The cultivation system (1830-1870) and its private entrepreneurs on colonial Java

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

Volumn 38, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 275-291

  Bosma, Ulbe ^a  

^a INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL HISTORY   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AGRICULTURAL HISTORY; COLONIZATION; CROP PRODUCTION; CULTIVATION; ECONOMIC HISTORY; FARMING SYSTEM; LIBERALISM; NINETEENTH CENTURY; PRIVATE SECTOR; SUGAR CANE;

ASIA; EURASIA; GREATER SUNDA ISLANDS; JAVA; MALAY ARCHIPELAGO; SOUTHEAST ASIA; SUNDA ISLES;

EID: 34250860041     PISSN: 00224634     EISSN: 14740680     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022463407000045     Document Type: Article

References (95)

1. This is how it is portrayed in, for example, J.J.P. de Jong, De waaier van het fortuin. De Nederlanders in Azië en de Indonesische archipel 1595-1950 (The Hague: Sdu, 1998), p. 270.
2. C. Fasseur, The politics of colonial exploitation: Java, the Dutch, and the Cultivation System trans. R.E. Elson and Ary Kraal (New York: Cornell, 1992)
3. Van Niel, Java under the Cultivation System: Collected Writings. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 150 (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1992), pp. 200, 224.
4. We have however some doubts about Van Niel's assertion that 'From an economic point of view, the Cultivation System literally created a Dutch infrastructure...'. See Van Niel, Java's northeast coast 1740-1840: A study in colonial encroachment and dominance (Leiden: CNWS Publications, 2005), p. 394.
5. G.R. Knight, Colonial production in provincial Java: The sugar industry in Pekalongan-Tegal 1800-1942 (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1993)
6. Margaret Leidelmeijer, Van suikermolen tot grootbedrijf. Technische vernieuwing in de Java-suikerindustrie in de negentiende eeuw (Amsterdam: NEHA series, 1997), pp. 18-22
7. Ulbe Bosma and G. Roger Knight, 'Global factory and local field: Convergence and divergence in the international cane-sugar industry, 1850-1940', International Review of Social History, 49, 1 (2004): 1-26.
8. Robert van Niel, The emergence of the modern Indonesian elite (The Hague and Bandung: Van Hoeve, 1960), p. 6
9. Van Niel, Java under the Cultivation System, p. 171.
10. Shahid Amin, Sugarcane and sugar in Gorakhpur: An inquiry into peasant production for capitalist enterprise in colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 31.
11. Fasseur, The politics of colonial exploitation, p. 36.
12. Alfred W. McCoy, 'Sugar barons: Formation of a native planter class in the colonial Philippines', Journal of Peasant Studies, 19, 3/4 (1992): 106-27, 107.
13. See C. Fasseur, 'De "geest" van het gouvernement', in C. Fasseur, ed., Geld en geweten. Een bundel opstellen over anderhalve eeuw Nederlands bestuur in de Indonesische archipel. I. De negentiende eeuw (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980), p. 38.
14. L. de Bree, Gedenkboek van de Javasche Bank, 1828-24 Januari 1928 (Weltevreden: Kolff & Co., 1928), pp. 115, 118-19.
15. For this version of the story see also G.L. Gonggrijp in J.C. de Haan and P.J. van Winter, eds., Nederlanders over de zeeën. 350 jaar Nederlandsche koloniale geschiedenis (Utrecht: Uitgeversmaatschappij W. de Haan NV, 1940), pp. 235-6
16. N. Tarling, 'The Palmer loans', Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 119, 2 (1963): 169-71.
17. 'Publicatie van den 20sten mei 1823, houdende bepalingen omtrent het verblijf en het landbezit op Java', Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië, 20 May 1823, no. 20.
18. H.R.C. Wright, East-Indian economic problems of the age of Cornwallis & Raffles (London: Luzac and Company, 1961), p. 6.
