THE EMERALDS OF WILHELMINA
In Singapore stands one of the most significant statues in the world.
From the centre of its sun-scorched Esplanade rises the bronze figure
of a youthful, slender, clean-cut, keen-eyed man, clad in the
high-collared coat and knee-breeches of a century ago, who, from his
lofty pedestal, peers southward, beyond the shipping in the busy
harbor, beyond the palm-fringed straits, toward those mysterious,
alluring islands which ring the Java Sea. Though his name, Thomas
Stamford Raffles, doubtless holds for you but scanty meaning, and
though he died when only forty-five, his last years shadowed by the
ingratitude of the country whose commercial supremacy in the East he
had secured and to which he had offered a vast, new field for colonial
expansion, he was one of the greatest architects of empire that ever
lived. He combined the vision and administrative genius of Clive and
Hastings with the audacity and energy of Hawkins and Drake. It was his
dream, to use his own words, "to make Java the center of an Eastern
insular empire" ruled "not only without fear but without reproach"; an
empire to consist of that great archipelago--Sumatra, Java, Borneo, the
Celebes, New Guinea, and the lesser islands--which sweeps southward
and eastward from the Asian mainland to the edges of Australasia.
Though this splendid colonial structure was erected according to the
plans that Raffles drew, by curious circumstance the flag that flies
over it today is not his flag, not the flag of England, for, instead of
being governed from Westminster, as he had dreamed, it is governed from
The Hague, the ruler of its fifty million brown inhabitants being the
stout, rosy-cheeked young woman who dwells in the Palace of Het Loo.
Though in area Queen Wilhelmina's colonial possessions are exceeded by
those of Britain and France, she is the sovereign of the second largest
colonial empire, in point of population, in the world. But, because it
lies beyond the beaten paths of tourist travel, because it has been so
little advertised by plagues and famines and rebellions, and because it
has been so admirably and unobtrusively governed, it has largely
escaped public attention--a fact, I imagine, with which the Dutch are
not ill-pleased. Did _you_ realize, I wonder, that the Insulinde, as
Netherlands India is sometimes called, is as large, or very nearly as
large, as all that portion of the United States lying east of the
Mississippi? Did you know that in the third largest island of the
archipelago, Sumatra, the State of California could be set down and
still leave a comfortable margin all around? Or that the fugitive from
justice who turns the prow of his canoe westward from New Guinea must
sail as far as from Vancouver to Yokohama before he finds himself
beyond the shadow of the Dutch flag and the arm of Dutch law?
Until the closing years of the sixteenth century, European trade with
the Far East was an absolute monopoly in the hands of Spain and
Portugal. Incredible as it may seem, the two Iberian nations alone
possessed the secret of the routes to the East, which they guarded with
jealous care. In 1492, Columbus, bearing a letter from the King of
Spain to the Khan of Tartary, whose power and wealth had become
legendary in Europe through the tales of Marco Polo and other overland
travelers, sailed westward from Cadiz in search of Asia, discovering
the islands which came to be known as the West Indies. Five years later
a Portuguese sea-adventurer, Vasco da Gama, turned the prow of his
caravel south from the mouth of the Tagus, skirted the coast of Africa,
rounded the Cape of Good Hope, crossed the Indian Ocean, and dropped
his anchor in the harbor of Calicut--the first European to reach the
beckoning East by sea. For a quarter of a century the Portuguese were
the only people in Europe who knew the way to the East, and their
secret gave them a monopoly of the Eastern trade. Lisbon became the
richest port of Europe. Portugal was mistress of the seas. But in 1519
another Portuguese seafarer, Hernando de Maghallanes--we call him
Ferdinand Magellan--who, resenting his treatment by the King of
Portugal, had shifted his allegiance to Spain, sailed southwestward
across the Atlantic, rounded the southern extremity of America by the
straits which bear his name, crossed the unknown Pacific, and raised
the flag of Spain over the islands which came in time to be called the
Philippines. Spain had reached the Indies by sailing west, as Portugal
had reached them by sailing east.
