6 - Coffee Cultivation in Java, 1830–1917

Summary

Java began exporting coffee in the early eighteenth century, under the aegis of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which introduced coffee to the lucrative European market. Coffee cultivation had a checkered career until the 1830s, when it became part of the system of state control of peasant agriculture known as the Cultivation System (Kultuur Stelsel). For well over half a century after 1830, Java produced a substantial portion of the coffee imported by Europe. On the eve of the outbreak of leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix) in the early 1880s, which ravaged Java's coffee groves, the island exported nearly 82 percent of all coffee leaving the Dutch East Indies, which amounted to 18 percent of world coffee exports.

Thereafter, Java's coffee cultivation declined rapidly. Nevertheless, as forced coffee growing had been the bedrock of colonial revenue in its heyday, the Dutch colonial government was understandably reluctant to abolish its monopoly of coffee production and export. By 1917, when the final remains of the monopoly were wound up, the Dutch East Indies produced a mere 5 percent of world production, and accounted for only 2 percent of world exports.

We know little about the impact of coffee cultivation on Java's peasantry in comparison with sugar, the other major commercial crop of the Cultivation System, which profoundly affected every aspect of the economic life of indigenous people. The colonial government left almost all aspects of coffee production in the hands of peasants, despite some efforts at modernization in the late nineteenth century.