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Exogenous Colonialism: Java Sugar between Nippon and Taikoo before and during the Interwar Depression, c. 1920–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2009

G. ROGER KNIGHT
G. ROGER KNIGHT*
Affiliation:
School of History and Politics, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, 5005 Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper discusses the commercial history of the Java sugar industry in the interwar decades of the 1920s and 1930s. Java's late colonial industry had a uniquely exogenous character, in that, amongst the world's major producers of cane sugar in the late colonial era, it was singularly devoid of metropolitan or quasi-metropolitan markets. Instead, it sought its markets pre-eminently on the Asian ‘mainland’ to its north and northwest. The Indian subcontinent formed one such market, but East Asia formed the second, and it is the Java industry's fortunes in China and Japan that provide the focus of the present paper. This focus highlights the extent to which the partial collapse of the industry in the mid-1930s related to factors altogether more complex than a simple fall in consumption and drop in prices associated with the interwar Depression. Fundamentally, it was evolving economic autarchy throughout east Asia, encouraged by Depression conditions, which lay at the heart of the Java sugar industry's problems in this sector of its market. Key factors were Java's ambivalent relationship with an expanding but crisis-ridden Japanese sugar ‘empire,’ and the effect on its long-standing links with British sugar refineries in Hong Kong because of the latter's increasing difficulties in the China market. In tandem, they underscored the commercial hazards inherent in Java sugar's exogenous situation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , May 2010 , pp. 477 - 515
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 Lindblad, Thomas J., ‘The Late Colonial State and Economic Expansion, 1900–1930s,’ in Dick, Howard et al. (eds.), The Emergence of a National Economy. An Economic History of Modern Indonesia, 1800–2000 (Crows Nest, NSW, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2002), pp. 128–130Google Scholar; van der Eng, Pierre, ‘Exploring Exploitation: The Netherlands and Colonial Indonesia,’ Revista de Historia Economica 16 (1998), pp. 296–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Early in the twentieth century, the per unit of manufacturing cost of factory white was rather less than one-third of what it cost to refine the same amount of raw sugar. See Geerligs, H. C. Prinsen, ‘Oorspronkelijke Verhandelingen: Invoer en Fabrikatie van Geraffineerde Suiker in Britsch-Indie, Oost-Azie en Australie, in verband met de Fabrikatie van Geraffineerde Suiker op Java,’ Archief voor de Suikerindustrie in Nederlandsch Indie [hereafter Archief Suiker] 12 (2) (1904), p. 1356Google Scholar. His calculation was that carbonation costs added about 30 cents to the manufacturing cost of each picul (61.76 kilo) of sugar, whereas refinery costs were in the region of 1 guilder per picul.

3 Frans-Paul van der Putten [‘Small Powers and Imperialism: The Netherlands in China, 1886–1905,’ Itinerario 20(1) (1996), pp. 115–131] draws attention to the functioning of imperialism in Sino-Dutch relations at the end of the nineteenth century, drawing examples from the regulation of the coolie trade and Dutch responses to the Boxer Rebellion. However, there is no apparent indication that the sugar trade fell into a similar category.

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5 See ‘Jaaroverzicht: Stemming Eenige Production,’ Indisch Verslag 2 (1939), p. 22. In 1938, Holland took more sugar than India (164,313 tons against 105,343 tons). Exports outside of Asia (Egypt, with 282, 529 tons, being the single largest such destination) amounted to 554,831 tons out of a total of 1,071,089 exported.

6 On the distinction (and interrelationship) between the two, see Brown, Ian, ‘Introduction,’ in Brown, Ian (ed.), The Economies of Africa and Asia in the Inter-War Depression (London, New York: Routledge, 1989), pp. 2–3Google Scholar.

7 See Dye, Alan, Cuban Sugar in the Age of Mass Production: Technology and the Economics of the Sugar Central, 1899–1929 (Stanford, CA, USA: Stanford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar, especially pp. 106, 145–151; J. W. F. Rowe, Studies in the Artificial Control of Raw Material Supplies, No. 1, Sugar, Part II. The Marketing of Java Sugar (London, Executive Committee of London and Cambridge Economic Service, 1931), pp. 13–41, 49–59.

8 World consumption, calculated at 13.3 million MT in 1920–1921, had risen to a peak of 24.4 million a decade later and declined to a low of 22.1 million in 1931/2. Geerligs, H. C. Prinsen and Geerligs, R. J. Prinsen, Cane Sugar Production 1912–1937 (London: Norman Rodger, 1938), pp. 50–51Google Scholar.

9 Prinsen Geerligs and Prinsen Geerligs, Cane Sugar Production, p. 70. The secular trend over less than two decades was for an increase in consumption of more than 100%, from 485,427 MT in 1919 to 1,114,000 MT in 1937.

10 Jaarverslag Nederlandsche Handelsmaatschappij (hereafter JV NHM) Agentschap Shanghai 1933(49) (1934),p. 38; Nationaal Archief, Den Haag (hereafter NA) Archief Hoofdkantoor Nederlandsche Handelmaatschappij (hereafter NHM), 51715172.

