Stories from Deli

Ann Stoler on Deli in 1930

Sometime ago an old Javanese woman from Deli settled in a village nearby the Soengai Toewan estate. Often she had such a stream of people coming to her house that people thought a wedding procession was approaching. Every Friday afternoon she gathered the villagers around her to discuss religious matters. But very soon it became clear that it was not religious matters, but the nationalist movement that they were talking about. It came to the attention of the local authorities, but since it didn’t seem a very serious matter, they let it go. In the meantime, more information was collected. It turned out that whoever wanted to take part in these weekly meetings had to contribute 25 guilder and sometimes rice, chickens and eggs. The money and profits from selling the produce were to go to the uprising set for May 1, 1930 ….

When sufficient evidence was collected by the authorities, the head foreman, another foreman, and 14 coolies were arrested. It was indeed surprising that the head foreman had joined the movement since he had worked for the Senembah Company for 27 years and was the vertrouwensman of the administration. In addition, it was established that here had been more or less regular contact made with outsiders. Two times, in the middle of the night, an automobile had arrived at the old woman’s house, which wouldn’t have been very significant if it wasn’t for the unusual hour at which it occurred. [15 May 1929] The old woman was quickly arrested and the “uprising” averted. But the story was used by at least one East Coast official as an “instructive” example to show that “extreme nationalists were not sitting quiet.” He had this to say regarding the apparent quiescence: On the contrary, they are using apparently innocent means to camouflage their actions . .. .

Let it be a warning to those who opine that there is no longer ferment in the Indies. The government is more vigilant than in 1926; but if they start again and a rebellion breaks out, it will be much more serious than it was several years ago. Things are brewing again; the growing insecurity for the staff on the estates is a symptom of it.

In June, 23 “ringleaders” charged with instigating riots on the Tandem Ilir estate were arrested and a secret organization with “communist tendencies” was disbanded. In july, 6 coolies and a foreman were returned to Java as “undesirable elements”; on the Tjoekir estate, 12 coolies were repatriated after being accused of setting fire to a tobacco shed. In the same month on the estates of Kisaran, Bah )ambi, Tinjowan, and Tanjung Bringin (all about 150 km south of Medan), 60 coolies were arrested for communist activities (OvSI 1930:32).

In August, 10 “undesirables” on the Bandar Negeri estate, purported to be members of a secret organization, were returned to java. On the Gedong Johore estate, 51 Chinese coolies staged a strike over a wage dispute.

In September there was again trouble on the Kotari estate; this time 29 Javanese workers were arrested for being members of a secret organization.

In November, 27 coolies and a foreman were returned to Java from the Kanopan Ulu estate, and in the same month 400 workers from Tanjung Bringin “rioted” in protest against what they saw as an arbitrary deduction from their wages.

During 1929 the number of workers repatriated as “undesirables” had increased twofold from the previous year to well over a thousand persons.

Several patterns become clear in reviewing the events of 1929.

Most expressions of protest and violence were myopically conceived, centering on estate-based grievance, not fundamental opposition to colonialmuch less capitalist-domination as manifest on the plantations or in any other form.

It seems that the majority of the labor actions embodied in collective refusals to work occurred on the older tobacco estates, while assaults were more widely dispersed throughout the entire plantation region.

“You can cut the wages of a Chinese worker but it must be justified, even over a half cent, he’ll give you trouble. He has no pride, you can kick him, never mind. But as for the Javanese, you can’t kick him, you can cut his wages, never mind, another day, another wage.”

From: Ann Stoler. Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra’s Plantation Belt.