Gambier, an extract of the climbing shrub uncaria gambir, was the earlier of the two new ingredients

to take its place. The Dutch encountered gambier for sale in the Banten market in 1596, as a
medicine rather than in that part of the market where betel ingredients were sold (Eerste
Schipvaart: vol. 1, 112, 152). About this time, however, the Indian habit of adding cutch, the
astringent extract of the acacia catechu, to the betel quid was beginning to spread to Southeast
Asian ports. During the seventeenth century gambier was recognized as a better and cheaper locally
available substitute for cutch. Rumphius described it as being chewed with betel in the Moluccas in
the late-seventeenth century (Yule and Burnell 1903:363). Gambier (Malay. gambir) appears to be
native to the Sumatra/Malaya area, and its leaves were probably used medicinally (as they are
today, notably against dysentery -Maradjo, 1977:15) for centuries before the imitation of cutch
began. To achieve the effect of cutch, the juice of the leaves was boiled down until it reached a
rubbery consistency; it was then cut into the characteristic one-inch cubes (biji) in which it was sold
throughout the Archipelago. During the seventeenth century a trade in gambier developed from
Palembang to all points of the Archipelago; in the 1740s the Bugis,- followed by the Chinese, made
Riau the primary export base (Trocki 1979:19-20; Ali Haji 1982:90-91). Chinese, followed by
Europeans, eventually discovered in gambier the best natural source of tannin, so that a major
international trade was added in the nineteenth century to the longer-standing interisland trade.
Although gambier was valued for its medicinal effects against dysentery and diarrhea, the main
reason for its prominence in the betel chew was presumably its taste, "affecting the tongue at first
with a mixed sensation of bitterness and astrin- gency . . . and leaving a lasting and not disagreeable
sweetness" (Crawfurd 1820: vol. 1, 406). Having come to appreciate this astringency from the areca
nut, betel users must have found gambier a durable and transportable substitute when fresh areca
was not available. In Central Java today gambier has almost completely replaced areca in this role.
When and how the chewing of tobacco with betel became common is far from clear. Van Lookeren
Campagne (1905:222-23) speculates that Indonesians may have learned the habit of chewing
tobacco from Portuguese and Dutch sailors, who were forbidden to smoke on board ship because of
the risk of fire. Given the precedent of chewing so many other things in the betel quid, however, as
well as the difficulty of procuring fire when traveling, such an example was probably not necessary. I
have not been able to find definite references to the addition of tobacco to the betel quid before the
second half of the eighteenth century (Marsden 1811:283; Stavorinus 1798: vol. 1, 245). If the
practice really began as late as this, its progress was extremely rapid. By the time of the British
interregnum in the Indies (1811-16), the primary use of tobacco in the Archipelago was undoubtedly
as a wad to cram between lip and gum after the initial salivation produced by the betel chew: The
practice of smoking tobacco, first tried, has been generally discontinued, and the Indian islanders
now use it in a peculiar manner. The tobacco is finely shred, and a portion of it, in this form, is pretty
constantly held between the lips and teeth, and, when the person wishes to speak, thrust between
the latter and the gums, adding, in either case, greatly, in the opinion of a stranger, to the disgusting
effects of the betel and areca preparation. (Crawfurd 1820: vol. 1, 105; cf. Raffles 1817: vol. 1, 101)
This content downloaded from 202.43.95.117 on Fri, 30 Sep 2016 15:58:26 UTC All use subject to
http://about.jstor.org/terms 538 ANTHONY REID The bungkus never died out entirely; it made its
greatest comeback in the form of kretek during our own century. However, most nineteenth-century
Indonesians absorbed their nicotine directly through the sensitive tissues of the gums. As a narcotic
this must have had a stronger effect than the areca nut. I interviewed betel-chewing women in
Central Java and the Sa'dan Toraja area who conceded that they got their "kick" primarily from the
tobacco. With gambier to provide the astringency, it is therefore understandable that the areca nut,
the original source of the appeal of betel-chewing, should have largely dropped out of use in Java.
