An Archaeology of Land Tenure in Colonial Minangkabau

This article investigates juridical engagement with land tenure in Minangkabau (West Sumatra) in the late colonial period. I argue that the scholarly encounter with adat (customary) land tenure was pivotal for the establishment of a new colonial legal science that severely circumscribed the enunciative possibilities of Minangkabau adat. While much previous research has concentrated on the doctrinal aspects of jural colonisation in Indonesia or whether colonial scholars adequately maintained the flexibility of ‘living adat law’, I argue that we should turn towards an investigation of how legitimate legal facts about adat land were constructed by colonial scholars and local elites in the first place. In tandem, these actors developed a novel legal science that sought to transform adat land tenure into a positive concept that could be observed, measured, and validated, characteristics that still hold true in contemporary Indonesian politics and legal culture. This article deploys a Foucauldian archaeology to excavate how novel discursive structures developed by the so-called Leiden School and manifested in a veritable explosion of publications seeking an exacte rechtswetenschap (precise legal science) determined the ways adat land tenure could be spoken and written about.