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From Plantation to Padi-field: The Origins of the Nineteenth Century Transformation of Java's Sugar Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

G. R. Knight
G. R. Knight
Affiliation:
University of Adelaide, South Australia
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Extract

Java's long-established sugar industry was transformed almost beyond recognition during the course of the nineteenth century. Under Dutch East India Company rule, which effectively lasted until the arrival on the island of Governor-General Daendels in 1808, sugar production had been organized almost exclusively by Chinese entrepreneurs, whose dozens of small sugar factories and plantations were scattered across the lowlands around Batavia (present day Jakarta). Their output played a subsidiary role in the prevailing pattern of colonial exploitation, was unable to compete in Europe with the production of West Indian sugar colonies and consequently found a sale, for the most part, only in other ‘protected’ Asian markets. During the nineteenth century, all this changed. First under government auspices—the so-called Cultivation System—and later under the direction of metropolitan-owned Sugar Corporations, the industry was transformed into a paradigm of colonial economic ‘development’. It was efficient, immensely profitable and productive (vast quantities of sugar were exported to the West), heavily capitalized and equipped with the best and most up-to-date machinery.

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Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , April 1980 , pp. 177 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 An earlier draft of this paper was given at a Malaysian and Indonesian History Seminar at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in May 1978. I would like to thank the members of that seminar for their criticism and advice. Likewise, my thanks to the many archivists and librarians in The Netherlands and England who have helped my researches and to the Australian Research Grants Commission (and hence the Australian taxpayer) for making funds available to me.Google Scholar

2 See, e.g., the review article by Bernstein, H. and Pitt, M., ‘Plantations and Modes of Exploitation’, Journal of Peasant Studies, I (1974), pp. 514–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 The most prolific contributor in this field has been Geertz, Clifford, notably with Agricultural Involution: The Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1963),Google Scholar and The Social Context of Economic Change: An Indonesian Case Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1956).Google Scholar

4 This section is based on the following (exceptions appear in the notes): Teisseire, Andries, ‘Verhandeling over den Tegenwordigensten Staat der Zuikermolens omstreeks de Stadt Batavia’, Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen (Hereafter: V.B.G.), 5, 1790, and ‘Beschrijving van een Gedeelte der Omme-en-Bovenlanden dezer Hoofdstadt’, V.B.G., 6, 1792;Google ScholarHooyman, J., ‘Verhandelingen over den Tegenwoordigen Staat van den Landbouw in de Ommelanden van Batavia’, V.B.G., I, 1779.Google Scholar For more recent discussions, see van den Berg, N. P., ‘De Suikerindustrie op Java onder het Bestuur van de Oostindische Compagnie’, in Berg, , Uit de Dagen der Compagnie Haarlem 1904),Google Scholar and de Haan, F., Oud Batavia, 2nd edn (Batavia, 1935), pp. 323–7.Google Scholar The plates accompanying this volume include a photograph, taken in the late nineteenth century, of a traditional sugar mill of the ‘Chinese’ type. An excellent recent survey in English is Cobban, James L., ‘Geographic notes on the First Two Centuries of Djakarta’, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 44 (1971), pt I, pp. 128–36.Google Scholar

5 A prominent late eighteenth-century example was W. V. H. v. Riemsdijk (1752–1818), son of a Governor-General, long-serving member of the Council of the Indies, holder of a number of other high offices under the Company—and also a major landed proprietor in the colony, ship owner and usurer to the sugar industry. See the biographical sketch in de Haan, F., Priangan. De Preanger Regentschapen onder Nederlandsche Bestuur tot 1811 (Batavia, 1910–1912), Vol. I, ‘Personalia’, p. 70.Google Scholar According to Teisseire's mid-80s account, most of the industry's creditors were Europeans—some of them repatriated—who had been attracted to sugar because of the high rate of interest, but said by him to have lost heavily on their investments. Teisseire, , V.B.G., 5, 1790, pp. 160–1).Google Scholar For additional material on another high-ranking Company official with extensive sugar interests, see De, Haan's comments on Nicolas Engelhard in Tijdschrift Bataviaasch Genootschap, 43 (1901), pp. 201–3.Google Scholar

6 Algemeen Verslag… Batavia 1824, p. 33, Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague (Hereafter A.R.A.) Schneither Verzameling 84. The Chinese population of Batavia itself and of the surrounding lowlands in the early 1830s was 25,000 and 15,000 respectively. See Statistiek Van Beusechem… Batavia (c. 1836), pp. 19–20, A.R.A., Archief Ministerie v. Kolonien (hereafter MK.) 3043.Google Scholar

7 By way of contrast, in August 1819, one of west Java's few progressive sugar makers found that the only place where he could get his broken mill repaired was in the government's shipyard in far-away Surabaja! G. F. Meijlan to H. J. van de Graaff, 10.8.1819, in van der Kemp, P. H. (ed.), Brieven van en aan Mr H. J. van de Graaff (Batavia/The Hague, 1901), 2, pp. 72–3.Google Scholar

