The Australian National University (ANU) Library - Asia-Pacific Digital Collections: Boyes/Some Notes on Java

The land system, obtaining in Java when the Dutch first landed, was almost identical with that prevailing in Hindustan, and it is quite certain that it was carried from the latter country to their new settlements by the emigrant Hindus. We find the sovereign acknowledged without question as the owner of the soil, the cultivator occupying it under unvarying conditions, the governors receiving assignments of the revenue of large areas in payment for their services in administration. Proprietary right, as we English understand it, never existed. The land was national property, the nation being represented by the sovereign. Sir Stamford Raffles, after a very full investigation into the land-tenures, writes:- "Generally speaking, no proprietary right in the soil is vested in anyone between the cultivator and sovereign, the intermediate classes, who may at anytime have enjoyed the revenues of villages or districts, being deemed the executive officers of Government who received these revenues as a gift from their lord, and who depended on his will alone for their tenure." Again, Herr Knops, one of the Dutch Commissioners

for the investigation of land-tenures, writes:- "There is not a single Javan who supposes that the soil is the property of the regent, but they are all sensible that it belongs to the Government, nominally called the sovereign among them. The Javan's idea of property is modified by the three kinds of subjects to which it is applied: rice-fields, gagas, or fruit trees. A Javan has no rice-field he can call his own. Those of which he had the use of last year will be exchanged next year for others. They circulate from one cultivator to another, and if any villager were excluded, he would infallibly emigrate. It is different with the gagas, or lands where dry rice is cultivated. The cultivator who clears such lands from trees or brushwood and reclaims them from a wilderness, considers himself to be a proprietor of the same. With regard to fruit trees, the Javan cultivator claims those he has planted as his legal property without any impost. If a chief were to transgress against this right the village would be deserted."

No co-parcenary communities are traceable anywhere in the island, indicating that no collector of revenue or headman of a village has ever yet succeeded in so strengthening his position as to become actually the proprietor,

capable of leaving the property to his heirs. The boundaries of villages in Java are not well defined as in India - a fact which indicates the absence of all idea of property either on the part of an individual landlord or of a community. No sales of land have been known, although the assignees of the revenue could sell their assignments to others. This system of "pusakas," or jaghirs, as they would be called in India, was carried to a great length. Every "tumangung" or ruler of a province was paid by the sovereign by a pusaka. He in his turn would grant pusakas to his demangs (tehsildars), and the demang to the bukal (lambardar). Similarly all the underlings and petty officials, the kliwons, the jeyang-sekars (armed police), the retinues of the chiefs of various grades, - all were paid in assignments of the revenues of lands. All this opened the door to great abuses, but in no cases did the grantees succeed in usurping the proprietary right. No length of holding, no application of industry or capital could justify any Javan in calling any rice-grounds his own. Nor could he gain a title even to a definite term of occupancy. Nor, of course, could any right of inheritance accrue. As a matter of convenience the cultivators' heirs succeeded to their fathers' position, just as the

son of the bukal might succeed his father in the headship of the village, and just as the demang's heir might succeed him: but no such right of succession was recognised.

Dr. J. Crawfurd, who was resident at Surakarta, in his history of the Indian Archipelago published in 1820 A. D., says that, in whatever country of the Archipelago arbitrary Government then existed, the titles of the prince, of his nobility, and of many of his officers of Government, would be found generally to be purely Hindu. He goes on to say:- "It is among the Javanese properly so-called that the proprietary right of the sovereign in the soil is most unequivocally established. Such is the universality of this principle that I do not believe, in the whole territory of the native princes, there are a hundred acres over which, by the law or customs of the country, any distinct proprietary right could be pointed out independent of the sovereign. There may be here and there, a little forbearance from motives of religion; but a proprietary right in the soil on the part of a subject, it is not going too far to assert, would be unintelligible to the people, so strongly contrasted are their opinions and ours on this point." And again:- "In the highly peopled provinces of Java, where the population

begins already to press on the good land, the cultivator exercises no right over the soil, and I hardly know any privilege which he possesses in. regard to it except the liberty of abandoning it."

