ARCHITECTURE

The House with Horns and a Tail

The island of Sumatra contains some of Indonesia’s richest and most fascinating traditions of vernacular, or domestic, architecture. Even the most casual observer can hardly fail to be impressed by the imposing scale of these buildings, by their ingenious nail-free construction and by the vigor and delicacy of their carved and painted decorations.

            The diversity of traditional house styles found on the island is truly astounding. Around Lake Toba alone, for example, are to be found several distinctive styles belonging to the Toba, Karo and Simalungun Batak peoples-while the houseof the Mandailing Batak to the south are different again. The traditional homes of the Minangkabau of West Sumatra are equally renowned for their beautiful floral carving and elegant, soaring eaves.

            The Gayo people to the north of Lake Toba formerly dwelt in large multifamily houses holding up to 60 people. Each family had an apartment in the center of the house, with a men’s gallery at the front and a women’s gallery at the back. Acehnese houses, found along the island’s north coast, are airy and well-ventilated, with large shuttered windows and elaborate woodcarving.

            But perhaps the most breathtaking Sumatran architecture is found on the island of Nias. Houses stand in rows beside long, stone-paved streets, dominated-as in the famous village of Bawomataluo-by a massive chief’s house resting in vertical and diagonal pillars fashioned from the trunks of giant ironwood trees.

Ancient origins

The observer of this astonishing architectural heritage will ask why so many of these houses-particularly the Batak and the Minangkabau-appear stylistically related, not only to each other but to the houses of other Indonesian peoples, such as the Toraja of Sulawesi. The most notable shared features are the pile foundations, the extended or saddleshaped roof ridge, and decorative, horn shaped gable finials. What ancient historical link explains the origin and spread of this remarkable style?
            The earliest surviving images of pile-built structures with saddle roofs are engraved on bronze drums found in the area of Dongson in what is now northern Vietnam. The culture associated with these drums dates from ca. 500 BC-AD 100, and Dongson drums were traded throughout the archipelago as prestige items. Early theories about "waves" of Dongson migration into Indonesia have now been discounted, however, and it is unlikely that an architectural style could have been spread simply by pictures on drums. Much more probable is that the style was already old when the drums were cast, and that the images are simply its earliest surviving representations.
            House styles ancestral to those you see today in Sumatra were probably developed in ancient times by Austronesians-speaking migrants. The Austronesians-ancestors of most modern-day Indonesians-orginated from a homeland somewhere in southern China and began to migrate into these islands from Taiwan and the Philippines 6,000 years ago. Subsequently, they colonized the islands of the Pacific, and reached as far east Madagascar by AD  400, bringing with them their distinctive building style. Pile buildings with saddle roofs are found as far east as Micronesia, an area settled by Austronesians some time after 2000 BC, and saddle roofs, often of impressive porportions, are a feature of men's houses in New Guinea.
             The survival of this ancient style of architecture seems to rest on its aesthetic or symbolic appeal, rather than a commitment to a particular mode of construction. Minangkabau and Batak houses, for example, both have pointed eaves and extended by quite different building techniques.
             In the Toba Batak house, the living space is essentially created by the roof, which rests on top of very low walls. The rafters are angled outward to produce the projecting gable, and strengthened by means of diagonal  ties. In the Minangkabau house, on the other hand, the living space is formed by the walls, which are much taller in proportion to the roof than in Batak houses. The roof sits on topof this space, supported by a truss and crossbeam structure and built up into tall points by means of many small rafters and battens.

Symbolic Acehnese houses

Acehnese homeoners are women. If they can afford it, the parents provide each of their daughters with a house when she marries-otherwise they simply present their own house to a married daughter and move into the kitchen. During the day the house is the woman's domain. Men spend most of their time in public places, or migrate (merantau) to earn a living through trade, returning home only at long intervals.

             Though subdued in their outward form, Acehnese houses are rich in cosmological and symbolic significance. The front verandah is the most public and formal part. Here men sit. The rear is private, containing the kitchen and the women's entrance. Male and female are simbolically united in the central room, which has the highest floor level, and countains the two main house posts-called "prince" and "princess"-against which the bride and the groom are seated on their wedding day. This is also where the newly-married couple sleeps. At the top of the house, beneath the gable, is a platform for storing family valuables and heirlooms. Outside at floor level runs a skriting-board, often elaborately decorated. The wall separating the verandah from the inner part of the house may also be decorated with intricate woodcarving.

Monumental Nias villages

South Nias has produced some of Indonesia's most astonishing architecture. In the 19th century, the area was ruled by a warlike aristocracy which enriched itself by raiding outlying districts for slaves. The nobles staged elaborate feasts by which they raised their status on the social ladder. The greatest of such feasts entitled a chief to construct a great house (omo sebua).

              A stunning example dating from 1863 survives today in Bawomataluo village in South Nias. It is 22.7 m tall, and is ornamented inside with  carved ebony wall panels depicting ancestral thrones, male and female ornaments, animals and birds, and even a Dutch steamship mounted with cannons.

              South Nias villages are remarkably large, with up to 6,000 inhabitants, as slave-raiding and headhunting made smaller communities too vulnerable. Most villages have a single main street paved with stone, sometimes crossed by a shorter street at the top forming a giant "T" Some settlements are approached by huge flights of stone stairs. The bowed fronts of the houses-reminiscent of Dutch galleons-from a continuous line on both sides. Stone monuments, commemorating past feasts and important funerals, stand before the houses of the nobility.
               A distinctive feature of the houses are the massive ironwood foundation pillars both vertical and diagonal. The diagonal pillars give added stability to the tall house structure in this earthquake-prone region. The flexibility of the house in tremors is enhanced by the fact that the piles rest on top of their foundation stones, a feature also found else where in the archipelago.
               The founding ancestors of South Nias communities originally came from central Nias. Here cam be seen houses of an older and plainer style, without the projecting curved front, as well as different kinds of worked stone monuments. You will need the help of a guide to visit this remote area, and you should check on the weather-rivers become impassable in the rainy season.
               Houses of North Nias are unusual in having an oval plan. They are less monumental  in scale, but share certain features such as the use of diagonal piles, and the cutting of flaps in the roof, which can be propped open to serve as windows. Graves, now Christian in style, continue to be located next to the houses in the traditional manner.