8 For a general description and diagrams of such mills, see Porter, G. R., The Nature and Properties of the Sugar Cane, 2nd edn (London, 1843), pp. 140–6.Google Scholar They had three metal cylinders operating horizontally, and could be worked by either steam or water power (or by cattle if need be). The advantages of the horizontal over the vertical set-up lay in the ease and uniformity with which the cane could be fed over the whole length of the rollers, thus reducing both the risk of uneven wear and of the rollers deviating under pressure. It also bruised the cane less, producing a juice ‘said to be much clearer and many shades lighter than that yielded by vertical rollers’. The use of such mills in Southeast Asia greatly speeded up the rate at which cane could be pressed. One writer, for instance, reckoned that the new mills could do in nine/ten days what the ‘Chinese’ mills had taken thirty days to do. See Loman, J., Het Eiland Java in Verband Beschouwd met Nederlands Handel, Zeevaart en Fabrieken (Amsterdam, 1828), p. 41;Google Scholar and Low, J. (who gives a somewhat higher estimate of the comparative capacity of the ‘West Indian’ mill), Dissertation on the Soil and Agriculture of the British Settlements of Penang (London, 1836) (Singapore 1972), pp. 52–3.Google Scholar The new mills had the additional advantage that they pressed the cane so dry that it could speedily be used for firing the factory furnaces. See Eysinga, S. Roorda v., Verschillende Reizen en Lotgevallen (Amsterdam, 1830–1832), 2, pp. 382–3.Google Scholar

9 van Hogendorp, C. S. W., Beschouwing der Nederlandsche Bezittingen in Oost-Indie (Amsterdam, 1833), pp. 211–17. (A slightly more detailed version of the same material appears in his Algemeen Verlag… Batavia, 1824, pp. 164–71, Schneither 84.) Carel Siradus Willem, Graaf van Hogendorp (1788–1856) was Resident of Buitenzorg (Bogor), 1818–1823 and Resident of Batavia, 1823–27.Google ScholarHis discussion of the Chinese sugar manufactory of western Java, has therefore, some claim to authenticity. Information from the Batavia Chinese sources—which might verify what he has to say—seems unlikely to be forthcoming.Google Scholar

10 Brownrigg, to Palmer, 12.8.1821, Papers of John Palmer, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Eng. Lett. c. 105, pp. 74–5. A general discussion of the rise and fall of sugar prices after 1816 and effect on the industry, by Alexander London and G. E. Teisseire, 8.5.1827, is to be found in A.R.A., Van den Bosch 402.Google Scholar

11 The price of rice at Batavia, which had been steady in 1817–1820, rose from 64 guilders per koyang in 1821 to a peak of more than 150 guilders in early 1825. See Prijzen den Rijst of Java, 1817–1829, A.R.A., Baud 251.Google Scholar

12 Rapport London-Teisseire, 8.5.1827, Van den Bosch 402; Nicholas Engelhard to C. T. Elout, 12 and 13.3.1825. MK. 3195; Algemeen Verslag…Batavia, 1824, pp. 164–9, A.R.A., Schneither 84.Google Scholar

13 Jaarverslag NHM Factorij Batavia, 1826, pp. 4 and 11, A.R.A., Archief NHM (not inventorized at the time I consulted them in 1971).Google Scholar

14 Algemeen Verslag …Batavia, 1824, p. 164, Schneither 84.Google Scholar

15 See footnote 12.Google Scholar

16 See Trail and Company's letter to the Nederlandsche Handelmaatschappij (n.d.) in Notulen (NHM) Factorij Batavia, 11.4.1826, NHM Archief. In the late eighteentwenties, Trail's Bekasi sugar factory was said to be the largest in the colony. As early as 1821, a prominent official of the Batavia government described the Bekasi mills as of ‘infinitely superior construction to any known hitherto on Java’. See: Willem v. Hogendorp to G. K. v. Hogendorp, 2.10.1828, enclosure, p. 5, A.R.A., Van Hogendorp, 91: H. J. v. d. Graff to C. T. Elout, 7.7.1821Google Scholar, in Kemp, , Van de Graaff Brieven, 2, p. 183.Google Scholar

17 Prior to 1825, the firm was known as Jessen Trail and Company. The firm was established at Batavia during the British occupation, and the original partners were James Trail (b. Paisley, Scotland, c. 1793) and Peter Jessen (b. Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein, c. 1786, d. Java 1832). They were later joined by William Young (b. Bengal 1787, d. Batavia 1841). Jessen left the firm in 1825, and the business was carried on by the remaining partners, and known in its later days as Trail and Young. Initially, the partnership was engaged in a wide variety of commercial business, and was agent in the colony for the (British)East India Company. They began sugar manufactury at Tjikandi Udek (Banten Residency) c. 1819, and bought the Bekasi estate in the Batavia lowlands from the Van Riemsdijk family in 1818. See: Registers of the European Population, MK. 3106, 3136 and 3144;Google Scholarde Haan, F., ‘Personalia der Periode van het Engelsch Bestuur over Java, 1811–1816’, B.K.I., 92, 1935, pp. 666–7;Google ScholarBataviasche Courant, 9.8.1817/1832 and 5.3.1825/1810;Google Scholar and Kemp, , Van de Graaff Brieven, 2, p. 183.Google Scholar

