CONSERVATION IN COLON IALINDONESIA

colonialisfi

hunting

nationalism

Robert Cr ibbThe Austalian National University

Cobsetuationkt thinking in colonial Indonesia (Netherknds East Indies)delebped in the ldtu ineteenth centsty fton awarercss of the impottance ofhi/.1s m co tloning aynulturdl pests. ln the ealy tnentieth .entury, tbeNetbetubds also feb tuessurc ta liue ap to 'internatio"al obligatians' i natsreprcsetuation. Calonidl patetnalisn fuelled k s of the datuasi s sacial con-seqqenes of the prcsence of reusb bid'of pdudse hunters in West Neu)C nea. The .olaftiol dutholities sa@ the indisenous peopbs af the archipdasaas the

'nain offend.ers in enuiron

'ental .lentu tion, and tllis perceptioft f"e ed

the dssunPtioft thdt' dtiL,es needed. fim control. By .ofttrdt, 'rcsporcibbh ntin{ by nmbers of the colonidl niddle clnss aftd elite uas pethitted brmeans of a systeh of li.ences. Huflters incleasingly aduocitcd oeating

"drule/esefl'es in *hich uildeness u,auLl be .losed to the ifldignous popuLtion torcserue a s"stdituble popuhrion of sane for hunte6. Pledswe in bubti"s be.aneassociated in the nmds of the larye Eatupedn, tndo-Earcpedn (Ewasidn) aftd tosome ertent Chinese communities nith d prcfosnd dttdchhent to tbe .olontdlland. This ,ittdchme"t, rcsembli g thdt of ohite settlets ift Austalasia, NotthAnelicd and sautheft Afnca, wat the basis fot as Indies settlet ftationalisntuhi.h rcpudiated the hdi4e olts peoples' .laiffi to the drctipelago on the

l) Roud€dqe ihterte"tro$ Vol.9lrl49 61 (ISSN 1369,801X print/1459-929x online)Copyrisht o 2007 Taylor & Irancis DOI:10.1080/13698010501173817

intert 'ent ions 9:1 50

grcunas tktt tbey did flot .are taperly fot theb enubannefl' This asso.iatiofluith settler nationdfistn aedkened the dryedl of .onetuatia"ist ideas inind.ependcnt I do esia.

The modern conservation mov€ment in global politics is a frustratingcreature to analyse. Although clearly a powerful mobilizing {orce, theideology of conservationism does not fit easily into any of the standardpolitical doctrines ofleft, right orcentre. In the 1960s, when Rachel Carson'sSilent Sptins (1962) isnited a new American environmentalist movement,conservation appeared to be of the left, an enemy of and a reaction tocapitalisn, business and development. Since rhar time, however, historicalresearch and practical eraerience have both gready complicated the picture.Not only have we been reminded that the history of modern environnen-talist movements begins about a century before Carsont book, in the earlydecades of the industrial era, but the malleability of environnentalistrhetoric has been demonstrated by studies of environmentalism in, forinstance, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (Dominick 1992; Pois 1986;\0einer 1988). More recendy, the important work of Grove (1995) has notonly added two more centuries to the pedigree of conservationism, but hassuggested that both conservation and the ideas of development spring fromthe same intellectual notions of human progress. And business throughoutthe Vestern world has found that consurner demand for 'environmentallyfriendly' and 'ecological' products has opened new conmercial opportu-

Whereas the antagodsm between conservation and capitalism has at timesbeen muted, a separate conflict between conservation and human rights hasbecome nore acute. The conflict is based on the compelling argument thatcons€rvationist measures inevitably focus on areas which have beenrelatively unaffected by developrnent. These areas are often those parts ofthe glob€ where indigenous peoples are struggling to preserve theirlivelihoods and cultures against external encroachment. In a host o{ casesacross the world, the creation of national parks and the protection ofendangered species have both excluded indigenous peoples from regions theyhave occupied and managed Ior centuries, and hampered them from usingnatural resources as an economic base from which to seek modernity. Thevery notion of a 'national park' was coined in the second half of thenineteenth c€ntury in the United States and New Zealand, both of themsettler societi€s in which the newcomers had a powerful interest in assertinga quasi-spiritual guardianship of the land in order ro counterthe olderclaims

Robert CribbINDoN!SIA 51

of indisenous inhabitants. Grove\ research on the Briiish colonies in lndia,Mauritius and southern Africa has shown that the power o{ scieniists toinfluence government policy rvhich was far greater in the colonies than inthe morherland w:s the key factor in the early implernentation ofconseflation measures. This conclusion supports ihe perception, eloquentlyexpressed by Guha (1997,2000), rhat conservation is sometimes d.iven byscientific ideolosy in which human valLres have litde place.

