ABSTRACT
In a report on the economic situation in the Government of Sumatra’s Westcoast prepared in the early 1890s, certain changes can be observed to have taken place. The report mentions a number of cottage industries in Minangkabau villages: tile, and brick-making, coconut oil milling, rice milling, saddle and harness making, shoe and furniture making, carpentry, smithing and metal working. Twentieth-century images of “traditional” Minangkabau economy, both Dutch and Indonesian, as we have seen, all approximate rather closely what Schrieke described as a closed-goods, natural economy centered almost entirely around household subsistence production. The reproduction of Minangkabau household units in the nineteenth century, as units of both consumption and production, would have required at least the following: rice and other foodstuffs, clothing, tools and household implements, raw materials for handicrafts or finished commodities for trade, and agricultural land. Coffee bushes were grown mostly in small gardens by individuals and families in the central highland districts of Minangkabau in the nineteenth century.