18 Notulen NHM Factorij Batavia, 11.4.1826. NHM Archief.Google Scholar

19 Thomas MacQuoid to H. W. Muntinghe and P. Merkus, 22.7.1820, Universitiets Biblioteek, Leiden, MSS 616, Nahuijs Papers, 6, No. 10. For additional descriptions of the Subang mills and plantations in the 1820s, see Some Remarks on the Sugar Cultivation of Java by Mr. Loudon, (c. 1830), A.R.A., Baud, 949; Algemeen Verslag…Krawang, 1823, pp. 72–6, Schneither 87 and Hogendorp, H.v., Willem van Hogendorp in Nederlandsch-Indie, 1825–1830 (The Hague, 1913), pp. 19–6.Google ScholarIt was initially intended to send the raw sugar from P. & T. to Europe for refining, but this project was soon abandoned, and in 1824 the Resident reported that production was now being purified at Subang ‘in the Chinese manner’ for sale within the colony. Algemeen Verslag…Krawang, 1824, p. 16, Schneither 87.Google Scholar

20 Trail and Company alone in the mid-1820s claimed that they were ‘attached to no foreign connection elsewhere, our interest being purely colonial, and our operations conducted exclusively for our own account’. This had not always been true even of this firm, however, for in 1815 (and hence before they entered the sugar industry) there is mention of their ‘constituents in England and India’. Notulen Factorij Batavia, 11.4.1826, NHM Archief; Proceedings, 13.5.1815, India Office Library, London, Java Factory Records, 28, pp. 520–1.Google Scholar

21 Skelton, Philip, b. Ireland c. 1779, d. Batavia 1821, started in business at Batavia in 1813 in partnership with James Shrapnell, d. Batavia 1815 (See: Registers of the European Population, MK. 3106 and 3126). His firm appear to have been connected from the beginning with Forbes and Co. of Bombay, who were said to have had an ‘interest’ in the Batavia house, and to have been ‘co-partners’ with them (Proceedings, 23.6.1813 and 6.7.1815, Java Factory Records, 21 and 29). In London, Forbes & Co were linked to the firm of Smith Inglis & Co., Which in 1823 became Inglis Forbes & Co., through the partners David Deans Inglis and Mitchie Forbes, both of whom were former members of the Bombay house.Google Scholar After 1821, both these firms were represented at Batavia by Stewart Tyring and Co. and later still by Miln Haswell and Co. See the various notices in the Bataviasche Courant, 10.7.1819/28; 24.8.1822/34; 28.6.1833/26 and Daukes, W. H., The P & T Lands (London, 1943), p. 12.Google Scholar

22 Details of the ownership of Pamanukan-Tjiassem are rather complicated. At Batavia, the firms involved (successively) were Skelton and Co., MacQuoid, Davidson and Co., Stewart Turing and Co. and Miln Haswell and Co. Information supplied to the Dutch colonial authorities in 1825 showed the ownership of the estate as follows: Sir Charles Forbes, W. T. Money, J. Stewart and General John Skelton (all owned 2/12ths) and M. Forbes, L. Stewart, J. R. Turing and A. Loudon (each with 1/12th). See: G. G. in Rade, 15.11.1825/15, MK. 2791. And, in addition, Daukes, P & T, pp. 10–12.Google Scholar

23 SirForbes, Charles, b. Scotland 1774, d. London 1849. For further details, see entry in D.N.B.Google Scholar

24 Money, William Taylor, b. Walthamstow (England) 1771, d. Venice 1833. His career in the East appears to have begun as Captain of an East Indiaman in the 1790S (his father was an E.I.C. Director), and he later became Superintendent of the Marine at Bombay, a fairly considerable position—the commanding post in the Company's navy—from which he resigned in 1810. Subsequently, he was a partner in the firm of Forbes and Co. at Bombay, but returned to Europe in 1815, apparently because of ill-health. He left the partnership in 1816, the same year in which he was elected M.P. for Wootton Basset. In England he was associated with such leading evangelicals as Wilberforce, Buxton and Zachary Macauley, and as well as being related by marriage to the Inglis's, one of the great E.I.C. families. He left England for the Continent, in rather obscure circumstances that suggest problems of debt, and became British Consul in northern Italy. Data on Money from: Bataviasche Courant, 20.8.1817/1835 and from the following letters etc. in the Harrowby MSS, in the possession of the Harrowby MSS Trust, Sandon Hall, Staffordshire (England). I am grateful to the Earl of Harrowby for the permission which he gave me to consult these documents (and for his kind hospitality) in 1966. William Money to W. T. Money (n.d. c. 1793), MSS 596, pp. 1–10; Chief Secretary, Bombay to W.T.M., 14.8.1810, MSS 596, pp. 52–3; W. T. M. to his wife, 4.7.1816 and 6.7.1816, MSS 596, pp. 72–8; William Wilberforce to W. T. M., 17.7.1817; MSS 596, p. 83; Zachery Macauley to W. T. M., 10.12.1824, MSS 596, pp. 203–5; ‘Extracts…from Papers sent by Robert Money, 31.7.1944’, MSS 597, p. 470.Google Scholar

