Changes in the balance of power

In the short time span between 1878 and1883, the political map of the Toba Batak region was altered irrevocably. The most populous parts of the region were brought under colonial rule, first Silindung in 1879, then Toba in 1883. The incorporation of several adjacent regions to the east, north, and west of Toba gradually followed before the end of decade, after two minor punitive expeditions in 1887 and 1889 against supporters of Singamangaraja, who himself remained in the background. What did these changes mean for the major stakeholders in the region—the Batak Mission, the colonial state, the Singamangaraja as the adversary of both, as well as the Toba Batak rajas and ordinary villagers?

The driving force behind the military conquest of Toba was the Batak Mission, although it is too far-fetched to say that it was the result of missionaries’ scheming. Once the Dutch troops

had arrived on the scene, the missionaries actively supported the military expedition by serving as interpreters and intermediaries, urging the reluctant Batak rajas on the Humbang plateau and in Toba to submit. In the end it was the Batak Mission that gained most from the expansion of the colonial state in this region, at least in the shorter run. After the first expedition, the numbers of Batak converted rose dramatically; and although the Batak Mission was not granted as much freedom to settle in still-independent areas after 1883 as it would have liked, the missionary work within the new sub-district of Toba provided a large enough field for action in the following years.⁶⁶

The Singamangaraja came out of the military clashes a defeated man. After the Batak Mission had taken the bold step of establishing a new missionary station on the Humbang plateau in 1876, he was confident that he could stop the advance of the Batak Mission and even oust the missionaries from Silindung. In the three years after he had succeeded his father at the young age of eighteen, he had been able to forge political unity among the rajas of the Humbang plateau and Toba, something none of his predecessors had been able to achieve.⁶⁷ After the 1878 expedition he must have begun to foster a bitter hatred against the colonial state as well, as the Dutch forces had hunted him down in Bakkara, had killed one of his most trusted allies, Raja Partahan Bosi of the marga Hutapea in Laguboti, and subjugated many of the rajas in Humbang and Toba who had supported him. That he could launch an even stronger attack five years later is an indication of the strength of his alliances, forged in part by his marriages to daughters of other chiefs. This attack also reveals the extent of the Singamangaraja’s statesmanship: he had travelled all over the northern part of the Batak interior to solicit support and he had got it. The finest hour of his life was his unchecked march in June 1883 from Bakkara to Balige, obliterating the still-new traces of Christianity in Toba.

When shortly afterwards he was forced to leave the battlefield wounded, he may have realized that by becoming a down-to-earth military commander, he had put his stature as the mystical priest-king of the Batak people at risk.⁶⁸ The colonial army had proved him to be as vulnerable as any other human being, and the destruction of his residence a few weeks later demonstrated his inability to defend even his village of origin. Apparently fearing that he might never be able to return, he took the precaution of digging up the bones of his ancestors, which he took with him before the Dutch troops arrived in Bakkara. It must have been a very sad moment for him; yet it proved a wise decision: when the troops arrived they destroyed not only his house but also the sacred edifice for worship there, the bale pasogit (Koloniaal Verslag 1884:15; Sidjabat 1983:196). After his flight he also had to swallow the bitter pill of the defection of Guru Somalaing, who had helped him to rally support. This well-known datu subsequently even undermined his status of priest-king by starting a millenarian movement of his own, the Parmalim. He also lost another of his erstwhile commanders, Si Alapiso Siahaan from Balige, who embraced Christianity, was baptized Laban, and became one of the Batak Mission’s main supporters in Toba. Another misfortune was his divorce from his first wife on the instigation of

66 The colonial government turned down the request by the RMG to begin missionary work in eight places in independent Batak territory (Koloniaal Verslag 1884:100).

67 According to Sidjabat (1983:404), Singamangaraja XII was seventeen years old when he visited Nommensen in 1875. In 1883 he must therefore have been twenty-five.

