ABSTRACT
So, it is the images fostered by these local civil servants that I wish to analyse or 'deconstruct' (Kahn, 1993). My proposition is that the local officials in West Sumatra had the model of Java in their minds, often consciously, when they started their geographical and social engineering. Java was then the most populous island of the archipelago with a long history of Dutch domination. My proposition is not new; F. von Benda-Beckmann (1979), Elizabeth Graves (1981: 37) and Kenneth Young (1990) have all remarked that the Dutch used a Javanese model for West Sumatran village leadership, and Christine Dobbin (1983: 229) speaks of the Javanisation' of Minangkabau coffee cultivation. What I want to argue is that the Javanese model is found in different fields of colonial policy and forms a coherent
different matter from the stricter socio-political organisation with which the Dutch were familiar in Java. Minangkabau villages were governed by a council of male family heads. These male heads, most often referred to as penghulu, were the representatives of their respective matrilineages. They were spokesmen for their lineages, or sublineages, but could not take decisions without the consent of their families. Consent was given only when the families had reached consensus after long deliberations, in which women took an active role. Since the matrilineages regularly split up, the number of penghulu in the village council was not fixed. The Dutch thought the dynamic village leadership, in which no particular person could be held responsible for any decision, unworkable. They settled the number of lineages for each village at a fixed total and appointed one jJenghulu as village head, charged with carrying out government policies (von Benda-Beckmann, 1979; Dobbin, 1983: 151-152; Young, 1990: 93).3 The position of the appointed village head was strengthened by a number of financial emoluments and, if necessary, by Dutch military force. After 1847 the heads received a financial bonus for each weight unit of coffee delivered. Not all heads were eager to comply, but when they failed to induce the peasants to work the coffee gardens they were jailed for up to a fortnight, and such punishment was regularly inflicted upon them.4 This is the first example of the Dutch officials applying a Javanese concept, namely of the one-head village administration, to West Sumatra.5