25 See e.g., Hogendorp, , William v. Hogendorp, pp. 200; Forbes, Stewart & Skelton to Van den Bosch, 13.11.1834 in Verbaal MK. 15.12.1834/6, MK. 951. They eventually sold the estate in 1839, see A. V. Hoboken to Van den Bosch, 22.10.1839, in Verbaal MK. 25.10.1839/11, MK. 1261.Google Scholar

26 Money, W. T. to (?), n.d. c. 1827, Harrowby MSS 597, p. 6.Google Scholar

27 De Haan, , B.K.I., 1935, pp. 605–8.Google Scholar

28 See e.g., Palmer, John to W. T. Money, 6.5.1822, ‘MacQuoid has, I trust, done famously with sugar…your mills and stills would complete the advantage of MacQuoid's process…’ (my emphasis), Eng., Lett. c. 93, pp. 265–7.Google Scholar

29 A notice in the Bataviasche Courant 18.7.1822/1829 informed the public that ‘our late firm of Skelton and Co… will be continued by Thomas MacQuoid, John Davidson and David Alexander Fraser…we feel it necessary to apprize our friends that Messrs. Forbes and Co., of Bombay ceased to hold any interest in our commercial concerns on 31.12. last’. A letter from the great Calcutta merchant, John Palmer, of September 1822 speaks of the ‘schism in the Skelton concerns’, the outcome of which (‘I trust that Forbes will not repent the bargain’) was the complete transfer of Pamanukan-Tjiassem to the Bombay firm and their associates in Britain. See: Palmer to Morris, 11.9.1822, Eng. lett. c. 94, pp. 223–8 and Palmer to Macquoid, 23.3.1823, Engl. lett. c. 95, p. 319.Google Scholar

30 Bataviasche Courant, 5.8.1826/1831Google Scholar; Wurtzberg, C. E., Raffles of the Eastern Isles (London, 1954), pp. 726–7.Google Scholar

31 MacQuoid's Sydney years are documented in: W. S. Davidson to John MacArthur, 20.8.1828, MacArthur Papers, 15, Mitchell Library, Sydney, MSS A2911, p.409; Robert Futter Estate Papers, items 91–94, Mitchell MSS A5479; N.S.W. Governor's Dispatches, 1829, 1833, 1841, Mitchell MSS A1205 (p. 906), A1211 (pp. 753ff) and A1226 (pp. 729ff).Google Scholar

32 A useful short survey of the literature dealing with the eighteenth-century situation in Levert, P., Inheemsche Arbeid in de Java Suikerindustrie (Wageningen, 1934), pp. 57–9.Google Scholar

33 Teisseire, , V.B.G., 1790, 5, pp. 33 and 81.Google Scholar

34 Algemeen Verslag…Cheribon, 1824, pp. 2–5, Schneither 88.Google Scholar

35 G. G. in Rade, 14.11.1834/1837, Baud 432.Google Scholar

36 The west Java estate-owners were supposed to take no more than one-fifth of the padi-harvest (usually assessed on the standing crop), and the colonial government appears to have made genuine attempts to police this regulation, e.g. by taking action against landlords who infringed it. See, e.g., G. G. in Rade, 7.1.1820/27, MK. 2772 and G. G. buiten Rade, 14.6.1823/4, MK. 2470. With regard to labour services, the owners of estates sold in 1813 were expressly forbidden to demand them in the conditions of sale. Prohibitions of this kind, however, were fairly generally ignored. See: Bastin, J. S., The Native Policies of Sir Stamford Raffles in Java and Sumatra (Oxford, 1957), pp. 63–4.Google Scholar A characteristically rambling discussion of the issue will be found in Kemp, P. H. v.d., Java's Landelijk Stelsel, 1817–1819 (The Hague, 1916), pp. 299–330.Google Scholar

37 In the late 'twenties, for instance, Willem van Hogendorp (Secretary to Commissioner General Du Bus) reported that at the major Subang sugar factory on the Parmanukan-Tjiassem estate both mills and plantations were worked by labourers from outside the area. (Exceptionally, they had been recruited in the adjacent government lands in the Preanger, and Van Hogendorp regarded them as genuinely ‘free’ labour, unlike the servile workers from Tjeribon.) Hogendorp, Willem van Hogendorp, pp. 195–6.Google Scholar

38 Faes, J., Geschiedenis der Tjikandi-Landen (Batavia, 1895), end-map. Nor was there evidence of padi-fields being used for cane-cultivation at Subang in the 1820s. Describing the estate's sugar industry at the close of that decade, administrator Alexander Loudon observed that ‘no allowance is made for the ground occupied by the cane gardens, for these reasons, that there are thousands of acres of better land uncultivated in the neighbourhood of Soebang, consequently there can be no loss for the [Padi] cultivation’. See Some Remarks on the Sugar Cultivation of Java, by Mr. Loudon, Baud 949.Google Scholar

