INTRODUCTION

The meaning attached to the city is placed centrally in the works of Castells. According to him, cities are liable to change because all sorts of parties are permanently struggling over the meaning the city should have. He defines “urban meaning” as “the structural performance assigned as a goal to cities in general (and to a particular city in the inter-urban division of labor) by the conflictive process between historical actors in a given society”. This article about the origin and development of the Indonesian municipality deals precisely with the meaning of urban attached to the Indonesian town by various categories of people at different levels over the years. This concerns a long-term process in which a lot of interests and goals have been at stake, such as financial cuts, administrative decentralization, the promotion of local interests, nation-building, security, repression, and the promotion of self-interests.

The Law of Decentralization was passed on 23 July 1903. It consisted of three articles, added to the governmental regulations of the Netherlands Indies, which empowered the establishment of local authorities. From 1905 onwards, urban municipalities (gemeenten) were created with Batavia, Meester Cornelis, and Buitenzorg taking the lead, followed soon by many others. Until then, the Netherlands Indies government had been dominated by the strongly centralized power of the governor-general. After the passing of the law, local interests could be represented at the local level.

The origin of this law could be characterized as a long Way of the Cross ending up with a jump into freedom. For more than half a century, local authority had been a topic of more or less intense contention between various persons, groups, and governmental bodies in which the discretion of the citizenry was at stake. It led to heated debate in parliament and other places as well as in the press, where not only were the pros and cons of the arguments fully explored, but also the modalities local authority might take.