Though the fabulous wealth of the lands thus discovered was discussed
around every council table and camp-fire in Europe, the routes by which
that wealth might be attained were guarded by Portugal and Spain as
secrets of state. The charts showing the routes were not intrusted to
the captains of vessels in the Eastern trade until the moment of
departure, and they were taken up immediately upon their return; the
silence of officers and crews was insured by every oath that the church
could frame and every penalty that the state could devise. For more
than three-quarters of a century, indeed, the two Iberian nations
succeeded in keeping the secret of the sea roads to the East, its
betrayal being punishable by death. In 1580, however, the English
freebooter, Francis Drake, nicknamed "The Master Thief of the Unknown
World," duplicated the voyage of Magellan's expedition of threescore
years before, thus discovering the route to the Indies used by Spain.
At this period the Dutch, "the waggoners of the sea," possessed, as
middlemen, a large interest in the spice trade, for the Portuguese,
having no direct access to the markets of northern Europe, had made a
practise of sending their Eastern merchandise to the Netherlands in
Dutch bottoms for distribution by way of the Rhine and the Scheldt. As
a result, the enormous carrying trade of Holland was wholly dependent
upon Lisbon. But when Spain unceremoniously annexed Portugal in 1580,
the first act of Philip, upon becoming master of Lisbon, was to close
the Tagus to the Dutch, his one-time subjects, who had revolted eight
years before. As a result of the revenge thus taken by the Spanish
tyrant, the Dutch were faced by the necessity of themselves going in
quest of the Indies if their flag was not to disappear from the seas.
Their opportunity came a dozen years later when a venturesome
Hollander, Cornelius Houtman, who was risking imprisonment and even
death by trading surreptitiously in the forbidden city on the Tagus,
succeeded in obtaining through bribery a copy of one of the secret
charts. The Spanish authorities scarcely could have been aware that he
had learned a secret of such immense importance, or his silence would
have been insured by the headsman. As it was, he was thrown into prison
for illegal trading, where he was held for heavy ransom. But he managed
to get word to Amsterdam of the priceless information which had come
into his possession, whereupon the merchants of that city promptly
formed a syndicate, subscribed the money for his ransom, and obtained
his release. Thus it came about that shortly after his return to
Holland there was organized the Company of Distant Lands, a title as
vague, grandiose and alluring as the plans of those who founded it. In
1595, then, nearly a century after da Gama had shown the way, four
caravels under the command of Houtman, the banner of the Netherlands
flaunting from their towering sterns, sailed grandly out of the Texel,
slipped past the white chalk cliffs of Dover, sped southward before the
trades, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and laid their course across the
Indian Ocean for the Spice Islands. When the adventurers returned, two
years later, they brought back tales of islands richer than anything of
which the Dutch burghers had ever dreamed, and produced cargoes of
Eastern merchandise to back their stories up.
The return of Houtman's expedition was the signal for a great outburst
of commercial enterprise in the Low Countries, seekers after fortune or
adventure flocking to the Indies as, centuries later, other
fortune-seekers, other adventurers, flocked to the gold-diggings of the
Sierras, the Yukon, and the Rand. On those distant seas, however, the
adventurers were beyond the reach of any law, the same lawless
conditions prevailing in the Indies at the beginning of the seventeenth
century which characterized Californian life in the days of '49. The
Dutch warred on the natives and on the Portuguese, and, when there was
no one else to offer them resistance, they fought among themselves. By
1602 conditions had become so intolerable that the government of
Holland, in order to tranquillize the Indies, and to stabilize the
spice market at home, decided to amalgamate the various trading
enterprises into one great corporation, the Dutch East India Company,
which was authorized to exercise the functions of government in those
remote seas and to prosecute the war against Spain. When Philip shut
the Dutch out of Lisbon, he made a formidable enemy for himself, for,
though the burghers went to the East primarily in order to save their
commerce from extinction, they were animated in a scarcely less degree
by a determination to even their score with Spain.