11 Ramon H. Myers, ‘The World Depression and the Chinese Economy, 1930–1936,’ in Brown, IanThe Economies of Africa and Asia in the Inter-war Depression (London, New York: Routledge, 1989), pp. 253–278Google Scholar.

12 For a brief introduction to Java's sugar trade to India in the 1920s and 1930s, see Prinsen Geerligs and Prinsen Geerligs, Cane Sugar Production, pp. 59–63. At the beginning of the 1920s, Java exported over 200,000 tons of sugar to the Indian subcontinent, and its market there peaked at over 800,000 tons (38% percent of Java's total exports) in 1930–1931. Thereafter, sales of Java sugar in India declined dramatically, such that by 1937–1938 they amounted to less than 11,000 tons.

13 Sugiyama, Shinya, ‘The Structure of the East Asian Refined Sugar Market in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century’ (in Japanese), in Akira, Hayami, Osamu, Saito and Sugiyama, S. (eds.), Tokugawa shakai kara no tenbo (Tokyo: Dobunkan, 1989), pp. 326–329Google Scholar. (I am grateful to Kazuhisa Shimada for translating this paper).

14 According to one well-informed, contemporary colonial observer, Japanese per capita sugar consumption rose from 3.9 kati (one kati = approximately .6 kilo) over the period 1888–1892 to 6.3 kati over the period 1893–1897. His broad estimate was that the Chinese consumption over a similar five year period (1893–1897) was a little over 1 kati per head. See Corsten, F, ‘Verslag Omtrent den Suikerhandel in China,’ Archief Suiker 8 (1) (1900), p. 394Google Scholar.

15 Butterfield and Swire Hong Kong Office (hereafter BSHK) to John Swire & Sons, London (hereafter Swires), 7 October 1896, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Papers of John Swire and Sons, [hereafter JSS + relevant identifying numbers from Elizabeth Hook, A Guide to the Papers of John Swire and Sons Ltd. (London: The Library, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1977)], JSSI 2/8.

16 According to ‘Japan’, International Sugar Journal 2 (1900), p. 322, by 1899 there were two refineries in Japan: one at Osaka (Japan Sugar refining Co.) and one at Tokyo (Nippon Sei Seito Co.). The same source also understood that ‘a leading Japanese banker and merchant’ was presently in the United Kingdom, inspecting machinery for purchase. See also H. C Prinsen Geerligs, ‘Oorspronkelijke Verhandelingen: Invoer en Fabrikatie van Geraffineerde Suiker in Britsch-Indie, Oost-Azie en Australie, in Verband met de Fabrikatie van Geraffineerde Suiker op Java,’ Archief Suiker, 12(2) (1904), pp. 1323–1325. According to this source (quoting contemporary Dutch consular reports), the refineries were, respectively The Sugar Refining Company (Nippon Seito Kabushiki Kaisha), Tokyo Sugar Refining Company (Nippon Seito Kabushiki Kaisha) and ‘Dairi Sugar Refinery’ (Suzuki Gomei Kaisha).

17 BSHK to Swires, 18 August 1896, JSSI 2/8.

18 BSHK to Swires, 25 March 1898, JSSI 2/8.

19 BSHK to Swires, 18 February 1898, JSSI 2/8.

20 Sakamoto, Masako, ‘Diversification: the Case of Mitsui Bussan,’ in Yonekawa, Shin'ichi (ed.), General Trading Companies: A Comparative and Historical Study (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1990), pp. 64, 87Google Scholar.

21 Suzuki's paid-up capital was 80% as large as that of Mitsui; and—at its business peak in 1917—its trade volume was 50% higher in value than the older company. See Lynn, Leonard H. and Rao, Hayagreeva, ‘Failure of Intermediate Forms: A Study of the Suzuki Zaibatsu,’ Organisation Studies 16, 1(1995), pp. 57–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For further information on Suzuki, see Lynn and Rao, ‘Suzuki’, pp. 60–70; Hidemasa Morikawa, Zaibatsu: The Rise and Fall of Family Enterprise Groups in Japan (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1992), pp. 123–181.

22 Hirschmeier, Johannes and Yui, Tsunehiko, The Development of Japanese Business, 1600–1973 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975), p. 172Google Scholar.

23 For the refineries in Manchuko, see NHM Kobe to Amsterdam, 16 June 1932, 140, NA NHM 9230; for Shanghai, see JV NIVAS 1938–1939, pp. 48–53. NA Archief Nederlandse Indische Vereniging tot Afzet van Suiker (hereafter NIVAS) 13.

24 Masako Sakamoto, ‘Diversification,’ p. 88. In 1929, Hong Kong sources claimed that an agreement had been reached among the Japanese sugar refineries and that ‘the Formosa, Meiji, Ensuiko, Nitaka, Hokkaido and Japan refineries . . . [were] included in it . . . [It was] reported to be very comprehensive, covering production of raws, selling of refined and finances.’ BSHK to Swires, 18 January 1929, JSSV 1/2.

