Banditry was rife around Batavia (modern Jakarta) during the late colonial period, with at least one major robbery committed every day. Banditry in West Java identifies the bandits and describes their working methods and their motives, which often went beyond simple self-enrichment. It also explores the world of the robbers' victims, city-dwellers for whom the robbers were the antithesis of civilization, convenient objects onto which respectable citizens projected their own preoccupations with sex, violence, and magic.
The colonial police force in the Dutch East Indies was reformed in...