Ethnic and Racial Studies

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Revisiting Furnivall's ‘plural society’: Colonial Java

as a mestizo society?

Charles A. Coppel

To cite this article: Charles A. Coppel (1997) Revisiting Furnivall's ‘plural society’:
Colonial Java as a mestizo society?, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 20:3, 562-579, DOI:
10.1080/01419870.1997.9993975

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 Revisiting Furnivall's 'plural society':
colonial Java as a mestizo society?

Charles A. Coppel

Abstract
J. S. Furnivall's characterization of Java in the last half-century of colonial
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rule as a 'plural society' has largely been taken for granted by most scholars
who have supported or opposed the applicability of the concept in a
Caribbean or African context. In the 'plural society' of colonial Java,
according to Furnivall, Europeans, Chinese and natives each held by their
own religion, their own culture and language, meeting as individuals only in
the market place. This article re-examines the case of colonial Java, which
first prompted Furnivall to use the concept, paying particular attention to
the Chinese. It argues that at the time he invented the term, he exaggerated
the 'pluralistic' features of colonial society, and that, when applied to the
situation at the turn of the century, the concept was quite misleading.
Rather, it is suggested, colonial society in the urban centres of Java at that
time might in many respects just as well be characterized as a 'mestizo
society'.

Keywords: Furnivall; plural society; mestizo; history; Chinese; Java.

When the British colonial administrator John Sydenham Furnivall

(1878-1960) published his influential Netherlands India: A Study of Plural
Economy in 1939, he modestly concluded with the hope that, whatever
its inadequacies, his study would serve at least

to throw into relief the interest which attaches to Netherlands India as

an example of a plural society; a society, that is, comprising two or more
elements or social orders which live side by side, yet without mingling,
in one political unit (Furnivall 1939, p. 446).

The 'plural society' motif recurs throughout the book and its charac-
teristics are sharply drawn. Under Dutch rule, he tells us, 'Europeans,
Chinese and natives lived each in their own world as constituent elements
in a plural society' (Furnivall 1939, p. 45); 'there are three social orders,
the Natives, the Chinese and the Europeans, living side by side, but sep-
arately, and rarely meeting save in the material and economic sphere'

Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 20 Number 3 July 1997

© Routledge 1997 0141-9870
 Revisiting Furnivall's 'plural society' 563
(Furnivall 1939, p. 239). More emphatically still: 'For there is one place
in which the various sections of a plural society meet on common ground
- the market place; and the highest common factor of their wants is the
economic factor' (Furnivall 1939, p. 449).
The 'plural society' concept is a recurrent, if not obsessive, theme in
many of Furnivall's later writings. A few examples here must suffice. His
contribution to Fabian Colonial Essays treats 'plural society' in the trop-
ical colonies as 'a society different in kind from that of Europe' which was
caused by the interaction between the 'contrary principles' of European
and tropical social life under conditions in which the colonial power
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dominated the colony for economic advantage (Furnivall 1945, p. 162;

emphasis in original). He goes on:

It is this plural society that I suggest is characteristic of the modern

tropics. One finds there a society in which two or more groups live side
by side but separately within the same political unit. All the members
of all the groups are subject alike to the economic process of natural
selection by the survival of the cheapest, and all respond in greater or
less degree to the economic motive, the desire for individual material
advantage. But that is all they have in common. Each group holds by
its own religion, its own culture and its own ideas and ways of life; the
members of each group mix with those of other groups only in the
market place, in buying and selling (Furnivall 1945, pp. 167-8).

At a later point in the same essay he suggests that 'The plural society has
come into existence because the only factor common to all groups and
members has been the economic factor' (Furnivall 1945, p. 171).
Furnivall's later book, Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative
Study of Burma and Netherlands India, built on the success of Nether-
lands India and elaborated on the themes of the 1945 essay. According
to Furnivall himself, it grew out of a request from the government of
Burma at the end of 1942 for his views on 'reconstruction, with particu-
lar reference to features of colonial rule in Netherlands India that might
suitably be adopted in Burma' (Furnivall 1948, p. ix).1 He decided to
make his views known to a wider public, and in doing so 'to frame the
comparison between Burma and Netherlands India in a general survey
of colonial policy and practice* (Furnivall 1948, p. x). Whatever the differ-
ences between Burma and Netherlands India, in Furnivall's opinion they
shared the character of a plural society which, he said, was 'common to
all tropical dependencies' (Furnivall 1948, p. 304). To quote him again:

In Burma, as in Java, probably the first thing that strikes the visitor is
the medley of peoples - European, Chinese, Indian and native. It is in
the strictest sense a medley, for they mix but do not combine. Each
group holds by its own religion, its own culture and language, its own
 564 Charles A. Coppel
ideas and ways. As individuals they meet, but only in the market-place,
in buying and selling. There is a plural society, with different sections
of the community living side by side, but separately, within the same
political unit. Even in the economic sphere there is a division of labour
along racial lines (Furnivall 1948, p. 304).2

Who was Furnivall?