The only exceptions to the general rule, which excluded the idea of individual right in landed property, are to be found in the mountainous and wooded tracts occupied by the Sundas in the west of the island, where private property is established and the holder's interest is transferable. This right has doubtless arisen in these tracts from the necessity of offering superior inducements to the reclaimers of such lands to settle in those parts, and it may be compared to the rights acquired by ryots in India who, under clearing grants, felled the dense forests of the Terai tracts. The right of the cultivator in his "gaga" lands, mentioned by Herr Knops, arises in the same manner. The cultivator under native rule paid nominally as land-revenue one-fifth of his produce; but under unscrupulous officials this was often increased to as much as two-fifths, and Raffles found this rate not an uncommon one. This share might be either taken in kind or at a valuations practice exactly similar to that prevailing in most of the grain-rented districts

of the North of India. Crawfurd, describes the process thus:- "Suppose the crop of a given quantity of land consists of 60 parts. One-sixth is deducted at once for reaping, which, in almost all cases, goes to the cultivator and his family. Of the remaining 50 parts, two

go to the village priest, after which the remainder is divided into equal parts between the cultivator and the sovereign. The shares of the parties are therefore as follows:-

"One-fifth of the sovereign's share has been occasionally paid as commission for collection. This would reduce the sovereign's actual share to one-third of the gross produce of rice-lands." In addition to this fifth of the produce the officials representing the sovereign could, if they wished it, take the whole produce of the cultivator at the harvest price. The main checks upon the extortionate use of this power were the difficulty of getting rid of the produce and desertion of the villages.

In practice this power was not in the old days abused to any great extent, the wholesome check of emigration restraining the chiefs from

going too far. In Java, too, as in India, the power of "adat" (usage), a word clearly introduced by Mahomedans, is great, and high and low obey it. A small ground-rent for houses was also payable by the cultivators, and in many districts a capitation-tax was levied. Then there were contributions at births and marriages in the chief's family, and contributions for charitable and religious objects. The roads, dams and, irrigation channels had to be maintained, and the maintenance came out of the pockets of the cultivators. Anglo-Indian officials in the North of India will recognise some of these imposts under the names of "parjot," "marwanah," &c. Besides the land-revenue and other dues the cultivator is bound to render to the sovereign or his representatives one day out of every five of his labour. In 1879, 2,030,136 persons in the island were subject to the corvee, each person being liable for 52 days' labour in the year. In the same year the total population was put at -

so that roughly one out of every nine persons is bound to render this service, and there is no

doubt whatever that this obligation is much abused up to the present day. Every underling, however low, who can represent himself, truly or, not, as the servant of the official, lords it in the village and makes the first cultivator he catches work for him. So also all officials - high and low - passing through the villages, consider themselves entitled to free supplies. These two customs, which almost exactly find their counterparts in the Indian "begari" and "rassad," form the two main counts upon which "Max Havelaar" arraigns the Dutch Government in the powerful indictment which, under the guise of a novel, he brought against his late masters in 1868 A. D. He shows how, up to the present day, the customs which may have had their origin in unobjectionable feudal services, often in the hands of exacting native officials become terrible instruments of oppression, and how the Dutch, while they issue voluminous philanthropic instructions to their officers, in which the protection of the natives figures as one of their first duties, nevertheless shut their eyes to the tyranny which in some regencies is practised with impunity, the general desire being that things may go easily, that there may be no open scandals, and that high native officials, through whom the

Javans are ruled, may be conciliated. It is quite certain that in India abuses under the guise of rassad (supplies) and begari (unpaid labour) are not so flagrant as in Java; but that they exist every European official will admit, and it is our bounden duty to persistently discourage these practices and protect our native fellow-subjects from themselves.

The system of administration in Java under the native sovereigns was almost identical with that of Akbar in India. We have, under different titles, the same very complete division of the country into provinces, districts, sub-districts and villages. The headmen of the villages were, as in India, chosen by the villagers themselves, The rulers of the sub-districts, districts and provinces, were appointed, and all held office at the pleasure of those who nominated them. With their duties as revenue collectors they combined the offices of criminal and civil judges, being assisted by the Mussulman law officer and a legal counsellor, who was the expounder of local customs which regulated much the dispensing of justice. The parallel between the Javan and Indian system is curiously exact.

