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Purse or Principle: Dutch Colonial Policy in the

1860s and the Decline of the Cultivation
System

C. Fasseur

Modern Asian Studies / Volume 25 / Issue 01 / February 1991, pp 33 - 52

DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X00015833, Published online: 28 November 2008

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/

abstract_S0026749X00015833

How to cite this article:

C. Fasseur (1991). Purse or Principle: Dutch Colonial Policy in the 1860s and
the Decline of the Cultivation System. Modern Asian Studies, 25, pp 33-52
doi:10.1017/S0026749X00015833

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Modem Asian Studies 25, 1 (iggi), pp. 33-52. Printed in Great Britain.

Purse or Principle:
Dutch Colonial Policy in the 1860s and the
Decline of the Cultivation System
c. FASSEUR

Introduction

In 1976 I published an article in the Ada Historiae Neerlandicae (an

annual series of publications in English on the history of The Nether-
lands, alas abruptly discontinued in 1982 for financial reasons) in
which I tried to summarize the main causes of the decline of the
cultivation system in Java (Fasseur, 1976, 143-62). Being then a
young and ambitious historian with little respect for the big names in
the field of Indonesian sciences, I stated that the literature on the
cultivation system contained many misunderstandings as to the orig-
ins of the 'decay' of the system. In this connection I mentioned in
particular Wertheim's well-known study on Indonesian Society in Transi-
tion (1959) and Clifford Geertz's stimulating essay on Agricultural
Involution (1963). Although this latter book is certainly not without its
shortcomings, it has greatly obliged all historians by reviving the
interest in the role played by the cultivation system in the develop-
ment of Java during the last century and a half. The period of the
cultivation system, in the words of Geertz, was 'the classic stage' of
colonial history, 'the most decisive of the Dutch era'. 1 Although I did
not realize that fully in 1975, it was thus an opportune moment to
publish, twelve years after Geertz's provocative study, a doctoral
dissertation on the history of the system. The main flaw of Geertz's
work was its weak historical component. The only 'historical' data
Agricultural Involution provided, were borrowed from an agricultural
atlas ofJava published in 1926. The literature he used on the cultiva-
tion system was hopelessly outdated. Even Reinsma's thesis from

' Geertz 1963, 53. In a later essay, rethinking his concept of agricultural involution,
Geertz confessed himself'still partial' to his original position in this respect (Geertz,
"984.525. note 5)-
oo26-749X/gi/$5.oo + .00 © 1991 Cambridge University Press
33

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34 C. FASSEUR
1955 on Het verval van het cultuurstelsel was not able to reverse this
negative judgement, as this otherwise scholarly work was mainly
based on the obsolete writings of nineteenth-century authors and not
on archival sources.2
Generally speaking, in this literature the decline of the cultivation
system was ascribed to the circumstance that it offered no scope for
private enterprise and investment directed from The Netherlands.
'The (Dutch) bourgeoisie', as Wertheim wrote, 'which had been able
to build up considerable capital from the profits derived from the
culture system, now looked for investment in the colony. The culture
system which reserved almost all economic activities to the state, was
considered an impediment to private enterprise' (Wertheim, 1959,
61-2). And Geertz too, in quoting Reinsma, was of the opinion that
the protracted 'fall' of the system was 'largely self-generated, because
its success in establishing a serviceable export economy infrastructure
made private entrepreneurship, originally so hampered by lack of
capital, progressively more feasible' (Geertz, 1963, 65).
In my view these explanations were merely a tenacious 'myth'
created by the liberal opponents of the system after its abolition
around 1870. The cultivation system, so I argued, offered, certainly in
the beginning at least, enough scope for private entrepreneurs as
could be demonstrated by the example of the Dutch and Chinese
sugar contractors who operated within the cultivation system—and
with remarkable success. But finally it was the changing political
climate that forced private entrepreneurs out of the system by closing
the door on further expansion of the profitable government sugar
cultivation. 'The system,' so was my final conclusion, 'went into
decline because it came into conflict with the political views which
began to dominate in the Netherlands after 1850' (Fasseur, 1976,
157)-
After all these years I am inclined to let my conclusion stand,
namely: that the cultivation system went into decline not primarily for
socio-economic reasons, the irresistible advance of private enterprise
and capital and so forth, but because it collided with the liberal
ideology which prevailed more and more in Dutch politics after 1850.
The weak point of my argument, however, was that I had referred
only to political events in Holland before i860 or, to formulate it more
'-' Except for the unprinted Utrecht dissertation o f j . M. Roosenschoon, De Western
cultures op Java voor 1870 (1945), Reinsma's work was the only Dutch publication on the
cultivation system between 1945 and 1975—an eloquent proof of the lack of interest
shown in Holland with regard to Indonesian history in those first post-war decades!

