Architect of the colonial state
Authors:   , Folkerts Jan 
Published: October 2023

Herman Warner Muntinghe (1773-1827), the protagonist of this study, was the main architect of the new colonial state that emerged in the Indonesian archipelago in the early nineteenth century.
This book focuses on the question of how ideas from the Enlightenment took shape in the Dutch colonial state formation in the Indonesian archipelago and how Muntinghe, between 1806 and 1827, collaborated with his superiors, to develop and implement these ideas. The key to this development of ideas about colonial governance was not primarily in The Hague or in Batavia, but in the interaction between contemporary political theory and practice in the Indies themselves and the rest of the European colonial world. Many concrete plans did not originate from the drawing boards in The Hague, but from the colonial experience in the archipelago. Therefore this study pays special attention to the opposing forces in the Indies. The response of the population to colonial policy largely determined the leeway of the government in Batavia.
The early nineteenth-century debate on the future of the former VOC possessions in the Indonesian archipelago was pre-eminently transnational in character. Ever since the 1770s, Batavia has been closely monitoring the rapid changes taking place in British India and the new forms of exploitation being tested in that colony. The British example was frequently quoted in the publications of Dirk and Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp and later in Muntinghe's writings. The major issues concerning the British East India Company were the subject of debate in the British Parliament, and they were well covered in the newspapers. The colonial discourse thus had a much more public character in England than in the Batavian Republic. My research confirms how the ideas in the British and Dutch colonial worlds around the Indian Ocean influenced each other.
In this study I use Muntinghe's biography as a lens to better understand the origins of the colonial state. By connecting his personal history with the political and economic history of the colony, and by taking Muntinghe's long career as a starting point, both the coherence and differences between the successive regimes become clearer. It shows that the countless administrative experiments were indeed preceded by lengthy discussions and that personal experiences could result in changing perspectives and ideas. Muntinghe's life story also reveals the personal and political confrontation between the ideas and new norms of the (moderate) Enlightenment, the economic demands of the motherland, and the reality in Indonesia. The collision of these three elements posed serious problems for colonial administrators that were inherently unsolvable and that ultimately could crush the main actors, such as Muntinghe.
In the debate about the continuity between the VOC-period and the 19th century colony, this study makes a clear stand: the real turning point between old and new was the arrival of governor-general Daendels in 1808. From that time on, the formation of a colonial state accelerated. This study shows the importance of the knowledge and experience that colonial administrators brought with them themselves or from their own network and family. Without knowledge of Muntinghe's family history and his remarkable doctoral thesis, his humanitarian ideas become incomprehensible, and without his experience as a private landowner in Indramayu, the dramatic change in his vision in 1817 is a mystery. Colonial officials and administrators were more than small cogs in an imperialist machinery: they each brought their own preoccupations and their own history.