In the Books: Networks of Legal Knowledge in 18th-Century Colonial Indonesia

In mixed courts in colonial Indonesia, until the latter part of the nineteenth century, suspects were tried, and conflicts settled through reference to “local laws and customs.” One of the legal sources for these local laws, a source that was rarely applied in the practice of the court but lived on in the genealogy of legal knowledge, was a range of law collections compiled in the mid-eighteenth century from across the Dutch Empire. These collections, or compendia, were often named after the European officials who compiled them or the location where they had been noted down. When they appear in the historiography of empire and law, these compendia are seen as isolated cases, specific for the location where they originated from, even though, for example, one compendium compiled in the Coromandel coast in India appeared later in South Sulawesi. This paper argues that the compendia should be seen as part of an interconnected network of legal knowledge production. However, far from the result of a systematic colonial project, these documents emerged through an eclectic set of processes, including, translations of existing (Islamic) texts, the work of local knowledge holders, and/or the result of verbal interactions between Dutch and local prominent figures. Importantly, the compendia emphasize the role of gendered familial networks, improvisation, and contingency in this legal encounter central to shaping ideas about gender and family law in colonial Indonesia.