Coping with Natural Disasters in Colonial Indonesia, 1800–1940: Colonial Response and Cultural Adaptation

Geographic and climatic circumstances make the Indonesian archipelago vulnerable to nature induced catastrophes such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, floods and droughts. This was as much the case in the past as it is in the present. The political and cultural response to natural disasters in Indonesia’s past has never been subject of academic study, despite the fact that historical source material on this subject abounds, particularly for the colonial period.

In this paper I will explore the following questions: how were natural disasters understood by colonial representatives and what action was undertaken in the aftermath of disasters? To what extent was disaster mitigation in colonial Indonesia inspired by Dutch and Indonesian knowledge and traditions, and to what extent were international humanitarian norms adopted to the Indonesian context?

The paper is part of a larger project that proposes to examine the interaction between government and society in the wake of natural disasters in colonial Indonesia in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In Indonesian cosmology natural disasters were given political meaning; therefore any response from the colonial government to disaster was a politically sensitive issue. Natural disasters could function as tests to governmental claims to legitimacy and authority, but also as events that provided space for negotiation and manipulation of colonial governance. It is this dynamic tension and inherent contradiction in the perception of disasters in colonial Indonesia that forms the primary focus of this study.