19. Namely Jean Louis August Petel, Pierre François Riquet, Harvey Thomson, Robert Scott Douglas, and William Emburg Edwards. See National Archive, The Hague (hereafter, NA), Ministerie van Koloniën (Ministry of Colonies) (hereafter, MvK) I, inv. nos. 3106-3124.
20. E.M.C. van Enk, Britse kooplieden en de cultures op Java. Harvey Thomson (1790 1837) en zijn financiers (Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit, 1999), pp. 236-44
21. G.R. Knight, 'John Palmer and plantation development in Western Java during the earlier nineteenth century', Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 131, 2 (1975): 309-37, 330-1; NA, Collectie Baud, inv. no. 433. Indigo production on Java soared from 133,381 pounds in 1832 to 2,121,226 pounds in 1840, after which production stabilised at 1.5 million pounds.
22. See NA, MvK I, inv. no. 3202, 'Aantekeningen omtrent de indigokultuur'. The Cultivation System focused on small-scale production. According to NA, MvK I, inv. no. 4405 there were 256 indigo factories in 1834; according to Fasseur, there were 749 factories in 1840. See Fasseur, The politics of colonial exploitation, p. 247.
23. It has been reported that in some residencies indigo production was so burdensome to the local population that the Inspector of the Cultivation System Louis Vitalis suggested to the Governor-General that a halt be called to growing indigo in some parts of Java. Vitalis's 'Kultuurverslag' (Cultivation Report) can be found in NA, Collectie Baud, inv. no. 461. Indeed, after 1847 the production of indigo under the Cultivation System was gradually phased out. See Fasseur, The politics of colonial exploitation, p. 80.
24. Knight, 'John Palmer and plantation development in Western Java', pp. 314-25
25. NA, MvK I, inv. no. 3043, p. 159.
26. G.R. Knight, 'From plantation to padi field', Modern Asian Studies 14, 2 (1980): 177-204.
27. See also Van Niel in Java's northeast coast, 346, 347, 394.
28. Leidelmeijer, Van suikermolen tot groothedrijf, pp. 8-22
29. Roger Knight, 'The contractor as suikerlord and entrepreneur. Otto Carel Holmberg de Beckfelt (1794-1857)', in J. Thomas Lindblad and Willem van der Molen, eds., Macht en majesteit. Opstellen voor Cees Fasseur bij zijn afscheid als hoogleraar in de geschiedenis van Indonesié aan de Universiteit Leiden (Leiden: Semaian, 2002), pp. 190-205.
30. R.E. Elson, Village Java under the Cultivation System 1830-1870, Asian Studies Association of Australia. Southeast Asia Publication Series No. 25 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1994), p. 43.
31. Thomas Stamford Raffles, The history of Java, vol. 1 (London, 1817; Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 63.
32. See Ulbe Bosma, 'Het cultuurstelsel en zijn buitenlandse ondernemers. Java tussen oud en nieuw kolonialisme', Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 2, 2 (2005): 3-28, 8.
33. Koloniale Verslagen [Colonial Reports], hereafter KV, 1855 (Handelingen van de Tweede Kamer [Proceedings of the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament], hereafter HTK, 1857-58), Bijlage A, 1855, pp. 4-5
34. KV 1881 (HTK 1881-82), Bijlage A, pp. 6-7
35. and Volkstelling 1930, Deel VI Europeanen in Nederlandsch-Indié (Batavia: Landsdrukkerij, 1933), p. 82.
36. Ulbe Bosma and Remco Raben, De oude Indische wereld 1500-1920 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2003), p. 73.
37. See also D. Meyer Timmerman Thijssen, Twee gouverneurs en een equipagemeester (Bilthoven: Knuff, 1991).
38. Between 1810 and 1826 more than 20,000 Spanish exiles from the newly independent Latin American republics went to Cuba and Puerto Rico. With their capital and entrepreneurial networks, they contributed to the remarkable ascendancy of the sugar industry and, as a concomitant, to the rapid growth in slave labour. See Arthur F. Corwin, Spain and the abolition of slavery in Cuba 1817-1886 (Austin: University of Texas, 1967), pp. 32-3
