Selamat Jakarta
November 23, 2007 — tbelfield
Selamat Jakarta
(work in progress)
Indonesia is the fourth largest nation in the world by population at around 250 million people. Indonesia is larger than Mexico, smaller than Libya, with a land area of 1,826,440 km². Located in the tropics covering over fifteen degrees of latitude and 45 degrees of longitude, it is the largest nation in the world consisting entirely of islands, some 17,500 of them. Superimposed on a map of Europe the island chain would stretch from England to Iraq.
Indonesia is the geographers dream. In its physical geography volcanoes are the central geological and geographical feature of Indonesia. Indonesia has the largest number of historically active volcanoes (76), with total of 1,171 documented eruptions, 80% which have occurred in the last century. Of the five greatest historic eruptions documented three have taken place in Indonesia: Toba (ca. 75,000 BP), Tambora (1815), and Krakatau (1883). Toba is the site of largest volcanic eruption on earth in the last ten million years, 2,600 times larger than the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1982. World record tsunamis and earthquakes are known from Indonesia.
The biogeography is no less impressive. Indonesian contains the second largest rainforest ecosystem in the world, of which about 70% remains (1,100,000 km²). Indonesia contains an estimated 25% of the world’s fish species, 17% of bird species, 16% of reptile and amphibian species, 12% of the mammal species, and 10% of the plant species. Of the approximately 25,000 species of plants in Indonesia only 30% have been named and described scientifically. It is home to the most biologically diverse reef systems in the world. There are large intact tracts of tropical rainforest, orangutans, birds of paradise, megapodes, komodo dragons, and babirusa. Out of Indonesia would come perhaps the greatest of all scientific theories through the observations of a young, self-taught naturalist from Wales, named Alfred Russel Wallace. This, of course, is the theory of evolution. Indeed, Wallace has also been attributed as the founder of biogeography.
In cultural geography Indonesia is the largest Muslim country with about 90% of the population of that faith. There are numerous ethnic groups scattered through Indonesia: the Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, coastal Malays, the Tobak of Sumatra, Toraja of Sulawesi, Dyak and Iban of Kalimantan, Sassak people of Lombok, and the many and varied ethnic groups found throughout the eastern islands of Indonesia from Flores, Timor, Kei, Aru, Buru, Seram, and Papua. Though Bahasa Indonesia is the national language (a modified form of Malay) there are some 610 languages spoken throughout the archipelago. For good reason the national motto is “unity in diversity”.
Indonesia cultural influences are varied and deep rooted in 1000 years of Hindu cultural influence as seen in great temple monuments of Borobudur and Prambanan, Islamic cultural influence dating from the fourteenth century persisting through to current times, nearly five hundred years of Dutch colonialism, and four years of occupation by the Japanese during the Second World War. Dating from August 17, 1945, Indonesia, as it has come to be, has been an independent nation for only 62 years.
Finally, for the urban geographer there are the cities. Indonesian cities are rapidly urbanizing with growth rates of 20% to 30%. Cities share some of the same forms such as streets and buildings and they share the same problems of air and water pollution, traffic congestion, the urban poor, but cities are unique in their particular histories.
There are as many ways to leave Indonesia as there are islands there but only three ways to enter: Jakarta, Java; Denpasar, Bali; and Manado, Sulawesi, via Cebu, Philippines. Jakarta. As the plane begins it approach to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport the Java coast comes into view. If it is a rainy misty day in February you can’t help but notice how the low, north coast of Java is dissolving into the Java Sea. You can’t tell where the inundated rice fields and villages leave off and where the sea starts. The coastal waters are muddied from the brown rivers running off the mountainous spine of Java. Nearer Jakarta the coast is crowded with freighters anchored at odd angles waiting harbor entrance. The coastal plain here is as flat as to almost appear two dimensional save for the village houses and an occasional building sticking up out of the mud. On a relatively clear day in May, amidst the towering cumulus clouds, in the short distance above and to the south of Jakarta, and rising to just above 9,000 feet are two rather ominous and large volcanoes: Gunung Gedde-Pangrango, really of complex of multiple volcanoes. Almost all of Gunung Gedde-Pangrango is a national park established in 1827, when Indonesia was known collectively as the Dutch East Indies. Just to the west of Pangrango there is Gunung Halimun, also a national park, here tigers where last seen on Java. Fifty to sixty kilometers from their base sprawls the largest city in Indonesia and one of the largest and most densely populated cities in Southeast Asia. Jakarta, yes. There you can see the taller buildings of the sprawling and disorganized government and business districts. But not really Jakarta either. More of a mega-city now known widely and reported in the local newspapers and TV news broadcasts as “Jabodetabek”; the combined populations of Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tanggareng, and Bekasi. Indeed, you can leave one city and drive into the next and not know it unless you have lived there for some time and know the general lay of the land and are familiar with the landmarks which tell you that you are close to home. The official population, or at least the one you most read and hear of, is some twelve million people but perhaps the real number is closer to seventeen million, perhaps twenty million. I think no one knows for sure. But it’s big. Jakarta. Ibu kota. The Mother City.