68 Illuminating proof of the demise of his spiritual power was also the acceptance of a German missionary, P. Pohlig, by the members of another millenarian movement, the Parhudamdam, as the new Singamangaraja only a decade later, when Singamangaraja XII himself was still alive (Hirosue 1994:342). Of course, the missionary refused the honour.

her father.

His last campaign in 1889 was not very impressive. His former allies in Toba and Humbang were unwilling to fight openly by his side, but at least they did not turn against him, allowing his forces to advance to Silindung. This implicit token of veneration dismayed the local Controllers, who had accepted the oaths of allegiance of these same rajas not long before (Van Dijk 1895:465).

They were punished for their cooperation by yet another punitive expedition. The troops tried to capture the Singamangaraja in Lintong on Samosir, where he had taken refuge after 1883, but in vain. On arrival they were appalled by the humbleness of his new abode.⁶⁹ During this campaign, the army marched for the first time into Samosir, where Djonggi Manaor, the chief of the marga belonging to the Lontung group, pledged his allegiance. After this the Singamangaraja was incapable of organizing new forces and was forced to spend the rest of his life in Dairi, where he was hunted down and killed in 1907.⁷⁰

Interestingly, the historiography on the Singamangaraja is divided about whom the priest-king actually fought. The Batak Mission’s later Superintendent (Ephorus) Warneck (1912b:122) argued that he objected only to the Mission’s advance into Great Toba, which is not a tenable assumption in view of the Singamangaraja’s supporters’ attacks on the church in Sipoholon—

Silindung—in 1883. The Batak author Sidjabat (1983:161-162; 395-407) even denies that he was against the Batak Mission and Christianity, but fought only against the Dutch. This is not at all convincing if we bear in mind that Christianity was a frontal attack on the old faith of which he was the highest spiritual leader. The Singamangaraja also gave vent to his animosity in 1878, when two slips of paper (brandbrieven) threatening Nommensen and Raja Pontas were attached to the entrance door of Bakkara when the Dutch troops arrived (Dietz 1885:627).

That the Singamangaraja was displeased, but also sad, about Pontas’s siding with the Dutch has been communicated by his son, Raja Buntal, to the author Sidjabat (1982:175), who quotes him as follows: ‘Hey Raja Pontas, people say that these soldiers came to fight your brothers of the same kin, while I am the one you confront as your enemy. Because of that, let us now fight in battle’. The official version of Indonesian history (Sejarah Nasional Indonesia, Poesponegoro and Notosusanto 1985:264) has it that the Singamangaraja intended to crush the Mission. Only Simanjuntak (1995:144) states firmly that the Singamangaraja fought both the Batak mission and the colonial state, which comes closest to the truth. It is understandable, however, that not all Christian Batak easily accept the opposition to Christianity of the former priest-king, who was pronounced a national hero for his undeniably heroic struggle against the Dutch only after Indonesia’s independence.⁷¹

The account of the clashes in the previous section shows that many Toba Batak rajas on the Humbang Plateau and in Toba rallied behind the Singamangaraja and that he could count on the support of his bridegiver Situmorang on Samosir; but other chiefs—mainly belonging to clans who were part of the Lontung group of marga not affiliated to him by marriage—were less inclined to take his side (Situmorang 1987:221-2). But even his staunchest supporters in the end opted for submission. They did not follow the Singamangaraja into exile, but chose to stay in their villages. The question is why. Insight into a raja’s resources may explain this. A Toba

69 Van Dijk (1895:486-7) depicted his impression in Lintong: ‘And here the most auspicious and revered raja of the Batak had lived during the past years, here lived the well-known priest-king Si Singa Mangaradja. We could hardly believe it’.

70 For an account of his last years and death, see Chapter 9, page 226.

71 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisingamangaraja_XII

Batak raja was not more than the chief of a clan, lineage or branch, and as such he was tied to the territory where the members of the clan and marga boru lived. He had access only to the natural products of his ancestral land, the labour of his subjects (and slaves), and a variety of dues and tithes the latter were obliged to give him (upah).⁷²

The Singamangaraja had nothing of the sort to offer his followers. He did not possess the material resources to support a standing army over a longer period of time, and could not pay his leading supporters nor bestow auspicious titles and fiefs to them. The only way in which he could obtain support was through his own kinship group and marital alliances. It was thus impossible for the Singamangaraja to build up a strong resistance movement that could hold out for a prolonged time: the edifice of Batak society based on territoriality of clans was not conducive to it. Seen from this perspective, the Toba Batak rajas had hardly any other choice than submission, as they had no other way to preserve their title and access to material resources.

