Hari-besar — Malay for “great day” — was the term for the twice-monthly payday of the colonial planters’ world of Sumatra’s East Coast, followed by a free day, on which great feasts were held at Hotel de Boer in Medan in the olden times. In Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. the hari-besar is the book’s marker of the planterswereld of Sumatra’s East Coast — the colonial society into which the Ambonese soldier of the K.N.I.L. was inserted when he travelled through Medan.
The payday and the feast
“Op de hari-besar, de tweemaal per maand voorkomende betaaldag, welke dan werd gevolgd door een vrije dag, werden daar in de oude tijd grote feesten gehouden.” The hari-besar — the twice-monthly payday, followed by a free day — was the occasion of great feasts at Hotel de Boer in Medan in the olden times. The hari-besar was therefore both an economic event (the payday of the planters’ world) and a social event (the great feasts that followed).
The planterswereld
The hari-besar is the book’s marker of the planterswereld — the planters’ world — of Sumatra’s East Coast. The planterswereld was the colonial society of the tobacco and rubber planters of Sumatra’s East Coast, with its capital at Medan and its social centre at Hotel de Boer. The hari-besar was the rhythm of that society: the twice-monthly payday that brought the planters to Medan and to Hotel de Boer.
The Hotel de Boer
The hari-besar feasts at Hotel de Boer are the book’s set-piece of the planterswereld’s social life. The hotel — “het eerste hotel van Medan, gelegen op de Noord-West hoek van de Esplanade” — was the social centre of the colonial society of Sumatra’s East Coast; the hari-besar feasts were the great social events of that society. The Ambonese soldier of the K.N.I.L. who travelled through Medan — like the kapitein of the 1e Divisie Marechaussee uit Blang Kedjeren of the opening anecdote — was inserted into this society when he visited the hotel.
Significance
The hari-besar is significant in Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. as the book’s marker of the planterswereld of Sumatra’s East Coast. The book’s argument is that the hari-besar — the twice-monthly payday of the planters’ world — was the rhythm of the colonial society into which the Ambonese soldier of the K.N.I.L. was inserted when he travelled through Medan. The hari-besar is therefore the book’s small marker of the planterswereld as the social context of the colonial army’s Ambonese soldier.
See Also
- Hotel de Boer
- Medan
- Sumatra’s Oostkust
- Esplanade (Medan)
- 1e Divisie Marechaussee uit Blang Kedjeren
- split
- K.N.I.L.
Source
Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L., by G. W. T. Dames, Maj. Inf. K.N.I.L. b.d. (‘s-Gravenhage: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1954), prologue “Bij ons…”