The view from the plane as it taxis down the runway is that of a flattened landscape of scattered scrub and rank tropical vegetation. As soon as the door of the plane opens the humidity and temperature rise and the windows fog up. This sensation is rather direct and immediate. The walk down the ramp is pleasant as you enter the air-conditioned Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. If you have been there before you will quickly recognize a familiar smell. Faint at first and then stronger as you walk toward the baggage pickup. Kretek cigarettes with a faint background urinal bite. No smoking signs are posted everywhere yet someone somewhere must be smoking nearby or perhaps the smell is being wafted in on the air conditioning from the hundreds of people puffing away in the greeting area or along the curb side. Everything Jakarta is in miniature at Soekarno-Hatta once you step outside with your passport stamped and luggage collected. The smells are funky, sticky, and diesel like, the humidity thick, the temperature warm at night, hot in the day, the sounds of vehicles, crowds of people, food stalls, advertisements, kretek smokers by the score, hawkers of watered down perfume, counterfeit watches and pens, taxi drivers, bus drivers, car drivers, hangers on, luggage porters, and crowds of people.
I once arrived there as the haj was ending. Someone in the crowd told me thirty thousand people a day returning from the Mecca pilgrimage were moving through the airport. And more people come to greet the hajji than hajji arriving. Men wearing peci and sarong, some women in full burqa and other dressed to the nines in makeup and high heels, still others in tight fitting jeans, tight blouses, sandals, and all trailed by numerous children. Everyone is carrying boxes of food to make a picnic of it all. If you are white, a “bule”, you stand out in the crowd of comers and goers and hawkers and sundry riffraff. Tall and white you are like a beacon. Approached a half dozen times or more to buy something and go somewhere or just to talk or have a smoke with someone who is suddenly standing by your side like a long lost uncle even before you hit the street side. By then you are sweating. If you smoke, maybe you have had three or four or five or six cigarettes. If you’ve been through this before you will know to use the kamar kecil before getting into your choice of transportation to take you into town or home to relatives. What is a short distance on the map to your destination is certain to become a long distance in time depending on the weather and traffic which are never dependable and always changeable.
The drive out of Soekarno-Hatta past the Bandera Sheraton and through the Bali gate is over flat, swampy ground. If it has been raining heavily in the mountains you can be sure the four lane toll road is underwater in at least two areas. If traffic is heavy it is also slow and the faded white lines dividing the lanes of the highway are obscured by the cars as two lanes become three or sometimes four cars abreast. The only generally agreed traffic rule seems to be to stop to pay the toll before jetting out and funneling down into the traffic again. Night obscures the sky and the horizon but not the smells and chirps and squeaks coming out of a darkness you could cut with a knife. In the day they sky is a dull gray above and brown in the distance, sometimes, surprisingly, and almost clear on a good day. You can bet that in the distance you will notice that something is burning and smoke lofting into the sky. Even in a heavy rain the smell of open tidal flats, mangrove, fish ponds, sewage, garbage (burning or otherwise), and diesel are thick in the air. Large billboards announce “selamat datang”, or the newest cell phones, or the newest cars, or newest apartment complexes: Sharpe, Sanyo, Motorola, Toyota, Honda, and McDonald’s 24/7, call for home delivery.