39 Algemeen Verslag… Batavia, 1824, pt 3, pp. 22–3Google Scholar and see, e.g., Hooyman's comments on the clearing of land for sugar cane in V.B.G., 1779, I, pp. 195–6,Google Scholar and Teisseire's, description of cultivation in V.B.G., 1790, 5, pp. 6–10, where it is clear that cane was grown without regular irrigation, depended solely on rainfall and that special arrangements for irrigation of the cane fields had to be made if it had the misfortune to be a dry year.Google Scholar

40 Resident of Krawang to Inspector of Finances, 31.12.1819, Baud 70. Of this population, only 4,843 were reckoned as ‘able-bodied’.Google Scholar

41 J. I. v. Sevenhoven (Member of the Council of the Indies in the 1830s) cited in Kemp, P. H. v.d., Bijdragen tot de Wordingsgeschiedenis van het Reglement op de Particuliere Landen bewesten de Tjimanoek (Batavia, 1889), pp. 89.Google Scholar

42 Some landlords certainly went much further. In 1821, for instance, the Resident of Krawang pointed out that Pamanukan's administrator (Thomas MacQuoid) was using village labour to have timber carried down to the coast and heavy iron machinery carted up to Subang. He added that ‘MacQuoid will never dare claim that he asked, or allowed anyone to ask the people…if they wanted to do such work. On the contrary, he will have to admit that he repeatedly ordered the native headmen to raise the necessary people for this work, and it cannot have escaped his notice that these latter did not wait for a yea or nay…but simply issued firm orders’. Interestingly enough, there is no suggestion, even here, that MacQuoid was using corvée labour for his sugar plantations. See Kemp, Bijdragen tot de Wordingsgeschiedenis, p. 50.Google Scholar

43 See, e.g., Buitenzorg, Statistiek 1821, Lett B/I. Schneither 85; Algemeen Verslag… Krawang, 1824, p. 2. Schneither 87.Google Scholar

44 See, e.g., Eysinga, S. Roorda v., Reizen, 2, pp. 267–8.Google Scholar

45 G. G. in Rade, 16.11.1824/1829, MK. 2785.Google Scholar

46 Batavia, Notulen Factorij, 11.4.1826, NHM Archief.Google Scholar

47 In 1826, the firm spoke of getting an annual production of as much as 30,000 piculs from their various mills. In fact, in the early thirties production still fell well below this. The Bekasi factory was producing around 7,500 piculs annually, and the Tjikandi works rather less than this. See: Jaarverslag NHM Factorij Batavia, I, 1826, p. 12, NHM Archief: Statistiek Van Beusechem…Batavia (c. 1836), p. 149, MK. 3043.Google Scholar

48 Productive capacity at Subang in the 1820s was estimated variously at ‘upwards of 6,000 piculs’ and at 8–10,000 piculs. The most which the mill ever produced during the decade was 5,000 piculs, and often considerably less. By the close of the 1820s, production was in the region of 3,000 piculs annually. See: Algemeen Verslag… Krawang, 1823, pp. 75, and Statistiek Krawang 1824, Lett. F/1, both Schneither 87; Algemeen Verslag wegens den Staat van den Landbouw over her Jaar 1829, Bijl. 2, A.R.A., Du Bus 371; Hogendorp, Willem v. Hogendorp, pp. 195–6. The labour shortage at Subang is documented in G. G. buiten Rade, 29.3.1822/8, MK. 2464; G. G. buiten Rade, 18.5.1825/1829, MK. 2483; Statistiek Krawang 1824, Lett. F/1, and Rapport Loudon-Teisseire, 8.5.1827, Van den Bosch 402.Google Scholar

49 Rade, G. G., 1.5.1829/13, MK 2825; Rapport Loudon-Teisseire, 8.5.1827, Van den Bosch 402; Robert Scott, Nota, 19.2.1828, A.R.A., Van Hogendorp 153.Google Scholar

50 de Jonge, J.K.J., De Opkomst van het Nederlandsch Gezag in Oost-Indie (The Hague, 1862–1888), 12 pp. 344–6 and 538–45Google Scholar; Berg, , Companie, pp. 322–6.Google Scholar

51 See Governor Reede tot de Parkelaar's Memorie van Overgave, 1801, p. 329, A.R.A., Van Alphen-Engelhard (1900) 191. Until 1808 the Dutch-controlled provinces east of Tjeribon were under the authority of their own Governor, whose seat of administration was at Samarang.Google Scholar

52 Reede tot de Parkelaar claimed that under his governorship sugar production had been put ‘on an entirely new footing’. See his Memorie v. Overgave, 1801, p. 328, Van Alphen-Engelhard (1900) 191. See in addition the references in note 50.Google Scholar

53 Sugar production in west Java in 1806 amounted to about 69,000 piculs and in the Northeast Coast Governorship to about 11,000 piculs, according to W. C. v. Braam to Min. v. Marine en Kolonien, 28.2.1808, printed in Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indie (hereafter T.N.I.), 1863 (2), pp. 95–6. In 1812 the seasoned Dutch officials, Jan Knops and J. C. Lawick v. Pabst, reckoned that the former N. E. Coast Governorship produced ‘on a rough calculation’ about 15–20,000 piculs annually. See Knops and Pabst, Java als het is…1812, India Office Library, Mackenzie Collection (Private), 56, p. 32.Google Scholar