Furnivall was born on 14 February 1878, the son of Dr C. H. Furnivall,
at Great Bentley in Essex. After completing his secondary schooling at
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the Royal Medical Benevolent College, Epsom, he proceeded to Trinity

Hall, Cambridge on a scholarship, where he completed the Natural
Science Tripos in 1899 before embarking upon examinations and pro-
bationer's training for the Indian Civil Service in London. He served as
a member of the Indian Civil Service [ICS] in Burma from 1902 until
his retirement from the ICS in 1923, when he went back briefly to
England. On his return to Burma in 1924, he founded the Burma Book
Club Ltd. and the World of Books magazine, and during the next seven
years was also active as an educationist (Träger 1963, p. 1). It was no
doubt during this time that he was 'occupied for some time in business
and in the direction of an agricultural bank' (Furnivall 1948, p. x). This
presumably explains the curious description of him as 'a banker with
considerable experience of the colonial Far East' (Smith 1960, p. 763),
but his identification as a 'Dutch social scientist' is inexplicable (Cox
1971, p. 388).
From 1931 to 1947 he retired to England, where he was for some six
years to become ICS Lecturer on Burmese Language, History and Law
at Cambridge University (1936-1941) (Träger 1963, p. 2). His earliest
comparisons of Burma and the Netherlands Indies were published early
in his retirement, when he studied the Dutch language and visited Java
and The Netherlands (Träger 1963, pp. 18-22). From 1948 until shortly
before his death in 1960, he returned to Burma, where he served as
Adviser of Planning to the Government of the Union of Burma. In the
light of Furnivall's insistence that in colonial Burma Europeans and
natives met only in the market place, it is surprising to learn that his wife
(Margaret Ma Nyun Toungoo), who died in 1940, was Burmese (Träger
1963, p. 2; The Guardian magazine (Rangoon) [June 1959], p. 33 has a
photograph of Furnivall with their 'two charming daughters').
'Furnivall of Burma' (Träger 1963) was a towering figure in modern
Burmese studies, publishing prolifically for half a century, and he became
an influential, if controversial, adviser to the government of Burma. In
June 1959 The Guardian magazine (Rangoon) dedicated a special issue
to his life and works. One of the founders of the Burma Research Society
in 1910, he addressed the Society on the occasion of its fiftieth anniver-
sary in 1960 (Furnivall 1960).
 Revisiting Furnivall's 'plural society' 565
Furnivall's authority as a historian of Southeast Asia, and specifically
of colonial Indonesia, has been, and continues to be, given great defer-
ence. For example, he is said to have conducted 'extensive research on
South-East Asia and, in particular, the Dutch East Indies...' (Cross 1971,
p. 477), and a recent publication describes Netherlands India as a 'classic
study of colonial Indonesia...' (Cribb and Brown 1995, p. 165). His pres-
tige was also great among eminent Dutch colonial administrators.
Jonkheer Mr A. C. D. de Graeff, a former Governor-General of the
Netherlands Indies (1926-31), contributed an introduction to Nether-
lands India in which he praised it highly (Furnivall 1939, pp. vii-viii). Dr
H. J. van Mook, at that time Minister for Colonies in the Dutch Cabinet
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in exile in London (and acting Governor-General in Indonesia after the

war), was a most respectful discussant of Furnivall's lecture to the Royal
Central Asian Society in May 1942 (Furnivall 1942). The Netherlands
government honoured him with the Order of Orange-Nassau in 1948.

Reception of the 'plural society' concept

Furnivall's concept of'plural society' has had a mixed reception in schol-
arly circles. Some have applied it (and in some cases extended its appli-
cation) to other parts of the world, particularly the Caribbean and parts
of Africa (Smith 1965; Kuper and Smith 1969; Kuper 1974). Others have
found the concept useful but prefer to speak of a 'segmented society' or
'segmentation' (Hoetink 1967; Nicholls 1974). The concept has also
evoked a wide range of criticism, in particular criticism of the claims
made by Furnivall and his followers in favour of its more general appli-
cation. The present article does not address these wider criticisms and
commentary on Furnivall, which may conveniently be consulted else-
where (Rex 1959; Rubin 1960; Muijzenberg 1965; Hollander et al. 1966;
Kuper and Smith 1969; Rex 1970; Cross 1971).3
Remarkably, the region which Furnivall called the 'Tropical Far East'
has been almost completely neglected in the later mainstream English
language literature on 'plural society'.4 The influence of Furnivall's
thought on studies of modern Burma has, of course, been profound
(Taylor 1988, p. 35;Taylor 1995). Robert H. Taylor, for example, acknow-
ledges his indebtedness to Furnivall, in particular his analysis of the
political and economic consequences of British colonial rule (Taylor
1987; 1995). Taylor does not subject Furnivall's concept of'plural society'
in colonial Burma to close critical scrutiny, however, although he
expresses some concern that its use has tended 'to obscure the class and
political aspects of the period' (Taylor 1981, p. 46; see also Taylor 1988,
p. 46).
Yet the case which prompted Furnivall to use the concept of 'plural
society' in the first instance was, as we have seen, Netherlands India, and
more specifically Java. Netherlands India was also, he considered, 'an
 566 Charles A. Coppel
extreme type of a large class of political organizations' (Furnivall 1939, p.
446; emphasis added). Most commentators on Furnivall, critics and fol-
lowers alike, have, however, taken for granted FurnivalFs characteriza-
tion of Netherlands India, or Java, as a 'plural society' in the sense in
which he defined it. When Banton wrote that Furnivall 'stated a persua-
sive case for regarding Burma and Java in the first half of the twentieth
century as examples of a special kind of society', he made explicit what
most scholars simply assumed (Banton 1987, p. 115). Carl A. Trocki, in
The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, after quoting the passage from
Colonial Policy and Practice given above (Furnivall 1948, p. 304; but with
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the omission of Furnivall's opening words 'In Burma, as in Java') sweep-

