Historical legal studies employing historical analysis, as well as historical research utilizing legal perspectives, have received rela-tively limited attention in Indonesia. Therefore, strengthening legal history studies, particularly those concerning rijksblad, is necessary. This research aims to examine the regulation of Village Heads in Rijksblad van Surakarta 1931 Number 9 from a legal-historical perspective. The study applies a normative legal method using statutory and historical approaches. The findings reveal two principal conclusions. First, the regulation positioned Village Heads primarily as state administrative officials rather than repre-sentatives of village communities. Their main functions included administering tax collection and allocating labor obligations for state purposes. Second, Village Heads were exempted from compulsory state labor, indicating their relatively privileged sta-tus within the colonial administrative structure. Based on the per-spective of legal history, these provisions demonstrate a trans-formation in the position of Village Heads from local customary leaders into administrative agents supporting colonial administra-tion functions. The novelty of this study lies in its historical-legal analysis of the status of village heads based on the 1931 Rijksblad van Surakarta, No. 9, as a source of colonial law in the autonomous region of Surakarta a topic that has been relatively under-examined in studies of village governance law. The contri-bution of this study is to provide a more comprehensive under-standing of the historical development of village government in-stitutions in Indonesia and to demonstrate the influence of au-tonomous state regulations on the formation of the concept of village head authority, thereby enriching the study of legal histo-ry and public administration law and serving as a reference for understanding the evolution of village government regulations in Indonesia.
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