Gayo encampments were multi-ethnic refuges of coerced estate coolies, not pure raiding gangs.

Evidence

Anthony Reid has suggested that the aid Gayos and other inland tribes provided for Aceh’s resistance to Dutch control “had nothing to do with the beginnings of an ‘Indonesian consciousness,’ but was simply an expression of their distrust of the foreign invaders.” He is undoubtedly right about some of these groups, but there was something distinctive about Gayo activities. Their assaults on the estates expressed more than “distrust.” They were directed at planters and their property, and at specific persons. Nor were the Gayo encampments confined to Aceh exiles. They were peopled with Malays, Javanese, and Chinese ex-coolies, as well. While some workers might have been taken by force, as claimed by Locker de Bruijne, many more might have lived in these encampments by choice and for relatively long periods of time. During those stays they seem to have raided the estates for food when they could not get enough in the surrounding villages or could not gather enough in the forest. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1228

Categorization

• XREF: Speaks to the coolie-to-resistance pipeline; connects to colonial-labor resistance literature and the author’s broader argument about subaltern agency against Western reading purpose.
• QUESTION: Were ex-coolies who joined these encampments fleeing wage coercion or refusing an emerging Indonesian nationalism — and did living with Gayo hosts convert their flight into anti-colonial action?