ABSTRACT
In this chapter I am concerned with key issues in the history of adatrecht. The adatrecht idea was developed in the first half of the twentieth century by the Leiden School. This School was never tightly defined. Centred on the University of Leiden, it consisted mainly of Indologists (scholars interested in what was then the Netherlands Indies), academics (mainly legal academics and practising colonial lawyers) and administrators on furlough. Its members tended to identify custom (adat) with law (recht). I argue that this was a mistake in method which led ultimately to administrative sterility. In reality, the two concepts must be distinguished. Custom, nevertheless, is certainly relevant to law and can influence the development of law. I show this by reference to one of the traditional patterns of marriage which European colonialists discovered in Sumatra. I provide a brief summary of the history of the adatrecht idea, indicating the victories that it achieved in the 1920s and the limitations of the idea which started to emerge in the following decade. These limitations were intrinsic to the idea as originally formulated by Cornelis van Vollenhoven, the founding figure of the Leiden School. Van Vollenhoven conceived of adat and adatrecht as manifestations of a peculiarly Indonesian world view which was essentially alien to European – particularly Dutch – thought. Although he took great interest in the differences found among the various legal communities of Indonesia (of which he distinguished nineteen major groups), he also held that there were essential common elements which united them and at the same time set them apart from European legal institutions.
