BARISAN TANI INDONESIA (BTI, Indonesian Peasants’ Front).

BARISAN TANI INDONESIA (BTI, Indonesian Peasants’ Front).

Founded in November 1945 and affiliated soon after with the Partai Ko- munis Indonesia (PKI), the BTI aimed initially at improving conditions on state-owned lands and in forest areas. From the mid-1950s, however, it began to work more widely in rural areas, organizing peasants and us- ing its party contacts to remedy injustices. Despite a shortage of cadres, it reached a claimed membership of 16 million by 1965. It was the main agent by which the PKI promoted land reform and conducted direct ac- tion (aksi sepihak) in the villages, and it aroused great hostility among landowners. It was banned in 1966. [0994, 0997]

BARUS. Port on the west coast of Sumatra, north of Sibolga, and probably the entry place for Indian influences penetrating the Batak interior. The hinterland of Barus was an important source of camphor and benzoin, and the port was possibly the one known as “P’o-lu” in Chinese records of the seventh to eighth centuries. It was certainly the “Fansur” mentioned as an important source of camphor in Arabic records of the ninth century onward. By the early 16th century when it appears in the Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires, it was a rich and busy port. Apparently the Minangkabau rulers exerted influence over the region, but Acehnese territorial influence spread there and by the late 16th century Aceh controlled the trade of Barus along with that of other west Sumatran ports. [0793]

BATAKS. The Batak can be regarded as a single people incorporating sev- eral ethnic and linguistic subgroups. The largest of these, the Toba Batak, inhabit mountain valleys near Lake Toba. To their north were the Pakpak (Dairi), Karo, and Simalungun, and to their south the Angkola and

BATAM • 49 Mandailing—all of whom speak Batak dialects, some mutually unintel-

ligible. The Bataks were traditionally organized in villages (huta), the patrilineal kinship system was dominant, and all knew the marga or ex- ogamous patrilineal clan. A line of priest kings called Sisingamangaraja played a unifying spiritual role. Ancestor worship was at the center of traditional religion, though there was some recognition of a creator god, Mulajadi na Bolon. Contacts with the outside world were limited at first to trade in benzoin and camphor through Barus on the west coast; Batak legend also acknowledged some allegiance to Aceh, Minangk- abau, and Ayudhya (Siam). In general, however, the Batak uplands were isolated until the mid-19th century when Protestant missionaries, the Dutch government, and the lowland plantation agriculture encroached simultaneously.

Dutch rule was gradually established in the period up to 1907, when Dutch troops shot Sisingamangaraja XII. Most Karo and Simalungun were administratively incorporated into the East Coast Residency, while the others were included in Tapanuli. About half the Toba became Chris- tians, as did numbers of Simalungun and other North Tapanuli Bataks. The southern Angkola and Mandailing are largely Muslim, having been converted by the Paderi (see MINANGKABAU) in the 1820s. Many Batak, however, remained animist. (The 1930 census recorded 345,408 Muslims, 299,000 Christians, and 512,327 “pagans” among the Batak.) Under Dutch rule the position of traditional leaders steadily weakened, though the colonial authorities made some attempt to bolster them by forming a Tapanuli Council in 1938.

Before 1940 members of ruling lineages held most positions of pres- tige, but peasants largely repudiated their legitimacy during the Revolu- tion, when there was widespread violence among Batak of both Tapan- uli and East Sumatra. In its aftermath there were massive migrations, particularly of Toba, to the former plantation lands of East Sumatra. See DECENTRALIZATION. [0282, 0660, 0793, 0804, 0901, 1260, 1262]

BATAM. Island in the Riau archipelago opposite Singapore. In 1970 it be- came a base of oil and gas operations in Indonesian waters and from 1971 was developed under Pertamina as a port to compete with Singapore. The project was suspended in 1976 after Pertamina’s bankruptcy but was re- vived by Technology Minister B. J. Habibie to play a more complementary role with Singapore. In 1974 Suharto had first proposed the possibility of Batam becoming a free trade zone, and in the late 1980s Singapore sug- gested the possibility of it forming part of a “triangle of growth” with Johor

50 • BATAVIA and Singapore within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations

(ASEAN). In 1989 Singapore, together with the Johor government and the Indonesian businessman Liem Sioe Liong, began to invest directly in an in- dustrial estate on the island. Habibie was pivotal in promoting the island’s development. In the 1990s Singapore investment in the island grew, and by 1995 its value was US$649 million, a little under 50 percent of approved foreign investment. See also GROWTH TRIANGLES. [0362, 0366, 0369]

BATAVIA. Capital city of the Netherlands Indies, site of a Dutch East In- dies Company (VOC) post from 1610, and founded in 1619 by J. P. Coen as regional headquarters for the VOC, on the site of the Banten

port of Jayakarta. It was first constructed as a Dutch city, complete with canals and walls to resist attack from Mataram, and much of the sur- rounding countryside was cleared of its inhabitants to create a kind of cordon sanitaire around the city. Batavia became a major center of set- tlement by Chinese, who lived within the city under their own laws. Ten- sion between the Dutch and the Chinese led to a massacre of Chinese in 1740. The social composition of the city was also influenced by a large slave community, much of it Balinese in origin (see SLAVERY), who formed the basis for a constantly evolving mestizo culture. By the 19th century, observers identified the Betawi as a distinct ethnic group. (See also PARTICULIERE LANDERIJEN.)

Chronic health problems as a result of waterborne diseases, especially malaria, led the colonial authorities in 1810 to shift the center of ad- ministration to Weltevreden (the area around the Koningsplein, the pres- ent Medan Merdeka). Further government offices shifted to Bogor and Bandung. A modern harbor was completed at Tanjung Priok in 1886. In 1905, as part of more general administrative reforms, the city was made

a gemeente (municipality) with limited autonomy (see DECENTRAL- IZATION). The city’s population in the 1930 census was 435,000. In 1942, Batavia was occupied by Japanese forces, and its name was changed the following year to Jakarta. See also HEALTH. [0491, 0584, 0585, 0609]