Tobacco as a Substitute for Betel Europeans never took the step of adding a wad of tobacco to the
betel chew. Dutch men in Batavia abandoned the habit of betel-chewing during the middle years of
the eighteenth century, although their womenfolk continued it well into the nineteenth century (de
Haan 1922: Vol. 2, 145). In its new, unsightly form, with the tobacco wad held in the mouth, the
betel-chewing habit began to seem repulsive to Europeans who encountered it. For European men
in the East it was the Manila cigar that assumed the role in the first half of the nineteenth century
which betel-chewing and pipe-smoking had once occupied. About 230 million Manila cigars were
imported to Java in the period 1856-64, at a cost of over 8 million guilders, for wealthy Europeans
and Chinese and for aristocratic Javanese. From imported cigars the transition was not a large one to
imported cigarettes. These first made their appearance in Batavia in 1845, substan- tially earlier than
they did in England (1854), and following the latest mode in France and Italy (de Haan 1922: vol. 2,
135; Apperson 1914:179-91). Once European males, the highest social caste of colonial society,
became firmly committed to the smoking of cigars or cigarettes, it was only a matter of time before
the whole society adopted the habit. As the nineteenth century wore on, the cultural gulf between
the European (by 1900, typically a Dutch-born totok) and the Indonesian became ever wider. To the
European, nothing seemed more emotive a demonstration of the inferiority of the Indonesian than
his habit of chewing betel, spitting the saliva on the roadside or even in the house, and stuffing a
wad of tobacco in his mouth. No doubt the development of bacteriological theory at the end of the
nineteenth century added to the righteous indignation with which Europeans from then onward
viewed the habit of spitting in a public place. One Dutch traveler described the Raja of Goa
(Makassar), whom he met in the 1880s, as "a dirty old fellow who chewed betel and looked more
like a monkey than a man" (G. Verschuur, cited Van Oyen 1905:128-29). Little wonder that the
successor of this ruler chose to impress Dutch visitors by handing round cigars. The transition in
South Sulawesi from betel-chewing to cigarette-smoking must have been one of the more
spectacular in its speed. Eerdmans (1897:57) pointed out that no Makassarese in the 1890s smoked
cigarettes or cigars except those few princes most anxious to impress Europeans: the bulk of the
population "chew sirih the whole day and often night, as long as they are awake." Yet in the market
of Makassar (Ujung Pandang) today there are only two Torajan women who sell the betel
ingredients, and the buyers are exclusively elderly Torajans. When Makassarese or Bugis buy betel at
all, it is purely for the ritual requirements of marriage. One of the two sellers does not herself chew
betel; she moved to Makassar City as a child in the 1930s, and in that urban environment nobody
chewed it. The transition among Bugis and Makassarese seems to have been completed in a half-
century. Virtually everybody chewed betel in 1900, and virtually nobody did so in 1950. This content
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http://about.jstor.org/terms BETEL-CHEWING IN INDONESIA 5 39 In Java, Bali, and Sumatra the
impact of "modernization," like that of colonialism, was rather more gradual. In 1903 hardly any
Javanese regents chewed betel, even though the betel set was ritually carried on all formal
occasions. By the second half of the nineteenth century the elite of Java were already smoking, and
the habit gradually spread downwards (Veth 1875:547; Van Oyen 1905:128). Around 1900 in West
Sumatra, where once the Padris campaigned in vain against the use of sirih . . . the young men in
particular begin to adopt the chic which is associated with a new type of civilization (also evident in
the clothing which more and more diverges from that of the adat), leaving the use of betel to older
people. To far in the interior one now finds "modern" young men. . . . They leave the sirih-tray for
the oldies, just as we in our youth left the snuffbox. A very educated native teacher confirmed to me
. . . that formerly everyone chewed betel the whole day. "But now only the old people are fond of it,
