Toba Batak society belongs to a category of societies with patrilineal kinship which is characterized by asymmetric alliance, also called ‘circulating connubium’. Societies of this rather rare type share the following features: regular links between patrilineal clans formed through asymmetric exchange of marriage payments between the bridegiving and bridetaking parties;
and a preference for matrilateral cross-cousin marriage. These have been studied by many prominent anthropologists, whose works greatly contributed to structuralist anthropology. This approach, however, has subsequently been criticized for its high level of abstraction due to its emphasis on structural models, lack of connection with empirical reality, neglect of the influence of the social, political, and economic context, insufficient attention to the processes by which a system is reproduced, and ignoring participants’ agency. Since the subsequent development of theoretical understanding of kinship has already been covered extensively elsewhere, here it suffices to mention only those outcomes of the debates that are particularly relevant for this thesis.33
The first outcome is the need to study kinship systems in process or, phrased differently, the way people (agents) reproduce and perhaps change or adapt the rules supporting the prevalent kinship system. Bovill (1986) fruitfully applied this ‘interpretive’ approach in her study of
32 About changing architecture of Batak houses, see Schefold 2008:675; about changing the form of tombs for ancestors, see Reid 2002. Niessen (1993, 2003) covers changing clothing styles of men and women from the colonial period until the present day.
33 For an overview of the theoretical approaches of British, French, and Dutch anthropologists in the structuralist tradition (C. Levi Strauss, E.R. Leach, L. Dumont, and R. Needham, W. Van Wouden and others) and critics of this approach (R.
Firth, F. Barth, C.E. Cunningham), consult Bovill 1986:12-25 and Aragon and Russel 1999.
decision-making about partner choice within middle-class Toba Batak families in Medan in the early 1980s, which focuses on the process of negotiation between parents, children, and members of the wider kin group. A historical study cannot duplicate Bovill’s approach, as it is impossible to reconstruct processes within the main locus of decision-making, which—as she shows convincingly—is the nuclear family. Historical sources just do not provide sufficient data of this kind, which can be uncovered only by in-depth interviews and participant observation.
But a historical study can explain social change, the need for which has been recognized as well. I do not intend to explain how the kinship system itself changed, but wish to demonstrate how Toba Batak ideas about the rules and practices supporting their kinship changed to the extent that this can be deduced from the discourse with outside agents, contextualised within their changing society. In contrast to Bovill, I therefore focus on the wider discourse over a long time span, focussing on concrete issues of kinship and marriage emerging during the colonial period. These issues concern in particular the rules and related practices that supported the perpetuation of patrilineal line on the one hand, and the formation of marital alliance between exogamous clans (marga) on the other. The main rules and practices as they are mentioned in the colonial sources and contemporary literature are summarized below. For brevity’s sake, ambiguities are left out: these are discussed elsewhere in this thesis.
The rules supporting patrilineal descent encompassed the necessity of couples to produce a son—preferably more than one—to avoid a rupture in the connection between a man and his ancestors and to create the precondition for the continuation of his descent line in the following generation(s). The need for male offspring could lead to bigamy, a practice followed if a marriage remained childless or without male issue. Patrilineal descent also prescribed the rule of inheritance, the sole prerogative of male offspring. The importance of the descent line was acted out in the mortuary rites held in honour of the soul of each deceased person.
Rules, customary laws, and practices pertaining to marital alliance were far more numerous. The necessity to perpetuate the lineage implied the obligation of each individual Toba Batak to get married. Marriage with someone from the same clan was prohibited. The preferred marriage partner was, as mentioned above, a matrilateral cross-cousin (from the male point of view), which perpetuated an already existing marital alliance with another clan. Marriage had to be concluded through the exchange of marriage gifts or payments, including the brideprice (sinamot or tuhor) given by the bridetaking party, which was reciprocated by other gifts by the bridegiving party. This exchange served not only to legitimize the conjugal union; it completed a couple’s incorporation into traditional society. Only after marriage could a man become a member of the village council; he and his wife were then entitled to represent their family at rituals hosted by others and to host rituals themselves. Through a marital alliance, families and the lineages involved also defined their relationship to one another as bridegiver and bridetaker.
