The 1950-1957s period marked Indonesia’s first democratic period. The dust of the National Revolution had, however, far from settled. Subversive groups, many with a criminal outlook, roamed Java’s and Sumatra’s countryside continuing the revolution. 

Peter Keppy's study of vigilantism and its transformation in Central Java illustrates that a paradoxical situation evolved. While attempting to create a just and democratic society, to consolidate the state and restore security, the state relied on forms of popular justice with roots in the colonial period. Significantly, building on existing vigilante practices a civil-military coalition introduced a postcolonial novelty: a volunteer civil militia system to fight petty criminals and rebels. 

The state subcontracting violence to civilians marked a process of ‘vigilantics’, and the militarization of society, raising fundamental questions about what the rule of law and democracy meant in Indonesia’s first democratic era. 

Speaker

Peter Keppy is a researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam, and endowed professor of history of mass violence and popular culture at Radboud University, Nijmegen. His research on vigilantism was part of a NWO funded collaborative project Indonesia in transition 1943-1958 (2017-2021) a joint initiative of KITLV, NIOD, Leiden University, and Universitas Gadjah Mada. 

Discussant

T.b.a.

Format, date, time & venue

This seminar is a hybrid event and will be held in the conference room of KITLV, Herta Mohr building, room 1.30, Witte Singel 27 A, Leiden and online via Zoom, on Tuesday 20 October from 15.00–16.30 PM (CET).  

Image

A civil militia in West Java. Siasat, 26 July 1953.

Flyer

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