Peter Carey, Trinity College, Oxford

From the foundation of Batavia (present-day Jakarta) in 1619 until its bankruptcy in 1798, the Dutch East India Company carved out a far-flung trading empire for itself in the Indonesian archipelago. In the seventeenth century, the Company secured a near monopoly of the Indonesian spice trade, but it had not yet extended its control territorially except in some areas in West Java where coffee and sugar were grown for export. Only in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when Java was drawn into the Revolutionary (1792-99) and Napoleonic wars (1799-1815), was the modern fate of the archipelago sealed. In quick succession, a Franco-Dutch regime (1808-11) under Napoleon’s only non-French marshal, Herman Willem Daendels (1762-1818), and a five-year British occupation (1811-16) under the equally dictatorial Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826), transformed the colony.

By the time Java was restored to the Dutch in August 1816, the commercial dealings of the Company had been replaced by the beginnings of a modern colonial administration. Over the next century, this would reduce the power of the local rulers and establish Dutch authority in nearly every corner of the archipelago. The boundaries of present-day Indonesia were determined at this time.

As the influence of the West penetrated ever more deeply into the lives of ordinary
Indonesians, events in the Middle East also began to shape the fortunes of the local populations and Dutch colonists alike. The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed an increase in Arab and Ottoman Turkish influence in Indonesia when increased numbers of Arab migrants from the Hadhramaut (present-day South Yemen) – an area renowned for its religious schools and Muslim scholars – began to settle in the archipelago. The quickening tempo of pilgrim traffic across the Indian Ocean also exposed Indonesians to the teachings of Islamic reformers, in particular those linked to the strict Wahhabi sect which briefly controlled the holy cities of
Islam (Mecca and Medina) (1803-1812).

Further west, the fading glory of the Ottoman empire inspired Indonesian Muslims with an admiration for the one Islamic state which had withstood the might of Christian Europe. Such examples stiffened the resolve of Indonesian Muslim rulers and Islamic divines in the face of post-1816 Dutch imperial expansion. In West Sumatra, a Wahhabi-influenced religious leader (tuanku), Imam Bonjol (1772-1864), emerged as the principal leader of armed resistance to the Dutch in the so-called Paderi (from the Dutch padre = ‘priest’) War (1821-37).

But it was in Java that the nascent imperial power of the Netherlands came closest to defeat during a five-year struggle which became known as the Java War (1825-30). The main Javanese protagonist of this conflict, Pangéran (prince) Diponegoro (1785-1855), whose name literally means ‘the light of the country’, was the eldest son of the third sultan of the central Javanese kingdom of Yogyakarta. A witness to the humiliation of his father’s realm at the hands of both Daendels and Raffles, the prince’s personal experiences as a young man led to his own decision to wage a holy war (jihad) against the Dutch in 1825-30. Although his attempt to force Java’s colonial masters to return to their late eighteenth-century role as merchants proved ultimately unsuccessful, Diponegoro’s struggle would become an inspiration for future generations.

Unusually for a member of the Javanese aristocracy, the young prince spent his childhood in a village environment, having been ‘adopted’ at the age of seven by his great-grandmother, the widow of Yogyakarta’s charismatic founder, Sultan Mangkubumi (r. 1749-92). A lady of great piety and forcefulness, she proved a stern stepmother to the future Java War leader. Growing up on her country estate two miles to the northwest of Yogyakarta, Diponegoro was taught to mix in his youth with Javanese of all classes, in particular farmers and wandering students of religion (santri).

He also learnt to withstand great physical hardships, embarking in his teens on long journeys on foot to local religious schools and places associated with the spirit guardians of southcentral Java. His stepmother’s example may have also quickened such practical skills as his ability to read character from the study of faces, financial acumen and capacity for honest administration. A keen chess player and connoisseur of sweet Cape wine (Constantia), the mystic prince tempered his asceticism with a powerful and vivid intelligence which impressed even his Dutch adversaries. In 1805, Diponegoro made a significant pilgrimage to the south coast which marked his coming of age as a young man.

There in meditations in caves and holy sites near the thunderous surf of the Indian Ocean, he received the early visions which foretold his future role as a Javanese ‘Just King’ (Ratu Adil), a ruler who would restore the moral balance of the universe after a period of corruption and decline. Marked by destiny to ‘raise up the high state of the Islamic religion in Java’, Diponegoro would see himself as an agent of purification. But he was torn between his intensely lived inner life as a mystic and his visionary calling as a military and political leader.

These were exceptional times, however. The world of Diponegoro’s youth – the seemingly ageless Java of custom and tradition – had been washed away by the tsunami that was post- Revolutionary Europe. The years between 1816 and 1825 were particularly bad for the Javanese peasantry. Mercilessly taxed by the newly restored Dutch government, the rural communities also suffered from drought, famine and cholera. Such calamities quickened popular expectations of a coming Ratu Adil, expectations which Diponegoro appeared to embody. The casus belli when it came was relatively minor. A highway project--demarcated with intentional insolence by the Dutch-appointed prime minister of Yogyakarta across Diponegoro’s estate-- led to an armed stand off which in turn precipitated a Dutch led military expedition.

Fleeing on horseback to his meditation cave in the limestone hills to the south of Yogyakarta as the Dutch torched his residence, the prince set up the standard of revolt. The Java War had begun. In the next five years, it would cause the death of 200,000 Javanese and damage the livelihoods of two million more. Many others would feel its indirect consequences. At the end of hostilities in March 1830, the Dutch remained in undisputed control of Java.

They immediately moved to restore their battered colonial finances by instituting what became known as the ‘Cultivation System’ (1830-70). This required the cultivation of cash crops on a fifth of available rice land, crops which were purchased at prices fixed far below international market rates. In under half a century, the Dutch had netted a profit of some 880 million guilders – equivalent in today’s money of an entire annual cycle of the United States domestic economy (US$3.3 trillion) – capital which eased Holland’s transformation into a modern industrial country. The Javanese were the great losers in all this.

Generations of post-Java War peasants labored to enrich their distant Dutch masters. Only the birth rate showed a steady increase: Java’s population quadrupled in the century to twenty-four million making the island one of the most densely populated places on earth. What then of Diponegoro? Arrested by the Dutch at a ‘peace conference’ (28 March 1830) on the holiest day of the Javanese Muslim calendar-- the end of the fasting month-- he spent the remaining 25 years of his life as an exile, first in Manado (1830-33) and then in Makassar (1833-55), where he died of natural causes in January 1855.

But his name lived on in Java. Many anti-colonial uprisings hailed him as the spiritual leader and liberator of Java, and when the Indonesians declared their independence on 17 August 1945 and rose against the Dutch, Diponegoro’s name was revived by the Central Javanese army division. Thus nearly a century after his death Diponegoro finally triumphed over his colonial adversaries. Declared a national hero in 1955, his name is now honoured as the first Indonesian freedom fighter – the Javanese Messiah.

Peter Carey is Laithwaite Fellow in History at Trinity College, Oxford and is the author of The Power of Prophecy: Prince Dipanagara and the End of an Old Order in Java, 1785-1855 (2007).