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 DUTCH COLONIAL POLICY IN THE 186OS 35

precisely, until 1862. As my research did not cover the political

developments after that year my argumentation was, to say the least,
rather vulnerable.
In the following pages, therefore, as a sequel to my thesis, I will
examine the links between the decline of the system in Java and the
political decision-making process in Holland in the 1860s. It is my
purpose to summarize some important phenomena and developments
in this decade which influenced Javanese society.

'The Colonial Question'

For about ten years, between i860 and 1870, the parliamentary
debate in Holland was focused on an issue which would become
known in Dutch politics as 'the colonial question'. England might
have its 'Eastern Question' (the future of Europe's 'sick man',
Turkey) for nearly a century between 1820 and 1920; Holland had—
at least in the 1860s—an 'Eastern Question' of its own: the problem of
the reconstruction of the Javanese colonial economy or, more particu-
larly, the substitution of the cultivation system by a more liberal
system of colonial exploitation that was better adapted to the
demands and the spirit of that time.
Three main interests were at stake in the solution of this question.
First, the interest of the Dutch treasury which was the great benefi-
ciary of the East-Indian contributions {Indische baten), consisting of
90% and more of the fruits of the coffee and sugar cultivation which
from its beginning in 1830 had formed the backbone of the system of
forced cultivations. Second, the interests of Western agricultural
enterprises in Java both in and outside of the cultivation system. Last,
(and least important) the interests of the indigenous population of
Java.
The judicial framework for the solution of the colonial question was
to be found in the Government Regulation (Indisch Regeringsreglement)
of 1854. This 'Indies constitution' had been adopted by a conservative
government and a conservative Dutch parliament but nevertheless it
was hardly sympathetic towards the cultivation system.
The famous article 56 of the Regeringsreglement (RR) was framed to
retain the cultivation system only as a provisional transition phase
towards a situation in which the Dutch government would not have
any direct involvement in the Javanese export of cash crops. However,
the same Regeringsreglement had also fettered the development of any

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36 C. FASSEUR
'free' Western agricultural enterprises, either on 'waste' or non-
cultivated land or on cultivated land, as these free entrepreneurs were
viewed as undesirable rivals of the cultivation system, the official
adage being that the Javanese could not serve two masters at the same
time. Therefore article 62 RR stipulated that only non-cultivated land
on which no Javanese lived could be rented or leased by private
entrepreneurs. Transfer of property and long-term lease or lease-hold
were absolutely impossible.3
Apart from the Princely States in Central Java and the so-called
private estates, which will not be discussed at this juncture, the only
alternatives open to private entrepreneurs after 1854 were:
1. to rent 'waste' or non-cultivated land from the government;
2. to induce the indigenous population to plant cash crops in their
own rice fields (usually after payment of a sum in advance) and to
hand these over. To comply with this second alternative collective
agreements, by which a whole village pledged itself to supplying a
certain cash crop, were indeed entered into with village heads on the
basis of an old government ordinance of 1838 (Indisch Staatsblad 1838,
no. 50).
It goes without saying that this situation gave Western
entrepreneurs little room for manoeuvre outside the cultivation
system. They had the greatest difficulty in obtaining credit as they
could give no land as security for mortgage (the short-term lease
agreements had a maximum duration of 20 years and were bound to
the person of the lessee). The agreements on planting and delivery of
cash crops on native rice-fields were also very uncertain. Often such
agreements were not met by the villages, the entrepreneurs being in a
rather powerless position as they became owners of the crop only after
it had been delivered to them.
Between 1862 and 1870 no fewer than four bills were introduced in
the Dutch parliament with the aim of presenting Western agricultural
enterprises with more opportunities for expansion without dispropor-
tionately damaging the interests of the treasury or of the native
population.4
3
See the first and third section of article 62 RR according to the text as in the NEI
Statute Book of 1854/55:
1. The Governor-General may sell no land.
2.
3. The Governor-General may lease out lands under rules to be determined by
general ordinance. Not included among such is land cultivated by the natives or
belonging to the villages or the desa either as common pasture or under any other
head.
4
See for a useful survey of these legislative efforts: Nolst Trenite 1942, 18-27.

