From Colonial Communications Hub to Republican Asset: The PTT Headquarters in Bandung, 1920–1945

Abstract

This article reconstructs the institutional history of the Post, Telegraph, and Telephone Service (Post-, Telegraaf- en Telefoondienst, PTT) headquarters in Bandung between the beginning of construction in 1920 and its seizure by Indonesian employees in September 1945. It argues that the headquarters was more than a colonial office building: it was a material and administrative node through which communications, technical expertise, personnel, and regulatory authority were coordinated across the archipelago. Drawing on colonial administrative almanacs, a 1924 PTT service guide, contemporary newspapers, institutional histories, and scholarship on Bandung’s urban development and the Indonesian Revolution, the article follows four connected transformations. First, the headquarters materialized the late-colonial effort to relocate selected central agencies from Batavia to Bandung. Second, the completed complex enabled increasingly differentiated bureaucratic coordination; the 1928 Regeerings-Almanak contains the earliest explicit heading Hoofdbestuur te Bandoeng found in the volumes examined and documents Bandung as the seat of central administration without proving the precise date of first occupancy. Third, Japanese rule territorially rescaled and militarized rather than simply abolished the inherited organization, while retaining Bandung as the coordinating center for Java and Madura. Finally, organizational continuity, technical competence, and collective action allowed Indonesian PTT personnel to convert the colonial headquarters into a Republican institution on 27 September 1945. The article’s contribution lies in integrating architectural history, administrative practice, and revolutionary agency within a single chronology. This longue institutional view qualifies narratives of abrupt regime change: the claim to Republican authority acquired an institutional basis through inherited infrastructure, routines, and skilled personnel, without establishing immediate control of the entire network.