Without the exchange of marriage payments, a sexual relationship between a man and a woman was considered a criminal offence. In pre-colonial times, the Toba Batak desire to continue existing alliances was supported by the custom of the levirate and sororate: a deceased man was replaced by preferably a younger brother and a deceased wife by a younger sister. The provisions in customary law for divorce also reflected the desire to preserve a marital alliance: heavy fines were stipulated for the party breaking off the alliance.
During the colonial period all these rules and practices, and others at one point or another,
became the subject of debate. This does not mean, however, that challenging these always brought about change in the views of the Toba Batak and in their practice of life. Although it is hazardous to draw firm conclusions, the concluding chapter offers a tentative explanation of why some rules and customs were upheld and others changed to a more or less significant extent. This is followed by an evaluation of the impact of all this on the lives of Toba Batak men and women by the end of the colonial period.34
Finally, relevant research on Toba Batak society after Indonesia’s independence throws light on the long-term influence of concerns and developments emerging before 1942. Post-independence developments also suggest a continuum in the way the Toba Batak reproduce their patrilineal kinship system within an increasingly multi-ethnic urban environment. This raises questions for further research, presented in the last section of the conclusion.
1.5. Composition
This thesis consists of two parts. Writing about change, one needs a point of reference in time, a baseline, from which to measure change. The first part of this thesis, consisting of four chapters, provides just that. The second part is a more or less chronological narrative, in eight chapters, covering the discourse on marriage customs and the evolving practices informed by relevant theoretical insights.
Chapter 2 introduces to the reader the intricacies of the Toba Batak patrilineal kinship system as understood by the Toba Batak around 1850. The main source used for this is the Toba Batak myth on the origin of the earth and mankind; the first handed-down version originates from that period. The analysis of the myth centres on agency: who are the main male and female characters in the myth, and what is the nature of their relationship? While the most commonly found gendered opposition in myths around the world is that between husband and wife (Moore 1988:19), I conclude that in the Toba Batak origin myth, the father-daughter opposition is pivotal. My analysis also questions the negative evaluation of ‘women’s subordination’, because in the myth female resistance to patriarchal authority is not presented as destructive but as the necessary precondition for the origin and perpetuation of human life.35 The chapter also discusses the overlap and discrepancies between norms expressed in the myth and behaviour of men and women in real life and the gendered perspective from which the myth is written.
A historical ethnography of Toba Batak marriage is presented in the next three chapters, divided according to ‘the life of a marriage’. This starts with the tooth-filing ritual as a rite de passage for girls and boys allowing them to start courting and the various ways a marriage could be concluded (chapter 3), followed by the husbands’ and wives’ expectations and disappointments in the conjugal union (chapter 4), and ending with the dissolution of marriage by divorce or
34 For a useful early post-colonial evaluation of changes in Toba Batak women’s position due to mission and colonial rule, and challenges still prevailing due to the influence of the patrilineal kinship system, see Kruyt 1946:71-5. The article is written from the perspective of the Mission, however, and does not pay much attention to the role of Toba Batak men and women in the process of change.
35 The dichotomy between patriarchal power versus women’s oppression and resistance was one of the most pervasive paradigms of much feminist academic work in the 1970s and 1980s. This idea has been criticized as being too simplistic to explain all relations between men and women, because these are also determined by other categories, such as race, ethnicity, class, and so forth (Geller and Stockett 2006:5-6). Nevertheless, I felt drawn to use a dualistic analytical framework for the first chapter precisely because in the Toba Batak myth this dichotomy is so apparent.
death (chapter 5). This historical ethnography should be read only as an account of conditions prevalent in Toba Batak society in the decades immediately prior to and after the penetration of the Mission and the colonial state. This cannot be otherwise, as available sources do not allow going back any further.