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 DUTCH COLONIAL POLICY IN THE l 8 6 o S 37

The first such bill, that of 1862, introduced by the liberal Minister
of Colonies G. H. Uhlenbeck was of very limited scope. It gave the
Javanese peasant the power to rent his land, that is the land being
used by himself, to non-Javanese. Moreover, Uhlenbeck was a weak
minister who, by the beginning of 1863, had already been replaced by
Isaac Fransen van de Putte. The latter had begun his career in the
Dutch merchant navy; thereafter had successively been a sugar con-
tractor within, and a tobacco planter outside, the cultivation system of
East Java, finally to return to the Netherlands in 1859 at the age of 37
as a millionaire. As the first Indies entrepreneur to become a Minister
of Colonies (nearly all his predecessors had come from the civil
service), he would make an attractive subject for a biography.5
In Dutch historiography there is a tendency to view Fransen van de
Putte as a typical representative of the Indies business world
(Reinsma, 1957). This, however, is incorrect. In his opinion there
could only be talk of 'free labour' in Java when the whole of Javanese
society had been subjected to radical change. Allocation of property
rights to land for the Javanese should make him a homo economicus and
thereby a fully-fledged partner of the indigenous village head and of
the Western entrepreneur. This is why, in 1863, immediately after
becoming Minister of Colonies, he explicitly forbade anyone to enter
into collective agreements with village heads which bound the whole
desa to the planting and delivery of certain cash crops. As the result of
such collective agreements the Javanese was not at liberty to decide
for himself what he wanted to do {Indisch Staatsblad 1863, no. 152).
Pending the final settlement of 'the colonial question' he also forbade
the issue of new lease contracts on 'waste' land.
The entrepreneurs within the cultivation system—the sugar con-
tractors—also went through a very rough patch. In i860 new
guidelines for the government sugar cultivation were drawn up by the
conservative Colonial Minister J. J. Rochussen (Fasseur, 1975', 170-
84). These so-called Algemene Grondslagen were aimed principally at
protecting the interests of the treasury; the interests of the sugar
contractors, not to say the Javanese planters, coming a poor last. By
the beginning of 1861, often under strong protest, nearly all the sugar
factories in Java (88 out of 96) which were operating within the
framework of the cultivation system, had acceded to the new regula-
tion {Overzicht Sloet, 398-9). In 1863, however, Fransen van de Putte
abrogated the Algemene Grondslagen and replaced these with new rules
in which the interests of the Javanese received more consideration.

J
For a first step towards such a biography: Fasseur, 1975,J 333 seq.

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38 C. FASSEUR
The use of forced labour in the factories, for instance, was greatly
reduced, which compelled the sugar entrepreneurs to pay higher
wages in order to recruit free labourers in sufficient numbers (Elson,
1986).6 The opposition to these measures was so strong that, by the
end of 1866, only 29 of the 96 sugar enterprises in Java had actually
acceded to the new conditions {Overzicht Sloet, 408).
The situation was thus threatening to develop into a complete
impasse for both these entrepreneurs outside the cultivation system as
those within it. In order to break down this impasse, in 1865, after
nearly three years of preparation, Fransen van de Putte introduced a
comprehensive Culture Law {Cultuurwet) in the Second Chamber of
the bicameral Dutch parliament.
The central point of this bill which contained no fewer than 62
articles, was the so-called conversion, the possibility of the allocation
of individual property rights to Javanese peasants who tilled their own
land. Communal desa\and was to be divided as soon as the majority of
the communal landholders so desired. The government coffee cultiva-
tion was to be retained, while the sugar contractors were guaranteed a
sufficient area of land to plant sugar-cane for twenty years after the
termination of their contracts (free labour, however, being a prerequi-
site as soon as the contracts had expired). Finally, private
entrepreneurs outside the cultivation system were to be given the
opportunity to acquire waste land by means of a 99-year lease;
according to the bill all waste lands were held to be the property of the
state. Also, any Javanese who therefter wished to reclaim any piece of
waste land for cultivation would have to ask permission from the
Dutch administration. Fransen van de Putte's motive for this rather
cumbersome stipulation (it was deleted in the final regulation by De
Waal) was that the Javanese would be dealt with on the same footing
as non-Javanese. For that reason Western entrepreneurs would be
subject to personal services (herendiensten) too, unless they bought off
such services. The Cultuurwet also made provision for renting out
sawahs by Javanese to non-Javanese; these agreements could be con-
cluded for a maximum term of 1 o years; the written consent of the
Javanese party was required. Finally, the bill stated that a Javanese
was unable to sell his land to a European or Chinese national, at least
not for the first five years after the law had come into force. After-
wards this point would be reconsidered.
The entire proposal was indicative of Fransen van de Putte's belief
in progress and the benign outcome of the free play of economic forces
6
Also the crop payments for the Javanese planters were raised.

