KEMANUSIAAN Vol. 27, No. 1, (2020), 69–88
© Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia, 2020. This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Raffles, the Naskah Kitab Hukum Manuscript and Social
Engineering of the Inhabitants of Java in 1814
*HAZMIRULLAH
TITIN NURHAYATI MA’MUN
REIZA D DIENAPUTRA
Program Pascasarjana, Fakultas Ilmu Budaya, Universitas Padjadjaran,
Jalan Ir Soekarno KM 21 Jatinangor, Sumedang, Jawa Barat, Indonesia
*Correponding author: azmeer125@gmail.com
Published online: 15 April 2020
To cite this article: Hazmirullah, Titin Nurhayati Ma’mun and Reiza D Dienaputra. 2020.
Raffles, the Naskah Kitab Hukum manuscript and social engineering of the inhabitants of Java in
1814. KEMANUSIAAN the Asian Journal of Humanities 27(1): 69–88. https://doi.org/10.21315/
kajh2020.27.1.4
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.21315/kajh2020.27.1.4
Abstract. The Naskah Kitab Hukum manuscript issued by Thomas Stamford Raffles in
1814 is one of the important manuscripts in the history of a judicial system in Indonesia.
The manuscript was published because Raffles, upon his early days of duty, noticed that
the existing judicial system in Java was complicated and confusing, constituted in the
formalities of the Roman law. This article presents a study of how the Naskah Kitab
Hukum became a means of social engineering of the inhabitants of Java through at least
three ways: (1) legislation process before the issuing of regulation, (2) accommodating the
social cohesion of Java inhabitants into the regulation and (3) domestication of English
legal terms which were not familiar to the Java inhabitants.
Keywords and phrases: Raffles, Naskah Kitab Hukum manuscript, social engineering,
Java, history
Introduction
In 1814, the third year of the British interregnum period in Java, Raffles decided
to issue a regulation of the police and judicial administration. The regulation
which was written in Malay by using the Jawi script or Malay Arabic now
became the part of The British Library collection, under the code Mss. Eur. D.
742/1, ff. 155–166. Authors obtained a digital “copy” through the website www.
bl.uk and have asked for permission to use it as the object of this research orally
from Annabel Teh Gallop, the Head of the South and South East Asia section at