Governing New Guinea:
The contribution of Papuan civil servants
In the literature on the history of former overseas possessions of the European powers, considerable attention is being paid to the role of white civil servants. For good reason, since more often than not their positions were pivotal in the central and regional administrations. They were the ones who made the formal decisions and signed the letters and reports that were sent to the home offices and which now comprise the bulk of the colonial archives.
* By P.J. DROOGLEVER & L.E. VISSER
Moreover, after independence had become a fact, in most cases these officials
were in a good position to have their voices heard. Once having returned
to the 'mother country', they felt a need to tell their compatriots about
the intentions that had led them to take on their share of the 'white
man's burden'. As the years went by, this was to be especially the case
when colonialism, as such, was becoming increasingly suspect not only
in the former colonies themselves, but among large segments of the 'metropolitan'
public as well. It led to a steady flow of publications from their pens
that tended to confirm the picture that had already been presented in
the reports they had sent in during their tour of duty.
There is no doubt that both types of reporting, the contemporaneous as well as the ex post facto memoirs, often contain important information, not only about the role of the administrators, but about the societies they had served, as well. Aware of limitations of these reports and memoirs, we may have confidence in the sophistication of later generations of historians and social scientists to deal with them.
Yet, our understanding of the colonial administration might be helped considerably by the inclusion of direct information from the indigenous administrators, who often made up more than half of the colonial administration. After all, they actually gathered and produced most of the data for the reports of their superiors and they acted primarily as a liaison between them and their fellow countrymen. Moreover, they themselves and their kin often had a (controversial) relationship with the nationalist movements in their countries and after independence they often played a role in the further development of the new nation-states.
For the Netherlands Indies, especially Java, Heather Sutherland and others have done considerable study on the indigenous administrators or Pamong Praja already. In Java, the role of the Pamong Praja is obviously one of long-standing and great importance. Things are different for West New Guinea, which was brought under some form of efficient Western administration only in the 1940s, and remained under the control of the Netherlands until 1962. Papuan civil servants were trained only after 1945, and in 1962-63, at the time of the transfer of the administration of the territory to Indonesia through the intermediation of the United Nations, their ranks had expanded to some sixty well-trained young men. By then, they were being confronted with all the tasks that had been performed by their colleagues of Java and the rest of the archipelago before.
The subject of the present project is to inventory the contribution of the Papuan civil servants to the administration of West New Guinea (Papua Barat, formerly Irian Jaya) during the colonial period and after. In some respects, it might be regarded as a sequel to P. Schoorl's work - Besturen in Nieuw-Guinea 1945-1962; ontwikkelingswerk in een periode van politieke onrust, Leiden: KITLV (1996) - which contains a number of essays by former Dutch civil servants describing their experiences as administrators of New Guinea. In other respects, it also easily fits in with two ongoing projects run by the Institute of Netherlands History (ING) in The Hague, both under the direction of P. J. Drooglever. The one is a documentary edition on Dutch-Indonesian relations 1950 - 1963, in which the administration of New Guinea during that period is one of the points of interest. Some of the reports compiled by these Dutch civil servants will be published in this. The other project is an historical analysis of the road leading up to the transfer of New Guinea to the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority (UNTEA) and the Act of Free Choice of 1969. The project was started in November 2000 by the Institute of Netherlands History at the request of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is expected to result in a publication at the end of 2003.
Though complementary to these projects in some way or another, Governing New Guinea stands apart from them both in method and scope. It will be based on interviews with some sixteen Papuan civil servants trained before 1962. In these, they will discuss their experiences during the Netherlands administration and after. The focus is essentially on administrative practices and philosophies. The interviews will be published in Indonesian, while a thematic presentation of the results will appear in English by the end of 2003. Some first rounds of interviews have already taken place in 1999 and 2000, made possible by a starter's subsidy from the IIAS. At present, it is being continued as co-operative project of the ING and the School of Social Science Research of Amsterdam University. The editorial committee is made up of Dr L.E. Visser (UvA), Amapon J. Marey, and Dr P.J. Drooglever (ING). *
Dr
P.J. Drooglever is historian of Indonesia, affiliated with
the Institute of Netherlands History in The Hague.
E-mail: pieter.drooglever@inghist.nl
Dr
L.E. Visser works at the Department of Anthropology of the University
of Amsterdam and is affiliated with the Amsterdam School of Social Science
Research.
E-mail: lvisser@pscw.uva.nl