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 DUTCH COLONIAL POLICY IN THE 1860S 39

in social life, so characteristic of the age of illusion in which he lived.

In his view the Javanese society had the same potentialities for further
development as its European counterpart; it might be backward but
was not basically different. His firm belief that economic laws were
universally applicable—also the credo of the dominant classic school
of economics in his day—made him blind to the darker sides of
economic liberalism, particularly in a colonial context.
These proposals raised a storm of protest. The main objection was
that the bill deeply affected the customary land laws in Java while
neither the minister, nor anybody else, had a very clear idea of the
existing legal situation there. Western property laws were threatening
to supplant adat law and nobody was in a position to predict what the
outcome would be. On the other hand, ultra-liberal opinion, which
was especially vocal in the daily press in Java, thought that the bill
did not go far enough. Eventually the Cultuurwet was fundamentally
altered in parliament when, by amendment, supported by a majority
of MPs who had hesitations about the violation of adat law, the notion
of Western property rights of the Javanese to his land was deleted. For
Fransen van de Putte this was as if, as he himself wrote to Governor-
General Sloet van de Beele, he had to bury 'his dearest child'.7 As a
result he preferred to withdraw the bill in its entirety and he resigned
in May 1866.
During a conservative interim government which remained in
power until 1868 (the liberals were hopelessly divided among them-
selves) an investigation into the rights of the Javanese to their land
was instigated. Although it was motivated by political interests—by
this means the conservatives hoped to postpone further reforms—the
investigation, the final results of which were published as late as 1895
(Eindresume), performed a valuable scientific service. The work of
Cornelis van Vollenhoven on Indonesian adat law was partly based on
this investigation. A bill introduced by the conservative cabinet which
would have made the long-term leasing of waste ground possible, was
torpedoed in 1867 by the Second Chamber after that body had sup-
ported an amendment by Fransen van de Putte (then an MP) by
which the Javanese themselves would also be able to function as long
lease-holders.8
The fourth and last bill which attempted to solve the colonial
7
Fransen van de Putte to L. A. J. W. Sloet van de Beele, 25 May 1866, Private
Papers Storm de Grave (Huis ter Heide).
H
In the final regulation of 1870 (Agrarisch Besluit, article 11, Indisch Staatsblad 1870,
no. 118) they were admitted as long lease-holders but this stipulation remained a
dead letter in practice.

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4-O C. F A S S E U R

question was finally successful. It was introduced in 1869 by the

liberal minister Engelbertus de Waal, formerly a high-ranking civil
servant in the Indies. De Waal felt a deep repugnance for the reform-
ist policies of Fransen van de Putte.9 He belonged to the more con-
servative wing of the liberal party. De Waal did, however, appear to
have learned something from his predecessor. As a result, the
Agrarian Law of 1870 {Indisch Staatsblad 1870, no. 55) consisted of only
a few clauses. These boiled down to the possibility of leasing waste
ground for 75 years, as well as to the letting of cultivated land by
natives to non-natives. Under certain circumstances indigenous land-
holders could obtain Western rights of ownership to their land (this
clause remained a dead letter).10 Alienation of land cultivated by the
indigenous population in favour of non-Javanese was definitely ruled
out; a form of legal discrimination which was in the evident interest of
the Javanese (Day 1904, 373-4). The Indies government was also
solemnly admonished to take care that no sort of land concession
should violate the rights of the native population.
The Sugar Law which was passed a few months later (Nederlands
Staatsblad) 1870, no. 136) ensured the continuance of the government
sugar cultivation until 1890. The free planting of sugar-cane, without
any government intervention, was to be gradually introduced after
1879. The idea of Fransen van de Putte of abolishing the forced labour
for sugar-cane planting immediately after the expiry of the contracts
and placing only the land at the disposal of the sugar factories was,
therefore, not adopted. Just as in the case of the Agrarian Law the
Sugar Law—both laws in fact consisted of only a few guiding
principles—would be worked out in the Indies. The Dutch parliament
would only take cognizance of their implementation afterwards.
The colonial problem which had been under discussion in parlia-
ment for ten years was thus finally resolved. The whole history is
9
De Waal to A. J. Duymaer van Twist, Collectie-Duymaer van Twist, General
State Archives or Algemeen Rijksarchief (ARA), no. 5.
10
Cf. the sections 4, 7 and 8 of article 62 RR as supplemented by the Agrarian Law
of 1870:
4. Under rules to be fixed by general ordinance, land may be granted in long-term
lease for periods no longer than 75 years.
7. Land occupied by natives in heritable personal possession may, on the request of
the legally entitled occupant, be granted to him in ownership, subject to the
necessary limitations —to be determined by general ordinance and to be made
explicit in the certificate of title — in respect of obligations to country and com-
munity and competence to sell to non-natives.
8. Lease or grants-in-use of land from natives to non-natives will take place in
accordance with rules to be determined by general ordinance.