39. J.H. Parry, The Spanish seaborne empire (London: Hutchinson, 1966), p. 314
40. Juan Giusti, 'Compradors or compadres', in Sugarlandia revisited: Sugar and colonialism in Asia and the Americas, 1800-1940 (New York: Berghahn, forthcoming), ed. Ulbe Bosma, Juan Giusti, and G. Roger Knight
41. Bridget Brereton, Race relations in colonial Trinidad, 1870-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 8-9.
42. See Bosma, 'Het cultuurstelsel en zijn buitenlandse ondernemers', p. 10.
43. George Frank Davidson became an associate at the house of MacQuoid, Davidson & Co. on 5 October 1823.
44. G.F. Davidson, Trade and travel in the Far East, or, Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, Singapore, Australia and China (London: Madden and Malcolm, 1846), pp. 2, 10.
45. NA, MvK I, mv. no. 3203; Henk Boels, Janny de Jong, and C.A. Tamse, Eer en Fortuin. Leven in Nederland en Indië 1824-1900. Autobiografie van gouverneur-generaal James Loudon (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 2003), p. 23.
46. Knight, 'John Palmer and plantation development in Western Java', p. 329;
47. P.A. Christiaans, 'Genealogie van Beusichem', De Indische Navorscher 10 (2003): 1-7.
48. Philip D. Curtin, Death by migration: Europe's encounter with the tropical world in the nineteenth century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 8.
49. For the declining role of the West Indies in the British Empire during 1775-1810, and the controversies on this subject, see Selwyn H.H. Carrington, The sugar industry and the abolition of the slave trade, 1775-1810 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002).
50. P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, 'Gentlemanly capitalism and British expansion overseas: I. The old colonial system 1688-1850', Economic History Review, 39, 4 (1986): 504, 513, and 525, where the authors claim that 'Even before 1850, financial flows from the city were a major determinant of the rhythm of development in the colonies.'
51. See also Tony Webster, 'An early global business in a colonial context: The strategies, management, and failure of John Palmer and company of Calcutta, 1780-1830', Enterprise & Society, 6, 1 (2005): 98-133.
52. Knight, 'John Palmer and plantation development in Western Java'; Van Enk, Britse kooplieden, p. 174.
53. Van Enk, Britse kooplieden, p. 133.
54. De Bree, Gedenkboek van de Javasche Bank, pp. 208-9.
55. According to Fasseur, in 1840 there were 99 sugar contracts running with an equal number of factories. Fasseur, The politics of colonial exploitation, p. 246
56. Leidelmeiier gives a figure of 110 factories in 1843: Leidelmeijer, Van suikermolen tot grootbedrijf, p. 138.
57. Ibid., pp. 127, 138.
58. Van der Enk, Britse kooplieden, pp. 125, 137, 139.
59. Roger G. Knight, 'Steam & steel on a colonial frontier: Technology, the state and the Indies bourgeoisie 1840-1890', Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land en Volkenkunde (forthcoming 2007)
60. Bosma and Raben, De oude Indische wereld, p. 129.
61. Ibid., p. 112
62. G. Roger Knight, 'A shropshire lad among the bourgeoisie: Thomas Jeoffries Edwards and the technology of sugar production in mid-nineteenth century Java', in Bosma, Giusti, and Knight, eds., Sugarlandia revisited; and The first one hundred years, 1827-1927 of Maclaine Watson and Co., McNeill and Co. and Fraser Eaton and Co. 1927 (n.p., n.d.).
63. W.M.F. Mansvelt, 'De producties van de zeven belangrijkste exportgewassen, naar de producenten', Exportcultures van Ned-Indië 1830 1937 (n.p. (Batavia), 1939), Table 3.
64. For Arthur Fraser see NA, MvK 1, inv. no. 2612, Oost-Indisch Besluit 2-11-1840, no. 9, and for Alexander Fraser see NA, MvK I, mv. no. 2667, Oost-lndisch Besluit 20-3-1845, no. 27.
