The Poor Legacy of Sumatra
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CHAPTER IX The poor legacy of Sumatra The Capuchin friar Anthonius Brevoort opens his 1993 dissertation on the first decade of the Capuchin mission in Sumatra (1911-1923) with a chapter on the previous Catholic presence in Sumatra. The disputed Christian community of Fansur or Baros is mentioned as recorded by Saleh al-Armini around 1150-1171. Franciscans in Aceh who were the first martyrs around 1642 are mentioned, as well as the mission in Bengkulu in the early 1700s, when some 300 Catholics were counted. But after that time, only decline is recorded for the history of Catholicism in Sumatra. The nineteenth century did not bring much growth either. An earlier colleague of Brevoort, the Capuchin priest Gentilis Aster, thus started his history of the mission with the sad title De magere boedel, the poor legacy. ‘Catholics were late, had no proper strategy, and did not concentrate in their work on the vast island of Sumatra’ (Brevoort 1993, Aster 1961).1 The cultural, economic, and religious pattern of Sumatra around 1900 was much more diverse than that of any of the other large islands, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and perhaps even Papua. The diversity was not only evident among the inland regions, the people living in the mountains of the Bukit Barisan, and the inland tribes of Batak, Gayo, Minangkabau, Jambi, Lampung. There were and still are great differences among the coastal re- gions as well: the Malay sultanates of the east coast, Java-oriented Palembang, the proud and independent Aceh, just to mention a few of the important cultures. Starting in the 1860s large numbers of migrants arrived from China on the islands of Bangka, Belitung, and the Riau archipelago. These migrant workers dominated tin mining, rubber and pepper plantations, and much of the non-agricultural smallholder economy. The islands of Nias, Mentawai, Siberut, and others also preserved their own cultures. Many of the Sumatran coastal cultures had been Muslim for several centuries. The most fervent of these were the Acehnese, as well as smaller coastal settlements like Bengkulu and those on the east coast like Medan, Langkat, and Siak. There were also strong Muslim traditions in the mountainous inland regions of Minangkabau, Gayo, Palembang, and Lampung. 1 Aster 1959 concentrates on the Batak mission while the 1961 book discusses other aspects of the Sumatra mission. 326 Catholics in Indonesia 1808-1942 PENANG Kota Raja Medan Pematang Siantar Parapat Kuala Lumpur Lake Toba Balige Sibolga NIAS Tarutung Siabu SINGAPURA Gunung Sitoli Lagundi Natal Pekanbaru RIAU Singkawang Bukittingi Padang Panjang Sawah Lunto KALIMANTAN Padang Pontianak BANGKA MENTAWAI Jambi Sungaiselan Palembang Manggar Bengkulu Kotabumi BELITUNG Metro SUMATRA Tanjungsakti Tanjungkarang Batavia Cirebon Bandung Semarang JAVA Yogyakarta Sumatra Batak identity and the rise of Protestantism in the Batak lands Around 1900 very few regions were open to Christian mission. The Protestant mission had been very successful among the Bataks. The German mission of the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft had to leave South Kalimantan in 1859 for some time due to the large uprising in Banjarmasin and surrounding districts. Their first missionaries arrived in 1861 in Sipirok. In 1864 Ludwig Ingwer Nommensen, ‘the apostle of the Batak lands’, arrived in the valley of Silindung and started a successful mission from there, which finally created a strong Batak church. The relation between being Batak and being a Protestant Christian was never as strong as in Minahasa, but among the many Indonesian peoples, Bataks are second only to Minahasans in the nurturing of their Protestantism. After the start of mission work among the Toba and Angkola Bataks by German missionaries, Dutch Protestant missionaries started work .