and the young chew it only when courting . . . or during feasts and rituals." (Rookmaker 1905:29) The
spread of Western-style education appears to have been closely correlated with the abandonment
of chewing betel. In areas such as Tana Toraja, where betel-chewing among both sexes is still
common today, the first generation to have been exposed to education was also the first to abandon
betel. The whole image of "modernity" that education conveys to a young person is contradictory to
the chewing of betel. Their association with education, and subsequent employment in the modern
sector of the economy, is no doubt part of the reason why men generally abandoned betel-chewing
a generation or so ahead of women. It is by no means the whole reason, however, for men without
any education had abandoned betel for cigarettes in most of Java and the towns of outer Indonesia
by 1950. The second factor is that the fashion, which steadily descended through colonial society
from the dominant Dutch down, was exclusively a rnale image of cigarette-smoking. For women
there was nothing to fill the enormous social and relaxant role of betel. During the nineteenth
century those who wished to follow the "modern" style had to purchase imported cigars or
cigarettes, since homemade bungkus, now known as strootjes (Dutch) or kelobot (Javanese), had an
image almost as rustic as betel itself. Local manufacture of international-style "white" cigarettes was
begun by British American Tobacco (B.A.T), with a factory in Cirebon in 1924 and a subsequent one
in Semarang. B.A.T.'s "white" cigarettes led the expansion of the industry consis- tently until the
1970s. In the long run, however, the new dominant fashion did make it possible for the indigenous
style of cigarette to make a comeback on a large scale. The bungkus or kelobot had always
resembled betel in the propensity of Indonesians to add aromatic spices to it. Among the additives
for roll-your-own cigarettes sold in the tobacco section of the Yogyakarta market in 1982 were
ground cloves, menyan madu (gum of the Styrax Benzoin), kelembak (root of the Rheum officinale),
and woor (an alternative to cloves). Local manufacturers found that a mixture of cloves, tobacco,
and a little sweetening saus (flavor) proved to be the most popular. The manufacture of such
cigarettes on hand-operated rollers was begun in Kudus in the 1880s, initially with traditional maize
leaves as wrappers. After World War 1 production in Kudus expanded to the point that it catered to
a substantial proportion of the Java market. Such clove cigarettes became known as kretek,
evidently an onomatopoeic reflection of the tendency of the cloves to crackle and explode as they
burned. To judge by the level of import of Zanzibar cloves for this expanding industry, its output
grew roughly tenfold during the 1920s. The depression curbed its expansion, largely because B.A.T.
lowered the cost of its "white" cigarettes to compete directly with the Javanese kretek (Creutzberg
1975 :i, 265-72). Nevertheless kretek production reached a prewar peak in 1939 with an annual
output that has been variously calculated (depending on This content downloaded from
202.43.95.117 on Fri, 30 Sep 2016 15:58:26 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 540
ANTHONY REID Table 1. Indonesian Clove Consumption in Metric Tons Domestic Production
Imported Total 1920 185 185 1930 3,039 3,038 1940 7,060 7,060 1956 4,000 12,700 16,700 1974
15,000 4,900 19,900 1978 21,100 9,800 30,900 SOURCES: Segers 1982:Bijl 5; Biro Pusat Statistik,
Statistical Pocketbook, relevant years. the formula used) at between 5 and 16 billion cigarettes
(Harahap 1952:144-45; Segers 1982:Bijl 2-6). The labor-intensive industry of rolling kretek cigarettes
became one of the great success stories of indigenous enterprise, employing 80,000 people in 1934.
Most of them were women in the two major manufacturing centers of Kudus and Blitar (Segers
1982:Bijl 57). By the time of independence in 1945, cigarettes had usurped the role of betel for most
Indonesian men, as a relaxant as well as a polite prelude to social intercourse. In areas where
traditional rites of passage were still celebrated, tobacco was even taking over some ritual functions.
