Taman penghiburan: entertainment and the Riau elite in the late 19th century
Timothy P. Barnard’s 1994 article examines the Rusydiah Club, a literary and cultural organization based on Pulau Penyengat in the Riau-Lingga archipelago, through the lens of a single surviving pamphlet—Taman Penghiburan (“The Garden of Leisure”)—produced for an Aidil Fitri celebration in 1896. The article argues that the club’s members, descendants of Bugis mercenaries who had shifted their political legitimacy from military to religious grounds, displayed a pragmatic openness to Western cultural influences that contrasted sharply with the virulently anti-European posture of their intellectual forebear Raja Ali Haji.
Summary
Barnard’s central historical problem is understanding the attitudes of the Riau elite toward Western influence during a period of accelerating Dutch consolidation of power in the archipelago. Previous scholarship, particularly the work of W.R. Roff and Barbara Watson Andaya, had traced the post-club activities of Rusydiah members in early Malay nationalism, but little attention had been paid to their orientations toward the West during the organization’s own existence. The primary source—Taman Penghiburan, a ten-page pamphlet in Jawi script announcing an Aidil Fitri gathering—serves as the evidentiary anchor because it is the only known document that lists all club members, their hierarchical positions, and the specific activities planned for the celebration (pp. 17–18, 26).
The article situates this document within the broader political evolution of the Bugis community in Riau. After losing their military justification for rule following the death of Raja Haji Fisabilillah in 1783/4, the Bugis elite on Penyengat reconstituted their authority around Islamic piety and literary production, a transformation epitomized by Raja Ali Haji’s works on governance and Malay language. This religious legitimation, however, also produced a community that the Dutch Resident characterized as virulently anti-Western, a posture reinforced by Dutch restrictions on the hajj pilgrimage and the presence of a colonial Resident in Tanjung Pinang since 1818 (pp. 19–25). Barnard argues that by the 1890s, the relaxation of these restrictions under Snouck Hurgronje’s new Dutch Islamic policy created conditions for a significant shift in elite attitudes.
The most revealing evidence for this shift is the list of games and activities in Taman Penghiburan itself. The fourteen events—ranging from sack races and three-legged races to “blind horse and deaf jockey” and a Malay version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey—bear no resemblance to traditional Malay holiday entertainments such as cock-fighting or communal dancing, and instead reflect Western-origin recreational forms (pp. 33–34). Barnard reads this not as cultural capitulation but as a pragmatic accommodation: the Penyengat elite were willing to adopt Western cultural forms so long as they did not threaten their continued pre-eminence in the region. This interpretation is reinforced by the companion document Pohon Perhimpunan, a 1896 travel diary in which Raja Ali Kelana records a respectful working relationship with a Dutch Controleur during an inspection of plantations in the Natuna archipelago (pp. 31–32).
Key Findings
- The Mathba’at Al Riauwiyah printing press was established on Penyengat in 1895 and operated until 1905, when Dutch pressure forced its transfer to Singapore, where it became the Al Ahmadiyah press (pp. 26, 40 n. 36).
- The 1818 treaty between the Riau-Lingga rulers and the Dutch granted the latter veto power over the selection of a new sultan, the right to bring warships into the kingdom, and the establishment of a Resident in Tanjung Pinang (p. 21).
- The 1896 Aidil Fitri celebration listed fourteen specific games, including a running race while lighting a cigarette, a sack race, a three-legged race, “blind horse and deaf jockey” (kuda buta sais bisu), and a Malay adaptation of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey (p. 33, Table 2).
- Southeast Asian hajj pilgrims rose from approximately 2,000 per year in the mid-1800s to over 5,000 by 1890, a trend facilitated by steamship travel and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 (p. 21, n. 23).
- Dutch restrictions on the hajj pilgrimage—including financial solvency tests and post-pilgrimage examinations—were not fully lifted until 1905 (p. 24, n. 36).
- Raja Ali Kelana’s Pohon Perhimpunan records a trip to Pulau Tujuh from 19 February to 4 March 1896, accompanied by Dutch Controleur H.J.E.F. Schwartz, who described him as a “man of energy and clear vision” (pp. 31–32).
Conclusion
Barnard’s definitive historical takeaway is that the binary framing of Malay rulers as either pro- or anti-Western—exemplified by the common contrast between Sultan Abu Bakar of Johor and Baginda Omar of Trengganu—obscures the far more complex and pragmatic negotiations actually undertaken by colonial-era elites. The Rusydiah Club represents a community that had internalized Western cultural forms on its own Malay-Muslim terms, accepting them in entertainment, education, and technology while resolutely preserving its indigenous political role. The organization’s ultimate goal was not modernization for its own sake but the preservation of some form of local autonomy within an increasingly constrained colonial framework (pp. 35–36).
Context
- The primary source document (Taman Penghiburan) is held in Leiden and was transliterated from Jawi script by U.U. Hamidy; supplementary evidence draws on the Pohon Perhimpunan diary (Pekanbaru: Bumi Pustaka, 1983) and Dutch colonial correspondence in the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague (p. 32, n. 55).
- The article fills a historiographical gap between Roff’s and Andaya’s studies of post-club nationalist activities and the earlier work of Muchtar Lutfi (1976) on the organization’s internal structure, by providing the first sustained analysis of the club’s cultural attitudes during its operational period (pp. 17, 36).