Conservation cnme on to the political agenda in the Netherlands Indies inthe final years of the ninereenth century. The economy of the Indies then, asin earlier centuries, was dominated by agriculture. Favourable soils andclimate, at least in some resions, allowed the Indonesian archipelago tobecome the world's main source for a long series of valuable cultivatedproducts, from cloves to cinchona.In contrast, the hunting ofanimals playeda rathe! subdued role in Indonesian history. Island ecosystems tend tosupport Iewer large animal species than do contincntal ones, and the tropicalrainforest that clothed mLrch of Indonesia until rccent times was a relativelyunsuitable environment Ior the large grazing animals that are the staple ofhunting societies. Although linguistic evidence shows that blowpipes, bowsand arrows were part o{ the equiprnent that the Austronesian anccstors ofmost of today's lndonesians brought to the archipelago about five thousandye.rs ago (Belhvood 1992), hunting seems for the most part to have been asecondary subsistence acrivity for Indonesi.\ nany peoples.l Indonesiatpeoples hunted for many reasons: for food, for animal products to trade, forsport, and to defend themselves and their crops and domestic animals frompredators; but it is a sign of the relarive insignificance of hunting in thearchipelagic economy that the Dutch colonial authorities, Nho dominntedparts of Indonesia from the seventeenth century, left hunting almost entirelyunrestricted (WFGO 1918). In the settled parts of the archipelago, hLrntingwas mainly a recreational activity. In a few areas, notably Vest Java, thelocal aristocracy maintained a deer hunting tradition not unlike that of theEuropean aristocracies, while weekend excufsions to shoot squirrels andbirds were a favourite occupation among the colony's urban Indo'European(Errasian) communiries.

In the late nineteenth century. the role of birds and some mammals incontrolling the insect pests of agriculture led to suggestions that bird huntingshould be banned on econornic grounds. The coionial sovernment at firctdismissed these suggestions out o{ hand. Although natural pests had been ascourge of plantation agriculture in the Indies since the eighteenth century,and although increasingly ftequent famines in Java had irnpressed the Dutchwith the need to secu-re adequate food supply (Hugenholtz 1986; Hiisken1994), the idea that wildlife misht contribute significandy to agricuturalproduction still seemed implausible. Within a decade, however, conceprionsof ecology inspired by the work of Haeckel had penetrated far enough

ik ter t )ent ions 9:1 52

17).3J.C.

28 July 1905 no. 16.

61, 1908 no. 100,

(1992).

beyond purely scientific circles to alter this scepticism (see Bowler 1989).

The main obstacles to action and it took a decade from acceptance of the

obstacles to the first legislative action were the problems of identitving

which birds were benevolent and which harmful to agriculture, and devising

a law which could be readily irnplernented ln 1898 the colonial government

appointed a specialist zoologist, J. C. Koningsberger, to investigate Java'savifauna and its economic value, but his research was not futly pLrblished

'rntll L909 Undisch Staatsrldd 1898 no.18j Koningsberger 1901, 1909). To

the disappointment of the colonial authorities, moreover, Koningsberger

proved from the start to have a professional aversion to classifving birds as

useful orharmful. This aversion did not arise from a reluctance to pronounce

sentences of life or death, as it were, over his objects of study, but from a

determination to eradicate the older but increasingly discredited view that

organisms could be systematized according to their usefulness to humans

rather than acco.ding to physical characteristics or evolutionary relation-

ship.2 'The relationship between birds, insects and plants', he wrote, 'is so

extremely complicated, that the usefulness or otherwise of any bird species

ca-nor be ' . rmmed up In r percenrage f igure. even roughly "Although Koningsberger was eventually persuaded to provide a list o{

