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

The financial result of Raffles' schemes had been most marked, the revenue rising from 3» millions of florins in 1810 to 7» millions in 1814, and the Dutch maintaining the same system were able to continually increase this sum until it reached 24 millions of florins in 1830 A. D. This revenue was, however, only obtained by very severe taxation and the country could not have gone on yielding this amount. The Government had been engaged for some years in a war with the two native principalities - Surakarta and Jokyokarta - and, in spite of the increasing revenue, deficits were year by year becoming more and more alarming, and Java bid fair to again land Holland in heavy debt, From these difficulties the Dutch were delivered by General Vander Bosch, in 1832 A. D., who initiated what is known as the "culture system." Under this scheme the revenue rose in twenty-five years from 2 millions sterling to 9» millions sterling annually. The Government with this fine revenue was able during the same twenty-five years to pay off the old Java debt, to raise its unproductive expenditure to 3 millions sterling and its reproductive

expenditure more than 2 millions, while the trade statistics showed that imports had jumped from 2 millions to 5 millions and exports from 2 millions to 8» millions. Population rose during the same period from 6 millions to 12 millions, and it is calculated that at the present time the population touches 20 millions.

Under the culture system the Government may be said to have become farmers on a gigantic scale. Recognising the fact that the soil of Java was eminently suitable to the growth of certain valuable products, such as sugar, tea, tobacco, coffee, cinnamon, pepper, indigo and cochineal, while the native, left to himself, would never exert himself to raise these crops, the Government determined in its capacity of owner of the land to declare that in the villages selected as suitable at least one-fifth of the area should be sown with the crop prescribed. If the crop was one such as sugar, requiring manufacture on the spot, a contractor was placed in the village or group of villages to whom the villagers were bound to deliver all the raw produce as cut, receiving a fixed price for the same. The contractor, who had received large advances from the Government to enable him to set up the necessary machinery, on his part was bound to deliver a certain

quantity of the manufactured article to the Government, again, at a fixed price. The result has been enormous profit to the Government, very considerable gain to the contractor, and, the advocates of the system say, great pecuniary advantages to the villagers. Now, when it is considered that not only has the Government, the contractor and the grower to get their profit (and it is asserted large profit) out of the article, but the officials - European and native - also receive a handsome percentage on the result in order to interest them in the success of the factory, a sceptic may be led to inquire at what point in the process is the marvel worked which gives such a satisfactory result. It is admitted that private planters, renting land from Government and paying for their labour, are unable to achieve such startling success. The advocates of the culture system say that this arises from the want "of official support among a native population who require authoritative explanation and persuasion to secure continued application of new ideas even for their own good."

Those who are acquainted with Oriental populations will admit that there is some truth in this remark, but the explanation would probably be more correct if for "official support"

were substituted "official pressure." There can be but little doubt that the factor which determines the profits of the contractor and of the Government is the price which is paid for the raw produce to the cultivator. If that is high the profits of the other parties to the bargain will be low: if it is low the superior partners will reap the advantage. Where the cultivator grows a crop by order and receives a price for his produce fixed by him who makes him sow, there is, it need not be said, a terrible temptation to the latter to make the most of his opportunity. In India we are familiar with this problem in the indigo culture. When indigo commanded a very high price in the market, the planter could afford to give the cultivator compelled by him to sow the plant a fair price; now that indigo has fallen in value, the only way to secure good pecuniary results is to give such a reduced price for the raw material as barely enables the cultivator to subsist. Doubtless a Government, strong to resist temptation, and vigilant in seeing that its paper orders are obeyed, could, when high prices rule, secure to the cultivator a fair price for his produce, and at the same time reap large profits; but in these days, when such products as sugar and indigo are at such low

quotations, it is impossible that under the Javan system large Government profits can be compatible with fair treatment of the cultivator.

This is what Max Havelaar says on this subject, and it is worth quoting at length, as it is the evidence of a Dutchman who had seventeen years of experience of official life in Java :- "The Javan is by nature a husbandman; the ground whereon he is born, which gives much for little labour, allures him to agricultural work, and, above all things, he devotes his whole heart to the cultivating of his rice-fields. The cultivation of rice is, in Java, what the vintage is in the Rhine provinces and in the south of France. But there came foreigners from the West who made themselves masters of the country. They wished to profit by the fertility of the soil, and ordered the native to devote a part of his time and labour to the cultivation of other things, which should produce higher profits in the markets of Europe. To persuade the lower orders to do so, they only had to follow a very simple policy. The Javan obeys his chief: to win the chiefs it was only necessary to give them a part of the gains, and success was complete. To be convinced of the success of that policy, we need only consider the immense

quantity of Javanese products sold in Holland and we shall also be convinced of its injustice, for if anybody should ask if the husbandman gets a reward in proportion to that quantity, then I must give a negative answer. The Government compels him to cultivate certain products on his ground: it punishes him if he sells what he has produced to any purchaser but itself, and it fixes the price actually paid. The expenses of transport to Europe through a privileged trading company are high: the money paid to the chiefs for encouragement increases the prime cost; and because the entire trade must produce profit, that profit cannot be got in any other way than by paying the Javan just enough to keep him from starving."