Batak houses

The countryside around lake Toba is dotted with traditional Toba, Karo and Simalungun Batak villages as well as elaborate concerete tombs in the form of houses. The tombs are built with great ceremony and expense to house the remains of the deceased ancestors of particular family. This traditional concern for the dead remains of great importance to the Toba, and has been integrated with Christian parctice. Older sarcophagi of carved stone may also be seen on Samosir Island in Lake Toba.

               Toba house stand on foundations of piles braced with cross-beams, forming a space beneath the house where buffaloes were once stalled. The walls are covered with graceful flowing and spiral decorations-unbroken lines are thought to provide protection to the occupants. Friezes with figures may also be seen, and three-dimensional carved protective 'monsters" are found  at the cornes and top of the facade.

               On the northeastern shore of the lake stands  Pematang Purba, site of the place of the former rajas of the Simalungun Batak, now a museum. The impressively long house has a realisticilly modelled buffalo-head on the front gable-end, and a tail made of the tough black fiber of the sugar-palm at the rear. Inside is the raja's private apartment, each formerly the domain of one of his wives. Nearby is a council house with an elaborately carved central pillar, against which the ruler used to sit while giving judgement.
                The Karo people living on the north of the lake developed an interesting variation on the extended ridge line, with multiple decorative gables topped by realistically-modelled buffalo heads which protected the occupants from harm. Some fine examples survive in villages around Berastagi, such as lingga. Traditionally, houses were occupied by four or eight related families, each with own hearth. A distinctive structure is the geriten or "head-house," to store the skulss of revered ancestors.

The Minangkabau house

The Minangkabau people are well-known for their matrilineal kinship system. This means that houses and rice fields are passed down from mother to daughter. A typical Minangkabau compound will consist of an older, original house surrounded by others that have been added by married sisters and daughters of the parent family.

                 The elegant, sweeping eaves of traditional houses are a common sight amidst the lush green Minangkabau landscape. These pointed eaves, locals say, remind them of the legendary. "vitorious buffalo" (menang kerbau) from  which their name is said to derive. On larger buildings the roof is tiered to form a series of four or six points, often with an additional peak over a porch set at right angles to the main structure. In the past, huge rumah gadang or "great houses" accommodated up to 100 people related to a single female ancestor. Inside was an open gallery with separate sleeping apartments off it. A surviving example-64 m long!-can be visited at the hilltop village of Sulitair, near Lake Singkarak.

                  Minangkabau rice barns and council houses (balairung or balai adat) are also built with pointed eaves, The ancestral village of Pariangan in the Tanahdatar valley, contains some very old examples, as does nearby Pagarruyung-site of the former palace of the Minangkabau rajas. The original palace unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1976, but it has now been rebuilt (on a somewhat enlarged scale) as a museum.

PEOPLES OF SUMATRA

A Melange of Ethnic Groups and Religions

More than 40 million people live in Sumatra-one-fifth of Indonesia’s huge population-making this the second most populous island in the archipelago, after Java. Four large ethnic groups-the Malay, the Minangkabau, the Acehnese and the Batak-form the vast majority of the island’s indigenous population, but over a dozen smaller ethnic groups are also represented, each speaking a difference language and processing a distinct history and culture.

            In recent centuries, there has been a significant influx of outsiders to Sumatra as well. The Japanese, who came by the thousand as plantation workers at the beginning of this century, continue to arrive through Indonesia’s ambitious transmigration program. The Chinese, who first came as debt-bonded plantation coolie and tin miners in the 29^th century, now dominate the wholesale and merchandising sectors of all major Sumatran towns. And a smattering of peoples from others island of Indonesia and abroad now live work in the booming oil industry.

           

Islamic strongholds

Sumatra is among the most thoroughly Islamic regions the archipelago. History states that Islam first came to Southeast Asia at a town on Sumatra’s northeast coast, variously referred to as Samudra or Pasai. From here, the religion spread around both coasts of Sumatra and across to neighboring islands and the Malay Peninsula-largely through an Islamic trading network established by Malay merchants oat Malacca in the 15^th century. For many centuries the term “Malay” was indeed synonymous throughout Indonesia with “Muslim”.

            The Malays have a long and illustrious history dating back to the days when the Buddhist Malay kingdom of Sriwijaya dominated the straits from a base at what is now Palembang, in South Sumatra, from the late 7^th until the 11^th centuries. For many centuries thereafter, the figure of the Malay raja embodied the highest cultural ideals of gentility, grace, eloquence, learning and Muslim piety throughout the Malay World. While fishermen and farmers could never match the raja’s refinement, they modeled their best behavior on the ideals he represented.

            Today the Malays are Sumatra’s largest ethnic group, numbering more than 13 million people and inhabiting most of the southern and eatern coasts and lowlands of the main island, as well as the smaller island offshore. Another 8 million people in neighboring Malaysia also consider themselves to be Malay-though many are descendasts of Minangkabau, Cham and Javanese migrants. Even in Sumatra itself, many people of Batak descent call themselves “Malay,” so that in fact a tremendous linguistic and cultural variety is encompassed by this ethnonym.

            The second largest ethnic group in Sumatra, and the one most closely related to the Malays in terms of language and culture, are the Minangkabau of the western central hinglands. They now number about 5  million, and are known as staunch Muslims, while at the same time retaining vestiges of an unusual matrilineal kinship system that predates their conversion to Islam. This means that the traditional Minangkabau longhouses, fertile rositions ricelands, and positons of  leadership within the clan are all transmitted to the next generation through women. While men hold public positions of leadership, they inherit these through their mothers-and when they retire they are replaced by their sister’s sons.

            A third major Islamic group inhabits Sumatra’s strategic northern coast. The Acehnese, who number about 3 million today, also speak a language related to Malay, and are best known for their fierce resistence against the Dutch during a 30-year jihad (holy war) from 1873 to 1903.long before this, in the 17^th century, Aceh was in fact the most powerful Islamic kingdom in the region. Today, Islam still rules the hearts of the Acehnese, and on Fridays the faithful fill Banda Aceh’s stately Grand Mosque while the town’s shops are shuttered tight. Just as among the Minangkabau, and despite Islam’s favoring of males, Acehnese village life revolves around women. Upon marriage, a man usually moves to his wife’s village, where her family provides them a house.