unambiguously harmful groups of birds, his caution was reflected in the

structure o{ the 1910 Ordinance to Protect Ceftain Mammals and Birds

which was the first legal measure to protect wildlife in the archipelago

Itndis.b Std.ltsbLtd 1909 ^os

497' 594).4 Rather than speci{ying the

endangered species to be protectedr rhe ordinance gave blanket protection

to mammals and birds but then lifted that protection from those categories

which Koningsberger was willing to list as harmful- Thus tig€rs and other

predators considered dangerous to humans could be freely hunted; so could

monkeys and {ruit bats, the traditional enemies of orchardists and gardeners.

Birds such as king{ishers, barbets and ricebirds, which preyed upon fish

ponds or rice fields, were exempt from protection, as were birds of Prevlikelv to feed on domestic birds such as chickens and ducks. In addition, the

ordinance exempted wild piss, pigeons and junglefowl, which were assumed

to b€ the main staples of ethnic groups such as the Dayaks in the jungles ol

Borneo (now Kalimantan) and which in any case showed no signs of being

threatened with extinction. Although the text of the ordinance makes no

mention of th€ {act, its provisions had legal force only in what were called

the'directly ruled'regions o{the archipelago: most ofJava, the southern hal{

of Surnatra and scattered smaller areas in other parts ofth€ Indies. Elsewhere

the rulers of about 280 native states retained the right to regulate hunting.'

The ordinance also created a second category of species for which the

Residents, the heads of the Netherlands Indies' thirty-seven or so regional

administrations, could lift protection. This category included most of the

IN COI,ONIAL I \DO\] :SIA 53

Robert Cr ibb

11993:225 451

11906, 81 2).

animals that had some significance in trade, such as elephants, birds of

paradise, parots and deer (WI'GO 1918: 176)Although its content was novel, in these measures the ordinarce was a

document of its time. In tolerating rhe hunting of pigs and pigeons, the

ordinance reflected the long-standing Dutch prcference for non-interference

in aspects o{ indigenous life which were not relevant to colonial economic

interests. This pre{erence had led the Dutch ro leave in place hundteds of

native ruters throughoLrt the archipelago in order to have a buffer of

traditional authority between the people and their foreign rulers and, for

much of the colonial era, ro discourage the.ctivities of Western missbnaries.On the other hald, the blankct ban on hunting except of nominated species

rvas characreristic of the confident interventionism which came to dominate

cololial policy in the early twentieth century ln 1901, rhe Dutch had

Ia"r^hed rvhat,rn. ro be.r l led rhc I rh ia l Pol ic l lh, t r . l i 'v $ r \ Jn.rr lv

application of developrnenr rheory to the Indies, an attempt to foster the

wcl{are of its inhabitants in ttre face of apparent sbgnation in rhe indiSerous

sectors ofthe economy.6 The policy was driven both by moral considerationslthe idea that the Netherlands had a debt of honour to the Indies as a resutt

of its depredations in earlier centuries) and by economic factors (the hope

that more prosperous Indonesians would provide a better labour force and a

bettef market for Dutch business intcrests). In practical terms, rhe F,thical

Policy had three main policy strands: intervention in the economy ropromote economic devclopmenr; education to creite a gcnemdon ot

bdonesians who rvould be capable of leading the colony in parmership

with the Dutchi and the protection of indigenous society tuom the nrcst

damaging consequences of modernization and capitalism. Althoug! tbe

Dutch did not use the term'sustainability'J their programme lay very much

$'ithin the ethos of more recent ideas of sustanrable developmcnt, both in

emphasizing the need lor growth to be self-sustaining and in accepting the

need to guard against wanton destruction o{ resources which should bc

available to future generations. Vjllage health programmes, state pawn

shops, archaeological excavation and prescrvation of the archipelago s

antiquities, the shielding o{ Bali from Christian and Muslim mission activitv,

and the conservation ofwildlife were all part ofthis ethos of protcction The

blanket coverase of the 1910 ordinance typified the inrerventionist, manage-

rial instjncts of the Ethical Policy, in conirast to the preferred'hands of|

style of earlier erns. It was a prosramme in which the welfare and

development of the people of the archipelago according to Dutch standards

were placed ahead of whatever their own wishes night have been The

effective exemption of birds-of-paradise and other species of cornmercisl

importance from the ordin:rnce was also characteristic: the central aim of rhe

Ethical Policy was to provide the conditions for self-sustaining economicgrowth in the lndies and the zeal for protection, althoqh sincere, tended to

