Dispossession by archive: contemporary land grabbing through colonial land deeds in Indonesia

This article examines a new pattern of land grabbing in Indonesia, where coalitions of state and private actors use colonial-era land deeds to expropriate community land. Despite being legally void, these historical documents are deployed to legitimize claims, facilitated by systemic corruption, judicial manipulation, and coercive state power. Through three cases in Bandung and Yogyakarta, the article illustrates how elites, allied with state forces, engage in such “dispossession by archive” to force communities to surrender land. It argues that this phenomenon reflects colonial debris, as Indonesia’s ambiguous land tenure system enables elite manipulation for economic gain.