25 For a succinct introduction to the Japanese sugar industry in the Marianas, see Keiko Ono and John Lea, ‘Colonial Towns of the Northern Marianas: Rediscovering the Urban Morphology of Saipan and Tinian,’ Paper delivered at RMAP series seminars, 31 May 2001, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, pp. 5–9; Mark R. Peattie, Nan'yo: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885–1945 (Honolulu, Hawaii, USA: Hawaii University Press, 1988), pp. 123–132. For data on the number of factories, see Prinsen Geerligs and Prinsen Geerligs, Cane Sugar Production, p. 69; for the area under cane, see Weitzell, E. C., ‘Resource Development in the Pacific Mandated Islands,’ The Journal of Land and Public Utility Economics 22 (3) (1946), p. 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 See de Graeff, A. C. D (ed.), Van Vriend tot Vijand (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1945), p. 266Google Scholar, as cited in Dick, Howard, ‘Japan's Economic Expansion in the Netherlands Indies between the First and the Second World Wars,’ Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 20 (2) (1989), p. 258CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peter Post, ‘Characteristics of Japanese Entrepreneurship in the Pre-War Indonesian Economy: Appendix 1; Japanese Agricultural Estates in the Netherlands Indies, 1924–25,’ in J Th. Lindblad (ed.), The Historical Foundations of a National Economy in Indonesia, 1890s–1990s (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1996), pp. 310–311.

27 ‘[Extract] Consular Reports . . . Japan,’ International Sugar Journal 6 (1904), p. 406. For Java-Japan shipping connections from a Dutch perspective, see in particular Brugmans, I. J., Van Chinavaart tot Oceaanvaart: De Java-China-Japan Lijn-Koninklijke Java-China-Paketvaart Lijnen, 1902–1952 (Den Helder, The Netherlands: Druk De Boer, 1952), pp. 55–91Google Scholar.

28 Dick, ‘Japan's Economic Expansion,’ pp. 245–248.

29 Tio Po Tjiang, De Suikerhandel van Java (Amsterdam: De Bussy, 1923), p. 59.

30 For overviews of the wider commercial context, see Dick, ‘Japan's Economic Expansion,’; Peter Post, ‘Japan and the Integration of the Netherlands Indies into the World Economy, 1868–1942,’ Review of Indonesian and Malay Affairs 27 (1993), pp. 134–165; Peter Post, ‘Trust and Status in a Dual Regional Economy: Dutch Trading Companies in Japan's Pre-War Trade with Southeast Asia,’ in S. Sugiyama and Linda Grove (eds.), Commercial Networks in Modern Asia (Richmond, Surrey, UK: Curzon, 2001), pp. 182–197.

31 The VJSP cartel embraced 160 of the total of the 186 Java factories operating c. 1919, and purchases made through its agency under-represent total Java sales by around 10%. On the VJSP, see Arjen Taselaar, De Nederlandse Koloniale Lobby. Ondernemers en de Indische Politiek 1914–1940 (Leiden, The Netherlands: Research School CNWS, 1998), p. 107; Tjiang, De Suikerhandel, p. 50.

32 Together, the sugar purchased by Suzuki and Mitsui amounted in 1921 to 258,485 tons, worth 61,791, 301 guilders—or more than 16% of the total value of sugar sold by VJSP in 1921. The relevant data are to be found in the annual reports (jaarverslagen) of the VJSP for the years 1918–1932, NA Archief Vereenigde Javasuiker Producenten (hereafter VJSP), pp. 7–18.

33 Something of the history of these firms can be gleaned from their respective ‘Commemorative Volumes,’ in Wellenstein, Krause & Co., Java 1882–1932 (‘s Gravenhage: Mouton, 1932); J. H. Schmiedell, Gedenkblatter zum 50-Jahrigen Bestehen der Firma Erdmann & Sielcken in Java, 1875–1924 (n.p., 1924); 1827: 1927 Maclaine Watson & Co., McNeill & Co., Fraser Eaton & Co (n.p., 1927).

34 Source: JV VJSP 1921–1929, NA VJSP: 7–18.

35 The data on which this and the following paragraph is based comes from JV VJSP 1921: 27, NA VJSP 7 and from JV VJSP 1925: [nota] ‘Aan de Commissie van Vertegenwoordigers der VJSP,’ 27 February 1925, NA VJSP 11. The notable absentee from the ranks of guarantors in 1925–1926 (given the earlier collapse of the Bank voor Indie) was DJB.

36 On DJB, see Alexander Claver, ‘Commerce and Capital in Colonial Java: Trade Finance and Commercial Relations between Europeans and Chinese, 1820s–1942,’ PhD Diss., Vrij Universiteit, Amsterdam, 2006. On the Bank voor Indie, see Taselaar, De Nederlandse Koloniale Lobby, p. 57. The Bank had been set up in 1920 by the Rotterdamsche Bankvereeniging (Robaver) and was liquidated with the collapse of the Rabaver in 1924—victim of a more general banking crisis in the Netherlands in the first half of the 1920s.

37 On the Bank of Taiwan (Taiwan Ginko, BOT) and, more generally, the role of Formosa in the development of Japanese financial and commercial ties with southeast Asia, see Adam Schneider, ‘The Taiwan Government-General and Pre-War Japanese Economic Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1900–1936,’ in Harald Fuess (ed.), The Japanese Empire in East Asia and Its Postwar Legacy (Tokyo: Deutsches Institut fur Japanstudien, 1998), especially pp. 170–172.

