Regency (Indonesia)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A regency (Indonesian: kabupaten) is a political subdivision of a province in Indonesia. The Indonesian term kabupaten is also sometimes translated as 'district' or 'municipality'. Regencies are divided into subdistricts.

[edit] History

The English name comes from the Dutch colonial period, when regencies were ruled by bupati (or regents) and were known as regentschap (kabupaten in Javanese and subsequently Indonesian). Bupati had been regional lords under the pre-colonial monarchies of Java. When those monarchies were abolished or curtailed by the Dutch, the bupati were left as the most senior indigenous authority. They were not structly speaking 'native rulers' because the Dutch claimed full sovereignty over their territory, but in practice they had many of the attributes of petty kings (including elaborate regalia and palaces, and a high degree of impunity). Regencies in Java territorial units were grouped together into Residencies headed by exclusively European Residents. This term hinted that the Residents had a quasi-diplomatic status in relation to the bupati (and indeed they had such a relationship with the native rulers who continued to prevail in much of Indonesia outside Java), but in practice the bupati had to follow Dutch instructions on any matter of concern to the colonial authorities. The relationship between those sides was ambivalent: while the law and military power rested with the Dutch government (or for a long time the VOC, the Dutch equivalent of the British HEIC) under a Governor General in Batavia on Java, the regents held higher protocollary rank than the white officials who supposedly advised them and held day to day sway over the population. After the independence of Indonesia in 1945, the terms bupati and kabupaten were applied throughout the archipelago to the administrative unit below the residency (karesidenan).