ingly asserted that 'Furnivall's classic definition of the plural society
applies to all Southeast Asian colonies' (Trocki 1992, pp. 108-9). The
lengthy section in which this appears (which has the title 'Plural
Societies') is an extension rather than a qualification of Furnivall's posi-
tion (Trocki 1992, pp. 108-118). The only scholars to question Furnivall's
characterization of Netherlands India as a 'plural society' have been the
Dutch, and their criticism (even when readily available in English) has
received scant attention from the mainstream (cf. Wertheim 1964;
Muijzenberg 1965,1966; Wertheim 1968; Doom 1983).
The present article re-examines Furnivall's characterization of Java in
the last half-century of colonial rule as a 'plural society', paying particu-
lar attention to the position of the Chinese. It argues that at the time he
invented the term, he exaggerated the 'pluralistic' features of colonial
society; and that, when applied to the situation at the turn of this century,
the concept was quite misleading. Rather, it is suggested, colonial society
in the urban centres of Java at that time might just as well be character-
ized as a 'mestizo society'. Before coming to these arguments, however,
we shall first consider the juridical position of the different 'population
groups' in the Netherlands Indies at the time Furnivall wrote Netherlands
India.

Europeans, Foreign Orientals and Natives

When Furnivall first visited the Netherlands Indies in the 1930s, the popu-
lation was divided by law into three 'population groups' (bevolkings-
groepen): Europeans, Foreign Orientals and Natives. These three
'population groups' neatly coincide, superficially at least, with the three
'elements', 'groups', or 'social orders' which to Furnivall were constitu-
tive of the 'plural society'. But Furnivall leaves unclear the point at which
the category 'Foreign Orientals' came to occupy a third, intermediate
position between 'Europeans' and 'Natives'. Many authors have assumed
that it dates back to the Government Regulation (Regeringsreglement)
of 1854, if not earlier. This regulation, which was like a constitution for
the Netherlands Indies, did introduce a racial classification of the
 Revisiting FurnivaU's 'plural society' 567
population, but the distinction was a dualistic one. The threefold distinc-
tion came into legal effect only in 1920, even if the term 'Foreign Orien-
tals' had a longer history (Fasseur 1994).
Under Article 75 of this 'constitution', the Chinese (together with all
'Natives') were 'subjected to their own "religious laws, institutions and
customs" - so far as they were "not in conflict with generally recognized
principles of equity and justice" ...', unlike the Dutch and others
regarded as Europeans, to whom the laws and procedures of The
Netherlands were to apply if practicable (Fasseur 1992a, pp. 237-8).
Article 109 similarly 'made a distinction between Europeans and those
equated with them (Indonesian Christians) on the one hand and
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"natives" and those equated with them (Chinese, Arabs, Japanese and
other "Foreign Orientals") on the other' (Fasseur 1994, p. 35). The court
systems were also separate for Europeans and non-Europeans, and
Chinese appeared before the same non-European courts as the 'Natives'
(Fasseur 1992a, p. 238).
The binary racial division thus set out in the 1854 'constitution' was not
as clean-cut in law as this description suggests, however, and it was to some
extent undermined over the following decades. 'Europeans' included the
Eurasian population (or 'Indos') as well as Indonesian Christians, and
'non-Europeans' could legally become 'Europeans' (or be equated with
them) in various ways. Illegitimate children of a non-European mother
could become European through acknowledgement by the father, and
where a European man married a non-European woman, she and their
children acquired European status. Nor were such marriages uncommon,
as we shall see. After 1871 it became possible for individual Indonesians
or other non-Europeans to be equated with Europeans by decree of the