That many of them supported the Singamangaraja for so long is in fact more remarkable than their submission.

The submission of even the most unwilling Toba Batak raja was certainly also the result of the punitive expeditions, which left a trail of burnt villages. Only by pledging allegiance to the Dutch could a raja could prevent his village from being incinerated. That many Toba Batak rajas did not want to take this risk is evident from their swift submission once it became clear the Dutch would resort to this measure if they did not comply. Nevertheless, hundreds of villages, perhaps a total of twenty percent in Toba, were set on fire and razed to the ground between 1878 and 1889.⁷³ The population of these villages had usually fled in time. Civilian casualties were therefore low, as the Dutch rarely took the trouble to hunt villagers on the run.

The rajas feared the destruction of their village because it would cause long-term hardship for their people and consequently a painful reduction in their own sources of income. The villagers not only saw their houses destroyed, but their food supplies were always confiscated by the armies—by both the colonial and the Singamangaraja’s troops. The precaution of burying the family’s rice supplies was often not effective: the hiding places were usually found. Often the wooden roof tiles were also buried, as the villagers wanted to prevent their houses being used as bivouac by the troops. When found by the Dutch troops, they were used as firewood (Van Dijk 1895:478). After the village had been razed to the ground, the villagers would be exposed to hunger, cold, disease, and attacks from wild animals for a long period of time, a situation the village raja naturally wanted to avoid. Pledging allegiance was already bad enough, as it left the rajas who had sided with the Singamangaraja penniless, because they had to pay the Dutch high war fines. Probably less cause for worry was the immediate death toll of the war. Few lives were sacrificed on the battlefield; the Toba Batak soldiers were not accustomed to ‘fight to the last man’. It is therefore not surprising that the colonial reports make no mention of a high number of casualties.

The conduct of the colonial armed forces in Toba was not unusual at the time. Razing villages to ground was most extensively practiced during the war in Aceh. Unlike in Toba, however, many soldiers on both sides lost their lives in battle in Aceh, and ordinary villagers

72 Adatinkomsten 1922; Adatheffingen 1932. These overviews contain information on traditional sources of income (some of them standardized by the colonial authorities).

73 The report on the 1883 expedition mentions a number of 23 (Koloniaal Verslag 1884:14.) Sidjabat 1983:195) gives a figure of eighty-four incinerated villages for the badly hit areas Laguboti and Tambunan alone (whereas the entire sub-district Toba, of which Laguboti and Tambunan were part) counted 388 villages (Koloniaal Verslag 1883:8).

were not spared.⁷⁴ In Toba, destroying villages proved sufficient to coax the Toba Batak raja into submission. The Toba Batak rajas were not detained or harmed personally, which they obviously feared very much. By requiring the payment of a fine from those who fought on the side of the Singamangaraja, the Dutch acted according to Batak adat: it was a standard procedure in Toba Batak society to admit defeat.⁷⁵ In this manner the colonial government kept the door open for a future political relationship that was acceptable for them. More violent action would probably have been counterproductive: it might have ignited embittered resistance.⁷⁶ The Dutch officials also wisely paired the punishment of enemy rajas with giving a reward to those rajas who had assisted them: they were appointed to the offices of jaihutan or raja paidua after the military campaigns.