            In the highlands of central Aceh live the Gay, all of woman are Muslim. Their language, like that of the Acehnese, is remarkable for its many borrowings from Mon Khmer, a language group of mainland Southeast Asia. Unlike the Acehnese, however, the Gayo are patrilineal, and in the majority of cases, a bride moves to her hudband’s village. Gayo who live around the edges of Lake Tawar harvest carp and a minnow-like fist called depik  from the lake; coffee and tea are other major products from this region.

            The Gayo fight with words. Poetic duels, didong, were once performed at weddings between pairs of speakers representing the families of bride and groom. Later, didong helped defuse hostilities between villages, and more recently men have turned this verbal art into a completion between clubs or teams composed of lead singers supported by an encircling chorus.

Christian convert

While the coastal and urban areas of the island are predominantly Muslim, large areas of Sumatra are now mainly Christian, and in fact more Christian live on this island than any other in Indonesia. German Lutheran missionaries working with the Toba Batak enjoyed early and widespread success. Today, the Toba Batak church is the largest Christian body in Indonesia.

            In contrast, the Dutch Reformed missionaries who worked in the nearby Karo Batak region met decades of resistance. As a result, the Christian Karo have become a majority only since the 1950s, when an indigenous church emerged. The Simalungun Batak, once part of the Toba church, have separated into their own ethnic denomination.

            The hymns and the liturgy in all these ethnic Batak churches are in the vernacular languages, but just as throughout Indonesia, these ethnic churches face competition from Catholic and Pentecostal denominations which operate through the medium of Indonesian, and whose congregations are ethnically mixed.

            About 10 percent of the Angkola Batak who live to the south of the Toba are also Christian, but the majority, like the Mandailing Batak to the south in South Tapanuli, are Muslim. Other pockets of Christianity include the islands of Nias and Mentawai off the west coast, and some of the original inhabitans of the island of Enggano.

A patchwork of peoples

While most of Sumatra’s people live as farmers, small groups such as the Kubu of Jambi Province and the Sakai of the Riau Islands live mainly by fishing and hunting along swampy southern rivers. Another group, the Orang Laut literally “sea people” but often called sea gypsies or oven sea pirates__live in boats among the hundreds of small island in the Riau Archipelago.

            Lake Kerinci, surrounded by wet rice terraces in the highlands of western Jambi Province, is home to the Kerinci people. Lacustrine fishing and tea cultivation supplement a rice economy. Like the Minagkabau, the Kerinci are matrilineal and construct longhouses for matrilineally extended families, but their longhouses are unique in the archipelago for having no communal passage or gallery linking the family apartments. While a man attaches himself to his wife’s family, he retains membership in his natal family and lives partly at his own longhouse, where he helps to manage his lineage property and the affairs of his sister’s children.

            Bengkulu Province is home to the Rejang, who call themselves “We the people of Jang.” Their mythical ancestor, Jang, was reputed to be of the royal family of Java’s Majapahit kingdom. He is said to have settled in Sumatra in the 14^th century, and had four sons who became the ancestors of the four patrillineal clans that today constitute Rejang society, a people numbering around 200,000. The Rejang region spans a diserve terrain, from the coast up gentle foothills to highland peaks convered in tropical rainforest.

            Rejang was one of the last regions in Sumatra to accept Islam, so the pre-Islamic focus on ancestor spirits remains strong. Each of Rejang’s claims dominion over its own territory. The oldest village in each of these territories contains a sacred shrine associated with its founding ancestor. Villages and lineages also have their ancestral shrines, so pilgrimage to the principal clan shrine occur only for extremely important purposes.

            To the west of Palembang, near the town of Lahat, the Pasemah Highlands contain meghalitic remains dated to AD 100. This statuary, the most extensive of its kind in the archipelago,consist of many animal  and human figures as well as dplmens, menhirs and stone cist cist graves. Although the Pasemah people converted to Islam in the early 20^th century, they continue to visit these these shrines, and others on Mt. Dempo, to redeem ancestral vows. Although similar to the Rejang in their social organization and even their founding mythology, the Pasemah were bitter enemies of the Rejang, and the lowland Malays as well, in the precolonial.

            The Lampung region at Sumatra’s southern tip contains several ethnic groups with different cultural histories, including many Javanese who have migrated here in large numbers, both spontaneously and through the government’s transmigration programs. One of the most numerous indigenous peoples of this region, the Abung, say the originated in the mountains to the west where, in the 15^th century, they maintained a megalithic culture similar to that of Nias. Headhunting and human sacrifice brought them into conflict with neighboring peoples, especially lowland Malays, who finally drove them into their current setting around 1450.

            Abung society is composed of numerous patrilineal clans maintains a separate house, occupied most of the time by only a few elderly people. Villages contains as many as 3,000 people and 120 clan house, but working adults and children spend most of their time in small seasonal settlements outside the village, maintaining their swidden gardens. They return to the village for initiation ceremonies or other special events. Initiations usher men into a series of ranks that indicate their wealth, formerly, headhunting was a precondition for the highest rank, and initiates to this rank were enthroned on a dolmen of stone.

            Although the Dutch attempted to stop their headhunting and human sacrifices, the Abung continued these practices surreptitiously into the 19^th century. Like all their neighbors in the region, the Abung are now Muslims. In their modern version of initiation rites, called papadon, dancing substitutes for headhunting, and a buffalo is sacrificed instead of a human.

Into the modern world 

In the last 20 years, Sumatra’s natural resources__particularly oil and natural gas__have helped fuel Indonesia’s rapid economic growth. This growth has resulted in a new emphasis on education and on highway construction, which together with newspapers, films and television are increasingly drawing the peoples of Sumatra into a national community and into the word economy. Signs of this emphasis__from the newly-completed Trans-Sumatra Highway running the length of the island, to the puffing gas and oil refineries of Lhokseumawe and Palembang-are everywhere to be seen.

MODERN HISTORY

Nationalisme, Revolution & Independence 

The Dutch conquest in the development of a common education and administrative system throughout Sumatra. Together with Islam, this laid the foundation for the emergence of common national sentiment. This first made itself felt through the mass Muslim organization Sarekat Islam, which tapped the suppressed resentment at alien domination. Jambi witnessed a small rebellion in 1916. Aceh was disturbed by riots in 1918-1919, and the Minangkabau developed a radical Islamic movement in the same years. In 1926, the Indonesian Communist Party launched a quixotic revolution; paradoxically, it was some of the relatively commercialized Muslim of Minangkabau who fought hardest for it.

