Revolution in Surakarta 1945-50 : a case study of city and village in the Indonesian revolution

Abstract

The five years of the Indonesian Revolution manifested not only the struggle to be free of Dutch colonialism; but also the attempt of Indonesian society to resolve its own tensions and contradictions, long held in suspension by colonial control. The intensity of internal revolutionary conflict in each locality served as an index of the social contradictions which had been latent beneath the superficial calm of Netherlands India. For many years Surakarta had been the centre of Javanese monarchy and traditionalism. In addition, it had become a major centre of colonial penetration, particularly through sugar estates, which caused the local people to rise against colonial authority. Early in the Revolution, this region became the centre for the most important badan perjuangan organizations, with the result that the city of Surakarta (Solo) became i:he focus of opposition to the Republican Government at Jogjakarta during the Revolution. Another reason for its selection was the role of the two Surakarta monarchies, the Kasunanan and the Mangkunegaran, in preserving written sources at the local level. Surakarta appears to be richer than any other Republican-held region in terms of local documentation for the study of the Revolution. This study was conceived while I was attending a colloquium on the Indonesian Revolution conducted by The Australian National University in Canberra in August 1973. Anthony Reid, who later became my supervisor, and other experts on Indonesian history such as John Smail, fiance Castles and Michael van Langenberg, encouraged me to enlarge my Surakarta case study to cover the period of the Indonesian Revolution as a whole. A number of specific problems have animated this study. What were the responses to the Independence Proclamation of the Surakartans, who had been caught in a feudal pattern for so many years? What kinds of factors determined their participation in the political and social conflicts of the time? What were the reasons for the intensity or the Revolution in Surakarta, including the permanent eclipse of its ruling dynasties? Did the Revolution really involve the rural people as well as the city-dwellers, or was it mostly an urban phenomenon? How far, in total, were the people involved in what had to be the key experience of their life time? In an attempt to tackle these questions, I selected certain rural areas for careful study, to balance the uroan bias of most written sources. Four rural subdistricts (kecamatan) were selected to provide a range of conditions. I selected two Kasunanan subdistricts with many plantations: Delanggu (Klaten regency) and Kedawung (Fragen regency) and two Mangkunegaran subdistricts with few plantations - Bendosari (Sukoharjo regency) and Jumapolo (Karanganyar regency). I hoped these examples would provide a broad enough range to examine the different degrees of rural involvement in the Revolution. I interviewed persons who had been involved, directly and indirectly, in many important activities during the Revolution. These interviews were conducted in either Javanese or Indonesian. In the villages they were more frequently in Javanese, because most of the older generation of villagers did not have an adequate knowledge of Indonesian. The collection of data was also carried out by examining documents, local newspapers, other contemporary publications, and private memoirs and recollections. I located contemporary Surakarta newspapers and journals in the Reksopustoko Library (Mangkunegaran, Surakarta), the Sasono Wilopo collections (Kasunanan, Surakarta), Perpustakaan Negara (Jogjakarta) and Perpustakaan Islam (Jogjakarta). Archival sources were found mainly in the Arsip Mangkunegaran (AMN) in Surakarta and Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia (ANRI) in Jakarta. The Seksi Sejarah Militer Angkatan Darat (SEMAD), Surakarta, also contains documents and materials for the period, many of them relating to the badan perjuangan organizations Most other Republican archives in Java were damaged as a result of the scorched-earth policy followed by the Republican troops during the Dutch aggressions. This is the main reason for the relative scarcity of written sources in the period of the Indonesian Revolution. For this reason this study is at times obliged to rely on an unsupported oral history approach, although wherever possible oral sources are complemented by contemporary written sources. Show more