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 DUTCH COLONIAL POLICY IN THE l 8 6 o S 4.I

another proof of the stubborn legalism of the Dutch which drove

friend and foe alike to despair in the first few years of the struggle for
Indonesian independence after the Second World War. It is not diffi-
cult to sympathize with the exclamation of Fransen van de Putte
during one of these lengthy parliamentary debates: 'Deliver us from
lawyers, O Lord, and give us nature and the truth once more!" 1
More than anybody else it was the sugar contractors who profited
from the results of the colonial debate, for the continuance of their
enterprises was secured. Furthermore, in 1871, new statutes for sugar
cultivation 'on high authority' were decreed by the Indies government
which were considerably more favourable to them than those of 1860
and 1863.l2 The Second Chamber merely confined itself to a feeble
protest. The government coffee cultivation also continued to prosper
for a period after 1870. Governor-General Pieter Mijer indignantly
asked in 1872:13
How can anyone claim that the coffee cultivation resembles a patient in the
last stages of consumption when one thinks that, in Java alone in 1870, there
was a coffee harvest to the tune of 34 million guilders or one-third of the total
sum of the Indies budget and three times the revenue of the land-rent tax?
Proposals for a radical reform of the coffee cultivation which were
set down in an official report of 1868 (itself the result of a five-year
investigation by the Netherlands Indies authorities) were then also
disregarded by Governor-General Mijer.14 In 1875 —twelve years
after the start of the investigation—the Second Chamber associated
itself with his view (Goedhart, 1948, 64).
For the time being the entrepreneurs outside the cultivation system
profited less from the new legislation than might have been expected.
The annual Colonial Reports (Koloniale Verslagen) are a good guide for
measuring the development of'free' enterprises in Java after 1870.
The 263 or so 'free' cultuurondernemingen, for instance, which existed at
the end of 1879 on waste land which had either been leased or let
were, for the most part, coffee plantations which required only a little
capital investment (Colonial Report 1880, 176-7). Approximately
" Fransen van de Putte hinted here at a verse by the Dutch poet P. A. de Genestet
(1829-1861):
'Verlos ons van den preektoon, Heer!
Geef ons natuur en waarheid weer!'
12
See Bijlagen Handelingen Tweede Kamer 1872-1873, no. 20 (Documents on the
implementation of the Sugar Law).
13
Colonial Report (Koloniaal Verslag) of 1872, Bijlage A, p. 225.
14
This fate befell, inter alia, the proposal for the privatization of a part of the coffee
gardens by handing them over to private entrepreneurs.

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42 C. FASSEUR

one-sixth of these enterprises had in the meantime either been

abandoned again or had not yet actually been taken up. There does
not seem to have been a great deal of enthusiasm for sinking capital
into these enterprises. Many potential investors in Holland saw the
wisdom of the proverb 'the further you are from your property, the
greater the damage'. The Colonial Report of 1880 also contains
figures for agricultural enterprises on land that had either been rented
from the local population or which were based on agreements with the
local villagers. Just as in the case of those enterprises on waste land, it
would be true to say that they had also led a pretty precarious
existence. Thus it appears that of the 153 tobacco enterprises which
existed in 1878, no less than 56 had either been abandoned or had
ground to a halt a year later (Colonial Report 1880, 175). Finally, at
the end of 1879 there were 47 'free' sugar factories which were
dependent on land rented from the local people without any govern-
ment interference (idem, 174). However, their production was only a
fraction of that of the sugar factories which had contracts with the
government.
Further research into the development of the 'free' agricultural
sector in Java in the 1870s is highly desirable. The Colonial Reports
contain relevant material for such an investigation. It already seems
we can conclude that 1870 was by no means the important watershed
that was claimed by the literature on nineteenth-century Java. There
is absolutely no question of private entrepreneurs taking Java by
storm after that year. The private entrepreneurs were weaker and the
remnants of the cultivation system stronger than had been supposed
by many a liberally biased writer.