This criticism of the culture system was written in 1868 A. D., and no answer to it has been given officially or unofficially. The Dutch Government gets a clean profit of five millions sterling, and this is a very solid reason for silence. The average annual produce of the Government coffee plantations for the ten years ending in 1878 A. D. was 52,000 tons, while the sugar plantations yielded 207,000 tons. The Government of India is not inexperienced in the culture system. It raises its opium revenue by a system identical with that

of Java, save in the all-important point that the opium cultivators compete with one another for permission to sow the poppy, while in Java they are compelled to sow the crop named by the contractor-controller. In India also there is no contractor in the business. The factories are managed direct by the Opium Department. Should the demand for opium in China cease, as seems not improbable, it might perhaps be possible for the Indian Government to declare tobacco a monopoly, and work its cultivation on the culture system. Indian tobacco is fast finding a European market.

An ingenious device for increasing the Government profit was devised by General Van-der Bosch at the same time as he initiated the culture system. An enormous amount of copper coinage was manufactured in Holland, the intrinsic value being rather less than half the nominal value. This coinage was made a legal tender, and the cultivator was paid for his produce in this copper coin. Thus, as Mr. Money in his work Java; or, How to Manage a Colony, naively remarks:- "The loans, raised in Hol-land to start the system, produced an effect in Java equal to double their amount."

But when all is said against the culture system, it must still be admitted that the cultivating

class in Java is distinctly well-to-do. The evidence to be drawn from a personal view of the rural population in their prosperous villages is decisive on this point; and the only conclusion to which we can come is that the extraordinary fertility of the soil and the entire absence of the landlord and middleman, enable the Javan peasant to bear up and even thrive under a system which violates in many ways our Western principles of justice and fair dealing, and which, unless it is most vigilantly supervised and directed, is capable of working ruin to the one who is unable to raise his voice on the subject. Crawfurd, speaking of the period when the English had just occupied the country, gives similar testimony to the condition of the people and comes to a like conclusion. He says "that the habitation of the Javanese peasant is neater, his clothing and food better, and his modes of husbandry more perfect is admitted by all who have had an opportunity of instituting a fair comparison between the Hindus and the Javanese;" while, speaking of the exactions levied upon the Javanese, he asks "what but the extraordinary productiveness of the soil and the benignity of the climate, with the peculiar relation of the land to the people, could render such enormous imposts tolerable and present

to us, notwithstanding such disadvantage extraordinary spectacle of a rich husbandry under such privations as those of the Javanese cultivator."

There is a limit, however, even to the yield of a country such as Java, and when we reflect that the population has quadrupled itself in the island within the past seventy years, and now presses with an incidence of 400 to the square mile, we feel that it will not be long before the Dutch will be face to face with agricultural difficulties similar to those met with in the most congested parts of India, and that it will then perhaps be impracticable to extend, even if it be not found imperative to contract, the cultivation of crops other than cereals. Deficiency in the food-supply has not been unknown even in Java, and Holland had once to issue an order that "the extension of the so-called European market should no longer be pushed to the extremity of famine."

Again, the Dutch Government must most jealously exclude the landlord and the middleman. If, as it seems is not unlikely to be the case, the independent planter steps into the place of the Government, armed with all its power, but untrammelled by its respect for public opinion, or its desire to do its duty by the native, the

great safeguards which at present exist will be removed. It is clear that considerable pressure has been for some time brought to bear upon the Java Government by the unofficial Dutch in the island to withdraw from the culture system in favour of the private speculators, find in 1870 a new law permitted the cession of uncultivated land to Europeans on lease for 85 years. In Batavia, and the other large towns where the European merchants have their houses of business, not unfrequently opinions are expressed adverse to the present administration under which the profits from the culture system are absorbed by the mother-country instead of being spent in Java; and sometimes these opinions are sufficiently unpatriotic to take the form of a wish that the English may, at some time or other, again be masters in Java, in which event, it is predicted, the colony will get fair play. But it is not difficult for those who pursue the subject with such discontented Dutchmen to see that it is not on behalf of the country or of the Javans that they are indignant at the present state of things, but on behalf of themselves. They are pretty well assured that the English, if they ever did re-occupy the country, would abandon at once their position as producers, as

militating against the free trade principle, and that the plantations would be handed over to private venture. Then would come the time of the speculator - Dutch, English and Chinese: and from that day forward woe to the unfortunate Javan, who would look back with longing regret to the days when his only master was a Government, selfish doubtless in its aims, but still discreet in the exercise of its power.

Skip footer and go back to top

Copyright | Disclaimer | Privacy | Contact ANU

Page last updated: 7 June 2002
Please direct all enquiries to: Menzies Precinct
Page authorised by: Director, Scholarly Information Services

The Australian National University — CRICOS Provider Number 00120C

Some notes on Java: Section 5