When the Dutch had made good their footing in the island they made no attempt to undertake

its government. So far as the natives were concerned, they left them and their management entirely to their native rulers. Their policy was entirely commercial and avowedly selfish. They insisted on certain articles of commerce being kept close monopolies for themselves; they demanded from each district a forced contingent of rice, leaving the tumangungs (or regents) to levy it from the villages in what manner they pleased; they compelled the regents to supply whatever labour they required for their public works, and after they had started the coffee plantations, they required the regents to see that every cultivator planted, nurtured, and plucked a certain number of coffee trees; they required that the services of 32,000 families should be placed at their disposal for the felling of timber in the Government forests; and in other ways they endeavoured to bleed the country for their own benefit, without attempting to give it anything in return. During this period, therefore, the unhappy country had not only to endure the ills which were indigenous, but it had, in addition, to suffer the oppression consequent on the presence of a foreign power, which insisted on the native rulers extorting produce and forced services from the people for their white masters as well

as for themselves. But this endeavour on the part of the Dutch to work the so-called colony for the benefit of the mother-country by such a clumsy and narrow system, was a disastrous failure. In order to keep up the price of the monopoly products they actually often destroyed a large quantity of them; timber accumulated to such an extent that it rotted at the depots; the deficits every year became more and more serious, and long before the English took possession, the island had ceased to be of any commercial advantage to Holland.

Sir Stamford Raffles had not been long in Java before he determined on a complete change of system. The Dutch monopolies were abandoned, freedom of cultivation was established, the forced deliveries of rice were stopped, all tolls on inland trade were abolished, and taxes on coasting trade removed, the port dues were equalised and their collection taken out of the hands of the Chinese. The salt farms were resumed and administered direct, and the "blandongs" (the system under which the teak forests were worked) were abolished, a certain area being reserved to be worked by paid labour, and the rest thrown open to private enterprise. But the greatest relief to the people was given in the abolition of all forced

services. The coffee plantations were no longer managed as Government properties by compulsory labour. The cultivators were left to keep them up or not, just as they pleased, the Government undertaking to purchase all coffee which the growers could not dispose of in the open market at a rate double that which was paid by the Dutch. The villages were held bound, as heretofore, to furnish their quota of men for works on the roads and other public works; but all this labour was now to be paid for at the regular market rate. In order to provide revenue wherewith to administer the country, Raffles commuted all the imposts on the cultivators into one fixed tax, namely, two-fifths (instead of one-fifth) of the produce; but he took this land-revenue from the first crop only, and allowed the second crop to be cut clear of any tax whatever. Fruit trees and gardens were left free. The cultivator henceforward was to know exactly what would be demanded of him, and would be called upon to make no other contributions either in kind, in money, or in labour.

Raffles then proceeded to reform the land-tenures by excluding, as much as possible, the higher class of natives from any connection with the soil, by leasing the lands direct to the cultivator.

During the Dutch rule the native regents would farm out the land-revenues to demangs, and the demangs would sublet to bukals. Raffles forbad such leases, and reduced the regents and their subordinates to mere collectors of revenue. Village rent-rolls were prepared, and the native collectors had to collect and account in accordance with these. The cultivators were given leases for three years, and it was clearly the intention of Raffles to introduce the ryotwari system of India, and to make the cultivators practically proprietors of their lands. To compensate native officials for their loss of income under these changes, Raffles provided them with handsome salaries and maintained their rank. He also, while he checked their interference in revenue matters, increased their dignity and usefulness by making them act as his police, giving them small correctional powers within their districts: and this is one of the few reforms carried out by Raffles, which were maintained by the Dutch when they resumed possession of the country in 1815 A.D. Torture and mutilation were abolished, and compounding for crime was disallowed; courts of law were established, and an endeavour was made to secure the benefit of their own laws to the Javans, even in criminal

cases, save in cases of murder. The revenue and judicial instructions issued by Sir Stamford to his officers read very like those that might have been issued forty or fifty years a

go to the commission of a newly-acquired province in India. That the reforms contemplated and mostly carried out were conceived in a nobly generous spirit and elaborated in a very masterly manner, must be admitted even by the Dutch; but viewing them by the light of our subsequent experience in India, we must hesitate to pronounce some of them to have been either good for the people whom it was Raffles's earnest desire to benefit, or advantageous for the Government.

It was Raffles's intention, as soon as his temporary settlement had expired, to confer on the cultivators the full proprietary right in their holdings, involving the terribly doubtful privilege of alienating their fields and the disastrous liability to be sold up, either by their civil creditors or by the revenue authorities, for default. By the return of the island to Dutch rule the Javans have escaped that fatal gift of absolute proprietary right which has been the ruin of so many tens of thousands of our peasantry in India, and with which, while striving to bless, we have so effectually cursed the soil of

India. It is not too much to say that the loss of all the many benefits which undoubtedly would have been conferred on Java by the substitution of English for Dutch rule, is not too high a price to have paid for escape from the many evils of unrestrained power to alienate landed property. Under their present Government the Javans, according to our English ideas, ought to be the most miserable people. That they are not so, but that, on the contrary, they are the most prosperous of Oriental peasantry, is mainly due to one cause - the inability of the Javan to raise one single florin on the security of his fields, and the protection thus enjoyed by him against the money-lender and against himself. Nature is bountiful in Java, and undoubtedly the abundant fertility of the soil enables the Javan to stand up under many ills to which he is subject; but were her fecundity doubled, were she to pour her gifts as from a cornucopia into his lap, nothing would ultimately save him from the money-lender and from consequent eviction from his fields and his home if he were able to pledge the one or the other as security for an advance.

