Internal Social Differentiation in Three Polities in Eastern Indonesia

Abstract

The diverse societies of eastern Indonesia provide a superb field of comparison for considering early processes of political formation. The existence of the local polities, their social diversity, their claims to ‘rule’ and their eventual engagement with the colonial powers deserve fuller scrutiny. In the literature on eastern Indonesia, greater attention has been devoted to the period of contact and its aftermath when there is a clear emergence of recognized small states during the long period prior to contact. Both the Portuguese and Dutch contributed significantly to this political development by their bestowal of title and official recognition. An excellent examination of this critical interaction in the Timor area is the study by Hans Hägerdal: Lords of the Land, Lords of the Sea. Less attention has been directed to the period prior to European contact when the polities that were to emerge and to gain recognition in 17th and 18th century were in their early formation. Reasons for this lack of attention are not hard to find: sources derive almost exclusively from local oral narratives, many of which are tinged with mythic elements that make them appear less than reliable. Yet it is a fact that these various local narratives are particularly concerned with these earlier processes – the distinct origins of emergence and formation of local identities. This paper looks at three distinct polities, their genealogical foundations, their particular concerns as distinct social identities, their interaction and competition with other nascent polities in the region and, most importantly, their internal social differentiation. These local polities are the Sikka population of central east Flores, the population of Termanu on the island of Rote and the population of Amanuban and its offshoots in central Timor. All three polities possess local narratives that proclaim their distinctiveness and assert their pre-ordinate position among neighbour polities. Each of these narratives does this in a different fashion. At issue in this comparison is the question of what constitutes a ‘political entity’. What are the accepted criteria of authority and of rule and how, according to local criteria, do these features develop. Among the crucial features of this formative process is the ‘ordering’ of the land and its people – an essential social differentiation into groups and the assignment of political ‘places’ within the realm Show more