The history of the Dutch East India Company is not a savory one. It was
a powerful instrument for extracting the wealth of the Indies, and, so
long as the wealth was forthcoming, the stockholders at home in Holland
did not inquire too closely as to how the instrument was used. The
story of the company from its formation in 1602 until its dissolution
nearly two centuries later is a record of intrigue, cruelty and
oppression. It exercised virtually sovereign powers. It made and
enforced its own laws, it maintained its own fleet and army, it
negotiated treaties with Japan and China, it dethroned sultans and
rajahs, it established trading-posts and factories at the Cape of Good
Hope, in the Persian Gulf, on the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel, and
in Bengal; it waged war against the Portuguese, the Spaniards and the
English in turn. When at the summit of its power, in 1669, the company
possessed forty warships and one hundred and fifty merchantmen,
maintained an army of ten thousand men, and paid a forty per cent
dividend.
Meanwhile a formidable rival to the Dutch company, the English East
India Company, had arisen, but the accession of a Dutchman, William,
Prince of Orange, to the throne of England in 1688 turned the rivals
into allies, the trade of the eastern seas being divided between them.
But toward the close of the eighteenth century there came another
change in the _status quo_, for the Dutch, by allying themselves with
the French, became the enemies of England. By this time Great Britain
had become the greatest sea power in the world, so that within a few
months after the outbreak of hostilities in 1795 the British flag had
replaced that of the Netherlands over Ceylon, Malacca, and other
stations on the highway to the Insulinde. When the Netherlands were
annexed to the French Empire by Napoleon in 1810 the British seized the
excuse thus provided to occupy Java, Thomas Stamford Raffles, the
brilliant young Englishman who was then the agent of the British East
India Company at Malacca, in the Malay States, being sent to Java as
lieutenant-governor. Urgent as were his appeals that Java should be
retained by Britain as a jewel in her crown of empire, the readjustment
of the territories of the great European powers which was effected at
the Congress of Vienna, in 1816, after the fall of Napoleon, resulted
in the restoration to the Dutch of those islands of the Insulinde,
including Java, which the British had seized. But, though Raffles ruled
in Java for barely four and a half years, his spirit goes marching on,
the system of colonial government which he instituted having been
continued by the Dutch, in its main outlines, to this day. He won the
confidence and friendship of the powerful native princes,
revolutionized the entire legal system, revived the system of village
or communal government, reformed the land-tenure, abolished the
abominable system of forcing the natives to deliver all their crops,
and gave to the Javanese a rule of honesty, justice and wisdom with
which, up to that time, they had not had even a bowing acquaintance. As
a result of the lessons learned from Stamford Raffles, the Dutch
possessions in the East are today more wisely and justly administered
than those of any other European nation.
The Dutch had not seen the last of Raffles, however, for in 1817 he
returned from England, where he had been knighted by the Prince Regent,
to take the post of lieutenant-governor of Sumatra, to which the
British did not finally relinquish their claims until half a century
later. His administration of that great island was characterized by the
same breadth of vision, tact, and energy which had marked his rule in
Java. It was during this period that Raffles rendered his greatest
service to the empire. The Dutch, upon regaining Java, attempted to
obtain complete control of all the islands of the archipelago, which
would have resulted in seriously hampering, if not actually ending,
British trade east of Malacca. But Raffles, recognizing the menace to
British interests, defeated the Dutch scheme in January, 1819, by a
sudden _coup d'etat_, when he seized the little island at the tip of
the Malay Peninsula which commands the Malacca Straits and the entrance
to the China seas, and founded Singapore, thereby giving Britain
control of the gateway to the Farther East and ending forever the
Dutch dream of making of those waters a _mare clausum_--a Dutch lake.
