Military Responses to and Forms of Knowledge About Natural Disaster in Colonial Indonesia, 1865–1930

Abstract:This is the first study to chart changes in military responses to natural disaster in colonial Indonesia (the Netherlands East Indies). It reveals that, up until the early twentieth century, colonial forces conducting wars of conquest across the archipelago were caught in disasters as they happened, and their responses were localized and reactive. Around 1918, colonial policy shifted toward a more coordinated, interventionist role for the military that attended to the humanitarian needs of Indonesian disaster victims. The groundwork for an integrated, first-responder role for the military in natural disasters was laid during the 1920s, with the establishment of an air force with capabilities in aerial reconnaissance and photography. These new technologies fostered a militarization of colonial knowledge about natural disasters that reached its fullest expression during the Merapi eruption of 1930 and, notably, exceeded operational purposes by shaping colonial science, as well as disaster- and geo-tourism.