Modern Jakarta is an anomaly. It is not an old city as compared to others like it in Southeast Asia, Bangkok or Rangoon for example. Jakarta’s origins are rooted in the period of the earliest European colonialism. Jakarta has its beginning as a small village on the Ciliwung River, originally located near the current area of old Jakarta known as Kota, just a bit south of Pasar Ikan, the fish market. North of this is Sunda Kalapa, once the main port of the Hindu Kingdom of Sunda, Pakuan Pajajaran, dating to the twelfth century. Time before that is obscured by the time that followed and the time that is now. Sunda Kalapa today still functions as a port for traditional Bugis sailing prahu. The stout wooden sailing ships still freight trade between Java and Sulawesi and Indonesian ports east. The Dutch have left their mark here as well at nearby Menara Syahbandar and the Chicken Market Bridge.
But before the Dutch there were the Portuguese who literally kicked down the door to the spice markets. Only seventeen years after the voyages of Columbus the Portuguese had rounded the south cape of Africa, established trade in India, and proceeded to trace back the source of the spices along the routes of their trade at the point of sword, musket, and cannon. In 1511, the Portuguese had brought their ships to the trading port of Malacca, on the Malacca Straits, separating the Malaysian mainland from the island of Sumatra. They took the port by force of arms and established their first colonial post in the East Indies. It was the shear obsession to locate the source and seize the riches of the spice growing islands in the eastern archipelago that Magellan would embark on the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1519. Not a voyage of exploration but a voyage financed and equipped by the Spanish to outflank the Portuguese in the spice trade game. Magellan was killed in the Philippines by the angry people of Mactan Island while he attempted to show them the divine omnipotence of his God and the force of Spanish arms for their failure to pay tribute to the local rajah who he had come to make a treaty with. His contribution, which he paid for with his life, would be that Spain would lay claim to the Philippines. In 1527, Spain and Portugal would sign a yet another treaty by which Portugal formalized the Spanish claim to the Philippines. Portugal would pay 350,000 ducats for the right to Maluku and New Guinea. In the same time frame, by 1513, the Portuguese were anchored off Sunda Kalapa seeking to trade for pepper, and by 1522, they had signed a treaty of friendship with the King of Sunda. Not because the King of Sunda believed that trade with the Portuguese was of any particular advantage to his kingdom. What the King of Sunda thought he needed from the Portuguese was protection from the rapidly expanding Muslim Kingdom of Demak.
To the west, at some distance from the Ciliwung River, is the city of Banten, once one of the largest cities in Southeast Asia, and then threatened by Muslim troops. By the time the Portuguese returned in 1527, both Banten and Sunda Kalapa had fallen to the Muslim leader Fatahillah. It was Fatahillah who renamed Sunda Kalapa, Jayakarta, which means “Great Deed” or “Complete Victory”. Jakarta marks it founding from June 22, 1527, the day which Fatahillah claimed his victory over the Sundanese Hindus and their Portuguese allies. But, of course, Jakarta’s history has to be more convoluted than simply this. The Portuguese didn’t particularly care who they had to deal with, Hindu or Muslim, if they were amendable to one sided trading agreements that was fine, if their trading partners were recalcitrant there was always the threat of armed intervention. Time moved slower in those days, memories deeper. Almost one hundred years later history would repeat itself as Portuguese power faded against a Dutch and English rivalry for the spice trade and to tip the balance of local political power in their favor. The end game came for Portugal when it was defeated by Spain on the European continent in 1580. The Spanish King, Phillip II, then awarded a royal monopoly to Fuggers and Welsars, Hapsburg bankers of Augsburg, who formed the Portuguese Company of the Indian Orient, in a late attempt to deflect the military and commercial challenge presented by the Dutch and to finance his armada which would soon be sent against the English.