Each of these three chapters revolves around specific problematic themes. Chapter 3 contains a description of Toba Batak customary marriage, refuting the idea that daughters were powerless in the process of marriage transactions. The importance of fertility is the subject of Chapter 4. Both sons and daughters were important and needed, because they offered fathers the opportunity to forge economically and politically advantageous marital alliances with bridegiving and bridetaking clans. But is the need to perpetuate the descent line of the father the only explanation for the relative preference for sons? The Toba Batak conceptualization of life in the hereafter adds a complementary perspective. Chapter 5 takes issue with the assumption that a clear jural construction of the individual is absent in many kin-based societies (Hirshon 1984:3). I will argue that in Toba Batak society, certainly kin-based, a clear jural construction of the individual did exist, defining men as legal subjects in their own right and women as legal minors.
The second part of the book starts with a chapter devoted to the three waves of intrusion disrupting the Batak world between roughly 1825 and 1895. Although the Batak region was peripheral from a global perspective and even within the Dutch colony, it was caught up in three worldwide trends in the following order: the expansion of Islam in the first half of the nineteenth century; the expansion of Christianity in the non-Western world by European (and American) missionary societies; and the gradual incorporation of remote parts of the archipelago into the colonial state in the last quarter of the century, the Dutch version of late nineteenth-century European imperialism. The main question answered in this chapter is how divisions based on religious affiliation between Batak sub-groups hardened during the nineteenth century.
These divisions included the one which evolved between Batak who embraced Islam and those who opted for Christianity, as well as another division—often forgotten in the contemporary literature—between Toba Batak who became Christian and others who continued adhering to their ancestral faith.36 A secondary question dwelt upon is whether the arrival of missionaries in the Toba Batak region can be regarded as exemplary of a divide et impera policy on the part of the colonial government.37
Chapters 7 and 8 cover the discourse between the Batak Mission and the Toba Batak elite of clan chiefs, the rajas, on the future of Toba Batak society based on patrilineal descent and marital alliance. The missionaries were not content to just introduce a new faith: they also endeavoured to recast indigenous society in a new, Christian mould, implying the abandoning of not only the old faith but also many traditional customs. The debate between the missionaries and Toba Batak Christian chiefs on the abolition of the brideprice between 1884 and 1886 is singled out for a separate discussion in Chapter 7. Why did feelings on both sides run so high
36 This process has been described in detail for Java by Ricklefs in his book Polarising Javanese Society: Islamic and other visions (c. 1830-1930). It appears that in Tapanuli a similar process took place around the same time with some important differences, which I will not discuss here.
37 Even an authoritative historian such as Bayly uncritically disseminates this strategy as usual for colonizing nations, including the Dutch (Bayly 2004:222; 227). Indonesians are also instructed that the Dutch deployed the divide et impera strategy through generations of schoolbooks on Indonesian history. That this image implies a denial of the agency of Indonesian rulers in the regions goes unquestioned.
in this debate? This can be explained only by the different interests of the parties and the wide gap in understanding and valuing the custom. Why the missionaries had to back down in the end should not come as a surprise. As has been found by other researchers, missionaries lacked the power to impose policies and practices they favoured on unwilling rulers as well as on their flock.38
Their failure to have the brideprice abolished with consent of the rajas induced the Batak Mission to find other ways to ‘engineer’ a Christian version of Toba Batak marriage, the details of which are presented in chapter 8. For this they made use of two instruments. The first was a Church Ordinance, patterned on the custom of missionary societies to set rules for young Christian congregations around the globe, but with some adaptations to local conditions. The second instrument was a revision of Toba Batak customary law, which was drafted in cooperation with an inner circle of trusted Christian Toba Batak rajas. The overwhelming emphasis on ‘law and custom’ in the encounter between indigenous chiefs and missionaries probably can be found in other missionary fields elsewhere as well.39 It is likely, though, that the Toba Batak case is unique because of its outcome in the form of a written ‘codification’ 1886 of Christianized customary law that came into being without the colonial authorities being involved. Why did the rajas go along with this project and how far were they prepared to accommodate the missionaries’ ideas for change? Close reading of the text of this set of regulations, the Christian By-laws, provides some clues. The extraordinary emphasis in the policies of the Batak Mission on the regulation of Toba Batak marriage customs, which continued into the first decade of the twentieth century, also calls for an explanation. The concept of Christian modernity (Keane 2007) in its various manifestations shreds light on this.