intet t ,ef t t ions 9:1

weaken when officials contemplated the idea of active)y resficting com

The drafting of the 1910 ordinance vas also influenced by the growinginternational extinction. The second half of the nineteenthcentury had seen the eninction of the quagg: and the blue antelope insouthern Africa and of the great auk in the North Atlanric. In NorrhAmerica, the bison and the passenger pigeon appeared to be on the brink ofextirlction (and the passenger pigeon indeed succumbed in 1914). Ther€ wasa widespread fear in international scientific circles that other species would{ollow, and among the names appearins commonly on endangered specieslists was that of the bird-of-paradise, found mainly on rhe island of NewGuinea, the western half of which lav within rhe Netherlands Indies.? Formany centuries, the people of this region had maintained a small butvaluable trade in the feathers and pelts ofbirds of-paradise, crowned pigeonsand panots which were used in ceremonial costunes as far away as Nepaland th€ Ottoman Empire (Swadling 1995). In ihe second half of thenineteenth century, however, the global feather trade took on enormousdimensions as Inillions of birds were killed each year in Africa, Asia, Europeand the Americas to provide {eathers, wings, pclts, heads and whole, stuffedspecimens for ladied clothes and, to a lesser extent, military uniforms. Publicindignation in parts ofwestern Euiope and North America was first aroLrsedby the slaughter of local birds, but the popular movement which sprang up!o oppose the killing soon set its sighrs more widely on rhe internationaltrade as a whole (DoLrghty 1975). The movemenr to limit the plumage tradewas the first case in which public opinion in developed courrries wasmobilized to influence environmenral policy elsewhere in the world. Colonialgovernments such as that of the Netherlands Indies came under considerablepressure to ban or at least to restrict commercial bird hunting within theirterritories (Cribb 1997).

The vulnerable position of the Netherlands Indies in world affairs made itresponsive to such cu.rents in international opinion. The Netherlands w:s asmall European country with a vast Asian colony and from rhe latenineteenth century vague ideas were in the air that the Dutch should perhapsgive up at least part of their colony to new, supposedly more vigorouspowers such as Germany,Japan or the Unired States. Although none oftheseideas took concr€te form, the Dutch {elt the pressure to show themselves tobe good colonialists by upholding international norms in their colony. Theinitial focus of international conservation attenrion was Africa, where theNetherlands had no colonies. and bv 1910 the Netherlands Indies was wellbehind Britain and other colonial powers in offerins formnl protection to irs

The traiectory of hunting regulation resembled that of many otherendeavours of the Ethical Policy. The idea of intervening into the daily life

55( :o] . ]SI1RVATION IN CoIONIAL INDONESIA

Robcrt Cribb

of Indonesians took time to turn into legislative ard 'dninistr'ltive

measurcsi and once those measures were in place they almost always rurned

out to be tess effective than was first hoped. Disappointment with the lack of

results from Ethic.l Policy measures in turn produced two characteristic

responses: an impetus to tune and fine-tune the regulations and a tendeDcv to

blame the Indonesians.The fine tuning that followed the 1910 ordinance is important because ol

the insight it gives us into the preoccupations of colonial policvmakers The

bird of-paradisc issue was the first to attract close attention becausc it raised