            In 1917 the first generation of Sumatrans to have enjoyed Dutch education formed the Young Sumatrans League. Support came from Minangkabau clerks, teachers and traders all over Sumatra. Toba Batak students established their own organization in the 1920s, and by 1926 these groups had been incorporated into the National League of Indonesian Students. Sumatran figures such as Mohammad Hatta (later Vice-President) and Soetan Sjahrir (Indonesian’s first prime minister) contributed greatly to developing Indonesian’s national consciousness.

            Sumatra’s role in developing a national literature was even more important. Malay had always been the principal written language for most Sumatra’s, and its adoption as Bahasa Indonesia, the language of nationalism, involved no linguistic conflict as it did for Javanese and Sundanese. Hence the first writers to adopt Malay to modern literary uses were virtually all Sumatran. In the early twenties, the political activists Mohammad Yamin, Sanisui Pane, and Mohammad Hatta were the first to write Malay poetry in a modern spirit, while the Langkat prince Amir Hamzah and the revolutionary Chairil Anwar wrote the finest Indonesian poetry of the 1930s and 1940s. The development of the modern Indonesian novel in the 1920s and 1930s was almost entirely a Minangkabau affair.

            It is not surprising, considering this strong contribution to Indonesian nationalism, that Sumatra rejected all attempts to separate it from Java in the turbulent 1940s.TheJapanese invasion in March 1942 caused greater upheaval than in Java. In Aceh the Japanese were assisted by an armed rebellion against the retreating Dutch, whose leaders wanted to end the dominance of the uleebalang (district chiefs). The Japanese initially suppressed all these movements, and forbade any nationalist activity. However, the Japanese gave the nationalists access to the state-population for war purposes. When the war ended, two rival elites-nationalist and traditionalist-eyed each other with mistrust.

            The Japanese belatedly fostered the idea of an independent Sumatra in 1945, establishing a powerless consultative council and a secretariat in Bukittinggi. In 1947, the returning Dutch set up federal states in the areasthey controlled in East Sumatra. The following year they encouraged a Sumatran umbrella organization for these and other states, but the idea gained little interest. Sumatrans had already decided in the 1920s that they could only bring together their diverse ethnic groups at a national level.

            Independence was declared in Jakarta three days after Hiroshima, but the revolution in Sumatra did not begin until October, when allied troops arrived to accept the Japanese surrender. Young activists, some with Japanese military training, fought against the British who occupied parts of Medan, Padang, and Palembang, and finally against the Dutch forces which replaced the British at the end of 1946.

            Most of the violence was internal. In Aceh the uleebalang were overthrown by a Muslim led coalition in December 1945, at the conclusion of a bloody civil war. Three months later, the east coast Malay sultans and Simalungun rajas were overthrown in what was dubbed a “social revolution.” These spontaneous movements led to a breakdown in central authority especially in East Sumatra, where semi military groups ot young men, became a law unto themselves funding themselves by selling the produce of the plantations they controlled to Singapore merchants. When the Dutch occupied the plantation area around Medan, and the oil installations of Palembang in mid-1947, these armed groups fought among themselves in Tapanuli.

            The vast island was far from integrated politically or economically when the revolution ended with transfer of full sovereighty to Indonesian in 1950. Each former residency had its own battle-hardened military force reluctant to return to civilian life, and each felt it had earned the right to play a part in the Republic on its own terms. Moreover, the rewards of the smuggling trade to Singapore, which had seemed patriotic during both the Japanese occupation and the revolution, were not easy to give up to an impoverished central government in Jakarta which had little to offer in return.

            The first post-independence crisis occurred in Aceh, when Muslims objected to being incorporated with Christian Bataks into the province of North Sumatra, and to the failure of the government to declare Indonesian a Muslim state. In 1953, Aceh revolted against Jakarta, and declare Aceh part of Dar al-Islam (the Islamic world). Troops sent from Java quickly re-occupied the Acehnese towns, but the hinterland remained largely in rebel hands until peace was eventually negotiated in 1959. Aceh was then granted autonomous status. Meanwhile Toba Batak and Minangkabau military leaders joined national politicians dissatisfied with the centralism, corruption and pro-communist policies of the central government, to form the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia (PRRI)  in February 1958. The central government reacted by bombing Padang and Bukittinggi and sending a large force from Java. The fighting was over within six months, but it left West Sumatra feeling like an occupied province in which locals were no longer trusted with high military or civilian office. If Sumatrans had been over-represented in national leadership before these events, they were under-represented thereafter.

            Under President Suharto’s New Order government which llook power in 1966, regional discontents have eased. Firstly, the government’s anti communist and free-market policies are those which  the PRRI had advocated. Secondly, the central government has provided roads, electricity, schools, hospitals and other infrastructural facilities, which have helped transform the economy. Large multi-ethnic provinces were broken up until all except North Sumatra (pre-war East Sumatra plus Tapanuli) were back to the boundaries of the old Dutch residencies, and the army’s presence became less obvious. If one still hears grumbles about the pusat (center), these are now no different from those heard in every Indonesian province.

IMPACT OF THE WEST

Gunboats, Garrisons and Guerrillas

By the 18^th century, the decline in world demand for pepper had deprived the rulers of sports such as Aceh and Palembang of the means to dominate their hinterlands. The biggest economic powers in Sumatra were now European-the Dutch established their headquarters at Padang in 1663, and the British at Bengkulu in 1685. Each became a center of rival networks of trade along the west  coast, but they were militarily vulnerable. Local Sumatrans drove the British out in 1719 and held Bengkulu for many years. These lonely European outpost also attracted the attention of the French. Admiral Comte d’Estaing occupied Bengkulu for several months in 1760; Admiral Linois pillaged the fort and town in 1803. Dutch Padang was equally vulnerable, falling to the British in 1781-1784 and 1795-1816, and to a French privateer for two months in 1793. During this period Dutch influence was virtually eliminated from Sumatra.

            British officials of the Bengkulu administration were the first to give detailed accounts of the Batak interior of northern Sumatra (Holloway and Miller, 1772), and the island of Nias (Jack and Prince, 1819). Raffles himself visited the Minangkabau capital of Pagarruyung in 1818. A great opponent of slavery, Raffles was nevertheless enthusiastic about Nias-“the finest people, without exception, that I have yet met with in the East.” He was outraged that the island was a major supplier of slaves to Aceh, the Dutch and the French colonies, and even to the British settlements in Bengkulu and Pinang. Raffles proclaimed British sovereignty over the island in 1820, but this was disallowed by London.