The Dance around the Golden Calf

One factor which did change around 1870 was the role of the Indies
profits or contributions (Indische baten) in the total of the Dutch state
revenue. Between i860 and 1866 this portion still represented about
one-third (336%). However, in 1866, the Indies Budgetary Law
(Indies Comptabiliteitswet, Law of 10 June 1864, Nederlands Staatsblad
1864, no. 71) came into force. This law decreed that in future the
Indies budget had to be specified according to this law and approved
by the States General; approval by Royal Decree (Koninklijk Besluit) as
had been the case before 1866 was discontinued. This meant that, by
amendment, the Second Chamber of the States General could

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 DUTCH COLONIAL POLICY IN THE 1860S 43

increase estimates of expenditure, allocate new expenditure and so on

(the reverse of course was also possible but less usual). Viewed in
hindsight the words of warning spoken by the conservative member
Wintgens during the debate on the bill in 1864—'Gentlemen, raise
your hats to the Indies profits, after approval of the government
proposal you will never set eyes on it again'—cannot be denied the
ring of prophecy (Oud, 1982, 71).
Moreover, the new law made it necessary to estimate the East
Indian profits in advance instead of afterwards and this change indu-
ced greater caution. Apart from ordinary contributions, extraordinary
contributions (those received over and above the estimates) were
added to the Dutch financial resources after 1866. This makes a
comparison between the annual Indies contributions before and after
that year extremely difficult. When considering the overall figures
then the ordinary and extraordinary Indies contributions between the
years 1867 and 1877 amounted to nearly 150 million guilders com-
pared to nearly 195 million in the period 1861 -1866. This was
certainly a marked difference! Increasing expenditure on public works
such as the building of state railways in Java and, above all, the
Acheh War, brought a definitive end to the Indies surplus in 1877
(Kielstra, 1904, 32).
For nearly half a century (from 1831) the Netherlands had been
living above its means. The Dutch public did not begrudge the price
that had to be paid for this—dependence on the Indies contributions.
Therefore, even the liberals in the Second Chamber who disliked the
system of state exploitation, such as the cultivation system, stub-
bornly resisted the concept of a 'fixed' Indies contribution which had
been launched by Minister de Waal in 1869 (Kielstra, 1904, 27). Even
the exemplary liberal Fransen van de Putte could express the view
that 'the system of government is not greed, nor cut backs on essential
(Indies) expenditure, but also not the renunciation of the advantages
that the mother country might enjoy from the colony, nor of any of the
rights that the motherland possesses in that colony' (Fransen van de
Putte, Parlementaire Redevoeringen, II, 1873, 60). Thanks to the Indies
contributions up to 1876 the Netherlands did not need to negotiate a
single government loan. The tax burden, certainly in the higher strata
of Dutch society, was significantly lower than in other Western
European countries. An income tax, for instance, was only introduced
after 1890 and even then in a very mitigated form (the present system
of income tax in the Netherlands with its high tariffs and marked
progressiveness originated from a regulation imposed by the Germans

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44 C. FASSEUR
in 1941 which was subsequently retained by the Dutch Finance
Department after the Second World War!). Additionally, despite all
their fine words and theories, the liberals did not consider abandoning
voluntarily the Indies profits. Throughout the 1860s every proposal
for ringing changes in the cultivation system would be tested against
this basic assumption.15

Bad Conscience and 'Good Government'

