The dutch colonial power in Indonesia in the nineteenth century needed to clarify its understanding of legal values and conventions of the peoples whom it claimed to rule. Dutch colonial lawyers tended to rationalize this legal culture, lumping together all kind of indigenous legal customs fro different areas as manifestations of adatrecllt, or costomary law. The status of this legal system vi-a-vis Dutch colonial law was a source of continual debate and disagreement. The champions af ...