Herr Mummtingle, one of the Dutch Commissioners whom Raffles consulted in considering

the question whether such radical reforms could, politically viewed, be safely carried out in such a conservative country as Java, remarked that the maintenance of the nobles' rank and titles, the attention to their dignity in confer-ring upon them police jurisdiction and petty magisterial power, the grant of high salaries, and the relief from produce deliveries and money contributions, ought and probably would be considered a sufficient compensation for their loss of profits, but he prophetically added that "the breath of opinion might dissolve even the British power in India," and he counselled caution and a gradual introduction of the system. He also displayed his shrewdness in saying that no order of abolition would suffice to abolish the custom of feudal services being rendered to those to whom they had hitherto been given. The force of "adat " would be to ostrong even for the British Government. Herr Mummtingle doubtless hit the blot in Raffles' reforms - a blot which has disfigured only too many a page of English administration of Oriental countries. A want of true appreciation of native ideas and incorrect valuation of Oriental methods has always betrayed us into imposing on our fellow-subjects in the East, without tact and without preparation, principles

and measures which, however good in themselves, are unintelligible and therefore unwelcome to those whom we wish to benefit. We are so eager to fight abuses and set wrong right that we cannot wait to see whether even in the abuse there may not be latent some principle which, if rightly applied, will enable us to reform instead of eradicate, shape instead of destroy. The Dutch before the time of Raffles, and almost equally so up to the present day, went much too far in the opposite direction. As Sir Stamford says of them:- "They had little other connection with their best subjects - the cultivators of the soil - than in calling upon them from time to time for arbitrary and oppressive contributions and services; and, for the rest, they gave them up to be vassals to the various intermediate authorities, the regents, demangs and other native officers" - a selfish, narrow, iniquitous and withal a suicidal policy. But it at least escaped the evils attendant on the sudden introduction of methods of government necessarily distasteful to the former holders of power and at the same time uncongenial to the people and opposed to their traditional notions of right. Could Sir Stamford Raffles have stopped short of the introduction of the new principle of proprietary right, with

its corollaries of power of transfer and mortgage, had he seen his way clear to utilising the labour rent by regulating, instead of abolishing, that much-abused system, and had he thus been able to avoid increasing the share of the produce demandable by the Government, his reforms would have had a better chance of furthering the true interests of the Javan.

The three years of the British administration of the island, however, were not wasted. When the Dutch re-occupied their old possession and found it swept and garnished, they did not proceed to call in the proverbial seven spirits worse than themselves. On the contrary, they began by announcing that they would abolish monopolies of production and allow freedom of cultivation. Further, finding that Singapore, a free port at their very gates, was taking away even such little trade as they already enjoyed, they made a virtue of necessity and largely modified their different duties. But the greatest permanent gains which the Javans obtained from Raffles' rule were the admirable police system and the establishment of courts of justice, both of which reforms were maintained by the Dutch, the former in its entirety and the latter with some modifications. They, however, swept away with decision the ryotwari system,

together with the right to sell and be sold up, and reverted, to the great relief of all concerned, to the old village system under which each cottier was allotted at the beginning of the year his parcel of rice-fields, subject to the payment of the grain-revenue. It is asserted by the Dutch (and all who know the manner in which unfamiliar measures are received in India can well believe it) that, in spite of Raffles' endeavour to bestow separate holdings on the cultivators, the Javans continued under the English to manage their affairs in their own way and to cultivate under the annual allotment system as heretofore. The Dutch, however, kept a grip on the land-revenue, which Raffles had for the first time, since Java was occupied by Europeans, brought into the Government treasury. They reduced it from two-fifths to one-fifth of the produce, and, to compensate themselves for the surrender of the extra one-fifth taken by the English, they re-imposed the old labour rent, reducing it from one-fifth of the cultivation labour to one day in seven.

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Some notes on Java: Section 4