38 On the history of these firms and their Japanese links discussed in the following paragraph, see Post, Peter, ‘Chinese Business Networks and Japanese Capital in South East Asia, 1880–1940: Some Preliminary Observations,’ in Brown, R. A. (ed.), Chinese Business Enterprise in Asia (London, New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 154–175Google Scholar; Kunio, Yoshihara (ed.), Oie Tiong Ham Concern: The First Business Empire of Southeast Asia (Kyoto: Kyoto University, The Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1989)Google Scholar; Dick, Howard, ‘Oei Tiong Ham,’ in Butcher, John and Dick, Howard (eds.), The Rise and Fall of Revenue Farming (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), pp. 272–281CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Claver, ‘Commerce and Capital,’ pp 292–350; Post, Peter, ‘The Kwik Hoo Tong Trading Society of Semarang, Java: A Chinese Business Network in Late Colonial Asia,’ Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 33 (2002), pp. 279–296CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Man-Houng Lin, ‘Overseas Chinese Merchants and Multiple Nationality: A Means for Reducing Commercial Risk (1895–1935),’ Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35(4) (2001), pp. 985–1009.

39 Post, ‘Kwik Hoo Tong’; Claver, ‘Commerce and Capital,’ pp. 291ff.

40 Lynn and Rao, ‘Suzuki,’ pp. 62–63. Schneider (‘The Taiwan Government-General,’ p. 173), remarks that the BOT ‘was reorganized after its collapse, but it limped along in the 1930s and did nor recover a prominent role until the Pacific War.’

41 Claver, ‘Commerce and Capital,’ pp. 342–44. The case of Kian Gwan is more problematic, if its sugar purchases can be taken as a more general index to its fortunes. Between 1925 and 1930, with a significant dip in 1928, Kian Gwan traded around 250,000 to 300,000 tons of sugar annually, before falling back to only 12,600 tons in 1932—by which date Java sugar found very few purchasers anywhere. See JV VJSP 1930: 14 and 1932: 12, NA VJSP 16 and 18.

42 JV NHM Shanghai 1927: 34, NA NHM 5171. Two years later, ‘turmoil in the interior’ led to the stockpiling of nearly a million sacks of sugar in the city—twice the usual amount. In 1930, there were many bankruptcies, including that of ‘one of the biggest and most solid [betrouwbaar geachte] of the city's Chinese importers.’ See JV NHM Shanghai 1929: 9; JV NHM Shanghai 1930:23, NA NHM 5171.

43 For a detailed history of the boycotts and surrounding developments, see Harumi Goto-Shibata, Japan and Britain in Shanghai, 1925–31 (Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 67ff.

44 JV NHM Shanghai 1927: 36 and 1928:27, NA NHM 5171.

45 BSHK to Swires, 12 July 1929, JSSV 1/2.

46 JV NHM Shanghai 1931: 29, NA NHM 5171.

47 BSHK to Swires, 5 July 1929, JSSV 1/2.

48 Swires to BSHK, 18 January 1929, JSSV 1/2.

49 Sugiyama, ‘Taikoo Sugar Refinery,’ in Sugiyama and Grove (eds), Commercial Networks, pp. 141–153.

50 JV VJSP 1930: 13–16, NA VJSP 16.

51 JV NHM Shanghai 1928: 27, NA NHM 5171.

52 JV NIVAS 1933–1934: 52, NA NIVAS: 8. At the end of 1930, the Nationalist government in Nanjing used its newly regained tariff autonomy to impose a duty of 35% on imported sugar. The real blow to importers, however, came in May 1932, when the duty was raised to around 80%. See Kuba, Toru, ‘The Tariff Policy of the Nationalist Government, 1929–36: A Historical Assessment,’ in Sugihara, Kaoru (ed.), Japan, China and the Growth of the Asian International Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 147–148Google Scholar. The actual figure may have been considerably higher. In the mid-1930s, for example, Dutch commercial agents in Shanghai claimed that in the tariff equated, in the case of Java's factory white (the most expensive quality of Java sugar) to 200% or more of its value. See JV NHM Shanghai 1934: 46 and 1935: 48, NA NHM 5172.

53 See Hill, Emily M., ‘Monopoly and Anarchy in South China's Sugar Business, 1934–1936,’ Journal of Asian Business 14 (1) (1998), pp. 57–69Google Scholar, and Lin, Alfred H. Y., ‘Building and Funding a Warlord Regime: The Experience of Chen Jitang in Guangdong, 1929–26,’ Modern China 28 (2) (2002), pp. 200–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Hill, ‘Monopoly and Anarchy,’ pp. 58–59. For contemporary Dutch accounts of developments that touched on their prospects in a major market for Java sugar, see JV NHM Hong Kong 1934: 4, 14–16, 20–21 and 1937:10; ‘A Brief Report on the Sugar Industry of China: Appendix’ (in English, n.d., n.p.), J. J. Wierink to NIVAS, 22 March 1937, 44, NA NIVAS 383.

