Beyond Benteng: Indonesian Entrepreneurship in Central Java in the 1950s\u27

Abstract

Abstract: Benteng failed but Indonesian business prevailed â that appears to be the final judgement on the liberation from foreign or colonial entrepreneurship in Sukarno\u27s Indonesia, albeit in grossly simplified wording. This exploration of emerging Indonesian entrepreneurship at the time of the Benteng policy, uses Central Java as a case study and produces five broad observations that may shed some new light on the history of economic decolonization in general and indonesianisasi in particular in Indonesia during the 1950s. First, the indisputable failure of the Benteng policy renders only a partial and even misleading impression of the development of entrepreneurship in Indonesia in the 1950s. Second, there was an unmistakeable new dynamism in the elaboration of Indonesia\u27s corporate network under Sukarno in which both indigenous Indonesian businessmen and Indonesians of Chinese descent participated, on occasion operating in conjunction with one another. Third, the very chronology of establishment of new enterprises reflects the short-run ups and downs in the general business climate in Indonesia in the 1950s. Fourth, there was a shift from Chinese to indigenous Indonesians in establishing new enterprises as the general business climate deteriorated for the former group and improved for the latter one in the course of the 1950s. Fifth, the pattern of combined differentiation in terms of both ethnicity and economic structure reveals that local conditions and traditions played an important role as well in the indonesianisasi of the corporate network. Did Indonesian entrepreneurship flourish because or despite Benteng? It is impossible to give a clear-cut answer to this question because it focuses too strongly on direct causal links. The connection is likely to have been a more indirect one. Benteng was symptomatic or symbolic for an optimism and iinprovement in the general business climate that in turn fostered new Indonesian entrepreneurship. Keywords: Benteng, Entrepreneurship, Central Java-195