In 1577, the English would make their appearance on the scene during the circumnavigation of the globe by Sir Francis Drake. Out-shipped and arriving as latecomers the best the English could hope was to pirate Spanish merchant ships. Unlike Magellan, Drake completed his voyage, assessed the rich Sultanates of Ternate and Tidore at first hand, and then returned to England with reports of Dutch activity and his ships full of pirated goods. Never had the merchants of London seen such wealth aboard a single ship, giving the investors of this voyage a return profit of 4,700%. The commercial interest of the English merchants and Crown was such that they would seek a “Northwest Passage” to the Spice Islands by a route through the high Arctic until as late as the 19th century, sending voyage after voyage up Lancaster Sound to endure or perish in those waters for King and glory. The English would turn up again in Spice Islands with the voyages of Lancaster and Middleton during which the first English colony in history would be established on the tiny island of Pulau Run, in the Band group, located at the far eastern end of the archipelago.
The world’s first corporate logo.
In 1602, the Dutch East India Company, Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC, was formed as a private corporate entity, issuing its own stock, flying its own flag, and governed by a board of directors known collectively as the “Gentlemen 17.” The motto of the VOC, if they would have had one, was one word: Profit! As the VOC board of directors tallied their profits they bluntly informed the Republic of the Netherlands that, “the places and strongholds captured should not be regarded as national conquests but as the property of private merchants, who are entitled to sell those places to whomsoever they wished, even if it was to the King of Spain”. The genius of the VOC was that they had secured the trade and shipping routes from control of the Crown and turned them into a private business monopoly. Dutch commercial ships were designed to standard sizes with holds which allowed the maximum cargo possible, then were mass produced in the shipyards to meet their commercial needs. Dutch merchants needed little encouragement to invest capital as it was possible for them to earn 100%, 1,000%, sometimes 3,000% profit, on their investment. Among Dutch investors the spice trade was known as “the rich trade”. Cloves, pepper, and nutmeg were literally worth their weight in gold and Dutch banks would finance European continental wars for years to come.
The VOC, however, peopled their business with the lowlife, the down and out, the mercenary, the opportunist, and the mad, essentially from the worst elements of Dutch society of the time, for few were inclined to suffer the long voyage out to the archipelago. Only one in three persons that left an Amsterdam wharf would live to return. Shipwreck, disease, death in war from hostile natives or from commercial competitors was not uncommon. Still, the VOC pursued profit like no other commercial entity before it. It co-opted, threatened, cajoled, and eliminated the native states and forced them to cede lands to the VOC when and where any commercial advantage was perceived to be had. When there was resistance, as there often was, there was retribution. The Banda people, whose islands were the very center of the nutmeg trade initially, resisted the Dutch, and then, under the VOC leadership of Jan Pieterszoon Coen, in an act of what was essentially ethnic cleansing, they were brutally exterminated.
In the archipelago the VOC largely achieved its aims through liberal use of the sword, first to reduce the various archipelago states and kingdoms to tribute states and then to eliminate all competition from foreign companies who wished to engage in the trade. In the case of the English who had established a small trading post on the island of Run the Dutch immediately had it isolated and blockaded. English merchants in Ambon were arrested, removed to the Dutch fort there they were summarily tortured through water boarding, and then executed, an act which so outranged the English that yet another war in Europe was threatened. The outcome of this “commercial dispute” was eventually arbitrated in 1667, through the Treaty of Breda which brought the Second Anglo-Dutch War to its inconclusive end but by which England would cede Pulau Run to the Dutch in exchange for the island of Manhattan, so dear did the Dutch value Pulau Run. Conrad would later write, “The seventeenth-century traders went there for pepper, because the passion for pepper seemed to burn like a flame of love in the breast of the Dutch… Where wouldn’t they go for pepper! For a bag of pepper they would cut each other’s throats without hesitation, and would forswear their souls, of which they were so careful otherwise: the bizarre obstinacy of that desire made them defy death in a thousand shapes; the unknown seas, the loathsome and strange diseases, wounds, captivity, hunger, pestilence, and despair…”
All the while the Dutch had long been probing the market cities of coastal Sumatra and Java for potential trade or trouble. In 1610 a certain Prince Jayawikarta, representative and follower of the Sultan of Banten, erected what was essentially a military post to watch the Dutch who had just been granted permission to erect a warehouse along the banks of Ciliwung River for trade and from which they were now able to watch the prince. Close on the heels of the Dutch came the English and in 1615, Prince Jayawikarta granted them permission to erect a fort near his Customs Office to assist him, no doubt, to watch over the Dutch. The Prince was attempting to play off one European power against another using their divide and conquer methodology. English cannons now faced Dutch cannons across the span of the Ciliwung and at least for now, to the prince’s satisfaction, no cannons were pointed his direction. The Dutch would eventually force the English out and in 1619, they built a fort which they named Batavia.
