Howard W. Dick, Surabaya, City of Work: A Socioeconomic History, 1900-2000. Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 2002. xxvii + 541 pp. $30 (paperback), ISBN: 0-89680-221-3.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Heather Sutherland, Free University of Amsterdam.
This study of Surabaya, by Howard Dick, is a unique contribution to the history of Indonesia, and should be read with pleasure and profit by anyone with a serious interest in a variety of fields: economics, history, urban studies, sociology or politics. Integrated history, uniting several approaches, is notoriously difficult to write. The dramatic tension and clarity of the chronological narrative is continually undermined by the necessary exposition, as specific topics are explained and contextualized. However, if a thematic rather than diachronic approach is chosen, historical events have to be recapitulated to explain the setting of individual subjects. All too often, the result of either approach is unwieldy, without a confident sense of direction. In this case, the author has found an elegant solution, through a well-judged combination of five major thematic chapters, within which a broad chronological structure prevails.
Howard Dick, who is associate professor at the Australian Centre of International Business at the University of Melbourne, is primarily an economic historian. However, his knowledge extends beyond the narrowly economic, encompassing a wide and well-informed interest in social and political history. In this book he wears his expertise lightly. The combination of a confident mastery of his material, tables, maps and illustrations, together with an accessible style, ensure that his book is easy to read, and will impress both students and specialists alike. The first two chapters are essentially introductory. In Chapter One, "Aspects," the reader accompanies Dick into Surabaya, first by sea and then by land. During the journey the author provides a painless introduction to geography, history, the urban landscape and the rhythms of daily and annual life, giving a concrete (in every sense) and human face to the city. "Episodes," the second chapter, is an eighty-page survey of Surabaya's twentieth-century history, focusing on the institutional and political developments that shaped economy and society. This chapter epitomizes the careful selection and judicious use of material from English, Indonesian and Dutch sources, which is typical of the book as a whole.
The next five chapters, some 340 pages, form the core of the book, as each examines one aspect of Surabaya's development. Chapter Three, "Profile," is a detailed analysis of Surabaya's people: their numbers, ethnicity, occupational profile, education and living conditions. Comparisons with Jakarta add depth to Dick's conclusions. "Government" is the theme of the next chapter, almost a hundred pages in length. Here topics from the preceding chapter are reconsidered, but with an emphasis on policy, so housing, markets, education, and public health (including prostitution and venereal disease) are discussed. In each section the situations under the colonial and various post-war Indonesian regimes are compared. In Chapter Five, "Industry," the focus is more narrowly economic, analyzing policy, manufacturing and the informal sector during the main phases in the growth of this most industrial of Indonesia's cities. The historical scope broadens again in Chapter Six, "Land," as the extent and morphology of Surabaya is traced, with sketch maps going back to the seventeenth century, before the author discusses in more detail transport, land rights, squatting and urban planning in Dutch and post-colonial eras. "Trade" is the subject of the last chapter, which places Surabaya in the context of its plantation hinterland as well as depicting its role in inter-island and international commerce.
In the book's relatively brief conclusion of eighteen pages, Dick selects several points for specific discussion. Here also a long-term perspective is central, as he concentrates on the nature of Indonesia's New Order regime (1965-1998), comparing it to the late colonial period. He makes this comparison his point of departure for a consideration of patterns apparent in the interaction between Surabaya's local economy and the global economy. These were, most notably, industrial retardation and a cycle of boom, bubble and bust in the real estate market. Dick also describes the conflicts between state and city-dwellers in the Dutch and post-colonial periods. On page 471 he comments, with regard to the long-term patterns which run through twentieth century Indonesia's economic and political history: "Relations with the global economy are sufficient to generate parallelism; the internal dynamics of Indonesian society have given rise to a repeated cycle of reaction and revolution." Nonetheless, Dick concludes his book on a guardedly optimistic note, in the hope that the new autonomy law in Indonesia will give Surabaya an opportunity to shape a future less subject to Jakarta-generated shocks.
Urban history is not well developed for Indonesia; indeed, if we consider the importance of Asia's cities as a whole we can only conclude that they remain critically understudied. Moreover, analyses of urban society are often problem and policy oriented, with a specific issue being examined in isolation, and usually without a historical perspective. Howard Dick's study of Surabaya is an example of what can be done. With its explicit emphasis on long-term trends and the socio-political context, it is a readable book for the general student of Indonesia or urban history. At the same time the richness of the data presented, and the sophistication of his judgment, make it a rewarding source for the specialist.
Heather Sutherland is Professor of Non-Western History at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her current research examines how incorporation into long-distance trade and changing state structures shaped the Indonesian port city of Makassar, East Indonesia, over a period of three hundred years. In 2003 she will publish, together with Gerrit Knaap, the book Monsoon Traders: Trade, Commodities and Captains in Eighteenth-Century Makassar.
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