54 Comparative statistics of the output and export of sugar in early nineteenth-century Java are a minefield into which the present author strays with the greatest misgiving. What seems fairly certain is that around the turn of the century, (a) there were only two sugar mills in the entire Oosthoek, and that their total output was, at the very most, 3,600 piculs annually. By 1820, total Oosthoek production was in the region of 11,000 piculs (which represented the output of three small watermills and about a dozen cattle or hand-operated mills) (b) at a time when exports from Java amounted to something in excess of 90,000 piculs. By the end of the ‘twenties there had undoubtedly been a considerable increase in Oosthoek sugar production, testified to, among others, by the NHM. (c) Getting at the precise figures is greatly complicated, however, by the dubious character of the statistics compiled by Commissioner-General Du Bus de Ghesignis's High Commission for Agriculture, whose reports (d) were characterized by his successor Van den Bosch as ‘works of fiction’, (e) as well as by the problems involved in trying to compare exports from a particular Residency with Java's sugar exports as a whole, and with total and regional outputs of the industry, something which is necessitated by incomplete/unreliable runs of figures. For 1829, if we accept the High Commission for Agriculture's statistics as over-blown but still a rough guide to comparative levels of production in the different Residencies of Java, the Oosthoek's output amounted to more than one-fifth of the colony's total production (26,787 piculs out of a total 121, 800 piculs). By 1830 (production for that year was the result of pre-Cultivation System planting in 1829) the relative position of the Oosthoek sugar industry appears to have been even stronger. In June of that year (and hence when the manufacturing season was already underway) Resident Domis confidently predicted to Van den Bosch that total output from the area would be in the region of 55–60,000 piculs. (f) Even allowing for a percentage of this to have been consumed within Java—perhaps even one-third—it compares well with Java's total sugar exports for that year of 108,640 piculs. (g) See (a) Reede tot de Parkelaar, Memorie v. Overgave 1801, pp. 322–7, Van Alphen-Engelhard 191; J. A. v. Middelkoop's Report on the Oosthoek, 1810, Mackenzie (Private) 6, p. 189, (b) Statistiek Sourabaya/ Pasoeroeang/Besoeki 1820, Lett C/2 and F/1, Schneither 96–8; Rapport… Kruseman, 15.9.1823, BijI. B, Schneither 78, (c) Jaarverslag Factorij Batavia 1829-1830, NHM Archief.Google Scholar (d) Algemeen Verslag wegens der Staat van den Landbouw over het Jaar 1828… (Batavia) 1829 and the MSS version of a similar Report for 1829 in Du Bus 371.Google Scholar (e) Boerma, J. J. Westendorp (ed.), Briefwisseling tussen J. v.d. Bosch en J. C. Baud, 1829–1832 en 1834–1836 (Utrecht, 1956), I, p. 60,Google Scholar (f) Domis, to Van den Bosch, 4.6.1830, Van den Bosch 418, (g) List of exports from Baud 413.Google Scholar

55 Domis, H. J., De Residentie Pasoeroeang op het Eiland Java (The Hague 1836), pp. 54–5 and 177–8.Google Scholar

56 Algemeen Verslag wegens den Staat van den Landbouw voor 1829, p. 4, Du Bus 371.Google Scholar

57 Jaarverslag NHM Factorij Batavia, 1829–1830, p. 17, NHM Archief; Domis Pasoeroeang, p. 55; Domis to Van den Bosch, 4.6.1830, Van den Bosch 418.Google Scholar

58 I have assumed that the unnamed author of the ‘Geographical and Statistical Description of Bangil’ in Mackenzie (Private) 82, pp. 266–7 is indeed Rothenbuhler. He was a major collaborator in Raffles Land Tenure investigations 1812–13 (many of the results of which appear in Mackenzie's collections) and the existence in his papers of a ‘Statistical Note’ concerning Bangil is mentioned by Ketjen, in his ‘Levensbericht’ of Rothenbuhler in V.B.G., 41, 1881, pp. 71–3.Google ScholarRothenbuhler, (b. Germany 1758) arrived in Java in the 1770s and was on the northeast coast from 1780. He was Gezaghebber (i.e. chief Dutch official) of the Oosthoek for almost a decade. He died at Surabaja in 1836.Google Scholar

59 Rothenbuhler, , as quoted in ‘Het Rijstcultuur op Java Vijftig Jaar Geleden’, B.K.I. 2, 1854, pp. 68–76.Google Scholar For discussion of the state of cultivation further along the coast, at Probolingo (also one of the key sugar districts of the late 1820s), see Bastin, J. S., ‘The Chinese Estates of East Java’, Indonesie, 7 (1953–1954), pp. 434–5.Google Scholar