important questions about the effect of hunting on indiecnous peoples 'n

New Guinea. The denand for bird of-paradise pelts was so great thar a

significant hunting economy developed in Ne*'Cuinea in the first r*o

tlecades of the twentieth cenrury. European and Chinese wholesalers in the

larger towns ol castern Indonesia sponsored expeditions bv hunters from

Terlate, Ambon and othef parrs ofthe regiotl' who in tLrrn spent months on

rhe New Cuinea coast and travelling into the interior, both catching birds

thenNelves and bartering for them with local tribes Tbe hunrers were a

rough lot, transicnt and handy with fireams, bur often dceply in debt to

thet sponsors and vulnerable to reprisals from Papuans il thcv were

perceived to have deah unfairly with local people Thev brought with

it .- tools, i-pl"n'.nt, "nd

clothing, thev introduced isolated peoples to rhe

outside wofld and established habits of conmerce. But thev also brousht

alcohol, diseases and firearms, all of them deplored bv the stlong missionarv

presence on the island and by the Dutch colonial establishment in general

if''. r.""f, *"" a series of regulations requiring the actual huntins to be

caried out by indigenous Papuans and restricting thc trade tu bnds-of

paradise to entrepreneDrs who had shown a commiment to local devclop

ment by establishins broader cornmercial operations in the region (Cribb

1997).A second area of fine tuning was in the specification of an;mals covered

by the successive ordinances. In 1910' the vear of the orisinal ordinance'

siie'rtists became aware of the existence of a giant moniror lizard on the

island of Komodo. Although there was no provision for protectins reptiles

under an ordinance specifying birds and manmals, and notwithstanding

the fact that Komodo lay within the domains o{ a native ruler, the Sultan

of Bima, the colonial authorities in 1915 insiructed the sultan to issue a

decree protecting the 'dragon' and banning p-ossession or export of skins

and other body parts (Heynen 1939:2'4 51.3 The 1910 ordinance listed

only those mammals and birds which were not protected' and identified

them by their Dutch names, adding indigenous names in the case of those

from Java. Only in a handful of cases was the scientific name provided ln

1924, however, a new HLrnting Ordinance (lzdiscl: Staatsbhd 1924 no

234) was issued, which specified sixtv one protected species and srouPs of

i f t teru.nt tont 9:1

ANIK vb 28 luly

species. The list included both apparently endangered species, and aninalsand birds considered to be useful, such as insect e.tins birds and mamnals.Scientific identifications werc now added to most categories, rlthough thereis no reason to suppose that this change did anything more than sarisfy thcprcference of the scicntists for nomenclatural precision. Even then,however, the process of incremental adjustment continued, with orang-utan, for instance, being given protection for the Lrst rime in L925 Uftd.ischSa sbldd 1925 ro.566).

The 192,1 ordinance prererved a distinction, which had appeared in the1910 ordinance between Java, with its neighbouring island of Madura, andihe otber islands $unenbezittinsen, literally 'outer possessioni). Theordinance specified more protected species on Java than elsewhere, and inpractice gave much greater protection there because it rvas declared to applyonly to Java and Madura. For those species which could be hunted,moreover, the 1924 ordinance provided a variety ofclosed seasons (Februaryto August for pigeons, March to July for ducks, and so on).

A third way in which the fegulation of hunrins rvas developed was as ameans o{ reinforcing social distinctions in the colony. Although deer huntingwas considered an aristocratic pursuit ir some regions, hunting had few o{the class connotations that it had in Europe. The small Dutch arisrocracywas rather iess prominent in colonirl affai.s thaD the larger Britisharistocracy, and pro{'ess in hunting never became a symbol of DLrtchauthority in the way thar it d;d in the British colonies (see Boomgaard 1993;Mackenzie 1988). During the long gestation period of the 1910 NaturcProtection Ordinance, early drafts of the regulations provided for adistinction between Europeans and 'natives' in the punishment specifiedfor in{ringements. Both Europeans and natives faced a fine of 100 Nether-lands Indies guilders, but for Europeans the alternative was eight day, in jail,

whereas for the same offence natives faced three morths ofprovidins unpaidlabou to the colonial authorities.' This formal distinction was dfopped fromthe final draft (although the colonial lesal system in practice continued tomake such distinctions in issuins punishmenrs), but re-emersed in the 1924ordinance and its successo$ of L93L \Indisch Stddtsblad. 1931 r'os 133,134,25s,266).

