Reducing Poverty as Personal Vocation Part II: The Impact of Westernization on Poverty in Indonesia
Leonard Winardi

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Introduction

Time progresses, every moment will eventually become a history. However, not every moment will make everlasting impact to a person, a community, a country, or to the world. Not every moment is historic. The main purpose of the study of history is to find such historic moments that explains how and why we arrive to where we are today. This article presents four events viewed by the author responsible in defining the identity of the poor and the poverty level in Indonesia.

The rise of western civilization, the Indonesia independence, the New Order regime, and the 1997 Asian financial crisis were viewed as historic moments both for Indonesian history and its poverty condition. The impact of western civilization to the world started in early 17th century and it still dominates today’s global arena. In the early 15th century up to early 17th century, the western civilization dominated the world through naval voyages. After the downfall of Muslim empires, the western civilization went on unchallenged and started conquering the world. Columbus and the Spanish conquered the Americas, the Portuguese found the tip of South Africa (Bartholomew Dias) and West Indies (Vasco de Gama), VOC fought their way against the Englishmen, the Spanish, and the Chinese to conquer Indonesia (led by Jan Pieterszoon Coen who founded Batavia), and the Englishmen took India by force.

In 18th to 19th century, the western civilization continued to dominate the world through its industrial revolution. The industrial revolution led by England made the gap between the rich and the poor widened for a simple reason: value creation through industrial revolution. Countries with industrial advantage could triple its profit by processing cheaply imported (from raw material (from their colonies) and selling the manufactured outputs in many markets, including the very colonies where they extracted raw materials from. Today, the western civilization dominated the world through its exported values, political system, and capital. Most nations adopted western standards of beauty and wellness, western-style democratic system, and capital borrowed or invested from the west.

Since this is such an extensive subject to be covered in one article, the author will only discuss the impact of the historical rise of western civilization on the poverty in Indonesia. The author will present indirect impacts of the Westernization on poverty conditions in Indonesia. The indirect impacts were presented in terms of human development and freedom, social inequalities, the raise of reactionary and extreme religious beliefs, and the dominating cultural values. The impacts of Indonesia independence, New Order regime, and Asian economic crisis will be covered on the subsequent articles.

The Negative Impacts of Westernization

The general sentiments on the westernization of the world can be divided into three groups. The first group contended that the Western civilization has brought negative impacts to the world. Western dominance achieved through colonization had deeper impacts than just the depletion of local natural resources and physical sufferings. Colonization had also colonized the mind of the people that is far more difficult to uproot. The colonization of the mind has fatal impact in the long run especially to the poverty level of the colonized countries. Most of the colonized countries can be categorized as poor or developing countries.

People in the colonized territory see the world, their identity and others through Western lenses. Our history began when the West “discovered” Indonesia. Moreover, beauty, goodness, fairness, justice, liberty all these virtues were set based on Western standard that sometime contradict to local values. All these impacts combined are believed to cause the degradation of national pride. We always feel weaker, worse, and stand unequal to the Westerners. Hence, we can not compete both in international politics and economics.

Furthermore, with the independence, we are integrated to the international political system and economic system. Unfortunately, the globalization in politics and economic was already been set in terms of the West. Thus it is creating what is called the new imperialism. The New Imperialism is based on capitalism and political system. Like the old imperialism, in order for this new one to succeed it needs to achieve two things: creating an elite class in the third world country that survives through the mercy of the West and increasing the gap between these elites and the masses. Increasing the gap will perpetuate the dependence of these elites to their Western allies (Galtung, 1971). Thus, it is beneficial for both the elites and their Western allies to keep certain mass of poor people in the third world countries. As a result, the third world countries become more dependent, instead of more independent, to the Western countries. For example, anti-West government was depicted illegitimate both internationally and domestically.

The adoption of Western government style and political system is also proven to be difficult and is creating internal chaos in Indonesia. Badie explained that Indonesia, as many of the new independent states, has adopted the massive structures, rules, and bureaucracies of the West. But, it did not adopt the spirits and logics behind resulted in the loss of meaning of the entire political relations. He added that as soon as politic loses its meaning, social recomposition will occur and produce spin off movements. These movements will merge to construct a competing space of legitimacy outside the official political scene as we seen happening in Indonesia. As soon as Soeharto’s iron fist rule was over, the armed mob controlled the decision making power.

One should also note that the Westernization of the South East Asia through colonization increased the resistance feeling toward the Westerners and did contribute to the rise of extreme Islam in the region. As early as in the Raffles days (1811), the colonization always resulted in the rise of extremism. Acehnese, that had been fighting the Dutch for more than 100 years, were more legalistic and had similar lifestyle with the Wahabi. The people in Pidie were warlike and had an autocratic ruler. He noted that the confrontations with the Westerners of the Christians had transformed peaceful people into the people of the sword.

The Positive Impacts of Westernization

The second group viewed that the impacts of Western civilization were positive. They view that the Western civilization was the driving force for world progress through the dissemination of their knowledge, technologies, the political and social ideologies, and most importantly a sense of nationality.