The thousands of islands, islets, and atolls which comprise Netherlands
India--the proper etymological name of the archipelago is
Austronesia--are scattered over forty-six degrees of longitude, on both
sides of the equator. Although in point of area Java holds only fifth
place, Sumatra, Borneo, New Guinea and the Celebes being much larger,
it nevertheless contains three-fourths of the population and yields
four-fifths of the produce of the entire archipelago. Though scarcely
larger than Cuba, it has more inhabitants than all the Atlantic Coast
States, from Maine to Florida, combined. This, added to the strategic
importance of its situation, the richness of its soil, the variety of
its products, the intelligence, activity and civilization of its
inhabitants, and the fact that it is the seat of the colonial
government, makes Java by far the most important unit of the Insulinde.
Because of its overwhelming importance in the matters of position,
products and population, it is administered as a distinct political
entity, the other portions of the Dutch Indies being officially
designated as the Outposts or the Outer Possessions.
Westernmost and by far the most important of the Outposts is Sumatra,
an island four-fifths the size of France, as potentially rich in
mineral and agricultural wealth as Java, but with a sparse and
intractable population, certain of the tribes, notably the Achinese,
who inhabit the northern districts, still defying Dutch rule in spite
of the long and costly series of wars which have resulted from
Holland's attempt to subjugate them. The unmapped interior of Sumatra
affords an almost virgin field for the explorer, the sportsman and the
scientist. It has ninety volcanoes, twelve of which are active (the
world has not forgotten the eruption, in 1883, of Krakatu, an island
volcano off the Sumatran coast, which resulted in the loss of forty
thousand human lives); the jungles of the interior are roamed by
elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses, panthers and occasional orang-utans,
while in the scattered villages, with their straw-thatched, highly
decorated houses, dwell barbarous brown men practising customs so
incredibly eerie and fantastic that a sober narration of them is more
likely than not to be greeted with a shrug of amused disbelief. One who
has no first-hand knowledge of the Sumatran tribes finds it difficult
to accept at their face value the accounts of the customs practised by
the Bataks of Tapanuli, for example, who, when their relatives become
too old and infirm to be of further use, give them a pious interment by
eating them. When the local Doctor Oslers have decided that a man has
reached the age when his place at the family table is preferable to his
company, the aged victim climbs a lemon-tree, beneath which his
relatives stand in a circle, wailing the deathsong, the weird,
monotonous chant being continued until the condemned one summons the
courage to throw himself to the ground, whereupon the members of his
family promptly despatch him with clubs, cut up his body, roast the
meat, and eat it. Thus every stomach in the tribe becomes, in effect, a
sort of family burial-plot. I was unable to ascertain why the victim is
compelled to throw himself from a lemon-tree. It struck me that some
taller tree, like a palm, would better accomplish the desired result. A
matter of custom, doubtless. Perhaps that explains why we dub persons
who are passé "lemons." Then there are the Achinese, whose women
frequently marry when eight years old, and are considered as well along
in life when they reach their teens; and the Niassais, who are in
deadly fear of albino children and who kill all twins as soon as they
are born. Or the Menangkabaus, whose tribal government is a matriarchy:
lands, houses, crops and children belonging solely to the wife, who
may, and sometimes does, sell her husband as a slave in order to pay
her debts.
Trailing from the eastern end of Java in a twelve-hundred-mile-long
chain, like the wisps of paper which form the tail of a kite, and
separated by straits so narrow that artillery can fire across them, are
the Lesser Sundas--Bali, noted for its superb scenery and its alluring
women; Lombok, the northernmost island whose flora and fauna are
Australian; Sumbawa, where the sandalwood comes from; Flores, whose
inhabitants consider the earth so holy that they will not desecrate it
by digging wells or cultivation; Timor, the northeastern half of which,
together with Goa in India and Macao in China, forms the last remnant
of Portugal's once enormous Eastern empire; Rotti, Kei, and Aroo, the
great chain thus formed linking New Guinea, the largest island in the
world, barring Australia, with the mainland of Asia. Of the last-named
island, the entire western half belongs to Holland, the remaining half
being about equally divided between British Papua, in the southeast,
and in the northeast the former German colony of Kaiser Wilhelm Land,
now administered by Australia under a mandate from the League of
Nations.