Governor-General published in the Indisch Staatsblad. It has been esti-
mated that more than one-third of the increase in the European popu-
lation between 1881 and 1940 (excluding immigration) can be attributed
to such sources as opposed to births arising out of marriages between
Europeans (Fasseur 1992b, p. 224, citing Van Marie 1951-52, p. 500).
Furthermore, in 1899 The Netherlands government implemented a treaty
with Japan by legislating that all Japanese nationals in the Netherlands
Indies (including Chinese originating from Formosa [Taiwan]) should be
equated with Europeans. The failure of the colonial government to do
likewise for all Chinese did much to stimulate the emergence of Chinese
nationalism in the Indies (Fasseur 1994, pp. 37-8).
Although the Chinese were equated with the native population under
the 1854 'constitution', subsequent legislation was often inconsistent with
this. As early as 1855, for example, the Chinese and other 'Foreign Ori-
entals' in Java were subjected, at the request of European business inter-
ests, to Dutch civil and commercial law. On the other hand, the Agrarian
Law of 1870 prohibited the sale or permanent transfer of land from
'natives' to Europeans or other 'foreigners' like the Chinese. The Chinese
 568 Charles A. Coppel
were also required to reside in designated districts, and were not permit-
ted to travel from one part of the colony to another unless they obtained
a government pass.
Despite these and other departures from the dualistic classification set
out in 1854, at the end of the century the category of'Foreign Orientals'
was still legally a subset of those equated to 'Natives' rather than a third
category intermediate to those of 'Europeans' and 'Natives'. According
to an 1890 Malay-language source, Chinese comprised the majority of
those equated (di samaken) with the natives (anak negri), together with
Arabs, Indians (Chodja and Kling) and 'other foreigners below the winds'
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(orang asing di bawah angin) and all Muslims and unbelievers {kafir). All
of these, it explained, were generally called 'foreigners below the winds'
(Albrechtl890,p.3).
During the final decades of colonial rule, there was an ongoing battle
in the Dutch political arena over judicial reform and legal unification in
the colony which often had paradoxical results. The issues are too
complex to summarize here, but a central problem was how to eliminate
the legal distinction between Europeans, Natives and Foreign Orientals
(or, at least, the appearance of it) in the field of public and constitutional
law, while at the same time attempting to apply different private and
family law to different ethnic groups in accordance with the ideas of the
increasingly influential 'adat law' school (Fasseur 1992a; 1994). The issues
were never satisfactorily resolved but one outcome was important for
present purposes. In 1906 the parliament adopted an amendment to
Article 109 of the 'constitution' which had the effect of classifying the
'Foreign Orientals' as a separate group rather than as 'equated' with the
'Natives'. Because of the ongoing political controversy, however, the
amendment to Article 109 was only brought into effect in 1920 and later
was incorporated into Article 163 of the Indische Staatsregeling (Indies
Constitution) which replaced the Regeeringsreglement in 1925. Although
legal argument continued to the end of colonial rule, the symbolic dif-
ferentiation of the population of the colony into the three population
groups embodied in this Article (as amended) remained in force. Rein-
forced by a corresponding threefold presentation of government statis-
tics, including the censuses of 1920 and 1930, it must have influenced
Furnivall's perception of the realities of colonial society when he was
writing Netherlands India in the late 1930s. For decades afterwards, in the
changed circumstances of an independent Indonesia, politically active
Chinese frequently harked back to the racial divide imposed by colonial
law as a major source of their political difficulties.