The 1931 Hmiing Ordinance (Jachtordonnantie) required anyonehunting animals in rhe wild with a firearm or air rifle to possess a huntingpcrmi lja.htakte). To avoid the reed to apprehend infringers in the veryact of shooting, the ordinance defined hunting to include having in one\possession a {irearm or airrifle with the apparent intention of hunting,except inside buildings or on land entirely surrounded by fences, walls orcanals. Wjthin such enclosed places, hunting of a1l species was permittedrvithout any restriction. The right of people to protect their lives,livelihoods and comfort against intrusions fron the natural world was

Robert Cr ibbIN COT ONIAL INDONIS]A 5l

thus guaranteed. The Hunting Ordinance restricted hunting in the open airby prohibiting the use of lamps and spodights, by banning the use of nets,snares and pitfalls to catch big game, and by forbidding the burning o{countryside to drive animals towards hunters. With these exceptions,protection was given to twenty-two categories of animal and bird underrhe Animal Protection Ordinance of 7931 llndiscb Staatsbldd 7937no. 13,1), bur in other respects indigenous Indonesians (and for that matterEuropeans and Chinese) were free to hunr small game in the forestswith any traditional weapoN they might choose (see also JachC 1935:1100).

Those who wished to hunt with firearms o' air-rifles, however. wer€obliged to choose from five categories of la.rtdAte. Category A, allowingthe huntins of noxious lschadelijke) animals only, was issued lree ofcharge. The other caregories gave permission to hunr a w;der range oianimals, and ranged from categorv B, holders o{ which could hunt smallgame for a mere 10 per year, to category E, costing 200 per year, whichallowed the hunting of any forn o{ 'big game' llndisch Stdtltsblad 7937no. 133). The ordinance also established a closed season for big and smallgarne from December to July €ach year, partly to coincide with thebreeding season and pardy because the trails of animals wele too easy tofollow during these often rainy rnonths ('JachC 1935: 1101). The ordinancealso gave the Director of Agriculture, lndustry and Trade the risht towithhold huntnrg Lcences from various catesories oi people, includingthose who had previously infringed the hunting r€gulations. Special huntinscommissions lia.ht.onnissies) were also established for West, Central andEasflava to advise local authorities on the managenent of hunting. Thissysten of permits and commissions was limited at first to Java and Maduraand only gradually extended to the administrative regions of the outerislands, but an abbreviated regulation was appended to the 1931 AnimalProtection Ordinance which allowed Residents to issue their own permitsfor huntins up to seven specified categories of animal ('JachC 1935). Apartfrom providing local authorities with a usefut source of incorne in reeionswhere the extent of wilderness generally meant that other sourc€s of stateincome were sparse, the regulations created a clear hierarchy of hunters, inwhich affluent big game hunters, who also tended to dominate the huntingcomrnissions, determined the rules of hunting for less affluent recreationalhunters, as well as for the small group of proiessional hunters who huntedmeat to sell in the marketplace. Although this affluent hunting elite waspredominantly European, it seems to have been drawn mainly from the so-called rlille/s, Europeans who in many cases had been born on the Indiesand who cenainly expected to die there. In the political climate of the1920s and 1930s, when indigenous Indonesian nationalism had become asienificant {orce. when the constitutional distinction between the Nether-

inte/ !ent ions 9:1 58

lands and its colonies was becoming sharper and when the fornal racial

distincrions that had underpinned colonial sociery in eariier times were

erodnrg in favour of definitions of nationality, this group felt tbreatened, as

did those oiher anomalous racial sroups, the Eurasians and the Chinese'

On the whole thesc groups did not seek common political ground, bur their

shared interest in hunting seems to reflect a claim to idenriF/ with and

mastery of the land of the Fnd we find among hunters in North America

and southern Africa.The tendency o{ Durch officialdom to blane the lndoncsians for the

failure of the Ethical Policy was one o{ the blights of the closing decades ol

the colonial era. This response became more common as time w€nt on and

led to the widespre.d popularity of theories such as that of J C. Boeke,

which proposed that Indonesians had a mindset that made them resistant to

the rationalities of Western economics and thus unlikelv candidates lor

economic development. 'As soon as we withdraw our hands" lamented one

colonial official, 'everything sinks back into the marsh' (Furnivall 1948:

229). Boeket equivalent in the world oa colonial conservation was the

zoologist K. W. Dammerman, head of the zoological museLrm at the

Buitenzors (Bogor) Botanic Gardens and a leading Iisure in the Netherlands

Indies Society for Nnture Plotection. In 1941, on the eve of the Japaneseinvasion which ended Dutch colonial rule, Damrnerman published an article

in which he squarely blamed the lndonesians for problems with nature

In thc ffopics, nature protecdon is the cxclusive interest ofthe Europeani rhe nanve

popuLation, includins that of the Nethcrlands lndies' if not disrrusttuL of nartue

protection is !t besi indifferenr' The native does rot regard na$r€ as obj€ctirelv as

wc do; he doc, not adnne it sonuch as fear rt Forhin, the junsle is fullofsecrets,

of spirits, and he will scldon venrure therc alone And if he spares a tree' a

beautiful lvariryh tsiant fisl fo.lnsrance, this is Dever bccause hc aPprec'ates the

wonders of dature, bur only because choPpiry ir down would bring bad lu'k'

(Damdernan 1941:627)

Dammerman went on with a de{ence of conservation whicb places him

firmly in the 'authoritarian biologist' wing of the colonial co$ervanon

movement. He identified as the three iustifications for conservation first a

pious respect {or nature, second the need to preserve material for scientific

research, and tbird the practical economic value of wild animals and plants'

He put forward a strong case for what we would now describe as preserving

the gene bank, both fof th€ development of new products and tor the

application of techniques of biological contol for the protection agatnst

pests ofefsting domestic animals andcrops. No m€ntion at all does he make

of the possibte value o{ indigenous knowledge of the archipelago's flora and

Robert CribbIN ( :oLONIAL INT'ONFSIA 59

faLrna, and he goes on to celebrate in some detail the comprehensiveness of

the various ordinances then in force.Dammerman's complaint raises the final, dif{icult question of how much

effect the hunting regulations had in reducing the number of wild birds and

mamm:rls to be killed. Regulation of the bird of paradise trade ceriainly

contributed to reducing dramatically the number of pelts exported to the

west, though international regulation of the feather trade and the cha ging

taste of consumers were also decisive factors (Cribb 1997). Swift action toprotect the Komodo'dragon', too, certainly put limits on the army ot

collectors who hoped ro obtain specimens for resenrch or display in

scientific institutes around the world (Heynen 1939) For the most part,

however, the vigour with which the huntirg regulations were enforced was

entirely up ro local and regional officials of the colonial government. These

officials were generally willing to supporr the government in protecting a

small number of 'celebrity' species, but the old practjce of lefting

Indonesians do what they wanted unless it directly conflicted with Dutch

economic or poliiical interests was deeply ingrained. Few officials could see

any good reason to abandon this practice for the sake of a spargled drongo

or a Sumatran mountain goat. 'lhe pasar burung, or bird market, where

anyone could buy a beautiful or sweet voiced bird as a pet, remained

undisturbed as a common feature of markets throughout the country (see

Bezemer 1932).Tbe history ofhunting regulation in the Netherlands lndies reflects a nore

general {eature in the history of environmentalism. The agenda for

environmental protection is generally set by science, because the porverful

unifying tendencies of scientific analysis are capable of showing why

apparently remote issues, frorn the ozone layer to tropical rainto.etts,

should be a naner of wider and more personal concern. The scientitic

agenda, however, enters a political stage already crowded with other actors

and the extent to which environmental issues can command attention

depends mLich more on the kinds of political coalitions that environmental-

ists can construct than on the importance or otherwise of the issues

themselves. Scientific concern over the risk of extinction placed hunting on

the political agenda in colonial Indonesia in the early twentieth century.

once raised, the issue besan ro acquire political implications, especially for

de style of colonial governmentr for the place of the Indies in international

affairs, and for the strLrcture of society in the Indies itself. These implications,

however, remained relatively w€ak throughout the colonial period. Not until

the 1970s were environmental issues to burst onto the political stage as a

significant force.

tn le rue n t io s 9: l

A< k now I ed g e m e nts

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