The technology disseminated, although through really painful means, had helped the Indonesian especially in agitation. Van den Bosch, who was the Indies governor in 1830, proposed to cultivate the Java Island using Javanese cheap (or free) labors. His reasoning came from his observations from Raffles’ mistakes. He realized that without an organized and managed cultivation, the Javanese would not able to grow their crops effectively. This was due to the Javanese inability to adapt to the new agricultural technologies (Vlekke, 1956). Hence, the Dutch infamous cultuurstelsel (cultivation system) was born.

The political and social ideologies disseminated through the education system have changed the Indonesian general culture. The importance of royal birth and inherited wealth is diminishing. Education and hard work can bridge the gap between the poor and the rich. Women and men have equal rights and responsibilities. Most significantly, freedom and equality are not inherited but God’s gift to every human being. God worked through Eduard Dowes Dekker and Abraham Kuyper to bring these changes to Indonesia.

Over the year, the Dutch cultivation system (cultuurstelsel) became more ruthless. Eduard Dowes Dekker, a young Dutch officer stationed in the Indies from 1840 to 1858, came back and became delusional after seeing the grave suffering by the Javanese. In 1875, Dowes Dekker under an alias name, Multatuli, published the “Max Havelaar” (or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company). The book opened the eyes of the Dutch that were unaware of what happened thousand miles away from their homeland in Indies. The book and the emergence of the Dutch reformed church in the mid of 19th century back home resulted in the curbing of the cruel cultuurstelsel practice. On 1870, the sugar law was passed to abolish culturstelsel in the sugar plantations. The cultuurstelsel was completely abolished by the end of 1917.

The end of cultuurstelsel was followed by the ethical policy carried out by the liberal party led by Abraham Kuyper. Abraham Kuyper was a well known Dutch Calvinist preacher that led the fight against the materialism public thinking, a dominant school of thought in his era claiming that both God and soul did not exist. His Dutch Reformed church was persecuted in mid 19th century, but by early 20th century it emerged as the majority. This fight against materialistic thinking led him into politics. He became the prime minister from 1901 to 1905. During his tenure as prime minister, he introduced an important change in Dutch colonial politics through the ethical policy. The policy was born from his Calvinistic belief that human was born equally valuable in the eyes of God their creator. Because of this, the Netherlands were not allowed to abuse their superiority over the Dutch East Indies. This policy gave momentum to the disassembly of cultuurstelsel and the rise of Indonesia nationalism. The Dutch Indies now allowed selected natives to be educated in the Dutch school system either in Indies or in Netherlands.

The Dutch government policy to educate the Indonesian eventually led to the Indonesian nationalism. Vlekke noted that by 1929, there were 50,000 educated and politically organized Indonesians. The majority of these people had one goal that was independence. How did Indonesia reach the critical mass (of educated and politically charged) people so quickly? Five major events or movements had been proposed contributed to this: Industrialization of Japan, Chinese national movement, Javanese cultural revival, Javanese women’s movement, and Islamist national movement in trade and agitation. All these 5 events were initiated by the opening up of Western civilization to the Easterners: first to the Japanese, then to the Chinese and to the natives through their local schools and local mission activities.

These virtues and ways of thinking were a good influence to Indonesia. Before the Asian financial crisis, Indonesians were living relatively well compared to Nigeria or the South Asian Nations (Bangladesh, India, Srilanka, and Pakistan). Most of Indonesians prefer democratic government, share the UN Human Rights declaration, and open to new ideas, technologies, and cultures.

The Ambivalent View of the Impact of Westernization

The third group viewed that the Western civilization did not have significant impact on the world. The impacts of Western civilization are diminishing and even have diminished especially in Muslim dominated countries.

I strongly disagree with this view. The West had and still dominated the world. They dominated the world through imperialism before. Furthermore, as long as the Westerners still using cars, trains, or had any heavy industries, the West still need oil and other resources and will impose or at least influence the weaker states but with abundant resources.

Conclusions

The impact of Western cultures on poverty could not be validated with numbers. However, one can analyze the impact of westernization by looking into the results of colonization (Pre 1920) and globalization (1960 to present). It is true that colonization depraved Indonesia from its natural resources, murdered thousands, and imprinted deep scar in the heart and mind of every Indonesian. However, this deep scar actually serves as a bond for all the people from Sabang to Merauke to unite as one nation. The Westerners also taught us a valuable lesson that the most effective cure for depravity and poverty comes from within. Hard work, faith, and forward thinking were the formula to move out from poverty and help us prevail in globalization.

However, without education, strong law and political institutions, it would be difficult for the poor to get out the poverty trap. The ability of the Old and New Order governments in instituting education, law, and political process and their connections to poverty will be discussed in the next articles.

Leonard Winardi is a PhD candidate in Metallurgical Engineering in University of Alabama- Birmingham. He is also interested in understanding government’s role in poverty reduction, particularly in ‘Kecamatan’. (Subdistrict level government).

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