The peranakan Chinese of Java

That Java should have inspired Furnivall's concept of 'plural society' is
particularly strange when one considers the phenomenon of the highly
 Revisiting Furnh'all's 'plural society' 569
acculturated/?erana&an Chinese of Java, who were a living disproof of his
assertion that the Chinese group held by 'its own religion, its own culture
and language, its own ideas and ways' (Furnivall 1948, p. 304). Accord-
ing to the 1920 Census, 70 per cent of the Chinese of Java used Malay or
some other local language, rather than Chinese, as their main home lan-
guage (Coppel 1973). These Chinese, known as peranakan, then num-
bered more than 268,000 and were, with very few exceptions, locally-born
and necessarily of mixed ancestry, since few women had emigrated from
China to Java before the twentieth century. Besides using Malay or some
other local language, rather than Chinese, as their main home language,
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many of the peranakan Chinese were unable to read (or even speak)
Chinese. Moreover, they published extensively in Malay from the 1880s
and were prominent in the development of the Malay press and of Malay-
language literature in Java (Salmon 1981).
Nor was their acculturation limited to language. It is known that even
in the second half of the nineteenth century some Chinese settlements
had 'entirely gone native' (The 1966, pp. 186-7). Although such complete
acculturation was no doubt less common than had been the case in
previous centuries, local studies by anthropologists in the middle of the
twentieth century provide strong confirmation of the considerable
degree to which the culture and ways of life of the peranakan Chinese in
Java had adapted through interaction with Indonesians and Europeans
(Willmott 1960; Skinner 1963; Tan 1963; Go 1966). The Chinese had not
held to their own.
Conversion of Chinese in Java to Islam was quite widespread in
earlier centuries and continued, on a smaller scale, into the late colonial
period (Lombard and Salmon 1985; 1993). By then, however, the pres-
tige and power of the Dutch and other Europeans made it more
common for the Chinese to convert to Christianity than to Islam and
inhibited their assimilation to indigenous society. In either case, the
willingness of significant numbers of Chinese in Java to convert to Islam
or to Christianity belies FurnivalPs claim that they held by their own
religion.
Acculturation among the peranakan Chinese of Java could scarcely
have occurred to this extent if their interaction with the local population
was restricted to the market place, as Furnivall suggested. The colonial
authorities did take various measures which were designed to restrict
their interaction, such as the well-known ghetto system (wijkenstelsel)
and the pass system (passenstelsel). Police regulations in 1872 which pro-
hibited anyone from disguising themselves by appearing in public in the
clothing of another race were officially admitted to be for the purpose of
'preventing the Chinese mingling with the natives even if they [i.e. the
Chinese] have become Muslims' so that they might evade the pass laws
(Albrecht 1890, p. 47). This is telling evidence of the social realities of the
time as well as of the attitudes of the colonial authorities. It suggests that
 570 Charles A. Coppel
the Chinese may have been hard to distinguish from the native
population if they were clothed alike.
Evidence is plentiful enough to demonstrate that the peranakan
Chinese of Java did 'mingle' with the natives, and that they had more 'in
common' than the 'economic motive', notwithstanding Furnivall's insist-
ence to the contrary. For example, the Chinese contribution to Malay
literary production in Java was not separate from other writings in Malay.
Journalists of different ethnic background worked together on the early
Malay newspapers, and the first organization of Malay journalists
included Europeans, Indonesians and Chinese (Toer 1982,p. 27). Nor was
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the readerjhip of the press segregated. It was common for the mastheads
of Malay newspapers to proclaim that their contents were for 'all nations'
(segala bangsa) (Coppel 1995, p. 18), and letters published in the press
give clear evidence of a multiracial readership (Adam 1995). Although
much of the voluminous Malay language literature produced by Chinese
writers from the 1880s catered for a predominantly peranakan Chinese
readership by translating traditional Chinese fiction (Salmon 1987),
Chinese authors also wrote for a wider audience and sometimes collab-
orated in their work with non-Chinese, as in the case of the translations
by Lie Kim Hok and Wiggers of The Count of Monte Cristo and the 1001
Nights (Tio 1959, p. 85). Although it later became increasingly common
to speak of a separate Chinese Malay press and literature (and even of a
separate Chinese Malay language rather than a shared 'low Malay'),
before 1920 the colonial government treated Chinese Malay newspapers
like Sin Po as part of the 'native' press, and the literature in 'low Malay'
seems to have been shared by literate members of all races (Coppel 1995,
p. 16).
Furnivall himself had little to say about the large body of literature in
'low Malay', but he wrote glowingly of the achievements of the govern-
ment's Bureau of Popular Reading (Balai Poestaka) under its chairman,
Dr Rinkes. He estimated that 'some 5 million books had been provided
for a country in which less than thirty years ago reading for pleasure was
unknown' and said that 'the Government may fairly claim that, within a
single generation, it has created a habit of reading and a demand for
books'. 'Without State intervention', he tells us, 'the reading habit would
never have developed' (Furnivall 1939, pp. 421-4). This proposition is
untenable. In the period before 1910, a time of which Furnivall said that
'reading for pleasure was unknown', there were some two hundred publi-
cations in Malay written by Chinese alone (Salmon 1981) and dozens of
newspapers in Malay and other vernacular languages (Adam 1995). This
development occurred independently of government and before the
establishment of Balai Poestaka.
Furnivall was evidently dependent upon the views of his Dutch inform-
ants and the biases of Dutch-language sources. Although he was 'the
major authority on modern Burma writing in English who used Burmese
 Revisiting FurnivaU's'plural society' 571
sources' (Taylor 1988, p. 35), there is nothing to suggest that he was able
to use Malay language sources for his work on Netherlands India. Maier
(1991) has convincingly demonstrated how the colonial government
managed to marginalize Chinese-Malay literature through the Balai
Poestaka, to denigrate it as Schund literatuur (trashy literature), and to
dismiss its authors' low Malay prose as a mere 'language of communi-
cation', not a 'language of culture'. Without direct access to Malay, the
lingua franca of the different population groups in Java, Furnivall was
ignorant of their shared popular culture and, probably unconsciously,
absorbed the prejudices about it of his Dutch informants.
This shared popular culture went well beyond the strata of those who
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were themselves literate in Malay. Many of the Malay stories in manu-