           

Pepper, coffee and tin

A new phase of commercial expansion affected Sumatra from about 1780. British and Tamil traders came from India, British and Chinese traders arrived from the new British port at Penang (founded 1786), and Americans from Salem, Providence and New London. The Americans found willing pepper suppliers in local chiefs on the west coast between Sibolga and Meulabuh, a frontier region beyond the reach of Acehnese authority in the north and the English Company in the south. More than 5,000 tons year were exported  from this region alone in the early 19^th century, primarily by Americans. In the Minangkabau area, cassia (a substitute for cinnamon), gambir (used for tanning leather), and from 1790, coffee, became attractive new crops. At the beginning of the 18^th century, Chinese miners began to exploit the tin deposits in Bangka.

            With the decline of authority, first of the Sumatran rulers, then of the Dutch Company, Sumatra became once again an economic frontier, as colonists from settled areas flocked  to new regions to grow export crops. The absence of major powers suited foreign traders, but when commercial disputes for vengeance to their respective navies. The Americans began this gunboat diplomacy by destroying coastal Acehnese villages in 1826 and 1838, and then French fleets did the same in 1839 and 1840.

            The Dutch had to start almost from scratch when their prewar possessions were returned by Britain after the Napoleonic Wars 1816. Economically on their knees and militarily tied down by the Java War (1825-1830), the Dutch were obliged to accept that others would dominate Sumatra’s trade. Meanwhile, they moved slowly, using their limited military force to annex one river port a time, trying to ensure that no other Europeans staked a political claim to any part of the island. Sumatrans did not accept the extension of Dutch authority without a fight.

            Anglo-Dutch squabbling over their respective rights following the founding of Singapore was temporarily resolved in 1824, when the British whit drew all claims to Sumatra, in return for the Dutch doing the same on the Malay Peninsula. In 1825, the Dutch seized control of Palembang and the tin-bearing islands of Bangka and Belitung. The Dutch also inherited a British conflict with a militant Islamic movement known as “Paderi” in the Minangkabau heiglands, a conflict which dragged on until 1837, when the Paderi’sleader, Imam Bonjol was finally killed. (See “History” in WEST SUMATRA.)

Dutch conquests

The Paderi movement disturbed the Batak as well as thr Minangkabau areas. A conquest of the southern Batak areas in the 1820s was carried out from the Paderi commercial stronghold of Bonjol in northern Minagkabau. The key leader of the holy war to the north was Tuanku Rao, a Batak who had converted to milliant Islam. He led a Paderi force forcing most of the Mandailing and Angkola areas of Shout Tapanuli to accept Islam. Tuanku Rao appears to have taken his troops even farther north, and tried unsuccessfully to convert the Bataks around Lake Toba.

            There is a story that Tuanku Rao invited the tenth Singamangaraja (Toba Batak priest-king who lived west of the lake) to meet him in the market place at Butar, and there killed him. Other Batak stories say that Tuanku Rao enjoyed extraordinary military success because he was the abandoned nephew of the magical Singamangaraja. European attempts to Christianize the Batak were less successful. It was not until the mid 19^th century that any real progress was made. (See “The Batak” in NORTH SUMATRA).

            Over two decades, from 1820 to 1841, the Dutch gradually conquered the Minangkabau area and built a series of strategic forts in the highlands. This made the most densely-populated region of Sumatra also the principal dutch stronghold. The expenses of the garrisons were met by the forced delivery of coffe at fixed prices. There was however enough land to enable the enterprising Minangkabau to take advantage of improving communications and expanding markets to grow their own coffee, tobacco, sugar, cassia and gambir, giving rise to a prosperous, commercially-oriented middle class.

            The same group responded enthusiasti-cally to the token efforts the Dutch made to provide modern secular school for Indonesians. In the 1840s they began funding their own ditrict schools. By 1872 there were almost 1,200 Minangkabau children in school-a proportion several times higher than in Java, where education was limited to the aris-tocracy. This first generation to be literate both in Jawi (Malay-Arabic) and Latin script provided Sumatra and the rest of Indonesia with a large number of its clerks, school teachers, journalist and political activist in the 20^th century.

            Dutch progress on the east coast of Sumatra was hampered by constant protests by British merchants in Singapore and Penang. A Dutch expedition was sent to Siak in 1858 to throw out an English adventurer, and another to the small northern states of Langkat, Deli, Serdang and Asahan in 1865, to estab-lish Dutch rights against claims of Acehnese suzerainty and British commerce.

            These small states proved a rich prize, thanks to the volcanic soil which proved ideal for growing tobacco. The pioneer Dutch planter, Jacobus Nienhuys,had to Deli  (the region around medan ahead of dutch troops, in 1863, and within  decade had estlablished its reputation for growing the world’s finest cigar wrapper-leaf. British objections were overcome by opportunities to provision this growing plantation economy.

            In the 1870s and 1880s, 20,000 Chinese laborers brought in each year to cut down the forests and tend the tobacco plantations. Later, the planters turned to cheaper ang more tractable Javanese labor. In the 1920s, just before the system of indentured labor was ended, partly due to American pressure, a total 260.000 javanese worked on the plantations. Prosperous new town grew at a Medan, Binjai, Pematang Siantar and Tanjung Balai. The insignificant coastal rajas who controlled the river mouths became enormously wealthy on the royalties from plantation land and (in Langkat after 1980) from oil.

           

The Aceh wars

            The biggest challenge to Dutch colonialism in Sumatra was Aceh, which never signed unequal treaties with the Dutch. It had wealth, arms and foreign contacts from its pepper and betelnut trade. Aceh also had a treaty of mutual defence with the British, arranged by Raffles in 1819, and a guarantee of Aceh’s in-dependence was incorporated in the 1824 Anglo-Dutch Treaty, which divided the Malay-speaking world into two halves. It was only in 1871 that British, arranged by Reffles in 1819, and a guarantee of Aceh’s in dependence was incorporated in the 1824 Anglo-Dutch treaty, which divided the Malay-speaking world into two helvest. It was on ly in 1871 that British objections were over come, clearning the way for a more vigorous Dutch apporoach.