55 Wierink to NIVAS 29 February 1936, 9, NA NIVAS 383.

56 Kian Gwan, under name of Hsing Wah, was appointed (1937) general manager of the two ‘military’ mills in Canton. The firm was to get 20% and the military 80% of the profits. See BSHK to Swires, 16 April 1937, JSSV 1/9. See also Wierink to NIVAS 7 October 1936, 26, NA NIVAS 383. One minister in the Nanjing government was said be a friend and former fellow student of Oie Kan Tjwan, Kian Gwan's chief representative in China, and the Oie Tiong Ham family (owners of Kian Gwan) had family ties with the former foreign minister of the regime. See ‘Extract Brief Waarnemend Inspecteur der NHM NV Shanghai to NHM Batavia 26.4.1933,’ NA NIVAS 537.

57 In 1937 a Straits Chinese consortium (PAN) was reported to be involved in negotiations to run the ‘civilian’ factories (i.e. those not currently run by Kian Gwan). See Wierink to NIVAS, 8 April 1937, 45, NA NIVAS 383.

58 By the middle of 1938, Kian Gwan's connection had ceased, and its staff had been withdrawn. Wierink to NIVAS 12August 1938, 58 and 1September 1938, 59, NA NIVAS 383.

59 JV NHM Hong Kong 1938: 6, NA NHM 5094. Repaired, they were subsequently considered for inclusion as a direct part of the Japanese sugar empire in the now conquered region. One manifestation of this was the arrival in south China in 1938 of a Japanese commission of inquiry into the possibilities of expanded sugar production there—though in 1939 it was being reported that nothing had yet come of this. See JV NHM Hong Kong 1938: 18 and 1939: 20–27, NA NHM 5094 (1939 being the last year that these reports reached Amsterdam).

60 According to Prinsen Geerligs and Prinsen Geerligs (Cane Sugar Production, p. 67), sugar imports into China peaked at 863,100 tons in 1929. The remaining data come from ‘A Brief Report on the Sugar Industry of China,’ already cited, which claimed that in the 1935–1936 grinding season, a total of six factories produced 23, 560 MT of sugar; the 1936–1937 expected output is in the region of 25,000 MT. The ‘Report’ is also the source for the ‘conservative estimate that China's annual consumption of sugar was in the region of 2,000,000 MT. Similar estimates of production—no more than 20,000–30,000 tons of white sugar and that ‘most mills . . . [had] made little or no provision for cane supplies for the coming season’ in 1937—are to be found in BSHK to Swires, 2 July 1937, Refinery Letters 1937, JSSV 1/9.

61 BSHK to Swires, 2 July 1937, JSSV 1/9.

62 JV NHM Shanghai 1934, p. 47 and 1935, pp. 49–50, NA NHM 7172.

63 It was claimed in Hong Kong that only two of the Skoda-built factories were actually designed for this purpose. BSHK to Swires, 2 July 1937, JSSV 1/9. A ‘national refinery’ had already been established in Shanghai in the 1920s but was derelict by 1929, when attempts to induce one of Jardine's ex-managers to take over the running proved abortive (‘one look at the place was sufficient for him to decline the offer’). BSHK to Swires, 19 April 1929, JSSV 1/2.

64 BSHK to Swires, 2 July 1937, JSSV 1/9.

65 Sucheta Mazumdar, Sugar and Society in China: Peasants, Technology, and the World Market (Harvard University Asia Centre, 1998), pp. 383–386. The point had also been noted by contemporaries: see F. Corsten, ‘Verslag Omtrent’, Cambridge, MA, pp. 311–315.

66 Lin, ‘Chen Jitang,’ p. 202.

67 JV NHM Shanghai 1931: 31, NA NHM 5171.

68 JV NHM Hong Kong 1932: 20; JV NHM Hong Kong 1937: 16, NA NHM 5094.

69 It was reported from Hong Kong in 1937, for instance, that growers were so badly squeezed by the factories that they preferred to use their cane to make brown sugar. BSHK to Swires, 2 July 1937, JSSV 1/9.

70 It was said, c. 1940, that the re-opened factories were working well below capacity, primarily because of the non-cooperation of sugar-growing peasants, who wished to crush the cane themselves in order to make brown sugar. See JV NIVAS 1940–1941: 84, NA NIVAS 15.

71 The prime published source for Feng Rui at the time of writing is Hill, ‘Monopoly and Anarchy’, pp. 57–69. Dr Hill's monograph, Smokeless Sugar in Southern China, will be published by the University of British Columbia Press in 2008. Dr Hill has kindly supplied me with drafts of the relevant chapters, and I have gratefully incorporated a number of her findings, based on her extensive research in Chinese and American sources, in the pages that follow. See also Lin, ‘Chen Jitang,’ pp. 200–202. For contemporary Dutch accounts of developments, see J. J. Wierink (Canton) to NIVAS (Surabaya), June 1936, 18 and 14 August 1936, 22, NA NIVAS 383.

72 Hill, ‘Monopoly and Anarchy,’ p. 65.

73 Stanley, F. Wright, China's Struggle for Tariff Autonomy, 1843–1938 (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1938), pp. 657–691Google Scholar. I am grateful to Dr Emily M. Hill for kindly directing my attention to this source.