60 The sugar producing districts of Pasuruan Residency were all located in the two coastal Regencies of Pasuruan itself, and Bangil. In the four sugar-growing districts of Pasuruan Regency (1820), there was a total of 3669 bouw of cultivated land, of which 3501 bouw were sawah. In the nine non-sugar districts of the same Regency, there was a total of 6,093 bouw of cultivated land, of which 3,939 were sawah. The corresponding figures for Bangil are: sugar districts, 2,723 bouw, 2,497 sawah; non-sugar district, 1,530 bouw, 1,357 sawah. These figures are drawn from Residency statistics of 1816 and 1820 and are, in all probability, far from accurate. Nonetheless, they give the best statistical picture of cultivation in early nineteenth-century Pasuruan that we are ever likely to get. See: Rapport Pasoeroeang, 16.9.1816 Bijl. 1–2 and Statistiek Pasoeroeang 1820, F/1, Schneither 97.Google Scholar

61 See e.g., the comments of the Resident of Samarang in 1823 that ‘The cane is commonly planted on fairly high ground, and the best ground is seldom taken for the same’, Algemeen Verslag… Samarang, 1823, pp. 94–5, Schneither 91.Google Scholar

62 Domis, to Van den Bosch, 4.6.1830, Van den Bosch 418. The Resident made it clear that the cultivators planted part of their rice-fields with sugar, and that the same system prevailed in Surabaja and Besuki as well as in Pasuruan itself. This was no new development. The clear implication, e.g. of W. H. van Isseldijk's 1799 report on the Oosthoek is that sugar cane was grown in the rice-fieldsGoogle Scholar (Jonge, De, Opkomst, 12, pp. 538–45).Google Scholar

63 Elias, B. J., Beknopte Overzigt van de Staat der Cultuurs…11.9.1834, Baud 442.Google Scholar

64 In 1823, the Resident of Besuki (included Probolingo) mentioned Madurese coming over annually to help in the padi-harvest. Algemeen Verslag…Besoeki, 1823 p. 2, Schneither 98.Google Scholar

65 Domis, H. J. (1782–1842) has been in Java since 1807 and prior to his appointment to Pasuruan had been Resident of Samarang for five years. He published several books and papers on Java (including a sketch of Pasuruan quoted in the text) and was one of Van den Bosch's major informants on the society and economy of rural Java.Google Scholar

66 On the population of the Oosthoek and Madurese immigration, see ‘Statistiek der Bevolking… Java's Noord Oostkust in het Jaar 1802’, T.N.I., 1866 (2), p. 335; Statistiek Pasoeroeang 1820, Lett. b/I, Schneither 97; Domis to Van den Bosch, 23.2.1831, Van den Bosch 314; Statistiek Van Beusechem…Pasoeroeang c. 1836, pp. 5–8, MK. 3063.Google Scholar

67 Mr Robert Elson's forthcoming Monash University doctoral thesis on the Residency of Pasuruan can be expected to throw a good deal of fresh light on this problem.Google Scholar

68 The nature of the relations of production existing within the villages of the Oosthoek is, for the present at least, virtually impossible to discern. The existence of a landless class within the villages was noticed in passing by Domis in 1831 (Domis to Van den Bosch, 23.2.1831, Van den Bosch 314), though he had nothing to say about its size, nor about its social and economic relations with the landholders in the village or about specific differentiations within this latter group, except to divide them into ‘cultivators’ and ‘members of the village government’.Google Scholar The presence of landless elements within the village—people who worked their own garden plots and the ricefields of other villagers—was noted in Bangil as early as 1806 (B.K.I., 2, 1854, p. 107).Google ScholarIn the mid-1800s the very ‘success’ of the Cultivation System in Pasuruan was sometimes ascribed to the presence of a readily available landless labour force within the villages. The sugar-planting landholders had labourers working for them who performed most of the compulsory work required under the System, leaving the landholders themselves free to work the land on their own account (See the comments of an anonymous contributor, recently returned from the Oosthoek, in T.N.I., 1852 (1), pp. 236–9). To suppose that this situation already existed in Pasuruan in the 1820s however, and hence facilitated the growth of the sugar industry, would be going well beyond the present evidence.Google Scholar

69 de Roock, A. G., Gelderland, b. (The Netherlands) c. 1786. Arrived Java 1811 (?) and in the early 1820s was a trader at Surabaja. (See his Nota, 29.5.1830, Van den Bosch 413 and Registers of the European Population, MK 3117 and 3142.) He was later a sugar-contractor under the Cultivation System, and the short, but succinct account of his mill at Padjarakan in Probolingo is his Nota of 29.5.1830 in Van den Bosch 417.Google Scholar

70 Domis, to Van den Bosch, 22.2.1831 and 23.2.1831, Van den Bosch 314.Google Scholar

71 Identified as the Regent of Bangil in Reede tot de Parkelaar's Memorie v. Overgave, pp. 322–7 (Van Alphen-Engelhard 191) Domis (Pasoeroeang p. 32), reckoned that the Regent of Bangil was of Chinese descent. What seems nearer the truth, however, is that according to Rothenbuhler's information in 1809, the bupati family of Bangil had two sons and a daughter married into the Paranakan Chinese community in Surabaia. They were, moreover, the only Oosthoek gentry to be thus connected. See ‘List of Regents belonging to the East Point’, Mackenzie (Private) 82, pp. 275–6.Google Scholar

