Town Development

By 1830, Pare was still only an embryonic town. When Map 2.1 was drawn, Pare was not even noted, but its site, to the east of Sukorejo, to the northwest of Gadungan, and to the south of Tunglur, can easily be found, and with its location at an important road junction, Pare was positioned well to grow from a small nucleus into an urban centre.

In the years after the Java War (1825-1830), many of the people who moved into Pare came from the Central Javanese Principalities. War had robbed people there of their homes, their wealth, their rights, and their security, and fleeing to more peaceful places must have seemed the most promising course. Pare's comparatively sparsely populated countryside offered opportunities to those who opted to clear land and work as farmers, and the small settlement, with its key location, offered other opportunities for those who had some wealth or who chose not to work the land in their new area. The newcomers to the town lived mainly around the present day area of Pasar Lawas, or the Old Market, which was the centre of old Pare. To support themselves in this frontier town, these people had to trade or to open up such businesses as clothing shops or dry-cake bakeries (7). In doing so, they entered into competition with the bor o , merchants or skilled tradesmen who planned to reside in Pare only temporarily. As the advantage of the continuity which permanent residence offered in the market places became clear to the bor o , they had to decide whether to

(7). Oral history in Pare still emphasizes the importance of these two endeavors in the early days of the town, and there seems to be no reason why this should not have been the case.

leave Pare for good or to bring their families to Pare and to settle down there themselves.

Much of the land inside the present-day town of Pare was, of course, still forest in the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, and, as was the case in much of Java, those who cleared the land (the cakal bakal) were in a position to gain wide stretches of territory, to insure prestige for their descendants, and to become almost legendary characters. One such man in early Pare was mBah Sarpan from Jogyakarta, who migrated to Pare around the outbreak of the Java War (Source: interview with Ibu Mutmainah, his great-grandchild). During the clearing of the land, mBah Sarpan injured his leg (whence the name of the settlement of Plongko, from the nickname given mBah Sarpan from the contemporary Javanese word for "hurt"), but he was still able to clear, to claim, and to hold a large area of land for his family. In 1910, the family still held title to much land from the New Market in the east to the Kamar Bola in the south, stretching northwest to Kampung Plongko within the town as well as farmland outside Pare. Plongko's experience and lasting influence were not unique in Pare, where other legendary cakal bakal are still honored by their descendants and still remembered through the names they gave to the areas they cleared.

As Pare began to develop into an agricultural, marketing, and service centre, several traders from the north coast of Java came to the town and stayed. The majority of these newcomers were Javanese, and they were batik dealers, small shop owners, and peddlers. Madurese traders also arrived in Pare, settling in Kampung Maduran, just north of the market, and erecting a small mosque there. To the east of the

Madurese quarter was Kampung Gresikan, where traders from Gresik resided. As small minorities, these North Coast and Madurese traders settled in their own small and secure areas close to the market where they worked. A few Baweans, coming later than the traders from Madura and Gresik, set up stores in the kauman area where Pare's more devout Muslims, including people from Kudus and Pekalongan, also lived (see also Clifford Geertz 1965:94).

Though early Pare grew on its own, spreading out haphazardly from its crossroads and its market, the influence of the colonial presence soon began to be felt, shaping the form of the town just as surely as it shaped the administrative structure in the area. The main sweep of government-inspired change was away from the old town and toward the northwest (see Map 2.2). As early as the year 1850, the government established a salt warehouse in Pare, at the same time that four other small warehouses were set up else where in Kediri Residency (National Archive 1850:no page). This salt warehouse, through which government-monopolized salt was distributed, was built on the main road which leaves Pare for Kediri, and in later years, opium was also sold there under government control. The appointed official in charge of the salt warehouse (gudang garam) was the Mantri Gudang Garam. The government also soon built a coffee warehouse (gudang kopi) at the southern part of the town, with a Javanese Mantri Gudang K o p i , or coffee warehouse supervisor, Maas Nitidiwirjo, appointed to Pare in 1859 with a salary of f 25 a month (National Archive 1859:no page). In addition to these Mantri, there were also a Mantri Tebu, sugar cane supervisor, and a Mantri Cacar, or vaccination official, with offices in Pare.

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The Old Town with market as its centre

The New Town centre

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^ I ^ Trends of town growth — Main roads

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Across the road from the the salt warehouse was the taxation office, or kolekturan as it was called by the local people. Here a Javanese official, the Onder Collecteur, helped the Controleur, the lowest-level Dutch official, to administer the area and to monitor and collect the various government revenues. The residence of Pare's Controleur was at the center of the new town, in a large brick building not far from the residence of the Javanese District Head.

A map (Map 2.3) of Pare and Brantas Basin (Source: Residency of Kediri drawn by P. Baron Melvill van Carnbee) in 1855 shows that by then Pare had developed into a centre for the surrounding regions. Roads already connected Pare to Kediri, Papar, Ngantang and Wates, though the regions to the north, such as Mojoagung, and Peterongan and its environs, did not yet have such connections. The regions to the north and the northeast of Pare probably still consisted of forest. As on the 1830 map (Map 2.1), Tunglur, Kretek or Tretek, Gadungan and Sukorejo could also be found on this 1855 map, but a significant change had taken place: Sukorejo had been designated as a large location on the 1830 map, from which Pare had been absent; in the 1855 map, Sukorejo was depicted as a smaller entity than Pare. In the 1855 map Sukorejo was simply another small town situated close to Palem, but although Pare had already surpassed it in size, the name of the district was still Sukorejo.

