes, rapid movement and unconventional attacks designed for surprise.
The Javanese proved excellent guerrilla fighters, able to subsist on minimal rations such as dried rice and dried deer meat (dendeng), edible roots, and fruits gathered from forest areas. They learnt how to wear down the enemy without allowing them chances for pitched battles. They also proved adept at using captured weapons against them.
By the time the Dutch and their local auxiliaries were destroying Diponegoro’s cave headquarters to the south of Yogyakarta on 10 October 1825, the prince was already planning his move across the Progo River to his new base at Dekso (4 November 1825-4 August 1826) and dividing his army into three fast-moving battle groups, two of which were sent to the north and southeast of the sultan’s capital, and a third westwards into eastern Bagelen.
Throughout the rainy season of November 1825 to April 1826, these forces continued to move with virtual impunity through the Javanese countryside, and when the rains eased in April 1826, 800 of the prince’s troops
began to ensconce themselves in the ruins of the 17th-century court at Plered. On 9 June, De Kock’s most senior engineer officer, Colonel Cochius, had to bring a 4,200-strong force to bear to dislodge the defenders in a bloodbath which left all but 40 of the 400 dead.
Undeterred by this loss, the following month (July 1826), Diponegoro’s forces, commanded by the prince’s 17-year-old adopted son, Sentot, who bore the title Ali Basah (The “High” Pasha), began winning a series of victories which took them from the west bank of the Progo River to the very outskirts of Surakarta. In quick succession, victories at Kasuran (28 July), Lengkong Wetan (30 July), where the flower of the Yogyakarta nobility perished, Bantul (4 August), Kejiwan (9 August), and Delanggu (28 August), brought a large proportion of the south-central Javanese heartland under Diponegoro’s control. Van Geen described how, in some of these battles, Diponegoro’s forces had stormed the Dutch lines in a seeming frenzy, with blood-curdling shrieks and lowered heads.
In desperation, the Dutch began stripping their outer island garrisons of troops and bringing up
soldiers newly arrived from Europe. The Dutch position seemed hopeless. Only the arguments between Diponegoro and his chief religious adviser, Kyai Mojo, over tactics in the areas controlled by Surakarta, which Mojo coveted, allowed them to concentrate sufficient troops to gain a victory over the prince at Gawok just to the west of Surakarta on 15 October 1826.
Even then, Diponegoro’s forces remained present throughout most of the core regions of the two south-central Javanese courts for most of the following year.
By the end of 1827, a new front had opened in Rembang on the north coast and Bojonegoro in East Java when Diponegoro’s brother-in-law, Raden Ario Sosrodilogo, went into revolt, with many female troops, including the prince’s most feared female commander in East Java, Raden Ayu Yudokusumo, joining his campaign. For some anxious weeks between early December 1827 and mid-January 1828, the government’s overland communications between Semarang and Surabaya were cut.
De Kock had to cancel plans to return to the Netherlands and hand over temporary command of the army to Van Geen, a serendipitous decision given the hatred aroused by Van Geen’s scorched earth tactics, summary execution of prisoners, and indiscriminate brutality towards the local population. This included the burial of suspects up to their necks in earth to be eaten by ants and other insects.
De Kock had to cancel plans to return to the Netherlands and hand over temporary command of the army to Van Geen, a serendipitous decision given the hatred aroused by Van Geen’s scorched earth tactics, summary execution of prisoners, and indiscriminate brutality towards the local population. This included the burial of suspects up to their necks in earth to be eaten by ants and other insects.
By late 1828, the tide of war was starting to turn against the prince.
In mid-November 1828, Kyai Mojo had allowed himself to be taken prisoner with 500 seasoned troops on the slopes of Mount Merapi, and the prince, with his remaining forces, were being gradually hemmed into an increasingly narrow strip of territory between the Progo and Bogowonto rivers.
In this area, the Dutch created a ‘killing ground’, their strategy of establishing temporary battlefield fortifications (benteng) to protect the villages recently ‘pacified’ by their troops, denying Diponegoro and his commanders vital supplies.
The inevitable result of these developments was that by the end of September 1829, the fourth year of the war, organised resistance to the Dutch in the fertile rice plains of south-central Java was at an end. The crucial bonds of trust and cooperation between Diponegoro’s forces and the local population had been sundered. Without them, there could be no successful prosecution of the guerrilla campaign.
The same period witnessed the nadir of Diponegoro’s personal fortunes. On 21 September 1829, one of his last remaining senior commanders, the part-Chinese Prince Ngabehi, and his two sons were killed in an ambush.
Shortly thereafter, on 11 November 1829, following his near capture by a Dutch mobile column, when he had to leap into a ravine and hide under pampas grass to escape, Diponegoro decided to wander off into the jungles of western Bagelen. Only his two intimate retainers, one a dwarf, Banthengwareng (‘baby buffalo’), the other a teenager, Joyosuroto (‘Roto’), accompanied him. These wanderings would continue until mid-February 1830 when the prince’s first direct negotiations with the Dutch began, resulting in the abortive ‘peace conference’ at Magelang (8-28 March 1830), his arrest (28 March), 25-year exile in Sulawesi (12 June 1830 –8 January 1855) and death (8 January 1855).
