In 1909, Russian botanist Vladimir Mitrofanovich Arnoldi visited the Buitenzorg Botanical Gardens. Though he was primarily concerned with the contributions of the gardens to botanical knowledge and rarely commented directly on politics, we can see in his account the footprint of the Dutch colonial project.¹ In his praise of the Dutch garden Director, Melchor Trueb, his dealings with the Indonesian staff, and his awe at the aesthetic force of gardens layout, we can observe how Dutch colonial oppression was articulated within the space of the Buitenzorg Botanical Gardens.

Apparent in Arnoldi’s notes is his occupation as a scientist and his resultant veneration of the garden’s organisation which privileged scientific knowledge. As he describes it, the gardens are run by “European chiefs”, that is Dutch botanists, whose orders are followed by “a large staff of small Malay employees”.²  During the early decades of the twentieth century, colonial officials began to pivot the justification of Dutch colonialism in the direction of scientific merit. By creating a space in the Buitenzorg Botanical Gardens which was dominated by scientists pursuing pure science, unpolluted by economic motives, the Dutch colonial project could be seen to have merit and value for the wider world.³ However, the subordination of native people to the whims of the Dutch showcased here holds vestiges of the earlier “civilizing mission”, which intended to Europeanise, and thus modernise, native Asian cultures. Arnoldi himself echoes this kind of sentiment, hoping that in a decade “yesterday’s cannibals and savages [will pass] into a semi-cultural state”.⁴ Here, the enforcement of Dutch control over native people for the research and cultivation of their own native flora is epitome of the “civilizing mission”. Though Arnoldi sees this as the idyllic prioritisation of scientific knowledge, it is in reality the prioritisation of European knowledge.

This oppression is further revealed by Arnoldi’s comments on staff salaries. According to his notes, most ordinary native workers receive between eight and ten guilders a month, while even the most experienced of them, “a very intelligent person who knows not only native, but also the Latin names of plants” , earned sixty guilders a month. In comparison, the lowest wages for European workers is quoted as two hundred guilders monthly.⁵ Though this is presented with some indignation by Arnoldi, he falls victim to minimising the contribution of native people himself, as he marvels at the transformative impact Professor Treub oversaw during his directorship, stating that the improvement of the gardens into one of the finest Botanical centres of the world was wholly due to “the work of his hands, his energy”.⁶ Evidently the work of native people in the running and improvement of the gardens was not recognised in any meaningful way by Arnoldi or the management. As a result they are subordinated in a fashion consistent across the Dutch East Indies, such as in the countless rubber plantations spawned from the gardens at Buitenzorg⁷, or in the cities of colonial Indonesia with their strict racial zoning.⁸

Of the garden itself, Arnoldi notes its structured, monumentality. He describes an alley of Canarium trees,  noting how their “large spreading crowns closely adjoin each other with their branches, forming an almost closed canopy”.⁹ It is a striking visual image and a feat of landscape design, allowing us to see the control the Dutch exerted over nature. This reflects the role of nature in the expression of Dutch power in town  planning, as noted by  Colombijn and Cote, who emphasise the importance of ordered nature as a means to engender order in native populations.¹⁰ Savitsky also notes the resemblance of the trees’ description to the description of the governor general’s palace, which was adjoined to the gardens. It is described by Arnoldi as “an elegant white building with a slender colonnade”.¹¹  Thus colonial, neo-classical style architecture can be seen to have been forced upon Indonesian nature, echoing and amplifying the prestige of the colonial government. The proximity of the palace to the gardens, essentially being intertwined,  only strengthens this connection. In this way, the physical design of the garden rearticulated the supremacy of the Dutch Empire.

The snapshot of the Buitenzorg Botanical Gardens in 1909 provided by Professor Arnoldi is a useful one in examining how colonial power was expressed within the bounds of the gardens. Evidently, the Dutch “civilizing mission” was built into the very fabric of the gardens, from its physical layout to its employment and organisational structures. The Buitenzorg Botanical Gardens can therefore be seen to be a physical representation of the the Dutch subjugation of native peoples, their cultures, and natural resources.

1. E. E. Savitsky, “Botanical Gardens as Colonial Institutions”, Novaya i Novejshaya Istoriya 63:6 (2019), p. 55. [↩]
2. Ibid, p. 56. [↩]
3. Andrew Goss, “Decent Colonialism? Pure Science and Colonial Ideology in the Netherlands East Indies”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 40:1 (2009). [↩]
4. E. E. Savitsky, “Botanical Gardens as Colonial Institutions”, Novaya i Novejshaya Istoriya 63:6 (2019), p. 50. [↩]
5. Ibid, p. 53. [↩]
6. Ibid, p. 55. [↩]
7. P. T. Bauer, The Rubber Industry (London, 1948) [↩]
8. E. E. Savitsky, “Botanical Gardens as Colonial Institutions”, Novaya i Novejshaya Istoriya 63:6 (2019), p. 56. [↩]
9. Ibid, p. 57. [↩]
10. Freek Colombijn and Joost Cote, ‘Modernization of the Indonesian City, 1920-1960’ in Cars, Conduits, and Kampongs, eds. Freek Colombijn and Joost Cote (Boston, 2015), p. 3. [↩]
11. E. E. Savitsky, “Botanical Gardens as Colonial Institutions”, Novaya i Novejshaya Istoriya 63:6 (2019), p. 57. [↩]