Public Transport Drivers in Netherlands East Indies

Amko (small taxi) in Java in 1930s

Since the streets in the East Indies was built as a means of mobility for the colonial exploitation, since it also the contiguity of modern civilization began reaching into areas in the Indian archipelago. Java can be said to be the first point of contact and friction rate for this modernity. Ranging from education to modern technology, community life descend the Indies at the time so no wonder that the Dutch colonial government compensate it by building infrastructure to fasten the modernity.

The entry of a modern car as a means of transportation to the Indies followed by the construction of smooth roads which used the asphalt hardening technology, that can be traversed by small and large cars. Rudolf Mrazek book entitled "Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in Colony", explain all of this. How the streets of Indies has been transformed into an 'exhibition' by creating a vivid spectacle of class difference visible to the eyes, starting from walking community, riding a bike, wagon ride, dolar, delman (traditional vehicles), trams and even private cars filled the streets. Not only that, the car has created new jobs for the people of the East Indies, especially as a driver.

Car driver, not much different from that one skilled charioteer driving a means of transportation. The driver of the car was in the colonial period is divided into two: a personal driver and car drivers of public transport.

Personal driver usually works for European gentlemen or nobles who own a car (they are part of the domestic workers), while public transport driver is a driver that runs the rented car and usually they work to the skipper or owner of the rented car. Rudolf Mrazek once again illustrates how the image of taxi drivers in a photograph showing a modern car, the driver of Indonesia, using the cap since the 1930s to be a marker for the radical nationalists. They also have a union, especially in Yogyakarta, with the name of PCM (Persatoean Chauffeur Mataram) which was established around 1931's. Indeed, in the early 20th century professional driver is a great profession with a high fee and almost all societies such as the Dutch, Chinese and Indonesian preferred to be a driver, but over the time only the Indonesian people who remains as a driver, while the Dutch and the Chinese have left this profession.

So, modernity re-opens a new profession shaped by the machines to create a professional driver to run the car. 

Taxi driver in 1930s

Taxi in Surabaya in 1936

Source :

Tropenmuseum collection

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