If you travel west from Jakarta on the Merak toll road toward the Sunda Strait and Serang you pass through the low lying alluvial plain of north Java. At Serang turn off on the old Cilegon highway. Rice fields define the landscape. Water buffalo rest in the shade of the garden forests. Ducks are busy eating weeds and dabbling in the water stained red from the laterite soils. To the south rises Gunung Karang. The rush of the toll road fades to a slower pace as you pass through the well kept Javanese villages on the smooth paved road to Banten and Banten is a most interesting place. Built around 1566, by Sultan Maulana Yusuf of the Banten Sultanate, the Mesjid Agung, squat and fat, with its three tiered meru roof, and reminiscent of the temples of Bali, it is the most impressive structure in the village. Next to the mosque are the royal tombs; directly across the alun-alun, or main square, are the ruins of the Surosowan Palace, which was destroyed, rebuilt, then again attacked by the Dutch Governor General Daendels in 1808, and finally razed to the ground by the Dutch in 1832. Banten is littered with red brick ruins: Kaibon Palace, Pakalangon, and Tasikardi, all testifying to the greatness which once was Banten and to the threat which it represented to the VOC. The Portuguese and Dutch would compete for the favor of the Sultan of Banten and the English would establish a trading post there in 1603. For the Dutch Banten was much to close to court intrigue and so they removed themselves to the Ciliwung River where they found they could operate more independently from Fort Batavia.
In 1682, the Dutch would return to build Fort Speelwijk at the mouth of the Cibanten River. The ruins of the fort are still present there, its anchorage now silted in by salt marsh and weeds, it is a quiet place off the beaten track. Fort Speelwijk, though built sixty-two years after Fort Batavia, is quite representative of what Batavia once was– a fort, a fortified armed place, a permanent post, an enclave. Thick brick and mortar walls five meters tall and eighty meters long to a side, gun powder cache, bastions at four corners, firing ports, underground bunkers. The Dutch would litter the archipelago from Java to Saparua with their forts: Fort Amsterdam, Fort Victoria, Fort Defensie, Fort Duurstede, Fort Beverwijk, Fort Oranje, Fort Toloko, Fort Nieuw Zeelandia, Fort Niwus Hoorn, Fort Barneveld, Fort Kayuh Merah, Fort Rotterdam, Fort Vrendenburg, Fort Vastenburg, just to name a few.
Batavia, plagued by unhealthy swamps, strange fevers, saltwater crocodiles, pesky rhinoceros (at one time the Dutch were killing one a day for eating up their gardens), crafty and sometimes belligerent locals, and the occasional arrival of foreign fleets challenging the Dutch hegemony of trade and power. Here the Dutch persisted. Batavia was their colonial city, designed not to serve the local people but to subdue them, if not economically then militarily.
Ever civic minded the orang Belanda built their buildings, drained the swamps and built canals, paraded their army, celebrated their holidays, and generally recreated Amsterdam in the tropics. This state of affairs was to persist in one form or another for over three hundred and fifty years, up through the mid-twentieth century when the Dutch presence was swept away by Japanese forces during World War II, followed closely a few years later by the surrender of this same Japanese Imperial Army, and at the end the proclamation of independent Indonesia while through this turmoil Batavia faded and Jakarta resolved itself into vision.
But how did it get there?
Maps are useful documents through which physical and cultural geographies can be interpreted and understood. Maps can give the past immediate meaning in the present. They reveal relationships of power, space, and place. On the Jakarta Maps page there are a series of maps dating from 1618 to 2004 showing the progression of Batavia/Jakarta over nearly a fourhundred year period.