Despite the ardent support of the Batak Mission and the official endorsement of the regional colonial government in 1892, the Christian By-laws were never put into practice as intended. Why this was so is told in Chapter 9 on the changing balance of power in the triangular relationship between the Toba Batak rajas, the Batak Mission, and the regional colonial administration. It also describes the wider context, the debate at higher levels of government on the legal position of Indonesian Christians. Seeing their legal project thwarted, the Batak Mission embarked on new strategies to reform domestic life, conjugal relations, and the elevation of Toba Batak women in the 1890s: consolidation of the Toba Batak Christian elite and single-sex education for girls.
As elsewhere on the islands outside Java, the last independent areas in the Batak homeland were incorporated into the colonial state around the turn of the twentieth century. After the new Residency of Tapanuli was established in 1906, colonial rule intensified in all areas, including that of the administration of justice. If anyone assumes colonial policy to be well-coordinated and consistent, the debate on the legal provisions for Indonesian populations covering the period 1891–1938 presented in Chapter 10 refutes that assumption. This debate led to the appointments of the Dutch legal scholars J.C. Kielstra in 1913 and J.C. Vergouwen in 1926
38 Comaroff and Comaroff (1991:1998-2006), for example, tell a vivid story about the tug-of-war between Chief Mothibi of the Thlaping tribe in South Africa and the first missionary to arrive in his region, R.U. Moffat, about the location of the missionary’s station (which is reminiscent of the encounter between missionary L.I. Nommensen and the Toba Batak rajas, Chapter 7:12-14). Their fascinating account of the battle over the control of other material resources (water), language, and symbolic values demonstrates the resistance of common people but at the same time a growing consciousness of the difference between them and Europeans, which the Toba Batak also acquired in the long run.
39 Comaroff and Comaroff (1991:247) mention the ‘extreme legalism of the Tswana Christianity of all types’, which they attribute to the particular ‘historical conditions of two cultures that placed complementary weight on rules and conventions in establishing membership in, and shaping the life of, any community’.
to advise on improving legal security through the Toba Batak indigenous legal system. How their work mirrored shifts in the colonial perception of secular modernity from the turn of the century until the 1930s is a question discussed in the concluding section.
Chapters 11 and 12 focus on the implementation of customary law as it was understood after 1915. Chapter 11 zooms in on the 1916 decree about the registration of marriage and marriage payments and what this decree intended to achieve. Remarkably, the regulation started to lead a life of its own, inspiring a tense debate among government officials. It also led to the erosion of Toba Batak customary marriage, which was not at all the purpose the regulation.
Here I explain how and why the Batak Mission and the Toba Batak rajas serving in the courts as judges were implicated in this process. This development illustrates how colonized people were affected not only by the codification and revision of the content of their traditional law, but also by the way justice was administered.40
In Chapter 12, I return to the topics of women’s legal status and options discussed in Chapter 5. After 1925 women’s options were both enlarged and restricted by the colonial government, as is demonstrated in the analysis of five ‘dynamite disputes’ brought to colonial courts. These disputes evolved around heavily contested legal issues, in which Dutch officials at various levels, Toba Batak bureaucrats, chiefs of clans, and in some cases the Batak press took position. Although the outcomes of the cases were varied, one common feature stands out: Toba Batak women did not behave as legal minors nor were they expected to do so by Toba Batak
In Chapter 12, I return to the topics of women’s legal status and options discussed in Chapter 5. After 1925 women’s options were both enlarged and restricted by the colonial government, as is demonstrated in the analysis of five ‘dynamite disputes’ brought to colonial courts. These disputes evolved around heavily contested legal issues, in which Dutch officials at various levels, Toba Batak bureaucrats, chiefs of clans, and in some cases the Batak press took position. Although the outcomes of the cases were varied, one common feature stands out: Toba Batak women did not behave as legal minors nor were they expected to do so by Toba Batak