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The Causes of an Involuted Society: A Theoretical Approach to Rural Southeast Asian History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

John A. Larkin
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Abstract

As historians of Southeast Asia turn to the study of rural history, they will have to resort increasingly to theoretical aids as an answer to the paucity of written records. Such theory, drawn from the other social sciences, must be shaped and tested to fit the needs of the historical discipline. For example, the work of Ester Boserup and Clifford Geertz on the relationship among population density, land usage, and socioeconomic behavior has applicability to problems of the evolution of Southeast Asian rural society under colonial impact. A comparison of Geertz' study of agricultural involution in nineteenth century Java with my own work on Pampanga Province, Philippines, provides some first steps towards a theory of rural change. Specifically, a modern cash crop economy produces more sophisticated contractual relations between tenants and landowners regardless of changes in population density per agricultural hectare. And, in the face of a scarcity of resources (e.g., land, cash, machinery, etc.) needed for modern agriculture, a given society will evolve highly complex institutions in order to share as far as possible those commodities in short supply. Specific types of institutions may develop to meet given needs, and the greater the number of shortages, the more involuted the society will become.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , August 1971 , pp. 783 - 795
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1971

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References

1 The distinction between the great and little tradition which I am drawing here is borrowed from Redfield, Robert, Peasant Society and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 69–78Google Scholar. The local populations to which I refer are those that interact, no matter how indirectly, with the originators and purveyors of the culture of the great tradition.

2 Relatively few studies exist which have significantly treated rural historical problems. Most such works, however, point out the divergences between urban-national and local developments, showing how die latter might remain quite independent from (or at least indirectly related to) the former. See for example Furnivall, J. S., Colonial Policy and Practice (New York: New York University Press, 1956)Google Scholar; Geertz, Clifford, The Social History of an Indonesian Town (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Cunningham, Clark, Postwar Migration of the Toba-Bataks to East Sumatra (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1958)Google Scholar; Roff, William R., The Origins of Malay Nationalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Sturtevant, David, “Guardia de Honor: Revitalization within the Revolution,” Asian Studies, IV (August 1966), 342–352.Google Scholar

3 One example of this kind of distortion can be found in Jacoby, Erich H., Agrarian Unrest in South-east Asia (New York: Asia Publishing House, 1961)Google Scholar. The author insists, without clear substantiation, on a heavy overlapping of interests and aims of urban nationalists and the participants in rural, often agrarian, unrest. This view has been seriously challenged by more recent findings of odier scholars, See for example Benda, Harry J., “Peasant Movements in Colonial Southeast Asia,” Asian Studies, III (December 1965), 430–432Google Scholar; Sturtevant, , Asian Studies, IV (August 1966)Google Scholar; Lam, Truong Buu, Patterns of Vietnamese Response to Foreign Intervention: 1858–1900 (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1967).Google Scholar

4 That the rapid growth of large urban centers in Southeast Asia has not necessarily produced economic and social changes in the vast rural sectors is suggested by McGee, T. C. in The Southeast Asian City (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1967), ch. 1.Google Scholar

5 One tentative step in the direction of a general historical theory for peasant behavior in Southeast Asia can be found in Benda, Asian Studies, III (December 1965), 425.

6 Moore, Barrington Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967).Google Scholar

7 Boserup, Ester, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth, The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population Pressure (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1965)Google Scholar; Geertz, Clifford, Agricultural Involution, The Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966).Google Scholar

8 Boserup, pp. 86–87.

9 In his ideas about cultural ecology, Geertz borrows heavily from Julian Steward. See, in particular, Steward, Julian, Theory of Culture Change (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963), pp. 30–42.Google Scholar

Among the branches of anthropology, cultural ecology crosses over more clearly into history than most. Consider the following definition by Steward:

Cultural ecology differs from human and social ecology in seeking to explain the origin of particular cultural features and patterns which characterize different areas rather than derive general principles applicable to any cultural-environmental situation. It differs from the relativistic and neo-evolutionist conceptions of cultural history in that it introduces the local environment as the extra-cultural factor in the fruitless assumption that culture comes from culture. [Ibid., p. 36.]