The population of Dutch New Guinea is estimated at a quarter of a
million, but the predilection of its puff-ball-headed inhabitants for
human flesh has discouraged the Dutch census-takers from making an
accurate enumeration, as the Papuan cannibal does not hesitate to
sacrifice the needs of science to those of the cooking-pot. Though New
Guinea is believed to be enormously rich in natural resources, and has
many excellent harbors, the secrets of its mysterious interior can only
be conjectured. The natives are as degraded as any in the world; their
principal vocation is hunting birds of paradise, whose plumes command
high prices in the European markets; their chief avocation in recent
years has been staging imitation cannibal feasts for the benefit of
motion-picture expeditions. But, unknown and unproductive as it is at
present, I would stake my life that New Guinea will be a great colony
some day.
To the west of New Guinea and to the south of the Philippines lie the
Moluccas--Ceram, Amboin, Ternate, Halmahera, and the rest--the Spice
Islands of the old-time voyagers, the scented tropic isles of which
Camoens sang. Amboin, owing to the fact that Europeans have been
established there for centuries on account of its trade in spices, is
characterized by a much higher degree of civilization than the rest of
the Moluccas, a considerable proportion of its inhabitants professing
to be Christians. The flower of the colonial army is recruited from the
Amboinese, who regard themselves not as vassals of the Dutch but as
their allies and equals, a distinction which they emphasize by wearing
shoes, all other native troops going barefoot. Beyond the Moluccas,
across the Banda Sea, sprawls the Celebes,[1] familiar from our
school-days because of its fantastic outline, the plural form of its
name being due to the supposition of the early explorers that it was a
group of islands instead of one. And finally, crossing Makassar
Straits, we come to Borneo, the habitat of the head-hunter and the
orang-utan. Though Borneo is a treasure-house for the naturalist, the
botanist, and the ethnologist, the Dutch, as in New Guinea, have merely
scratched its surface, almost no attempt having thus far been made to
exploit its enormous natural resources. Thus I have arrayed for your
cursory inspection the congeries of curious and colorful islands which
constitute Netherlands India in order that you may comprehend the
problems of civilization and administration which Holland has had to
solve in those distant seas, and that you may be better qualified to
judge the results she has achieved.
[Footnote 1: Pronounced as though it were spelled Cel-lay-bees,
with the accent on the second syllable.]
* * * * *
The Insulinde has eight times the population and sixty times the area
of the mother country, from which it is separated by ten thousand miles
of sea, yet the sovereignty of Queen Wilhelmina is upheld among the
cannibals of New Guinea, the head-hunters of Borneo, and the savages of
Achin, no less than among the docile millions of Java, by less than ten
thousand European soldiers. That a territory so vast and with so
enormous a population, should be so admirably administered, everything
considered, by so small a number of white men, is in itself proof of
the Dutch genius for ruling subject races.
From the day when Holland determined to organize her colonial empire
for the benefit of the natives themselves, instead of exploiting it for
the benefit of a handful of Dutch traders and settlers, as she had
previously done, she has employed in her colonial service only
thoroughly trained officials of proved ability and irreproachable
character. The Dutch officials whom I met in Java and the Outposts
impressed me, indeed, as being men of altogether exceptional capacity
and attainments, better educated and qualified, as a whole, than those
whom I have encountered in the British and French colonial possessions.