As early as the nineteenth century some brides and grooms among the Sarawak Dayaks exchanged
cigars as well as betel at marriages (St. John 1862:vol. 1, 50). In Kelantan of the 1930s betel was still
essential in all social and ritual occasions, but Rosemary Firth was told that she might use cigarettes
if she was unable to obtain in England the betel which had to be offered to spirits at every birth
(Firth 1943:74). The Berawan of Borneo in the 1970s used cigarettes to substitute for betel in
accompanying the dead on their last journey (Metcalf 1982:41-42). At the great death feasts of the
Sa'dan Toraja, hosts and guests now reciprocally offer cigarettes rather than betel. Tobacco in
Contemporary Indonesia Like betel-chewing before it, cigarette-smoking for males is now more than
a personal indulgence. It is a social necessity in many circumstances. Unlike opium, which was
always condemned by a large section of Islamic and other leaders and did not therefore become
socially central, cigarettes have few critics in Indonesia. The social and ritual gap left by the passing
of betel was filled, if at all, by cigarettes. No doubt there was also a physiological gap for a people
whose culture required them to endure poverty and injustice with calm and elegant civility. In this
respect opium became a more potent resource than betel for a minority in the nineteenth century,
but its even more sudden passing left tobacco without major competitors. The extent of Indonesian
smoking since World War II is not fully revealed in the official statistics derived from excise duties
paid. An indication of the speed of the increase in kretek production is given by the rapid escalation
in clove consumption in Indonesia during the period 1920-78. While we may reasonably posit a
tenfold increase in the smoking of kretek cigarettes between 1930 and 1978 on the basis of the
figures in table 1, it is difficult to translate this into numbers of cigarettes smoked because of the
large proportion of homemade cigarettes outside any government control. Official figures for the
large-scale industrial production of cigarettes subject This content downloaded from 202.43.95.117
on Fri, 30 Sep 2016 15:58:26 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms BETEL-CHEWING IN
INDONESIA 541 Table 2. Annual Production of Cigarettes in Indonesia Population Production
Production in billions over age 15 per head of adult Kretek "White" Total (in millions) population*
1972 20.1 21.6 41.6 67.9 613 1976 37.9 30.0 67.9 76.9 883 1980 51.0 29.1 80.1 86.7 924 1982** 62.8
25.7 88.5 90.1 982 SOURCE: Biro Pusat Statistik, Statistik Industri, relevant years. * To give
consumption per adult, this figure should be increased slightly to accoulnt for the small and declining
excess of imports of "white" cigarettes over exports of kretek. (The excess of imports meas- ured in
weight was 1,300 tonnes in 1976 and 477 tonnes in 1980.) ** Provisional data. Table 3. Smoke
Analysis of Four Kretek Brands and Australian Brands of Cigarettes Dry Puff particulate Carbon Brand
of kretek count Moisture matter Nicotine monoxide Djarum 17.1 2.4 mg 51.3 mg 5.07 mg 19.5 mg
Djarum 16.7 2.56 51.6 5.02 18.9 Dji Sam Soe 23.2 2.09 38.6 5.31 23.0 Gudang Garam 16.8 2.26 49.7
5.28 18.2 Gudang Garam 15.0 2.83 44.5 5.37 14.9 Wismilak 16.4 3.01 45.3 5.1 19.7 Wismilak 17.0
2.77 46.5 5.02 21.3 Australian brands (average) 8.0 2.0 15.0 1.1 14.0 SOURCE: Australian
Government Analyst Laboratory analysis for Dr. Robert MacLennan, April 1980 (made available by
Dr. MacLennan). to excise nevertheless indicate the steady increase in consumption over recent
years (see table 2). These figures for consumption per adult are far above those issued by the World
Health Organization for Indonesia (WHO 1979:86). They place Indonesia above most Asian and
African countries, but still well below the levels of affluent European and North American countries,
which consume between 2,000 and 3,800 cigarettes per adult per year. Given the understatement
caused by homemade ciga- rettes in Indonesia, the much more intensive use of each cigarette than
in affluent countries, and the content of Indonesian cigarettes, there is no cause for complacency
concerning the impact of smoking on the health of Indonesian males. The increasing share of the
market occupied by kretek cigarettes, whose popularity has spread from Java throughout the
Archipelago in the past decade, multiplies the effect of a single cigarette on health. One 1980
Australian analysis of four kretek brands in comparison with the international standard brands
smoked in Australia yielded the results that are shown in table 3. Smoke analyses such as these were
This content downloaded from 202.43.95.117 on Fri, 30 Sep 2016 15:58:26 UTC All use subject to
http://about.jstor.org/terms 542 ANTHONY REID designed especially to test the nicotine content of
the tobacco smoked, which appears to be five times as high in kretek as in international brands. The
effect of smoking the cloves and other additives in the kretek remains unknown, although it may be
expected that the eugenol of the cloves when burned would produce vanillin, which has soothing
anesthetic properties. 1 Lung cancer is not listed among the ten major causes of death in Indonesia,
and as long as the kretek industry continues to be one of the most remarkable successes of the
Indonesian manufacturing sector, there is no official encouragement for research into its effects on
health. The shift from betel to tobacco has important social implications, too. Whereas betel-
chewing preeminently symbolized the union of male and female, cigarette- smoking has become one
of the most important symbols of the expanding modern sector of the economy which is dominated
by men, in contrast to an older agricultural market economy in which women were prominent.