script and print could be borrowed from lending libraries (taman bacaan)
and it is likely that they were also read aloud to those who were not liter-
ate in Malay. For example, Muhammad Bakir (fl. 1884-98) copied manu-
scripts for readers and listeners whom he knew personally, his postscripts
addressing readers and listeners directly in terms which make it clear that
the texts were intended for peranakan Chinese and Eurasians as well as
Indonesians (Chambert-Loir 1991, p. 99). Those who could not read
could also attend performances of the komedi stamboel (or komedi bang-
sawan), a kind of musical comedy, which 'were attended by all races (lan-
daarden), by Chinese, Indonesians and Europeans as well' (Nieuwenhuys
1982, p. 164). The same was true of a Japanese circus troupe, which visited
Yogyakarta in 1890, drawing a crowd which included 'Javanese, Chinese,
Indians, and Dutch' (Tan 1890, p. 26). An 1893 poem describes the per-
formance in Yogyakarta of a touring komedi stamboel troupe from
Surabaya, which was owned by a Chinese and under the artistic direction
of a Eurasian (Tan 1893). A story by a Chinese author, said to have 'really
happened in Surabaya in 1916' and set in the theatrical world oí komedi
stamboel, has a multiracial cast of characters (Chinese, Indonesian,
Dutch, Eurasian) who seem to form part of one social world (Tan 1917).
Their sexual relationships (although interestingly not their marriages)
are inter-racial, crossing the boundaries of FurnivaU's 'plural society'.
They were not 'each in their own world', and they had more in common
than the 'economic motive'.5
There are many such examples from the turn of the century of social
interaction outside the market place among the various population
groups. An 1898 photograph of a Eurasian family in Yogyakarta includes
two women visitors or house guests, both married to Europeans, one
Javanese and the other Chinese (Nieuwenhuys 1982, p. 115). The preface
of a contemporary booklet in Malay on how to play whist explains that
it was written so that Javanese or Chinese officials could play the game
with Dutch officials in club houses, rather than having to stand by silently
and watch the Dutchmen play by themselves (Kresna 1895, p. 3). It seems
probable from the text that the author, who used a pseudonym, was
 572 Charles A. Coppel
Javanese or Chinese but it is difficult, if not impossible, to know which.
Through their interests in Javanese mysticism (kebatinan) and theosophy,
many peranakan Chinese were active in associations which had an eth-
nically mixed membership. The theosophical lodge in Surakarta has been
described as a 'prestigious meeting place of Dutch, Indos, Chinese,
Kasunanan and Mangkunagaran princes, aristocrats, and high-ranking
officials' (Shiraishi 1990, p. 120).
Another Malay book from the turn of the century, written by a
Eurasian, is a manual of European manners and etiquette, which
explains, among other things, how to behave when playing cards (Winter
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1898, pp. 48-50). The author observed that he had noticed from meeting
nobility and ordinary people in Java, both natives and foreigners, that
they all seemed to wish to follow Dutch customs. He hoped that his book
would help them to avoid solecisms, however unintentional, in their deal-
ings with the Dutch (Winter 1898).6 It is clear from the scope of this book
that intercourse between the Dutch, natives and foreigners was not con-
fined to the market place.

Urban Java as a mestizo society at the turn of the century?

The evidence from Java at the turn of the present century thus suggests
that, if we confine our attention to the urban centres where most Euro-
peans and Chinese lived (including those of mixed ancestry who then
formed the majority in each case), there was something which we might
call a 'mestizo society' rather than a 'plural society' in Furnivall's sense.
Outside these urban centres, of course, it seems pointless to apply either
concept, since there the Europeans and Chinese were but drops in an
indigenous ocean.
The term 'mestizo' has not usually been applied to the locally-born and
acculturated peranakan Chinese of Java (or to their Baba Chinese equiv-
alents in Malaysia). In the Philippines, however, their counterparts were
known as 'mestizos'. The absorption of these Chinese mestizos into the
Filipino élite was to be so successful, however, that it was not until the
1960s, when Wickberg published his research on the Philippines Chinese,
that a later generation became aware that in the late nineteenth century
the term 'mestizo' was usually employed in Spanish sources to refer to
the more numerous and powerful Chinese mestizos rather than the
Spanish mestizos (Wickberg 1964,1965; Tan 1984).
Historians of the Netherlands Indies have likewise tended to confine
the use of the term 'mestizo' to Eurasians or, as Taylor has put it, to
'persons of mixed Asian and European ancestry and for the culture that
grew up in the Dutch settlements in Asia from the meeting of the two'
(Taylor 1983, p. xix). Within that framework, she criticized the 'orderly
hypothesis' of Furnivall's 'plural society' for failing to take account of the
role of women:
 Revisiting Furnivall's 'plural society' 573
Thus it was possible for one and the same person to be now Indone-
sian, now European, now Mestiza, according to circumstances. What
were plural and separate were the laws regulating each group. The sep-
arate legal system was almost elaborate in the second and third
decades of the twentieth century, obscuring actuality by creating the
impression of cultural separation (Taylor 1983, p. 156).

