View from the Periphery: Football in Indonesia

Abstract

Around 1900 football was introduced into Indonesia by a colonial power, the Netherlands, and quickly captivated the indigenous people. The diffusion of football in Indonesia followed that of the Netherlands in remarkable detail. The Haarlemsche Football Club, the oldest club in the Netherlands, was established in 1879 by a Dutch schoolboy, who had attended an English boarding school. Sixteen years later a schoolboy, who had learned the game in Great Britain, founded the first club in Indonesia. His name, John Edgar, suggests the possibility of a British father. In England, Holland, and the Dutch East Indies, football spread from the elite, via the middle class, to the workers, at which point the upper class began to seek other sporting pastimes (Berretty 1934: 161). Pursuing a strategy of divide and rule the colonial power conquered and ruled the indigenous population that was split into some 300 different ethnic groups.