ABSTRACT
To the extent that it was able to overcome the “ethical” resistance of people like Ballot on Sumatra’s Westcoast, the colonial state was empowered to open the gates of liberal reform. Beginning late in the nineteenth century the Outer Islands of Indonesia began to replace Java as the stronghold of the colonial export economy. An obvious difficulty faced by those wishing to judge the impact of this colonial transformation on Indonesian society in the Outer Islands is the tremendous diversity both in the nature of colonial rule and European economic involvement and in the organization of indigenous societies in this period. Minangkabau villagers, they argued, were already experiencing difficulties in finding sufficient land near enough to their villages suitable for planting coffee. The new law again declared all land within the boundaries of the government of Sumatra’s Westcoast to be the domain of the state.