74 JV NHM Hong Kong 1935: 18–22, NA NHM 5094.

75 JV NHM Shanghai 1933: 52–3, NA NHM 5171.

76 Wright, China's Struggle, p. 683.

77 JV NHM Soerabaija 1936: 25, NA NHM 5193.

78 JV NHM Shanghai 1939: 22, NA NHM 5172.

79 BSHK to Swires London 16 April 1937 and 3 December 1937, JSSV 1/9.

80 JV NHM Soerabaija, 1936: 25, NA NHM 5193; JV NHM Shanghai 1939: 21–22, NA NHM 5172.

81 For the Formosa industry, see Mazumdar, Sugar and Society, pp. 368–82; Chih-Ming Ka, Japanese Colonialism in Taiwan: Land Tenure, Development and Dependency, 1895–1945 (Boulder, CO, USA: Westview, 1995), pp. 62–69, 109–125.

82 Data from Rosenfeld, Arthur H., ‘Een en Ander Omtrent de Suikerindustrie in Formosa’ Archief Suiker 37 (1929), pp. 1018–1029Google Scholar, originally appeared in English in The International Sugar Journal 31 (1929); ‘Formosa Suikerproductie en Suikeruitvoer naar China,’ Archief Suiker 41 (1933), pp. 26–27 (which shows Formosa's output in 1931–1933 to be composed overwhelmingly of factory white); Ho, Samuel P. S., Economic Development of Taiwan (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1978), p. 357Google Scholar. Formosa had started to produce factory white a few years before the First World War. See Schmidt, H., ‘Over de Invoering der Witsuikerfabrikatie op Formosa,’ Archief Suiker 20 (2) (1912), pp. 1124–1129Google Scholar.

83 For the period through to 1937/1938, see Prinsen Geerligs and Prinsen Geerligs, Cane Sugar Production, pp. 83–84; the later figures are from JV NIVAS 1940–1941: 82–83, NA NIVAS 15.

84 Writing c. 1937, Prinsen Geerligs and Prinsen Geerligs (Cane Sugar Production, pp. 67, 69–71) remarked, ‘[The] production of Japan and Formosa is about equal to Japan's consumption. Yet the country imports great quantities of raw material for the refineries, which ship the equivalent to the Asiatic mainland viz. China, Manchuko, Korea etc.’ A similar point emerges from NIVAS reportage from this era. For instance, in 1936 the organization noted that an increase in exports of raw Java sugar to Japan was predicated on the growth of Japanese refinery sales in China. It also drew attention to rising per capita consumption in Japan itself as a promising sign for the Java industry. JV NIVAS 1935–1936: 22, NA NIVAS 10. Even in Japan's home market, although imports from Formosa were said to contribute to 75% of domestic consumption (Ho, Taiwan, p. 31), they nonetheless fell well short of the total amount.

85 Ho, Taiwan, pp. 73–74, notes that because of climate problems and relatively backward cultivation techniques consequent of the sugar company's decision to rely primarily on ‘cheap’ and risk-free peasant smallholder production. Ka (Japanese Colonialism, pp. 123–124) argues that ‘Formosa was not an efficient producer of sugar, the growth of the industry was confined to the Japanese market, where it received preferential treatment.’ As a result, ‘Japan could have obtained sugar more cheaply from Java than from Formosa.’

86 S. Sugiyama and Linda Grove, ‘Introduction,’ in Sugiyama and Grove, Commercial Networks, p. 11.

87 For this and the following paragraphs, see Howard Dick, ‘Formation of the Nation State,’ in Dick et al, National Economy, pp. 158–162; Dick, ‘Japanese Expansion,’ pp. 251–255; Anne Booth, ‘Japanese Import Penetration and Dutch Response: Some Aspects of Economic Policy Making in Colonial Indonesia,’ in Shiriya Sugiyama and M. C. Guerrero (eds) International Commercial Rivalry in Southeast Asia in the Interwar Period, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1994, pp. 133–164; Anne Booth, ‘Growth Collapse in Indonesia: A Comparison of the 1930s and 1990s,’ Itinerario 26(3–4) (2002), pp. 79–85.

88 Post, ‘Chinese Business Networks,’ pp. 167–8.

89 Booth, ‘Japanese Import Penetration,’ pp. 157ff.

90 On trade negotiations in general, see Dick, ‘Japan's Economic Expansion,’ pp. 254–258. On the possibility of a deal over sugar, see NHM Kobe to Amsterdam 3 May 1934, 250; 5 May 1934, 252 and 8 May 1934, 253, NA NHM 9230 ‘Kobe Agentschap 1930–1935’.