Since the war, owing to the difficulty of obtaining men of sufficient
caliber and experience to fill the minor posts, which are not
particularly well paid, Holland has given employment in her colonial
service to a considerable number of Germans, most of whom had been
trained in colonial administration in Germany's African and Pacific
possessions, but they are appointed, of course, only to posts of
relative unimportance.
Every year the Minister of the Colonies ascertains the number of
vacancies in the East Indian service, and every year the Grand
Examination of Officials is held simultaneously in The Hague and
Batavia, the results of this examination determining the eligibility of
candidates for admission to the colonial service and the fitness of
officials already in the service for promotion. With the exception of
the Governor-General and two or three other high officials, who are
appointed by the crown, no official can evade this examination, to pass
which requires not only an intimate knowledge of East Indian languages,
politics and customs, but real scholarship as well. The names of those
candidates who pass this examination are certified to the Minister of
the Colonies, who thereupon directs them to report to the
Governor-General at Batavia and provides them with funds for the
voyage. Upon their arrival in the Indies the Governor-General appoints
them to the grade of _controleur_ and tests their capacity by sending
them to difficult and trying posts in Sumatra, Borneo, the Celebes, or
New Guinea, where they must conclusively prove their ability before
they can hope for promotion to the grades of assistant resident and
resident, and the relative comfort of official life in Java. In the
Outposts they at once come face to face with innumerable difficulties
and responsibilities, for the _controleur_ is responsible, though
within narrower limits than the resident, for everything: justice,
police, agriculture, education, public works, the protection of the
natives, and the requirements of the settlers in such matters as labor
and irrigation. He is, in short, an administrator, a police official, a
judge, a diplomatist, and an adviser on almost every subject connected
with the government of tropical dependencies. The officials in the
Outposts are given more authority and greater latitude of action than
their colleagues in Java, for they have greater difficulties to cope
with, while the intractability, if not the open hostility of the
natives whom they are called upon to rule demands greater tact and
diplomacy than are required in Java, where the officials are inclined
to become spoiled by their easy-going life and the semi-royal state
which they maintain.
Though Holland demands much of those who uphold her authority in the
Indies, she is generous in her rewards. The Governor-General draws a
salary of seventy thousand dollars together with liberal allowances for
entertaining, and is provided with palaces at Batavia and Buitenzorg,
while at Tjipanas, on one of the spurs of the Gedei, nearly six
thousand feet above the sea, he has a country house set in a great
English park. Wherever he is in residence he maintains a degree of
state scarcely inferior to that of the sovereign herself. The residents
are paid from five thousand dollars to nine thousand dollars according
to their grades, the assistant residents from three thousand five
hundred dollars to five thousand dollars, and the _controleurs_ from
one thousand eight hundred dollars to two thousand four hundred
dollars. Though officials are permitted leaves of absence only once in
ten years, those who complete twenty-five years' service in the
Insulinde may retire on half-pay. Even at such salaries, however, and
in a land where living is cheap as compared with Europe, it is almost
impossible for the officials to save money, for they are expected to
entertain lavishly and to live in a fashion which will impress the
natives, who would be quick to seize on any evidence of economy as a
sign of weakness.
Netherlands India is ruled by a dual system of administration--European
and native. By miracles of patience, tact, and diplomacy, the Dutch
have succeeded in building up in the Indies a gigantic colonial empire,
which, however, they could not hope to hold by force were there to be a
concerted rising of the natives. Realizing this, Holland--instead of
attempting to overawe the natives by a display of military strength, as
England has done in Egypt and India, and France in Algeria and
Morocco--has succeeded, by keeping the native princes on their thrones
and according them a shadowy suzerainty, in hoodwinking the ignorant
brown mass of the people into the belief that they are still governed
by their own rulers. Though at first the princes, as was to be
expected, bitterly resented the curtailment of their prerogatives and
powers, they decided that they might better remain on their thrones,
even though the powers remaining to them were merely nominal, and
accept the titles, honors and generous pensions which the Dutch offered
them, than to resist and be ruthlessly crushed. In pursuance of this
shrewd policy, every province in the Indies has as its nominal head a
native puppet ruler, known as a regent, usually a member of the house
which reigned in that particular territory before the white man came.