            The first Dutch attack was ill-prepared brought on hastily by energetic Acehnese attempts to form defensive alliances with Turkey, France and the United States. The US Consul in Singapore agreed to forward a draft Aceh-US Treaty to Washington, though in received no support from the State Department. A Dutch force of 3.000 men attacked the Acehnese capital in April 1873, but with drew three weeks later having lost its commander and 80 men. Humiliated , the Ducht recruited the largest force they had ever as sambled in the Indies, and landed 10.000 men the following December. The Acehnese citadel was taken six weeks later amidst a cholera epidemic that wiped out at least a thousand on each side. This was, however, only the first chapter in a war which was to last until 1903, tying up Dutch resources, men and money, and sapping morale for 20 years, leaving a legacy of bitterness in Aceh.

            By the mid-1880s, the leardersip of Acehnese resistance passed to the ulama (religious scholars) who died of wounds or disease on the Dutch side. For the Acehnese, who lost at least 5 times as many, their enduring monument is the memory of countless dead heroes, some now officially recognized as Indonesia’s national heroes. Among these are the west coast uleebalang (district chief) Teuku Umar, who defected in 1896 after acting as the principal Dutch ally. Others include Teuku Umar’s gallant wife Cut Nyak Dien and ulama leader Cik di Tiro, who defiantly called on the Dutch governor to embrace Islam if he wished to avoid the inevitable destruction awaiting the infidels. Right to the end of Dutch rule, Aceh remained an occupied province. At the approach of the Japannese in 1942, the province rebelled and drove out the remaining Dutch forces.

            On the Dutch side, the eventual success was credited to two men in particular. Colonel J.B. van Heutsz, military governor of Aceh from 1898 to 1904, adopted an uncompromising policy of  relentless pursuit, and was rewarded by being named governor –general (1904-9). His invaluable key adviser was the Islamic specialist Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, author of a Dutch strategy of tolerating or even encouraging Islam in what was held to be the religious domain, but resolutely crushing any sign of Islamic political assertion. After 1904 the policies of these two men were extended throughout the Indies. Dutch troops penetrated every corner of Sumatra, and by 1910 the whole island was for the first time under a single authority; but one that did not enjoy much love from its people.

ISLAMIC KINGDOMS

The Rise of Coastal Sultanates

The year AD 1300 saw the beginning of a shift in political cultural importance from the south to the north of Sumatra, linked with the arrival of a new religion-Islam. Until the 14th century, the great kingdoms of Sumatra had been located at Palembang or Jambi. Now a number of small Islamic kingdoms began to appear at the mouths of the short, fast-flowing rivers which disgorge into the Malay language, the Islamic religion and a literary tradition using the Arabic script were first elaborated. Yet in the interior of Sumatra, protected by the marshes to the east and the mountains to the west, people continued to speak a dozen mutually unintelligible languages and retained their own religious and cultural traditions.

Along the northern coasts of Sumatra are numerous small rivers where ships from India and the Middle East for food and water. In the 13^th and 14^th centuries, trading ports began to appear on the banks of these rivers, and it was in these ports that Islam first gained a foothold in the Indonesian archipelago.

Up to this time, the island of Sumatra had been called “Jawa” or Java Minor by travelers and traders, but now the whole island took on the name of the flourishing ports of the northeast, known as Samudra (Sanskrit for “ocean”)__or Sumatra.

In 1292, the Venetian traveler Marco Polo sojourned of Samudra for five months waiting for the monsoon to change before continuing his journey back to Europe. His expedition disembarked, and “for fear of these nasty and brutish folk who kill men for food we dug a big trench round our encampment, and with in these fortifications we lived for five months.” In Marco Polo’s time, Samudra was a small kingdom practicing the same shamanistic animism as the people of the interior. He reported, however, that the neighboring kingdom of Peurlak (near modern Langsa) had already become Muslim, “owing to contact with Saracen merchants, who continually resort here in their ships.

An Islamic trade network

Ibn Battuta, an Arab traveler, also visited Samudra in 1323. By then it had become a sophisticated Muslim sultanate, trading with places as distant as south India and China. Many south Indian Muslim traders made their home in the city. Inder is preferred Muslim name of Pasai, its rulers issued gold coins, and a system of writing Malay using the Arabic script was developed. Pasai was the earliest center of Islamic scholarship in lacca (on the Malay peninsula), Patani, Aceh and Johor, regarded it as a model of Islamic learning and behavior.

            From Samudra-Pasai, Islam traveled with Muslim traders down the east and west coasts of Sumatra, as well as to the Malay Peninsula and to the trading ports of the north coast of Java. By the 16^th century, all the important Sumaatran ports were under Islami authority, and Islam had begun to make inroads in the Minangkabau region, the heavily-populated, gold-producing area in the central mountains where the halft-Javanese, half-Sumatran Adityavarman (1356-1375), claiming descent from both Majapahit and Sriwijaya, had established his own Tantric Buddhist kingdom.

            Sumatra rulers eagerly accepted Islamic legends woven around Alexander the Great, who for Muslims was the world-conquering hero Iskandar Zulkarnain (or “Alexander the two-horned”). Soon after adopting Islam, the kings of Pagarruyung in the theory that Alexander had sent his three sons to rule the world-one in China,one in “Rum” (the Roman/Byzantine empire, and its heir in Ottoman Turkey), and the third in Minangkabau.

            The Chinese imperial eunuch Cheng Ho (himself a Muslim!) visited Samudra with a huge fleet of ships in the early 15^th century, and it may have been the information suppliedny him regarding China’s needs which prompted Sumatrans to introduce the cultivation of pepper from India. By the late 15^th century, Sumatra was the main exporter of pepper to China. Pepper remained Sumatra’s principal export until the 19^th century, and for much of this periodit was the world’s major supplier.

The politics of pepper

Samudra-Pasai was just one of the kingdoms on the northern coast of Sumatra. When the Portuguese arrived in Southeast Asia in 1509, there were independent states at Barus, Daya and Lamri (near modern Banda Aceh), Pidie (near Sigli), Pasai and Aru (near Medan). After conquering Malacca and driving out its Muslim merchants, the Portuguese attempted to gain influence in Pasai and Pidie by intervening in their frequent succession disputes. The effect of this was to drive wealthy Muslim merchants to Aceh, where a new and virulently anti-Portuguese sultanate formed at the beginning of the 16^th century, on the ruins of the ancient kingdom of Lamri. With the wealth generated through trade, Sultan Ali Munghayat Syah-the first ruler of this new kingdom-was able to conquer Daya, Pidie and Pasai, drive the Portuguese out of northern Sumatra, and begin a century of bitter conflict with the Christian intruders.