91 For a brief note on Japanese sugar interests in Formosa (and references to Japanese sources) see Schneider, ‘The Taiwan Government-General,’ pp. 163–164. For a contemporary Western account (c. 1930) of the refinery interests of Mitsui and Mitsubishi (and Dai Nihon), see ‘De Suikerindustrie van Formosa. Een Economische Beschouwing [The Sugar Industry of Formosa. Considered from the Economic Aspect],’ Archief Suiker 39(1) (1931), pp. 549–557, 607–621. Reprinted from the American periodical The Diamond, this lists the Mitsui, Mitsubishi and Dai Nihon refineries in metropolitan Japan and their links with Formosa (but has virtually no information on Ensuiko, likewise one of the top firms involved, with links to Mitsubishi). The article shows that c. 1930 some 30% of all Formosa sugar came from what was, in effect, Mitsui's Formosa Sugar Co. (Formosa Seito Kabushiki Kaisha). Mitsui was by far the largest single shareholder in the firm, followed by the Japanese royal family. The company had two metropolitan refineries, one in Kobe and the other on Kyushu at Kurume. Mitsui was followed (in almost equal importance) by the Mitsubishi-linked Meiji Sugar Co., with three refineries in Japan and one in Shanghai (Meika), opened in 1924. The Dai Nihon Sugar Manufacturing Co., c. 1930, appears to have had the largest refining capacity—with three in Japan and one in Korea. (For a brief reference to Mitsubishi's long-standing interest in Ensuiko, already in place in the 1920s, see BSHK to Swires, 25 October 1929, JSSV 1/2.)

92 For a general overview of these negotiations, see the files relating to the Netherlands Indies trade negotiations, 1934–1936 in Collectie Meyer Ranneft, NA 2.21.121, nos. 93 and 98. The specific information quoted here comes from no. 98, Bijlage 16. I am grateful to Jeroen Buterse, of the University of Leiden, for kindly investigating this source on my behalf.

93 ‘Sugar Agreement forshadows Japan-N.I. Trade Pact,’ Far Eastern Survey 6(2) (20 January 1937), pp. 25–26.

94 Prinsen Geerligs and Prinsen Geerligs, Cane Sugar Production, pp. 83–84; ‘Jaaroverzicht.’

95 For the history of Taikoo, see Sheila Marriner and Francis E. Hyde, The Senior: John Samuel Swire 1825–1898 (Liverpool, Merseyside, UK: Liverpool University Press, 1967), pp. 98–112; Shinya Sugiyama, ‘A British Trading Firm in the Far East: John Swire & Sons, 1867–1914,’ in Shin'ichi Yonekawa and Hideki Yoshira (eds.), Business History of General Trading Companies (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1987), pp. 186–191; Sugiyama, ‘The Taikoo Sugar Refinery,’ pp. 140–158; and, more generally, Howard Cox, Huang Biao and Stuart Metcalfe, ‘Compradors, Firm Architecture and the Re-Invention of British Trading Companies: John Swire and Sons Operations in Early Twentieth Century China,’ Business History 45(2) (2003), pp. 15–34. For the China Sugar Refinery, see Sugiyama, ‘The Structure of the East Asian Refined Sugar Market’ pp. 325–353; ‘The China and Hongkong Sugar Trade,’ The Sugar Cane 12 (1880) pp. 490–492, and for Jardine Matheson in general, see M. Keswick (ed.), The Thistle and the Jade (London, Octupus Books, 1982).

96 ‘Extract brief waarnemende Inspecteur NHM Shanghai’ to NHM Batavia, 26 April 1933, NA NIVAS 537.

97 Kian Gwan/OTHC (c. 1940) was a member of the Hoofdbestuur of Nivas but was not admitted into the (all-important?) ‘Dagelijks Bestuur,’ comprised of the NHM, HVA, KB, Vorstenlanden Cultuurmij, NILM and Fonds van Eigendom Mangkoenegoorsche Rijk—i.e. of all the big operators in sugar manufacturing. See JV NIVAS 1940–1941: 1, NA NIVAS 15.

98 See NILM to NIVAS, Amsterdam, 10 May 1933; ‘Extract brief waarnemende Inspecteur der NHM NV, Shanghai aan NHM Batavia,’ 10 May 1933, in ‘Dossier inzake raffinaderijen in China (1934–1940),’ NIVAS 537. NIVAS data shows that ‘the combine’ (i.e. Maclaine Watson, Erdman, Wellenstein) was by far the largest buyer of the 1939 Java sugar crop. The Rotterdam-based Internatio came in second and Kian Gwan a poor third. Japanese firms bought a mere 16,000 tons out of a total of 1,244,109. See JV NIVAS 1940–1941: 29–32.

99 As had been the case for most of the preceding four decades, early in the 1920s Maclaine Watson and its associates were largest single supplier of Java sugar to Taikoo. (Erdman, Kian Gwan and the London Rangoon Trading Co. were also involved.) This was still the case in the late 1930s, though Maclaine Watson also had their own agents in China through whom it sold directly to Chinese buyers. Contemporaneously, the firm had direct dealings with Japanese refineries. See Swires to BSHK, 30 March 1922, JSSV 1/1; Swires to BSHK, 1 January 1937, 19 February 1937 and 28 May 1937, JSSV 1/9.

100 On the political and economic background, see Harumi Goto-Shibata, Japan and Britain, pp. 13–41.

101 Sugiyama, ‘The Taikoo Sugar Refinery,’ pp. 146–147, 150–155. According to Dutch sources in Hong Kong, the shift in the Chinese civil war to the Yangzi Valley in 1927 had a particularly damaging impact on the fortunes of the Hong Kong refineries, and the city's sugar trade in general had suffered very badly in the previous year from a speculative disaster that had swept away several big Chinese wholesaler firms. See JV NHM Hong Kong 1926: 13–15; 1927: 9–11 NA NHM 5093.