Though the regents are appointed, paid, and at need dismissed by the
government, and though they are obliged to accept the advice and obey
the orders of the Dutch residents, they remain the highest personages
in the native world and the intermediaries through whom Holland
transmits her wishes and orders to the native population.
In order to lend color to the fiction that the natives are still ruled
by their own princes, the regents are provided with the means to keep
up a considerable degree of ceremony and pomp; they have their
opera-bouffe courts, their gorgeously uniformed body-guards, their
gilded carriages and golden parasols, and some of the more important
ones maintain enormous households. But, though they preside at
assemblies, sign decrees, and possess all the other external attributes
of power, in reality they only go through the motions of governing, for
always behind their gorgeous thrones sits a shrewd and silent Dutchman
who pulls the strings. Though this system of dual government has the
obvious disadvantage of being both cumbersome and expensive, it is,
everything considered, perhaps the best that could have been devised to
meet the existing conditions, for nothing is more certain than that,
should the Dutch attempt to do away with the native princes, there
would be a revolt which would shake the Insulinde to its foundations
and would gravely imperil Dutch domination in the islands.
The most interesting examples of this system of dual administration are
found in the _Vorstenlanden_, or "Lands of the Princes," of Surakarta
and Djokjakarta, in Middle Java. These two principalities, which once
comprised the great empire of Mataram, are nominally independent, being
ostensibly ruled by their own princes: the Susuhunan of Surakarta and
the Sultan of Djokjakarta, who are, however, despite their
high-sounding titles and their dazzling courts, but mouthpieces for the
Dutch residents. The series of episodes which culminated in the Dutch
acquiring complete political ascendency in the _Vorstenlanden_ form one
of the most picturesque and significant chapters in the history of
Dutch rule in the East. Until the last century these territories were
undivided, forming the kingdom of the Susuhunan of Surakarta, who,
being threatened by a revolt of the Chinese who had settled in his
dominions, called in the Dutch to aid him in suppressing it. They came
promptly, helped to crush the rebellion, and so completely won the
confidence of the Susuhunan that he begged their arbitration in a
dispute with one of his brothers, who had launched an insurrection in
an attempt to place himself on the throne. Certain historians assert,
and probably with truth, that this insurrection was instigated and
encouraged by the Dutch themselves, who foresaw that it would be easier
to subjugate two weak states than a single strong one. In pursuance of
this policy, they suggested that, in order to avoid a fratricidal and
bloody war, the kingdom be divided, two-thirds of it, with Surakarta as
the capital, to remain under the rule of the Susuhunan; the remaining
third to be handed over to the pretender, who would assume the title of
Sultan and establish his court at Djokjakarta. This settlement was
reluctantly accepted by the Susuhunan because he realized that he could
hope for nothing better and by his brother because he recognized that
he might do much worse.
In principle, at least, the Sultan remained the vassal of the
Susuhunan, in token of which he paid him public homage once each year
at Ngawen, near Djokjakarta, where, in the presence of an immense
concourse of natives, he was obliged to prostrate himself before the
Susuhunan's throne as a public acknowledgment of his vassalage. But as
the years passed the breach thus created between the Susuhunan and the
Sultan showed signs of healing, which was the last thing desired by the
Dutch, who believed in the maxim _Divide ut imperes_. So, before the
next ceremony of homage came around, they sent for the Sultan, pointed
out to him the humiliation which he incurred in kneeling before the
Susuhunan, and offered to provide him with a means of escaping this
abasement. Their offer was as simple as it was ingenious--permission
to wear the uniform of a Dutch official. This was by no means as empty
an honor as it seemed, as the Sultan was quick to recognize, for one of
the tenets of Holland's rule in the Indies is that no one who wears the
Dutch uniform, whether European or native, shall impair the prestige of
that uniform by kneeling in homage. The Sultan, needless to say,
eagerly seized the opportunity thus offered, and, when the date for the
next ceremony fell due he arrived at Ngawen arrayed in the blue and
gold panoply of a Dutch official, but, instead of prostrating himself
before the Susuhunan in the grovelling _dodok_, he coolly remained
seated, as befitted a Dutch official and an independent prince.