The first map is Jayakarta, 1618, reproduced from F. de Hann, Oud Batavia, Batavia 1922, and which appears in Jakarta: A History (1987) by Susan Abeyasekere. The prominent feature is the Ciliwung river. Along its west bank are found the customs defense line, British defense line and lodge. To the south is the town of Jayakarta, three defense lines appear north of the town where there is a market, town square, mosque, and palace ringed by roads, which only appear on the west side of the Ciliwung, and tributaries of the Ciliwung delta which appear to have been modified to act as moats, or defensive barriers. On the east bank of the Ciliwung is Fort Batavia, two defense lines north of the town, Chinese houses (outside of the defense lines), and Kyai Aria’s District.
This is a simple but subtle map.
The next map in order is Batavia, 1650, reproduced from Abdurrachman Surjomihardjo, Pemekaram Koa (The Growth of Jakarta), Jakarta, Djambaton, 1977, which also appears in Jakarta: A History.
Only twentytwo years have passed since the first map was drawn. Now on the west bank of the Ciliwung River are eleven defensive bastions, a Chinese hospital, a spinning house (for single women), a carpenter’s shop for Chinese, a fish market, a carpenter’s shop for the VOC, and the old Utrecht gate.
Along the east bank the old fort is now called ”the castle”, there is Niewpoort Gate (now Pintu Besar), Brug Street, a strait, central street, along which is found the new church, city hall, the hospital, government house, and the old Gelderland defense works.
The map of Batavia, 1897, and Meester Cornelis show ten railroad and tram stations, six hotels, two markets (Paser Baroe and Paser Senin), the palace of the governor general, Glodok (the Chinese district), a theater, the Museum of the Batavian Society, the military hospital, the Royal Philosophical Society, two social clubs (Harmenie and Concordia), six churches, zoological gardens, and telephon offices. The maps are colored, scaled, and the map legend lists “European and Chinese quarters” and “native campongs”. There are symbols indicating tramway lines, railways and stations, and Chinese tombs.
Finally there is Batavia and Tandjoengpriok. The map legend lists “Eroen mel st. gebouwen, kampongs, sawahs, drassige terreinen, spoorlijnen, dokken and station. On the map are found schiet terrain, an aquarium, taman sari, Chin Berg., Glodok, kanaal, Weltevreden, Koningsplein, Bandjir kanaal, Kemajoran, oud havenkanaal, and kanaal Baroe.
Jakarta remains the center that holds Indonesian together. Its position and power derived from the colonial spice trade it remains Indonesia’s greatest emporium. A drive down any street will convince you that buying and selling is the single most consuming and on-going activity. It is quite visible as hundreds of small shops are setup curbside. Proportional to the population few people work in government or are employed in factories than are working their own particular business. The range is staggering; everything from small carts selling mei gorang and satay, fish, fruit, and vegetable vendors who walk the neighborhoods in the early morning, each with their own signature call or sound of clacking wood, whistle, ringing bell. Small stores carved out of a corner of a house selling cigarettes, coca-cola, candles, and other small items you might need and can get without having to go more than a few steps from where you live. Right across the street is a mosque announcing the call to prayer with loud drumbeats.
I used to fear Jakarta. If that city is not truly broken it lives on the edge of breaking. It is crowded, polluted, and notorious for its traffic jams, urban poor, and periodic flooding. But through familiarity I have come to find it an exceptionally interesting place. I have walked through some very rough neighborhoods and have always be greeted with a smile or by having “Hi Meester” being yelled at me by one or a dozen children at a time. As broken as that city is, I think everyone who calls Jakarta home recognizes that everyone else is in the same boat, leaky or not.
Some say Jakarta is a city of villages and the more time I spend there the more I see this is so. Familiarity, has given me a sense of place: I know the back streets, the best food stalls, the all night markets. Familiarity, has given me memories: drinking coffee on an early Saturday morning at the Batavia Café in old Jakarta, waiting for the train at Gambir Station, the fantastic thunder and lightening shows dancing through the city on a late afternoon. Or the drive home with a Siti Nurhaliza, Merriam Bellima, or a Park Drive CD popped into the car stereo.
But more, Jakarta has always been a gateway for me. A place of entrance and transit to those things I love most about Indonesia: the highlands of Java, Bali, and Lombok, the deep blue waters and white sand beaches of Ambon and Seram. All the while knowing I still have Jakarta at my back.