102 Cox, Biao and Metcalfe, ‘Compradors,’ pp. 15–34.

103 Swires to BSHK, 29 November 1929, JSSV 1/2.

104 See Swires to BSHK, 8 March 1929, JSSV 1/2.

105 See Ayala, Cesar J., American Sugar Kingdom (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), pp. 48ffGoogle Scholar. An attempt early in the 1920s by the great Indies-Chinese sugar-trading firm of KHT to set up a refinery in Hong Kong, that might have created a degree of vertical integration, proved abortive. See Claver, ‘Commerce and Capital,’ pp. 330–331.

106 At various times in 1930s, the London-based Maclaine Sugar Company, a firm with very close relations with Butterfield and Swire, the owners of Taikoo, along with its ‘friends in Java,’ found itself at loggerheads with NIVAS, inter alia, over the purported re-sale by Taikoo of raw Java sugar that it had obtained at favourable rates ('the frequent discovery of mare's nests by NIVAS is getting rather irritating for all concerned'). See the file of correspondence between NIIVAS and Maclaines in NIVAS 537.

107 BSHK to Swires, 5 April 1937, JSSV 1/9. Taikoo's ‘lowest economical melt’ was around 1,500 tons (25.000 piculs) per week, whereas it was presently disposing of only half that amount.

108 Swires to BSHK, 17 September 1937, JSSV 1/9.

109 It had begun to do so at the beginning of the decade. According to Cox, Biao and Metcalfe, ‘Compradors,’ pp. 31–32, after the 1931 Nationalist government tariff on imported sugar (TSR being outside the boundary circumscribed by the duty) ‘Taikoo looked increasingly outside China for a market for its sugar.’ Dutch sources in the early 1930s likewise commented on the fact that Taikoo did business across Asia and into the Middle East (JV NHM Hongkong 1931: 12–13, NA NHM 5093), and towards the end of the decade the firm was contemplating an assault on the African market with specifically designed sugar ‘tablets’ manufactured in imitation of those with which the market was currently supplied by Czechoslovak beet sugar manufacturers. See Swires to BSHK, 29 January 1937, JSSV 1/9.

110 See Swires to BSHK, 1 January 1937, JSSV 1/9: ‘It occurred to us that the present might be as good an opportunity as we are likely to get of starting some sort of cooperation with Japan . . . [E]ven a single joint price increase would be a start in the right direction . . . [I]t does look as if the Japanese may be in a slightly more accommodating mood than they have been of late.'

111 Swires to BSHK, 19 March 1937, JSSV 1/9.

112 ‘Our position as Maclaine's agents might enable us to bring the Java sugar importers into an agreement as well.’ Swires to BSHK, 25 March 1937, JSSV 1/9.

113 J. Thayer (Yokohama) to BSHK 10 February 1937 and 27 February 1937; BSHK to Thayer (Yokohama), 27 February 1937, JSSV 1/9.

114 JV NIVAS 1940–19441: 82–83. In 1940–41, Hong Kong (i.e. Taikoo) took 166,000 tons of Java sugar, up from 90,000 in 1937–1938.

115 The factory concerned was Pandji, in East Java, owned by the Surabaya firm of Fraser Eaton (part of the Maclaine Watson group). According to company reports for the years concerned (JV NV Cultuur Maatschappij Pandji and Tandjoongsarie, Gevestigd te Surabaja, 1920–1953, Koninlijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Amsterdam, L 2827) the factory, which was planting over 1,600 ha of cane annually prior to the Depression, was converted to refined sugar production in 1933, when a new refinery plant was built alongside the existing ‘white’ sugar factory, which was itself converted to the production of ‘brown’ or raw sugar. In 1936, Pandji's refined output amounted to only 40% of total output because of big demand for browns, but it was claimed that Pandji's refined sugar was ‘comparable with the best European refined.’ By that date, the factory was in the black, financially speaking: profits amounted to 3,293 guilders on an equity capital of 3,360,000 guilders. (Reserves amounted to the better part of 1 million guilders.) By 1939, with over 1000 ha under cane, refined sugar constituted the principal part of Pandji's output.

116 See Swires to BSHK, 16 April 1937, JSSV 1/9: ‘In conversation the other day, Mr McNeill [presumably of Maclaine's London office] remarked that he would not be surprised to see three or four more Java mills converted to “refineries” before very long; the Java sugar industry is more prosperous now; and there is money for this sort of development . . . Of course, if others than Maclaine's are going to out-turn Java ‘refined sugars’, which they will no doubt try to sell on the China market, then there will be no point in having any special arrangements with Pandji.’ [emphasis added].

117 JV NIVAS 1940–1941: 86, NA NIVAS 15.

118 JV NIVAS 1940–1941: 82, NA NIVAS 15. The volatility of the trade was demonstrated in 1940–1941, however, when imports to China ‘soared’ to 78,417 tons, largely in consequence of a sharp (though temporary) fall in production in Formosa.

119 JV NIVAS 1933–1934: 57, NA NIVAS 8.