            Portuguese attacks against Muslim trade, and Aceh’s hostile respons, introduced an element of holy war into the expension of Islam in Sumatra. From 1540 to 1630, Aceh launched more than a dozen large expeditions against the Portuguese at Malacca. During on siege in 1547, St. Francis Xavier galvanized Malacca’s defenders and was credited with miraculously prophesying the Portuguese naval victory.

            The las and greatest of the fleets sent against Malacca contributed to the decline of both powers. In 1629, the Aceh fleet of 19,000 men and several hundred ships was trapped and destroyed by a Portuguese fleet which arrived unexpectedly from Goa in India. Few of these ships returned after the fight and  the hostile weather encountered on the way. Aceh never fully recovered from this blow.

Aceh’s golden age

During the latter half of the 16^th and early part of the 17^th century, Aceh supplying Europe with half its pepper. Venetian envoys in Cairo and Costantinople noted with satisfaction-and the Portuguese with dismay-that ships from “Assi” were arriving regurarly in Jiddah or Suez laden with pepper. Aceh was then known as the “doorstep to Mecca” (serambi Mekkah), because it was from all countries “below the winds” (i.e. Southeast Asia) embarked for their voyage to the Holy Land.

            Because of Aceh’s abundant pepper, and its  known aversion to the Catholic Portuguese, Protestants Europeans made the sultanate their first Asian port of call. The Dutch were welcomed in 1598 and the English  in reception at the palace, they were honored with gifts of sarongs and krisses. However, relations between the Dutch and the Aceh-nese were not always smooth; as an example the first Malay dictionary and phrasebook was written during a year’s captivity in Aceh by the Dutch Admiral de Houtman.

            Aceh reached its peak of power and wealth under the brilliant but ruthless Sultan Iskandar Muda (“the young Alexander,” 1607-1636). Throughout the first half of the 17^th century, Aceh’s court astonished visitors with its lavish feasts and public rituals. Hundreds of richly-caparisoned elephants and thousands of pikemen accompanied the Sultan in the  weekly Friday procession from the palace feast days and at receptions for foreign guests, the processions were even grander-there were contests between pairs of fight-ing elephants, buffaloes and rams.

            In the early 17^th century, Aceh was one of the major powers in Asia. Its effective authority stretched along the coast to Padang in the west and Tanjung Balai (on Karimun Island) in the east. Acehnese viceroys were appointed to rule over the Karo and Simalungun Batak and the Minagkabau. In the Malay peninsula, Aceh ruled Kedah and Perak, and conquered states as far away as Johor and Pahang. Victorious naval expeditions brought back thousands of captives to populate the city, man the war galleys, and carry out heavy contruction work in the capital. Three thousand woman waited on the sultan in his palace, and meals were served on plates of gold.

            Warfare and the impermanence of building materials have left little trace of this former splendor. The city was never walled, a fact which an Acehnese chronicler attributed to the bravery of its people and the ferocity of its war elephants. In 1874,  the palace complex was destroyed by the invading Dutch, and the great mosque, which was built of wood, was also destroyed. All that now remains is the curious limestone gunongan and pintu khob, ornaments built in the 1630s as part of the royal pleasure garden along the banks of the Krueng Daroy, just south of the palace. Today, the style of the parished great mosque can be seen in the mosque of Indrapuri, originally built in the period of Sultan Iskandar Muda, about 20 km upriver from Banda Aceh.

            Iskandar Muda’s declining years were marked by signs of madness. He killied many of those closest to him, including his own son. His son-in-law, Iskandar Thani, succeeded him in 1636, but died in 1641. A violent succession dispute arose, and the leading men of the kingdom decided to place on the throne Iskandar Muda’s daughter (Iskandar Thani’s widow), Taj al-Alam (“Crown of the World,” 1641-75). During her reign, the stern personal autocracy intstituted by her father was relaxed. Traders enjoyed more predictable conditions in the capital, and local lords were able to establish hereditary lineages throughout the country.

            Despite being at odds with Islamic law and tradition, to experiment with female rule was deemed so successful that three more queens were successively placed on the throne. As an English visitor explained, “the very name of a king is long since become nauseous to them through the Tyrannical Government of their last king.” Not until 1699, when one of the factions was able to produce a decree from Malacca judging female rule unacceptable to Islam, was a king again on the throne of Aceh.

            After the defeat  that destroyed its entire fleet at Malacca in 1629, Aceh went into a slow decline. The Dutch were able to prise from Aceh’s control both the pepper-growing areas on the west coast of Sumatra and the tin-producing areas on the Malay Peninsula. The major sources of Aceh’s continued wealth were then the items  that had once been regarded as non-exportable royal treasures-gold and elephants.

Literature and theology

Malay was the language spoken in the cities of Aceh in the 17^th century, and it was here that much of the best classical Malay literature was written. Then earliest Muslim Malay syair (poetry in 4-line verses) still extant is the work of Hamzah Fansuri (Hamzah of Faansur, i.e. Barus) who lived and worked in the late 16^th century. Syech Syamsuddin of Pasai, who was the chief kadi (Muslim judge) of Aceh until his death iin 1630,was influential with Iskandar Muda. Both he and Hamzah were adherents of the wujuddiya school of mysticism, which in the eyes of its critics so emphasized union with God that it erased the distinction between God and man.

            In the reign of Iskandar Than, a rigidly orthodox current of though gained the upper hand, the works of Hamzah and Syamsuddin were burned and several of their adherents were executed. This orthodox reaction was led by the most prolitic of classical Malay writers, Nuruddin ar-Raniri (of Ranir, in Gujerat), who wrote numerous theological works, and the greatest encyclopedic work of politics and history in Malay, the Bustan al-Salatin. He was unpopular with the people of Banda Aceh, and when his patron Iskandar Thani died, ar-Raniri was chased out of Aceh by an angry crowd.

            The most influential religious scholar of the second half of the century, Abdur’rauf of Singkel, managed to combine orthodoxy with a tolerant approach to pre-Islamic beliefs and mystical ideas, and today he is revered as the mouth of Aceh river is still honored and he is remembered as Syech Kuala (the Syech of the river mouth). Aceh’s state university is named in his honor.