Smoking is almost entirely restricted to men, and is seen as a luxury item men pay for outside the
household budget that is controlled by women. Smoking therefore celebrates both modernity and
maleness. It also celebrates the increasing role of wealth in the new status system. Betel was
economically within the reach of all, and its ritual functions served chiefly to underline status based
on age or birth. The great variation in price range of cigarettes, from the cheapest homemade
kelobot to the most expensive Bentul Biru, serves as a precise marker of the achieved status of the
host who dispenses this new narcotic. Betel and Tobacco in Indonesian Expenditure Betel was
always regarded as an important item of expenditure. The pocket money received by Dutch-owned
slaves in the eighteenth century was known as siriegeld ("betel money"-Abeyasekere 1983:308), just
as similar pocket money today is known as uang rokok (cigarette money). A time-honored
Indonesian saying to express the deepest poverty was kepengpembeli sirih tidak ada lagi ("he hasn't
even the money to buy betel"-Rookmaker 1905:30). However, the expenditure required for a chew
of betel was very modest, and it remains so. For those who bought all the ingredients in the market
(many would have grown at least betel themselves), the cost of a chew in markets in Java and
Sulawesi in 1982 was, on average: betel leaves (sirih) 1 rupiah areca (1/4 nut) 1 lime (tiny amount)
0.4 gambier (fragment) 0.6 3 rupiah (0.4 U.S. cents) A quid of tobacco to add to the betel chew cost,
by contrast, almost 100 rupiah, though many chewers reused the tobacco for the three-to-six betel-
chews they had in a single day. A packet of cigarettes in Indonesia cost from 200 rupiah (30 U.S.
cents) upwards. A detailed survey of expenditure by Javanese workers in 1938-39 showed that the
richest categories of skilled workers and supervisors spent no more than 0.22 guilders l Kretek
manufacturers have revealed that 1,000 kretek cigarettes contain on average 1. 2 kg tobacco, 0.8 kg
dried clove flowers, 743 grams Vaniline crystals, 417 grams Coumarine crystals, and 330 grams
Saccharine crystals (Indonesia Raya June 2, 1970, Special Supplement). This content downloaded
from 202.43.95.117 on Fri, 30 Sep 2016 15:58:26 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
BETEL-CHEWING IN INDONESIA 543 per family per month on betel, whereas the expenditure on
tobacco was between 0.24 guilders and 1. 17 guilders. Every group of workers spent three or more
times as much on tobacco as on betel, the two items together amounting to about 5 percent of total
expenditure for ordinary farmers, and up to 8-9 percent for estate workers (Van Niel, 1956:78, 92-
93). The most recent measure of Indonesian expenditure is the increasingly sophisti- cated National
Socio-Economic Survey (SUSENAS), which breaks expenditure patterns of a large sample of urban
and rural households into eleven income categories. Biennial surveys have given the average
proportion of expenditure for "tobacco and betel nut" over all Indonesian households as 5.37
percent of the total expenditure in 1976, 4.95 percent in 1978, and 5.7 percent in 1980. Indonesian
households in 1980 spent more on tobacco than they did on clothing and footwear, on meat, or on
medical and educational needs combined, and twice as much as they spent on festivals. The poorest
households spent more on tobacco than they did on fish, meat, and eggs combined. The breakdown
of the "betel and tobacco" category shows that expenditure on betel is now low enough to be taken
as insignificant. The poorest households spend mainly on shredded tobacco, not on cigarettes,
revealing the inadequacy of the cigarette production figures as a measure of total consumption. The
higher the income category, the more cigarettes dominate in expenditure. Overall, almost twice as
much is spent on kretek cigarettes as on "white" brands (SUSENAS 1980:32-33, 116-17, 184-85).
Conclusion The large role once played by betel in Indonesian life has been partly filled by cigarette-
smoking. Today men enjoy relaxant, analgesic, and social advantages from cigarettes similar to those
they once derived from betel; women appear increasingly to be able to get through the day without
any such support. The passing of betel- chewing has meant the loss of certain antibacterial
safeguards, which are still imperfectly understood. The large and rising consumption of cigarettes,
on the other hand, brings with it a very certain negative effect on Indonesian health. Indonesian
medical statistics, unaided by autopsies, are not sufficiently accurate to distinguish tobacco-related
deaths among the large proportion of respiratory, pulmonary, and cardiovascular disorders
recorded. From research elsewhere, however, we know that Indonesian lives are being shortened by
the smoking habit, almost certainly on an increasing scale.