8 - Mercantilism and the evolution of ‘traditional’ society

Summary

The literature on Minangkabau is, with respect to the question of the development of a commercial peasant economy, very similar to the writings of many modernisation theorists. The contemporary situation is usually envisaged as the result of the disintegration of a traditional society subject to the influence in this century of a Western market economy. Gough, in a survey of the impact of Western contact on ‘traditional’ matrilineal societies including Minangkabau, argues that ‘economic changes brought about by contact with Western industrial nations’ result in the disintegration of matrilineal groups: ‘In their place, the elementary family emerges as the key kinship group…’ (in Schneider and Gough, 1962, p. 631). Schrieke (1955), Josselin de Jong (1957) and Maretin (1961) all take up a similar position, i.e. that the commercial pressures of Western contact have served to dissolve traditional matrilineal bonds, led to the emergence of the nuclear family and promoted the development of an indigenous market economy. These commercial pressures were, it is maintained, experienced in Minangkabau at the beginning of this century, ‘the time of radical changes in the traditional way of life’ (Maretin, 1961, p. 173).

Implied in this approach is not only an inaccurate conception of pre-twentieth-century Minangkabau history, but also a misleading continuist view of social change and the development of capitalism. Western contact, primarily through the impact of the market, leads to a dissolution of tribal society producing a commercialised peasantry, a development which is in itself only a transitional step in the development of capitalism.