Attempts to bring about changes in the colonial administration of

Java cannot of course be seen out of the context of the discussion of the
East Indian surplus which flowed into the Dutch treasury. In i860
Multatuli published his famous book Max Havelaar or the Coffee Auctions
of the Dutch Trading Company, being a merciless indictment of the Dutch
administration in Java. However, in Max Havelaar Multatuli did not
attack the cultivation system directly. Indeed, in the residency of
Banten there was hardly any government cultivation of cash crops at
all. The book was rather directed against the high taxes which had to
be paid to the government, against arbitrary consignments and per-
sonal services to Javanese regents and native chiefs who operated
hand in glove with the Dutch government. Saidjah's father had not
been forced to flee from Banten because of the cultivation system but
because his buffaloes had been confiscated by the district head of
Parang Kudjang, and because he feared that he would be punished if
he failed to pay the land-rent tax (Multatuli, 1987, 259). Far from
being a Garden of Eden, as the majority of Dutch people thought, it
seemed that all Java could offer the bulk of her population was a
wretched and penurious existence.
For many Dutch readers of the book—and there was not a single
educated family in the Netherlands in which it was not read —this
discovery was a great shock. The shock was all the more telling
because in his fascinating tale of Sai'djah and Adinda—perhaps the
finest prose ever written in Dutch — Multatuli succeeded in bringing
the nameless Javanese to life for a wide public. Max Havelaar con-
tinued to influence colonial policy until well into the present century,
and became required reading for generations of Dutch school chil-
dren. For C. Th. van Deventer, one of the architects of the Ethical
Policy around 1900, it was a foregone conclusion that Max Havelaar
lj
Janny de Jong in her dissertation Van batig slot naar ereschuld (September 1989) has
dealt with this subject in greater detail.

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 DUTCH COLONIAL POLICY IN THE 1860S 45

was the most powerful single factor in arriving at this policy. He

himself decided to leave for the Indies after he had read Max Havelaar
at the age of fifteen (1872). Many others reached the same decision.
The future civil servants, who were trained for service in the Indies at
the East Indian Institute in Delft, were very strongly under the
influence of Multatuli. For a long time to come the spirit of Multatuli
was to be perceptible in the Indies government offices. 'Take any civil
servant you like', wrote Van Sandick in 1892, 'let him forget every-
thing he has ever learned at the Delft Institute but there will still be
one book that he will remember. That book is Max Havelaar. There is
no Governor-General, even if he had never read a book about the
Indies before assuming office, who does not know Max HavelaarV
(Fasseur, 1987, 12).
Multatuli's refusal to support either of the two main political cur-
rents of his day, the liberals and the conservatives, made him a useless
ally for either party in the Second Chamber. After i860 his book was
only rarely cited in parliament because nearly every M P shied away
from his forceful and fundamental judgement on the Dutch exploi-
tation policy in Java. However the book, which of course everybody
knew, was often indirectly referred to, for instance, when someone
stigmatized a political opponent as 'DroogstoppeP, the name of the
greedy Amsterdam trader in Java coffee who was one of the main
characters of Max Havelaar.
Four examples will suffice to show that Max Havelaar also had a
substantial influence on the measures taken for improving the colonial
administration during the 1860s. These were: Firstly the abolition of
the so-called cultivation percentages {cultuurprocenten), a form of
remuneration for both Dutch officials and Javanese chiefs who were
involved ex officio in the implementation of the cultivation system;
secondly the abolition of corporal punishment (flogging) for Javanese
who were negligent in performing cultivation services; thirdly the
limitation of the personal services which the population had to render
to their chiefs and fourthly, the introduction of penalty clauses for
extortion and abuse of power by these native chiefs.
1. The abolition of the cultivation percentages. This subject had already
been raised in an exchange of letters between the Minister of Colonies
and the Governor-General during the 1840s. There the matter rested
for, amongst other things, the fear that cancellation of these rewards
would harm the government coffee cultivation. The fact that the
percentages could lead to excesses and, what is more, could cast a
spanner in the works of the efficient functioning of the civil service—