The animosity thus ingeniously revived between the princely houses
lasted for many years, which was exactly what the Dutch had foreseen.
But, though the Susuhunan and the Sultan had been goaded into hating
each other with true Oriental fervor, they hated the Dutch even more.
In order to divert this hostility toward themselves into safer
channels, the Dutch evolved still another scheme, which consisted in
installing at the court of the Susuhunan, as at that of the Sultan, a
counter-irritant in the person of a rival prince, who, though
theoretically a vassal, was in reality as independent as the titular
ruler. And, as a final touch, the Dutch decreed that the cost of
maintaining the elaborate establishments of these hated rivals must be
defrayed from the privy purses of the Susuhunan and the Sultan. The
"independent" prince at Surakarta is known as the Pangeran Adipati
Mangku Negoro; the one at Djokjakarta as the Pangeran Adipati Paku
Alam. Both of these princes have received military educations in
Holland, hold honorary commissions in the Dutch army, and wear the
Dutch uniform; their handsome palaces stand in close proximity to those
of the Susuhunan and the Sultan, and both are permitted to maintain
small but well-drilled private armies, armed with modern weapons and
organized on European lines. The "army" of Mangku Negoro consists of
about a thousand men, and is a far more efficient fighting force than
the fantastically uniformed rabble maintained by his suzerain, the
Susuhunan. In certain respects this arrangement resembles the plan
which is followed at West Point and Annapolis, where, if the appointee
fails to meet the entrance requirements, the appointment goes to an
alternate, who has been designated with just such a contingency in
view. Both the Susuhunan and the Sultan are perfectly aware that the
first sign of disloyalty to the Dutch on their part would result in
their being promptly dethroned and the "independent" princes being
appointed in their stead. So, as they like their jobs, which are well
paid and by no means onerous--the Susuhunan receives an annual pension
from the Dutch Government of some three hundred and fifty thousand
dollars and has in addition one million dollars worth of revenues to
squander each year--their conduct is marked by exemplary obedience and
circumspection.
Ever since the Dipo Negoro rebellion of 1825, which was caused by the
insulting behavior of an incompetent and tactless resident toward a
native prince, to suppress which cost Holland five years of warfare and
the lives of fifteen thousand soldiers, the Dutch Government has come
more and more to realize that most of the disaffection and revolts in
their Eastern possessions have been directly traceable to tactlessness
on the part of Dutch officials, who either ignored or were indifferent
to the customs, traditions, and susceptibilities of the natives. It is
the recognition and application of this principle that has been
primarily responsible for the peace, progress, and prosperity which, in
recent years, have characterized the rule of Holland in the Indies.
When a nation with a quarter the area of New York State, and less than
two-thirds its population, with a small army and no navy worthy of the
name, can successfully rule fifty million people of alien race and
religion, half the world away, and keep them loyal and contented, that
nation has, it seems to me, a positive genius for colonial
administration.
* * * * *
Some one has described the Dutch East Indies as a necklace of emeralds
strung on the equator. To those who are familiar only with colder, less
gorgeous lands, that simile may sound unduly fanciful, but to those who
have seen these great, rich islands, festooned across four thousand
miles of sea, green and scintillating under the tropic sun, the
description will not appear as far-fetched as it seems. A necklace of
emeralds! The more I ponder over that description the better I like it.
Indeed, I think that that is what I will call this chapter--The
Emeralds of Wilhelmina.