Not Always Be “Dari Tmur Ke Barat”: Basalla’s Model and Agricultural Knowledge In The Dutch East Indies (1817-1942)

Abstract

This article investigates how agricultural knowledge was produced and circulated in the Dutch East Indies (1817-1942). All of the writing process, from collecting data to analyzing them, are done through historical method. This study wants to prove that the Basalla’s Model, which states that modern knowledge began in the West and then was diffused into other regions (colonies) in one-way method whose Non-Europeans were merely considered passive recepients, proved to be partly correct. It argues that, in the beginning, knowledge was provided only by the European scientists; its circulation was mostly an indirect top-down process. A shift eventually occurred during the Ethical Policy period, which was promoted as “decent colonialism.” Although the policy included education as one of its primary purposes, the government did not have any plan for scaling up the natives’ intellectual role as a knowledge maker. This article also demonstrates that agricultural knowledge was diffused through demonstration fields, schools of agriculture, through a newly established Department of Agriculture, and official publications of the Agricultural Information Service. It can be seen clearly that the natives remained passive participants in the most of these processes.