72 The Regent was described by the Dutch as ‘very limited in his outlook’ and as being greatly attached to the ‘old ways’ i.e., he continued to levy produce and labour from the cultivators in disregard of the Land Rent System. See Algemeen Verslag…Besoeki, 1823, p. 36, Schneither 98. For his sugar-growing operations, see G. G. buiten Rade, 1.4.1822/1821, MK. 2465.Google Scholar

73 Domis, to Van den Bosch, 4.6.1830, Van den Bosch 418. In 1820 according to records compiled in the Residency, five of the small cattle or hand-driven mills belonged to unspecified Javanese, and a similar situation prevailed in Surabaja. See Statistiek Pasoeroeang and Sourabaya 1820, Lett. F/1, Schneither 97 and 96.Google Scholar

74 Domis, , Pasoeroeang, p. 32.Google Scholar

75 In 1820 the water-driven sugar mills in Pasuruan employed 18–25 men each, who were paid 25 duiten per day. The remaining eleven smaller mills employed 3–10 men each, and paid them 20 duiten per day. See Statistiek Pasoeroeang 1820, Lett. F/2, Schneither 97.Google Scholar

76 Domis, , Pasoeroeang, p. 89.Google Scholar

77 The mill at Padjarakan had been erected by the Surabaja firm of Poulter and Grieve, c. 1818, and there had been trouble from the start, over both the water used by the mill (which was said to endanger the irrigation of neighbouring sawah) and the arrangements made for growing cane, in which the Assistant Resident had been so deeply involved that the peasants feared a return to ‘village-hire’. The situation deteriorated even further in the early ‘twenties, when the mill fell into the hands of one Charles Brodie, to whom the colonial government refused a loan on the grounds of his ‘public notoriety’. See G. G. in Rade, 10.4.1818/1822 and 12.6.1818/1821, MK.2374 and 2376 and G. G. in Rade, 20.4.1824/26, MK. 2782.Google Scholar

78 Nota, , 29.5.1830, Van den Bosch 417.Google Scholar

79 Domis, to Van den Bosch, 4.6.1830, Van den Bosch 418.Google Scholar

80 See note 78.Google Scholar

81 Vos, Cornelis, b. Doordrecht (The Netherlands) c. 1779. His father-in-law was one-time Landdrost as Pasuruan, and he himself held various administrative positions in the Oosthoek, prior to being appointed as Resident at Pasuruan in 1816. He remained there for two years, and in 1819 was Resident at Pekalongan. He does not appear to have been one of the brighter luminaries of the colonial administrative scene, and was conspicuous by his absence from the scene when Dipanegara's uprising threatened to spill over into Pekalongan in 1825.Google Scholar After 1830, he became a sugar-contractor under the Cultivation System, and died at Pasuruan in March 1847. Haan, De, B.K.I., 1935, pp. 659–60; Registers of the European Population MK. 3144Google Scholar; Kemp, P. H. v.d., Oost-Indie's Herstel in 1818 (The Hague, 1911), p. 241,Google Scholar and Het Nederlandsch-Indisch Bestuur ib 1817, tot het Vertrek der Engelschen (The Hague, 1913), pp. 36–7.Google Scholar

82 Domis, , Pasoeroeang, p. 56 and see notes 78–9.Google Scholar

83 The best recent discussion of the Cultivation System (which stresses its essentially Unsystematic character and developments after the departure of Van den Bosch) is Faseur, C., Kultuurstelsel en Koloniale Baten (Leiden, 1975).Google Scholar It is particularly strong on the colonial pressure groups operating in the Netherlands in the mid-nineteenth century. See also the same author's ‘Some remarks on the Cultivation System in Java’, Acta Historiae Neerlandicae (forthcoming).Google Scholar For the Cultivation System in the Oosthoek in particular, see Van Niel's, R. important preliminary studies ‘The Regulation of Sugar Production in Java, 1830–1840’, Asian Studies at Hawaii, 2 (1968),Google Scholar and ‘Considerations on the Introduction of the Cultivation System in Pasuruan, Java’, Paper presented to International Conference on Asian History, Hong Kong, 1964.Google Scholar

84 De Roock, , Nota, 29.5.1830, Van den Bosch 417; Kultuurinrigtingen op Java 1845, Verbaal Kolonien 10.7.1848/1817, MK. 1867.Google Scholar

85 Domis, , Pasoeroeang, pp. 54–5Google Scholar; Baud's Inspectiereis…1834, cited in Deventer, S. v., Bijdragen tot de Kennis van het Landelijk Stelsel op Java, Zalt-Bommel 1865–1866, 2, pp. 664–5.Google Scholar

86 See note 79.Google Scholar

87 Niel, Van, Asian Studies at Hawaii, 2 (1968), pp. 102–4, shows that the System was exceptionally profitable for the Oosthoek manufacturers, because the sugar-content of the cane (on the basis of which the cultivators were paid) was habitually underestimated by as much as fifty percent. Hence almost half the output of the mills carried no cultivation costs!Google Scholar

88 Deventer, Van, Stelsel, 2, pp. 582–91.Google Scholar