Cross-colonial cooperation in nineteenth-century Java: examining the Sepoy conspiracy of 1815 in a world history context

Nathan Sowry

During the brief British occupation of the Indonesian island of Java (1811-1816), Bengali Sepoys under the command of the British East India Company allied themselves with Javanese aristocrats and formulated a plot to murder all of the British, Dutch, and Chinese residents throughout the island. The build-up of resentment over centuries of harsh imperial policies and a concomitant European ideology of superiority finally culminated in anti-colonial resistance. However, before the Javanese and Bengalis could put their plan into action, word was leaked to a British officer, and the plot unraveled. The Sepoy leaders of the planned overthrow were summarily executed or exiled, as were a few high-ranking Javanese nobles. Ultimately, British officials regarded this joint colonial resistance by the two different ethnic/religious groups as nothing more than a "conspiracy" and a failed attempt at rebellion. Though the overthrow of the British never materialized, the actions of the Bengali Sepoys and Javanese aristocrats were harbingers of what would later emerge in protest movements against colonial rule, particularly in the Java War of 1825-1830 and in the Indian Sepoy Rebellion of 1857-1859. Moreover, both subjugated groups, the Javanese and the Bengalis, managed to eschew ethnic and religious differences in their common hatred of the British, and were willing to work together for their desired ends. The Sepoy Conspiracy illustrates the emergence of cross-colonial cooperation between colonized peoples at a point in time much earlier than most historians believe, thus challenging current historiographical thought. This cooperative effort to cast off the yoke of imperial oppression in Java, though never fully realized, emerged over one hundred years before it was thought to arise as a result of the First and Second World Wars in the twentieth-century. The importance of this cross-colonial cooperation between disparate ethnic and religious groups across great distances, and at such an early date, is noteworthy, even in the absence of a successful revolt, as it illustrates the existence of a latent and growing resentment among subjugated peoples towards Western imperialism.

Cross-colonial cooperation in nineteenth-century Java: examining the Sepoy conspiracy of 1815 in a world history context

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