65. W.M.F. Mansvelt, De eerste Indische handelshuizen. Mededeelingen over de resultaten van een onderzoek naar de nationaliteit van het Nederlandsch-Indisch handelsapparaat in de eerste helft van de 19e eeuw (Batavia: Centraal Kantoor voor de Statistiek, 1937), p. 5.
66. We should also mention the trading house of Voûte, which was involved in Indies trade from 1790 to 1816. E.S. van Eyck van Heslinga, Van compagnie naar koopvaardij: De scheepvaartverbinding van de Bataafsche Republiek met de koloniën in Azië 1795-1806 (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1988), p. 102.
67. The same applies to Nolthenius, which was present before 1800 and again almost immediately after the restoration of Dutch rule over the Indonesian archipelago. See NA, MvK I, inv. no. 2448, Oost-Indisch Besluit 28-7-1819, no. 5
68. E.C. Godée Molsbergen, Gedenkboek Reynst & Vinju 1836-1936 (Batavia: Reynst & Vinju, 1935), pp. 5-9.
69. See N.W. Postumus, 'Nota over den toestand van de Amsterdamsche handelshuizen in het jaar 1854', Economisch Historisch Jaarboek, 7 (1921): 204
70. Bram Oosterwijk, Koning van de koopvaart. Anthony van Hoboken (1756-1850) (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1983), pp. 97, 143
71. J.R. Bruijn and E.S. van Eyck van Heslinga, Maarten Schaap, een Katwijker ter koopvaaraij (1782-1870) (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1988), pp. 32-3, 39
72. A. Hoynck van Papendrecht, Gedenkboek A. Van Hoboken en Co. 1774-1924 (n.p. (Rotterdam), 1924), pp. 33, 63, 100-1.
73. Bosma and Raben, De oude Indische wereld, ch. 4
74. Ulbe Bosma, 'Sugar and dynasty', in Bosma, Giusti, and Knight, eds., Sugarlandia revisited.
75. See Fasseur, The politics of colonial exploitation, pp. 241-2
76. Bosma and Raben, De oude Indische wereld, p. 140.
77. Gouvernementsbesluit 10 januari 1834, no. 3
78. Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië, 18, no. 60.
79. On retirement, lower-ranking soldiers without a permanent residence permit were confined to the locality in which their pension was paid. See KV 1861 (HTK 1863-64), p. 55,
80. and Indisch Besluit 29 juli 1861, no. 51, Bijblad op het Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Nederlands-Indï e, no. 1069.
81. John Crawfurd, A view of the present state and future prospects of the free trade and colonization of India (London, 1829), p. 65.
82. For details of the immigration regulations, see Bosma, 'Het cultuurstelsel en zijn buitenlandse ondernemers', p. 27.
83. Bosma, 'Het cultuurstelsel en zijn buitenlandse ondernemers'.
84. NA, Collectie Baud, inv. no. 471.
85. According to Elson, Banck did some of the milling himself and subcontracted with a number of smaller Chinese millers. See Elson, Village Java under the Cultivation System, p. 52.
86. Knight mentions Banck's collaboration with Chinese capitalist, with one of whom, the Captain or Major of the Chinese The Goan Tjing, he shared a contract for the sugar factory of Tjandi (Candi). See Knight, 'Steam & steel on a colonial frontier'.
87. See also S. van Deventer, JSz, Bijdragen tot de kennis van het landelijk stelsel op Java, vol 2. De werking van bet stelsel 1819-1836 (Zalt-Bommel: Joh. Noman en Zoon: 1865-66): 370-2.
88. Fasseur, The politics of colonial exploitation, p. 45.
89. They were Thomas Watson, Daniel Kidney, John Kidney, Andrew Robb, John Hadfield, George Fife, James Davidson, and Alexander Sutherland.
90. Koninklijk Besluit [Royal Decree] 13-2-1824.
91. NA, MvK I, inv. no. 3220; KV 1849 (HTK 1850-1851), 32nd sheet, 131.
92. Bosma,. 'Het cultuurstelsel en zijn buitenlandse ondernemers', p. 25.
93. Ibid., p. 26.
94. NA, MvK I, inv. nos. 7523-7641, Oost-Indische Besluiten van de gouverneur-generaal in Rade.
95. These lists can be found in Handboek voor cultuur - en handelsondernemingen (Amsterdam: Duby, 1888-1940).