Cultural ecology, being a relatively new field, has not yet received much attention from historians of Peasant socletV in spite of its Pertinence to their work.

10 Geertz, Agrtcultural Involution, p. 7. He is quoting here directly from Steward, p. 37. The brackets, however, belong to Geertz.

11 The term “farmer” used here merely identifies an occupation rather than defining anything about ownership of land. For the tiller of soil working a small plot of land, the distinction between being a tenant or a full owner has little real significance in the ecological context.

12 Geertz, Agricultural Involution, pp. 124–130.

13 Ibid., pp. 98–100.

14 Ibid., p. 101.

15 In another work, Geertz deals more fully with the social ramifications of agricultural involution in Java. See Geertz, The Social History of an Indonesian Town.

16 Benda, , Asian Studies, III (December 1965), 422Google Scholar; Furnivall, pp. 131–141, 196–201; Schrieke, B., Indonesian Sociological Studies: Selected Writings, Part One (The Hague and Bandung: W. Van Hoeve, Ltd., 1955), pp. 95–143Google Scholar; Kartodirdjo, Sartono, The Peasants' Revolt of Banten in 1888, Its Conditions, Course and Sequel: A Case Study of Social Movements in Indonesia (Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Deel 50; 'S-Gravcnhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), pp. 104–109.Google Scholar

17 The information on Pampanga for the years 1560 to 1820 comes from Larkin, J. A., “The Evolution of Pampangan Society: A Case Study of Social and Economic Change in the Rural Philippines” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, New York University, 1966), chaps. 2–3.Google Scholar

18 This last point exemplifies one of the problems of applying some of the findings of Moore to a colonial situation. Moore contends that the elite remains in control over a stable peasant society only so long as they fulfill leadership functions at the local level commensurate with their exactions from the peasants [Moore, pp. 469–475]. However, in the colonial situation, the native elites may survive right down to modern times and continue to draw a considerable share of peasant earnings, simply by serving as go-betweens for the local and foreign communities.

19 Population estimates here are only approximate, but they do, in all probability, reflect accurately the slow rate of growth during this period. The first is taken from “Relacion de las encomiendas existents en Filipinas, el dia 31 de mayo de 1591 años,” in Retana, W. E., Archivo del bibliofilo filipino (Madrid: Minuesa de los Rios, 1898), IV, 10–12Google Scholar. The second is calculated from Bureau of Insular Affairs, A Pronouncing Gazetteer and Geographical Dictionary of the Philippine Islands (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902), p. 30.Google Scholar

20 The information on Pampanga for the years 1820 to 1896 comes from Larkin, chap. 4.

21 The best work on 19th century Philippine trade is Legarda, Benito Jr., “Foreign Trade, Economic Change and Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth-Century Philippines” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1955).Google Scholar

22 Yearly production figures for Pampangan sugar do not exist, but the few statistics available offer some indication of the rise of the sugar industry, Around 1820, Pampanga and the nearby province of Pangasinan together produced seven thousand tons of sugar [Thomas de Comyn, State of the Philippine Islands, trans. William Walton (London: T. and J. Allman, 1821), p. 25]. In one year during the 1890's, Pampanga alone sent between fifty and sixty thousand tons to market [Sawyer, Frederic H., The Inhabitants of the Philippines (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1900), p. 240].Google Scholar

23 Pronouncing Gazetteer …, loc. cit.

24 Census of the Philippine Islands: 1903 (Washington: United States Bureau of Census, 1905), II, 382.

25 Notarial registers, located in the Philippine National Archives in Manila, indicate that in the last decade of the 19th century Pampangans were already involved in the settling, cultivating, and swapping of land in Concepcion, Bamban, LaPaz, and Capas, all municipalities in lower Tarlac.

These Protocolos contain information on every type of commercial transaction from simple sales to formation of small corporations. The Protocolos are perhaps the most complete and the most cared for records in the Archives. Twenty-seven Protocolos for Pampanga cover commercial relations in the province between 1889 and 1896. Seventeen of these books yielded 638 entries concerning transfer of land. Archive catalogue numbers [which do not correspond to years] of the Protocolos examined are: 1917; 1919; 1920; 1921; 1923; 1924; 1925; 1926; 1927; 1928; 1929; 1930; 1931; 1932; 1933; 1937; 1943. Future entries marked “PNA, Protocolos” refer specifically to the above mentioned books.