What was the Java War’s Significance?
It can be seen as the last stand of Java’s old order, marking the final transition to the high colonial era of the Netherlands Indies state (1816-1942). The reason most rallied to Diponegoro can be summed up in three words: “I want respect”— respect for religion (Islam), language (Javanese), culture, dress, food and way of life. This desire for respect can be seen most clearly in Diponegoro’s treatment of Dutch prisoners: he insisted they should speak High Javanese (krama) to their captors rather than the Market Malay, the lingua franca of the new colonial state, dress in Javanese not European dress, and consider conversion to Islam. This last was something the prince also expected of the Chinese who sided with him: the process of ‘becoming a Muslim’ being quite simple: namely, having their pigtails cut off, undergoing circumcision and uttering the declaration of The Faith (shahada) “There is no God but God and Muhammad is His Prophet”.
This spirit, which animated Diponegoro’s followers, was characterised by one senior Dutch official as a ‘feeling of [Javanese] nationality’.
This provoked the future Governor-General and Minister of the Colonies, Jean-Chrétien Baud, to warn that one day this would cause the Javanese to understand that ‘they have suffered a great injustice by not being treated equally with Europeans. “But we are the rulers, they are the ruled!”
It was precisely this relationship with the Dutch as rulers and the Javaneseas ruled, which Diponegoro set out to overturn.
His peace proposals, articulated at the end of the war, highlighted this. He gave the Dutch three options: (1) to return to their country but continue to trade with Java; (2) to remain as traders when they would have to reside in three designated north coast cities (Batavia [present-day Jakarta], Semarang and Surabaya); or (3) embrace the Islamic faith and be rewarded with enhanced civilian and military rank
If they chose the first two options, there were conditions: trade could only be conducted based on reciprocity; the Dutch were expected to pay international prices for Javanese products and rent urban property at going rates. They would not be allowed to buy cheap and sell dear under their privileged status as colonials. Diponegoro’s insistence on market prices being paid for Javanese products and land lease contracts was prescient.
The post-Java War Cultivation System (1830-70) would net the Dutch 832 million guilders (approximately US$100 billion or US$11 trillion in purchasing power parity) from the sale of Javanese cash crops, including sugar, tobacco, indigo, and coffee.
Diponegoro’s status in the eyes of his supporters was greatly enhanced by the ‘holy war’ character of his struggle. In nearly every engagement, groups of religious scholars or ulama, clad in their distinctive white or green tabards and turbans, had helped to stiffen the resolve of Diponegoro’s troops through chanting endlessly repeated phrases from the Qur’ān. Both men and women, who joined Diponegoro, shaved their heads in emulation of the Prophet’s tonsure (paras Nabi). All wore ‘priestly’ dress and went into battle chanting Sufi dhikr (short phrases from the Qur’ān repeatedly recited in recollection of Allah)
It was precisely this religious aspect which caused the Dutch Colonial Minister, Cornelis Elout, to reject suggestions that hostilities might be brought to an end by recognising Diponegoro as an independent prince. Such a solution required Diponegoro to be recognised as a protector and regulator of religion. But this threatened the Christian foundations of European authority in Java in Elout’s view. The religious factor alone set it apart from the dynastic struggles of previous centuries.
The war would consume the lives of 200,000 Javanese and damage the livelihood of two million more, a third of Java’s then population. The Dutch also suffered.
Their eventual victory would cost them 15,000 troops (8,000 of whom were Europeans) and bankrupt their colonial treasury. This necessitated an immediate response from the victorious Dutch. Their postwar government, under Governor-General Johannes van den Bosch, instituted what became known as the ‘Cultivation System’. This required Javanese villages to set aside part of their land to produce export crops, especially coffee, sugar, and indigo, for sale at fixed prices to the colonial government as a means of meeting their land tax obligations. Within 40 years, the Dutch had netted 832 million guilders, equivalent to US$100 billion in today’s money, over forty times what they had spent on the war. Before the System ended in 1870, nearly a third of Dutch state revenue came from Java. This eased the Netherlands’ transition to a modern industrial economy. It enabled the country to pay off most of its state debt, finance modern infrastructure (ship canals and railways), and fortify its southern border against future French attack. Not a cent of that sum was returned to Java in social welfare (health and education). It was this exploitative relationship which inspired Multatuli’s (Eduard Douwes Dekker’s) famous novel Max Havelaar (1860). He dedicated it to the Dutch king, Willem III, [‘that thief on horseback’] who rules over ‘a robber state on the North Sea’.