For the Dutch government, the incorporation of the heartland of the Batak world was not the outcome of a deliberate policy of imperialist expansion, nor was it given high priority at the time.⁷⁷ It was solely the result of local conditions getting out of hand, as reported by the missionaries. The Governor of West Sumatra, who lent an ear to their call for assistance and sent troops, acted without permission from Batavia, which he received only later, after the small Dutch military force was besieged by the Singamangaraja’s forces at Bahal Batu.⁷⁸ In 1883 local conditions—the unexpected aggression from the side of the Singamangaraja—again propelled the Governor of Sumatra into action. In sum, colonial expansion between 1878 and 1883 was primarily the consequence of problems faced by missionaries and colonial officials on the spot.⁷⁹

After the incorporation of Toba in 1883, the Dutch government refrained from further expansion. The costs of the Aceh war already caused enough headaches for the liberal P.J.

Sprenger van Eyk, Minister of the Colonies in The Hague between 1884 and 1888 and financial expert (Kuitenbrouwer 1985:100; 103-7).

In Toba and Silindung, the Toba Batak rajas finally got what they had been looking for in 1852. In the person of L.C. Welsink, the first Controller in Toba—in 1890 promoted to Assistant Resident, and in 1900 to Resident of North Tapanuli—they found their true ‘stranger king’.

Welsink became very adept as a mediator of old festering disputes, and stayed until 1908, serving the longest term of office of any colonial official in the Batak lands during the colonial period.⁸⁰

74 I thank Petra Groen for this information. Violent methods of warfare were questioned only after the Aceh war was brought to a close due to reports on the killings in the Gayo and Alas region (north of the Batak lands) in 1904 under the command of colonel G.C.E. van Daalen (1778 men—an estimated 25% of the male population—1149 women, and 224 Acehnese (fugitives?). The Dutch parliament demanded guidelines on military ethics, but nothing came of this. The last independent areas of the colony had to be won, by whatever means (Groen 2002).

75 The heaviest fines were imposed on Laguboti (2000 ‘spaanse matten’), Lintong ni Huta (2602), and Sitorang (2146), while several other regions paid less than 1000 (Koloniaal Verslag 1884:13-14). In the campaign of 1889, the fines demanded were much less: 20 spaanse matten per village (Van Dijk 1895:473).

76 Thanks to Petra Groen for pointing this out to me.

77 If there was ever a motive on the part of officials to thrust a Christian Batak wedge between Muslim Aceh and Minangkabau, it was not endorsed by the colonial government in the 1870s when the first expedition was sent (Kuitenbrouwer 1985: 76-77).

78 This is consistent with Fasseur’s (1979) and Kuitenbrouwer’s (1985:77) conclusions that local government officials in the 1870s generally were more prone to adventures than the government in The Hague or Batavia.

79 Dobbin (1983:226) has drawn a similar conclusion for the Dutch advance in Minangkabau in the 1830s and 1840s due to the resistance of the Padri to the Dutch, thwarting the profitable coffee trade. She terms the arrival of the Dutch (following David Fieldhouse, 1961) ‘a classic case’ of a response to ‘a crisis in the periphery’. Locher-Scholten (2004:22-5) discusses the insights into the process of imperialism in peripheral regions in more detail, stating that ‘[I]mperialism is no longer viewed as a deliberate policy of expansion devised by the mother country, specifically arising from the economic interests of a small group in that country’. The case of the Toba Batak region demonstrates, that economic factors were absent.

80 He used to hold great judicial assemblies of two hundred-odd chiefs in newly-annexed areas, settling disputes as far back as a hundred years (Castles 1979:34). The Toba Batak bestowed on him the title ‘ompu’ ([obituary]. ‘Resident Welsink.

Meanwhile the missionaries, outnumbering the colonial officials and military commanders by far, remained the dominant force pressing for change. A bright future for geographical expansion beckoned: Toba lay waiting to be conquered for Christianity. The magic Batak word used by Nommensen, elected as the head of the Mission in 1881 with the title Ephorus, was Tole: ‘March forward!’ But the missionaries were not satisfied with the prospect of mere numerical success. They had become worried that the fast-growing number of converted people would become an obstacle to creating a truly Christian society. In the next two chapters I discuss their efforts to create just that, by focusing on their strategies and policies to foster Christian Toba Batak marriage.