26 Census of the Philippine Islands: 1903, II, 366.

27 The available records indicate that in 1896 Spaniards owned 4,384 hectares of land in Pampanga. The rest of the more than 106,000 hectares under cultivation belonged to native Pampangans [PNA, Terrenos de la Pampanga, Expedientes Nos. 30, 37, 42; PNA, Protocolo No. 1923, pp. 731–738; Census of the Philippines: 1903, IV, 264.

28 Basco, José y Vargas, , “A Decree by Basco in 1784,” Emma Blair and James A. Robertson, The Philippine Islands, 1493–1898 (Cleveland: A. H. Clark, 1907), LII, 294.Google Scholar

29 The information on tenancy was taken from Manuel Buzeta, O.S.A., and Felipe Bravo, O.S.A., Diccionario geográfico, estadistico, histórico de las Was Filipinas (Madrid: José C. de la Peña, 1851), I, 190, 193–195; Foreman, John, The Philippine Islands (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1899), pp. 314–315Google Scholar; Sawyer, pp. 239–240; and from series of interviews with 148 Pampangan tenant farmers and twenty-one landowners, all over eighty years of age, conducted in Pampanga between June and September 1964.

30 Geertz, Agricultural Involution, pp. 98–99.

31 Basco y Vargas, p. 295.

32 PNA, Protocolos.

33 PNA, Protocolos, 1917; 1920; 1921; 1923; 1924; 1925; 1926; 1929; 1930; 1931; 1932; 1933; 1937; 1938; 1942; 1943; 1944; 1946; 1947. These Protocolos for the years 1889 to 1902 contain information on seventy-eight wills of Pampangan property owners. These wills represent the most accurate statements of individual property holdings to be found anywhere in the historical sources. The great majority of estates included little or no cash, although the assessed value of the agricultural lands, warehouses, machinery, and residential property might be quite high, in the range of many thousands of pesos. Only 13 estates showed any substantial cash balances on hand. With one exception, these cash balances varied between P 600 and P 4,400 with the average around P 2,600. Only in two of these estates did the cash balance exceed the worth of other property, and in some cases the difference in favor of other property was large. Some representative examples include:

Estate of Doña Joscfa Buting y Lising: Cash balance— 3,270. Worth of other property—P 81,687 [Protocolo, 1930].

Estate of Don Estanislao Cardenas Reyes y Man-anabat: Cash balance—P 1,998. Worth of other property—P 1,098 + 90 hectares of unassessed agricultural land [Protocolo, 1931].

Estate of Don Julian de Palma: Cash balance—P 3,873. Worth of other property—P 7,617 + 79 hectares of unassessed agricultural land [Protocolo, 1943].

Estate of Don Maximo Tablante y Sioson: Cash balance—P 4,236. Worth of other property—P 11,000 [Protocolo, 1947].

Estate of Don Emigdio Liongson and Don˜a Eulalia Tongio: Cash balance—P 2,669. Worth of other propertymdash;P 65,579 [Protocolo, 1947].

The single large cash balance, P 23,492, was in the exceptionally extensive estate of Don Florentino Dayrit valued in total at P 176,628 [Protocolo, 1944]. Only one will showed investments outside the province, in shares of the Banco Espanol-Filipino.

The conclusion can only be drawn that the wealth of the province resided in agricultural land, which became the greatest trading resource.

34 PNA, Protocolos. In the wills of eight Pam-pangan landowners recorded between 1889 and 1896, houses in Manila were included in their property.

35 For some mention of the life of Pampangan students overseas, see Alejandrino, José, The Price of Freedom, trans. Alejandrino, José M. (Manila: M. Colcol & Co., 1949). pp. 1–40, 99–104.Google Scholar

36 PNA, Protocolos. The pacto de retro was by far the most common means of transfer recorded in the registers.

37 At the present time I am in the process of refining, this idea by looking comparatively at the province of Negros Occidental, Negros Island, another sugar producing region in the Philippines where wholly different conditions prevailed and entirely divergent results followed in the 20th century.