By 1867 the population of the district of Sukorejo was listed as 7,779 people (Veth Vol III 1868:368), spread out over the growing urban centre, the old and new villages in the farmlands, and the plantations (8). According to Veth, Pare had already become the center of government in Sukorejo district (Veth Vol III 1868:368), which meant

that the Javanese head of Sukorejo district (the Wedana) had already transferred his residence and office to Pare, where he could work together with Pare's controleur. Waringin trees were planted in front of the residences and offices of those high level authorities in Pare. At this time, Pare was connected by road with other larger towns, 20 pal from Kediri, 40 pal from Tulungagung and 34 pal from Pasuruan (Veth Vol II 1868:698) and it had already eclipsed the former centre of

Sukorejo (9).

Throughout its period of growth in the nineteenth century, Pare remained within the administrative district of Sukorejo. There were actually three distinct settlements called Sukorejo for which the district was named. The first was only a few kilometres northeast of Kediri, the second lay almost midway between Kediri and Pare, and the third was only a few kilometres west of Pare, near the present-day village of Pelem (see Schulze 1890:262; Map 2.2 and also personal communication with the District Head of Pare during the fieldwork). As the road east from Kediri was extended and improved, and as the plantation districts in eastern Sukorejo gained importance, the site of the administrative centre of Sukorejo district shifted eastward, until finally it became only rational to locate the seat of government in Pare.

(8) . By that same year there were already 464 Europeans, 4,379 Chinese and 510,812 Natives (Indonesians) living in Kediri Residency (National Archive 1867:no page)

(9) . Veth's estimation of the distance between Pare and Pasuruan is in fact far shorter than the actual distance, but it is possible he was referring to the boundary with Malang, which was part of Pasuruan Residency in the middle of the century. One paal was about a mile, or 1.6 Km.

By 1880 Sukorejo had clearly lost its importance and in a report written in that year Sukorejo was written in brackets after Pare in order to clarify the intended district. In that year, the district consisted of 4525 households, with a total of 24,989 inhabitants. The population density of the area in 1880 was 128 persons per square kilometer, still low in comparison with the density of Papar, 252 persons per square kilometer, the town of Kediri 415 persons per square kilometer, and in the Regency of Kediri 163 persons per square kilometer. The sparsely populated region of Pare with the work opportunities available there, attracted migrants, and within a decade, in 1890, the inhabitants in the district increased to 47,943 persons. (Onderzoek naar de mindere welvaart... tables:no page).

The growth of Pare was further stimulated by a government policy to establish two main salt warehouses for the whole regency in the town of Kediri and the small town of Pare. Salt sold in Pare in 1882 totalled 2019 pikuls, which in Kediri it was 14,623 pikuls. In 1900 those figures reached 18,160 pikuls for Kediri and 8,901 pikuls for Pare. This indicates a significant increase of salt sales in Pare from only one-seventh to almost one half of the Kediri stock within 12 years. It can be inferred that Pare was undergoing a rapid increase in the number of inhabitants, in the complexity of life, and in ties with its surrounding communities.

In 1888, the district was still called either Sukorejo or Pare, but the offices of the administrators and bureaucrats, both Dutch and Javanese, were all located in Pare, and the Javanese head of the district was already called the Wedana of Pare. The Wedana, through his Asisten Wedana, supervised the sub-districts within Sukorejo

district (the sub-districts were then called asistenan and were essentially the present-day Kecamatan). By 1896, there were four asistenan in the district: Kandangan, Gurah, Plosoklaten and Pare (National Archives 1897). In 1898, Pare was finally recognized as the full administrative centre and the name of the district was officially changed from Sukorejo to Pare (National Archives 1899). In the nineteenth century, then, the name Pare had come to be applied first to a village, then to a town, a subdistrict and finally a district for which it served as the centre.

The expansion of the private plantation work around Pare greatly stimulated business and service activities in the town. Especially important in this respect was the fact that Pare was chosen by the HVA to be the centre of its local activities.

When the Kediri Railway Company (Kediri Stoomtram Maatschappy, KSM) initiated the development of a rail network in the area between Kediri and Jombang, Pare was selected as the local headquarters. The KSM received government licences to build rail lines and to run trains in 1894 and 1895, work was begun in 1897, and it took two years to complete the main network (Encyclopaedia van Nederlandsch-Indie, Vierde Deel, 1921:81; see also Clifford Geertz 1965:71). The chief KSM lines in the Pare area ran from Kediri to Jombang via Pare, with additional lines from Pare serving Kandangan, Papar and Kepung/Sente. A large train station was built in the western part of the new town, and three smaller stations were erected in the town and its vicinity. Offices, official and worker residences, and a repair depot were established near the main station. The railways around Pare were mainly constructed to transport plantation products, but the number of

passengers carried was not insignificant (10).

With the establishment of the KSM in Pare, the development of the plantations accelerated and urban Pare consequently also grew. In the previous 40 years, Pare's population had increased greatly (11). Now a hospital for treating Javanese was built around 1905 at the northern urban limit of Pare. A Post and Telegraph Office, a government pawnshop and a hotel were also established around that time. And it was also during this decade that the growing Dutch community erected its club house, the Societeit or Kamar Bo l a , on the main road leading out of town to Kediri (see also Clifford Geertz 1965:81).

Map 2.4, which is reproduced from an official map of Pare drawn in