Ground Work

This chapter examines the longue durée reproduction of the material agrarian structure and the violently and radically changing political regimes. It operates at two levels. First, on the large scale of time and space, the chapter shows how the political contexts over time have supported and undermined various land claims at different junctures — from the first Dutch land acquisition in the 1860s in North Sumatra through Japanese occupation, social revolution, “guided democracy,” the “New Order,” and reformasi. It also demonstrates how the patterns of claims and counterclaims, acquisitions and evictions, occupations and retreats, have emerged. Second, the chapter provides a detailed analysis of a single, emblematic, enduring conflict. The local case shows how legalization, in connection with the other nine-tenths of the law, allowed plantation agriculture to hold off smallholder challenges for decades. Some claims in this land struggle challenged the status quo, but proved to be ephemeral and short-lived. Other claims, however, reproduced effectively. They hardened and institutionalized, propped up by statutory law, regulation, force, and other practices.