What then of Diponegoro? He was arrested by the Dutch at a ‘peace conference’ at the Magelang Residency House on 28 March 1830, just three days after the holiest day of the Javanese- Islamic year—Hari Raya Idul Fitri at the end of Ramadhan. The event—and Diponegoro’s defiance in arrest—was captured some 27 years later by the Indonesian painter Raden Saleh in his historic 1857 painting ‘The Arrest of Pangeran Diponegoro’. The prince would spend the next 24 years of his life in exile in Celebes (Sulawesi)— first in Manado (1830-33) and then in Makassar (1833-55)—where he died of natural causes on 8 January 1855. During that time, he wrote his autobiography, the Babad Diponegoro (Chronicle of Diponegoro), recognised in June 2013 by UNESCO as a Memory of the World manuscript.
Recounting the ancient history of Java and his life history up to and including his arrival in Manado in June 1830, he wrote his chronicle in part for the education of his seven children born in exile, whom he wished to bring up as Javanese, not Makassarese or Bugis. He also drew mystical diagrams (daérah), imparted the mystical practices of Islam to a select group of local servitors and sons born in exile, and kept notes on his Islamic practices, which indicate his strong Sufi leanings.
Visited in Makassar in March 1837 by Prince Henry ‘the Seafarer’, the youngest son of the future Dutch King, Willem II, the exiled Diponegoro was described as being still ‘full of fire’ in his 51st year.
His name lived on: many anti-colonial uprisings hailed him as the spiritual leader ‘over the water’, casting him as the liberator of Java, a view which ignored the strong theocratic nature of Diponegoro’s war aims. In Yogyakarta, the figure of Diponegoro still loomed large amongst the local inhabitants.
In 1831, a wandering Javanese, Joyoseno, raised supporters by declaring that Diponegoro had returned to Java. Later in the same year, two other followers raised a significant following by proclaiming that Diponegoro had come back to the cave of Sekembang in the Kutoarjo district of western Bagelen.
The strong nativistic appeals of these movements and their connection with Diponegoro caused the Dutch authorities to keep a wary eye on the prince’s Yogya family. They would eventually exile three of Diponegoro’s sons to Ambon in 1840. Further measures would follow against the prince’s relations when a plot was supposedly foiled in 1849 to bring Diponegoro back from Makassar and declare him sultan.
So much for the immediate aftermath of the Java War. What about the prince’s legacy in the modern period of the pergerakan nasional (nationalist movement)?
When this movement began to organise in the early 20th century—driven, in part, by Indonesians studying in the Netherlands—Diponegoro’s name was revived as an inspiration across the spectrum of Indonesian politics. This stretched from the communists, who appreciated the prince’s concern for the common people (wong cilik), the nationalists who related to Diponegoro’s defense of Javanese cultural and linguistic values, and the Muslims of the Sarekat Islam (Islamic Association) organisation who admired the Java War leader’s commitment to Islam. Poets such as Chairil Anwar and poet-politicians like Muhammad Yamin, the prince’s first biographer (June 1945), also orbited him as a literary icon, his image appearing on pro-independence billboards alongside Marx and the co-founder of the pre-World War I pro-independence Indies Party (1913), Multatuli’s nephew, E.F.E. Douwes Dekker. Following Indonesia’s freedom proclamation on 17 August 1945 and their victory in the hard-fought independence war (1945-49), Diponegoro was eventually recognised as a national hero (10 November 1973), his face gracing post-Merdeka bank notes.
Thus, over a century after his death, the prince finally triumphed over his Dutch adversaries, a hero in a country which had not been invented in his lifetime.
But how accurate is this memory of Diponegoro? He was not a paragon and did not pretend to be one. He cheerfully admitted in his autobiography that he had a roving eye and was addicted to betelnut (sirih) which he chewed constantly, even telling the time by the time it took him to masticate mouthfuls of the astringent mix of betel leaves, areca nut and slaked lime and turning his mouth a vivid vermilion. Even though a number of his close friends and family members were of Chinese descent, he got carried away with the anti-Chinese sentiments at the start of the war. He even forbade his commanders to have intimate relations with Chinese peranakan (mixed race) women, blaming his defeat at Gawok in October 1826 on his dalliance with a young Chinese woman prisoner-of-war who had acted as his masseuse on the eve of the battle.
Perhaps most important, his high personal integrity in money matters, frugality and hatred of corruption make him an uncomfortable presence for those who do not resonate those values in the present-day Indonesian elite.
All portraits of the prince have been removed, for example, from the Yogyakarta court and his name has been banned from the list of accepted titles for senior princes in both Yogya and Surakarta, given his attack on the courts and betrayal of his duties as royal guardian to the infant fifth sultan. Even in the former colonial power, the Netherlands, there are sensitivities. A particularly fine sketch of Diponegoro was made by the artist, Adrianus Johannes (Jan) Bik, who also served as Diponegoro’s guardian when he was held as a political prisoner in April 1830 in Batavia (post-1942, Jakarta). This is kept in the Rijksmuseum, but it is never on permanent display, its showing being seen as a ‘political statement’ and a standing indictment of Dutch colonialism. So, even in death, the prince remains a controversial figure. However, for ordinary Indonesians, who remember his simplicity and sacrifice, he remains deeply revered.
Peter Carey
Historian.