Her point was well taken, but in some respects her analysis seems none
the less to adopt Furnivall's notion of 'plural society', partly by exclud-
ing the Chinese from her frame of reference (Taylor 1983, p. 169) and
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partly because, like Furnivall, she relied almost exclusively upon Dutch
rather than Malay sources. She referred briefly to the peranakan Chinese
as 'another "Mestizo" group' whose formation of an 'intermediate
society' she described as 'a similar process' (Taylor 1983, pp. 132,169).
The possibility that the mestizo cultures of peranakan Chinese and
Eurasians might be more closely intertwined was not entertained.
Although she made excellent use of such Dutch sources as the personal
columns of newspapers and novels to throw light upon late colonial
society in Java, she disregarded the newspapers and literature in collo-
quial Malay. If her gaze had strayed in that direction, she might not have
written that 'Mestizo culture, by its nature, did not produce a written
literature' (Taylor 1983, pp. 157-8). Like Furnivall, she seems to have
assumed that 'the reading habit' could only arise through the beneficent
actions of the colonial state.
Several decades earlier, the concept of 'mestizo culture' in Java had
been developed by the Dutch sociologist Wertheim, who did find a place
for the Chinese in his discussion of that culture, even if he did not draw
attention to the importance of Malay language as its bearer:

In the course of the nineteenth century this [mestizo] culture achieved

its definite form among the European settlers in the colony . . . but it
was not restricted to the Europeans, of pure and mixed ancestry in the
colony. It spread, gradually, to those Indonesians and Indonesian
Chinese, who were also part of the urban upper and middle class
(Wertheim 1959, pp. 290-1).

In a later contribution to the International Encyclopedia of the Social

Sciences, Wertheim explicitly criticized Furnivall's use of the concept of
'plural society' in the Indonesian context. He refuted the denial by Fur-
nivall of social and cultural contacts among the different racial groups by
pointing to a 'creolization process' in the colony, so that 'in many cases
the offspring of the immigrant groups (Europeans and Chinese) even
adopted the native language' (Wertheim 1968, p. 433).
There were, of course, limitations to the integration of the mestizo
society. Government-sponsored segregation by race was a historical fact.
 574 Charles A. Goppel
Wertheim reserved his strongest criticism of Furnivall for his neglect of
'the hierarchical nature of the race relationships' in the colony, where
segregation was 'purposely kept in force by the dominant group'. This
aspect led Wertheim to consider the structure of the colonial society as a
whole in terms of 'caste' rather than 'plural society' (Wertheim 1968, p.
433).7 If the concept of a 'mestizo society' is here proposed in opposition
to Furnivall's concept of 'plural society', it too needs to take account of
the power relations among the different communities.

From mestizo society to plural society?

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Nor should the relationship between the racial groups in the colony be
considered as static. In Wertheim's view, the multiracial mestizo culture
contained the seeds of its own disintegration:

Though Indo-Europeans, Indonesian Chinese and modern urban

Indonesians were all of them equally imbued with the mestizo culture,
they saw themselves as bearers par excellence of European, Chinese
and Indonesian cultural values. Paradoxically, however, the dwindling
cultural differences tended to widen again, insofar as the various
groups were the supporters of divergent ideologies. Thus, communal
strife worked towards still further disintegration (Wertheim 1959, p.
184).

Wertheim's interpretation is shared by van Doom, who posits 'a more

or less integrated Indische society'8 in Indonesia in the nineteenth
century, but argues that it gave way during the first four decades of this
century to a 'historical process of racial and cultural separating out'
(Doom 1983, pp. 6 and 20). This sharpening of the lines between the
population groups, which has already been discussed in a juridical
context, coincided with the growth of national consciousness among
Indonesians, Chinese and Europeans. This process, in turn, was related
to the rapid increase in immigration to the Netherlands Indies by Euro-
peans and Chinese, including significant numbers of women, which nat-
urally led to a more intensive transplantation of lifestyles and languages
from Europe and China and inhibited further assimilation to the Malay-
speaking mestizo society. The opening up of Dutch schools to non-
Europeans, for whom such education had been rare before the
twentieth century, also embodied an element of segregation, in that
Dutch-language primary schools were designated formally by race.9
These developments help to explain the paradox that a sharpening of
racial boundaries occurred precisely at the time at which older mechan-
isms of segregation (the ghetto and pass systems) were being aban-
doned, and when access of all races to Dutch education was being
rapidly expanded.
 Revisiting Furnivall's 'plural society ' 575
If, as has been argued here, Furnivall's concept of 'plural society' was
misleading in its depiction of Java at the turn of the century, can it be
saved by taking into account this process of 'separating out' in the suc-
ceeding decades? Most historians would agree that racial boundaries
sharpened during that period, and it is not proposed here that Furnivall's
perception of a 'plural society' was completely without foundation.
Whatever the value of the concept of 'mestizo society' may be for under-
standing urban society in Java at the turn of the century, it is not sug-
gested that Furnivall would have found it a useful lens for observing Java
in the late 1930s. Too much had changed.
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In 1940 the colonial government appointed a commission (known as

the Visman Commission) to investigate the political aspirations of the
different population groups in the Netherlands Indies. Its findings, pub-
lished in 1942, about the extent of interaction among them could have
been written by Furnivall:

Social intercourse between persons of different race but similar edu-

cation is, in general, slight, according to the unanimous conclusion of
everyone questioned. There is a difference of opinion over the ques-
tion of whether the developments of the last twenty years should be
considered as having brought an improvement or a worsening of con-
ditions ... For the rest, it is acknowledged that the corporate life of
the Indonesian and Chinese populations is segregated by race, pre-
venting further social intercourse (Doom 1983, p. 13, citing Visman
1942, p. 85).

Although this pronouncement may seem to lend authoritative

support to the notion of a 'plural society' in which the different groups
met only in the market place, it was nevertheless an exaggerated depic-
tion of social reality. That it was overdrawn is evident from the fact that,
even at the time when Furnivall published Netherlands India, one in five
marriages contracted by European men in the colony were with an
indigenous or Chinese wife (Fasseur 1992b, p. 223, citing Van Marie
1951-52, p. 322).
The extreme language which Furnivall and the Visman Commission
used to deny the existence or extent of interaction between the differ-
ent population groups has more than academic significance. Such lan-
guage contributed to Indonesian stereotypes of the ethnic Chinese as
socially exclusive and clinging persistently to the culture of their ances-
tral homeland. These images, together with 'Fifth Column' scaremon-
gering during the Cold War, helped to convince many Indonesians that
they had a 'Chinese problem' (Coppel 1983). To point to the existence
of a mestizo society in urban Java at the turn of the century, by contrast,
reminds us of the potentialities for different outcomes in group
relations.
 576 Charles A. Coppel
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the
Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS), Wassenaar, where, as a
1995-1996 Fellow-in-Residence, I wrote the first draft of this article. My
thanks also to Mary Somers Heidhues for her comments on that draft,
and to Martin Bulmer and Robert H. Taylor for additional suggestions
and references. Responsibility for any errors remains with me.

Notes
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1 This was by no means the first time Furnivall compared the colonial administrations
of Burma and Java (Trager 1963, pp. 19ff).
2 A similar formulation appears in his May 1942 lecture to the Royal Central Asian
Society (Furnivall 1942, p. 198). Perhaps Furnivall delineated 'plural society' with ever
greater sharpness after returning to Britain. In a postwar article, he asserted that 'in the
plural society of South-East Asia the racial groups - European, Indian, Chinese and Native
- inherit different traditions; they differ in religious profession, in literature, music, art and
way of life' (Furnivall 1946, p. 124).
3 The 'plural society' of Furnivall, and those who have followed him, should be distin-
guished from other social science concepts of pluralism. The distinctions are usefully dis-
cussed by Nicholls (1974).
4 For example, see the extensive bibliography on 'Pluralism' in Kuper and Smith (1969).
The main exception to the general neglect is the case of Malaysia (Freedman 1960; Ratnam
1961; Vasil 1971).
5 Abeyasekere has a good discussion of the mediating role of women in social and cul-
tural mixing in nineteenth-century Batavia (Abeyasekere 1987, pp. 75-80).
6 These observations appear in the introduction (Moeka damai) which is not paginated.
7 According to Heidhues, Furnivall's plural society model can be 'simplified' to look
like a pyramid consisting of three layers: a thin layer of Europeans at the top, a larger
stratum of Chinese and other immigrant Asians in the middle, and the impoverished masses
of the natives at its wide base. 'Class was synonymous with race' (Heidhues 1974, p. 18).
Her 'simplification' discovers a hierarchy among the races in Furnivall's writing which
others, including Wertheim, have criticized him for neglecting. In the case of Burma, Robert
H. Taylor has attempted to add a class dimension to Furnivall's ethnic pluralist theory
(Taylor 1981).
8 The word Indisch literally meant 'Indian', that is, of the Netherlands Indies, but it was
often used to denote what was culturally distinctive about those of foreign ancestry who
were born there. It was also used in the early twentieth century, before the term 'Indone-
sian' came into vogue, to express the political aspirations for unity of those born in or com-
mitted to the Indies, regardless of their race.
9 In practice, the students actually attending such schools were not, as is commonly
assumed, restricted to the racial group for which the school was named. Both Chinese and
indigenous students were to be found at the European Primary Schools (Europeesche
Lagere Scholen), the Dutch Chinese Schools (Hollandsche Chineesche Scholen), and the
Dutch Native Schools (Hollandsche Inlandsche Scholen) (Somers 1965, p. 55).

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CHARLES A. COPPEL is Associate Professor in the Department of

History, University of Melbourne.
ADDRESS: Department of History, The University of Melbourne, John
Medley Building, 3rd Floor, Parkville, Victoria 3052, Australia.