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Regenten Capitalists, their Rise, Decline and Reorientation in Colonial and Independent Indonesia, 1900-1962
| In their classic study of British Imperialism Cain & Hopkins (1993a, 1993b) showed that the gentlemanly capitalists oriented on the colonies were largely concentrated in London and the home countries, that many were of noble descent and were not only integrated in the national economy but in political life as well. This paper purports to apply Cain & Hopkins’ arguments to the position of Dutch businessmen, Regenten capitalists, who were active in (colonial) Indonesia.
During the first forty years of the twentieth century the Indonesian archipelago was a crucial area for economic activities and investments by Dutch businessmen. An indicator is the steadily rise in the number of Dutch joint-stock companies involved in economic activities in colonial Indonesia, like trade and transport, agriculture, mining and the exploitation of oil fields. Their head offices were, however, often located in the Netherlands, especially in Amsterdam and The Hague. Many directors and bankers did not restrict their economic activities to colonial Indonesia. In 1942 Japanese occupation made an abrupt end to Dutch domination. After Indonesia became independent many Dutch corporations, however, remained active in Indonesia between 1945 and 1962.
A systematic way of looking at the involvement and cohesion of business elites is by analysing the networks of interlocking directorates as created by people with multiple seats in several Boards of Directors. These networks suggest the existence of an integrated business elite and this paper will use the concept of multiple directorships to define the top members of the Dutch colonial business elite between 1902 and 1962. The analysis of the business elite is based on the combination and re-analysis of several available datasets collected by the author himself or other scholars. In 1950s the network of corporation oriented to Indonesia started to disintegrate slowly, but on the whole it remained remarkably stable over a long period of time.
The patrician and noble families, who dominated both the national and the colonial business elite at the turn of the twentieth century, also wielded considerable political and social influence, a phenomenon fully in line with the arguments by Cain & Hopkins. Like British gentlemanly capitalist, however, Dutch regenten capitalists increasingly opened their ranks to successful members of the middle classes.
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