Economic decline

World demand for pepper reached  peak in the middle of the 17^th century. From 1650 onwards, the port-states which had dominated Sumatra since the 15^th century began to decline along with the trade which had sustained them. Aceh embarked on a long period of internal conflict, and the uleebalang (local chiefs) who controlled the river mouths of Aceh coast became virtually independent of the capital. Acehnese gradually replaced Malay as the language of literature, and the weight of state authority was lightly felt by the majority of highland Sumatrans.

            The lack of any major political authority encouraged adventures such as the Bugis from Soulth Sulawesi, the Arabs from West Sumatra to seize power by warfare, by marrying into the ruling families, or by strategic alliances. Increasingly, European and south Indian merchants were appointed as shahbandars or trade officials in the island sport. By the 18^th century the Europeans emerged as the biggest economic backwater.

EARLY HISTORY

Svarnadvipa: The Ancient Island of Gold

Sumatra crept slowly and tentatively onto the historical stage. The Indian Ramayana epic (3rd century BC) mentions a Svarnadvipa or "Gold Island" which is probably Sumatra, for the island has rich gold deposits that have been mine since antiquity. A Greek scholar of the first century AD named Claudius Ptolemy wrote that cannibals lived on the five Barousai Island east of India. This is probably a reference to northwest Sumatra-the port of Barus on this coast was famous in later centuries as a source of camphor.
        Until about AD 600, foreign writers thought of Sumatra as a forbidding wilderness, inhabited by fierce cannibalistic tribes and wild beasts, but enticingly rich in mineral and botanical wealth. One trading port, located somewhere in the southeast coast, stood out as an isolated outpost of civilization in a savage land. This port, know to the Chinese as Gantoli, maintained diplomatic relations with China between AD  441 and 563.
         By the end of the 7th century, several Sumatran kingdoms had established contact with China. These Sumatran courts sent diplomatic missions to China. and Chinese Buddhist monks undertook the hazardous 40-day sea voyage to Sumatra en route to India, bringing back with them glowing descriptions of these kingdoms as flourishing centers of trade and scholarship.
The empire of Srivijaya
The greatest name in ancient Sumatra history is Srivijaya ("Glorious Victory"). In the late 7th century, this kingdom rapidly expanded from its capital near present-day Palembang in southeastern Sumatra, and gained control over the neighboring ports. For the next 400 years Sumatra's history is essentially the story of Srivijaya's golden age.
          The name Srivijaya first appeared in AD 671, when a famous Chinese monk, I Ching (also known as Yijing) sojourned in Palembang for six months on his way to India. Palembang was then an active center of Buddhist learning and trade. Yijing states that there were more than 1,000 Buddhist monks in the city, and advised other Chinese monks to go to Srivijaya to study Sanskrit before proceeding to India. Yijing sailed from China to India and back on Srivijaya ships, which were the chief means of transport and communication over this vast distance.
          Almost all our accounts of Srivijaya come from records left by foreign visitors. Srivijaya must have had written records, but these would have been written on strips of lontar palm leaves, and none has survived. Faint echoes of Srivijaya voices are recorded on a few stone inscriptions found around Palembang and other sites in South Sumatra. Most were written during a critical period between AD 682 and 686 when the kingdom was expanding fast and consolidating its power.
          The Srivijaya inscriptions are all similar in content-containing oaths of loyalty to the king coupled with threats of divine retribution against rebels and troublemakers. One inscription from the island of Bangka mentions a military expedition about to depart for Java. Another from Talang Tuo, west of Palembang, commemorates the founding of a park by the ruler-a Buddhist act of virtue.
-this is that his inscriptions use an add language combining Old Malay with ungrammatical Sanskrit. This is a marked decline from the standard of composition which prevailed in 7th century Srivijaya. and demonstrates thet the ancient traditions of classical learning were on the wane.
           The few inscriptions which have been studied do tell us, however, that Adityavarman tried to establish his court in a region which, to our knowledge, had no previous direct contact with the outside world, and no form of government above the level of a federation of neighboring villages. No doubt he struggled hard to recreate the glory of the court life in which he grew up in Java. Fragments of sculpture and architecture remain as mute testimony to his effort, and legends still popular in West Sumatra about contests between champions of autocracy and democracy may echo attempts to superimpose a Javanese-style system of aristocratic rule upon an egalitarian village society.
            Adityavarman's last words were inscibed around 1374, when one of his monuments mentions a crown prince, Ananggavarman. After this, a veil of silence descends over West Sumatra, only to lift when Europeans penetrated the area some 300 years later. what happened to this prince? Perhaps he ascended the throne but could not keep alive the traditions his father had tried transplant. By the 17th century. the West Sumatra political system bore little resemblance to the court system depicted in the classical inscriptions of Srivijaya, Malayu and Java.
A Chinese pirates' nest
Even after its political eclipse in the 11th century, Palembang continued to be an important port. During the 14th century, its Malay subjects chafed under Javanese overlordship. In 1370 Palembang took advantage of the rise of the new Ming dynasty in China by sending a Mission to Beijing to request diplomatic recognition. The Ming emperor dispatched envoys to Palembang with documents recognizing Palembang as a Chinese vassal, but the envoys were waylaid and taken to Java, where they  were murdered.
            In 1392 the ruler of Palembang, a prince whom we know as Parameswara, tried to assert his independence, but a Javanese fleet destroyed the villages on Bangka which constituted his main source of naval strength. He fled to Singapore, where he tired to set up a new Malay stronghold, but he was driven out again in 1397 by an attack by the Siamese. In 1400 Parameswara finally succeeded in establishing a new base at Malacca, which in the 15th century became what Melayu and Palembang had been earlier-the focal point of a triangular trade between the Indonesian archipelago, China and India.
            Even then Palembang did not die. According to accounts brought back to China by naval expeditions sent to Southeast Asia in the early 15th century, the Chinese inhabitants of Palembang, several thousand strong, remained behind when Parameswara fled. Left without a local ruler, they chose one from among themselves. Soon his position was usurped by a Chinese ruffian who turned Palembang into a pirates' nest. A Chinese naval expedition attacked Palembang and captured the pirate leader, who was taken back to Beijing and publicly strangled in the marketplace.
            After 1430 China turned inward, and contact with Palembang was broken off. When we next glimpse the town, in the early 1500s, it was no longer a Chinese enclave but an important port dominated by Javanese culture. It would be fascinating to know how this transition took place, but unfortunately Sumatra's ancient history resembles less a continuous line than a series of brief dashes separated by broad, gaping spaces.