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46 C. FASSEUR

for many Dutch officials the service was not important but the culture
percentages were—was considered a matter of minor importance.16
After a period of ten years within which there had been little discus-
sion about this problem, the Colonial Minister James Loudon—nota
bene a member of the conservative cabinet in 1861 —passed judgement
on the cultivation percentages in no uncertain terms. He considered
that they had 'an immoral purport' and that 'the artificially
stimulated diligence, thus generated, often perverts into a mere pur-
suit of gains and can lead to the oppression of the indigenous popula-
tion'.17 The Council of the Indies thought that this criticism was
excessive: if the cultivation percentages were 'immoral', the Council
argued, then the same judgement should also hold true for the entire
cultivation system, which was surely not the intention!18 Nonetheless
the proposal for the abolition of the cultivation percentages did not
rally a lot of protest. In 1867 a new structure of salaries for Dutch civil
servants was introduced in Java, so that their income no longer
depended on the cultivation system (for native officials, on the other
hand, the cultivation percentages were retained until 1907).19
Many a resident in Java was reduced from being a rich nabob to
being an official with occasional money worries, whose salary was far
below that of the private entrepreneurs in his residency. This calls to
mind the portrait of resident Van Oudijk drawn by Louis Couperus in
his famous novel De Stille Kracht (i8gg):20 'Yes of course, the resident',
laughed Mrs Van der Does, 'as if a resident was always rich. Van
Oudijk hated that titter. Every month his housekeeping cost him a
tidy few hundred guilders more than his salary and he was eating into
his capital, was in debt'.
Is it a too far fetched supposition that in this unequal remuneration
many a civil servant may have found the inspiration to protect the
native population better from the greed of the private entrepreneurs?
16
Verbaal (Vb) 21-12-1848, no. n , Archief Ministerie van Kolonien (AMK) port-
folio 1901, General State Archives (ARA).
17
Vb. 12-4-1861, no. 19, A M K 1053, ARA.
IH
Vb. 25-10-1865, no. 21, A M K 1669, ARA.
19
It should be noted, however, that in the Colonial Report of 1871 Appendices EE
(coffee cultivation) and FF (sugar), there was still a heading 'cultivation percentages
to be paid to European and native officials'. Amounts paid were (in 1870) also con-
siderable: f 418.360 and f 505.488 (compared with f 563.914 and f 435.656 in i860). I
cannot fully explain this anomaly. 'European' could be just a slip of the pen.
Administrative mills grind slowly.
20
L o u i s C o u p e r u s , De Stille Kracht (or The Hidden Force), 9 t h e d n ( W a g e n i n g e n ,
1973), 23. Van Oudijk was in the novel governor ('resident') of Pasuruan in East
Java—by coincidence the residency in which the cultivation percentages reached
their highest level in Java around i860!

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 DUTCH COLONIAL POLICY IN THE l 8 6 0 S 47
Without the abolition of the cultivation percentages, the Ethical
Policy would not have been possible.
2. The abrogation of corporal punishment. Flogging as a form of corporal
punishment (up to a maximum of 20 strokes per person) could be
meted out to any Javanese who was in arrears with his compulsory
cultivation services or who had failed to fulfil other duties. According
to Max Havelaar, Sai'djah's father had been punished byfloggingwhen
he had left Lebak without a permit from his village head. Performing
judicial functions in trials on minor offences, Dutch officials were
empowered to impose this punishment. In contrast to the situation in
British India, in Java before 1870 there was no clear-cut distinction
between administrative and legal functions. Therefore the Dutch local
administrator, who through the culture percentages had a personal
interest in seeing that the cultures were enforced, also functioned as a
criminal judge in the cases of 'lazy ' Javanese who wanted to with-
draw themselves from the forced labour services! In the residency of
Surabaya alone more than 70,000 strokes with rattan cane were
handed out in 1861 and 1862 together—'and that', as the (liberal)
resident Otto van Rees remarked indignantly, 'mostly without suf-
ficient investigation, just on the complaints of the masters or the
European sugar contractors; it could not have been worse in a slave
colony!'21
This institution offloggingwith rattan cane, which for a long time
had been almost taken for granted, was also to disappear in the sixties
without causing any great fuss. After the abolition of slavery in the
Dutch West Indies in 1863, with the corporal punishment inherent in
such a system, this form of punishment began to seem like an anach-
ronism in Java. Although a minority of the Council of the Indies did
oppose the abolition, the abrogation was granted approval by Col-
onial Minister Fransen van de Putte in 1865 and realized a year
later.22 This reform was yet another blow to the cultivation system.
'Without the arbitrary ration of rattan strokes, the system of govern-
21
Governor-General Sloet van de Beele to Minister of Colonies Fransen van de
Putte, 14-11-1863, 29-12-1865, Private Papers Storm de Grave.
22
Ordinance 01*28-2-1866, Indisch Staalsblad 1866, no. 15. Corporal punishment by
means of rattan strokes was subsequently maintained as a disciplinary measure in the
army and in prisons. The Dutch attitude towards corporal punishment as an instru-
ment of colonial law and order, by the way, seems to contrast favourably with the
British one in Africa: see Martin Chanock, 'The Law Market. The Legal Encounter
in British East and Central Africa' (paper for the conference on European Expansion
and Law, Bad Homburg, June 1988), p. 5: 'Colonial criminal law was severe and
authoritarian. It relied far more heavily on corporal punishment than the criminal
courts of Britain'.

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48 C. FASSEUR
ment of the conservatives is impossible', the latter had already argued
in the Second Chamber in 1863 (Fransen van de Putte, Parlementaire
Redevoeringen, I, 1872, 202).
3. The limitation of pancen-servicesP Also during the 1860s the multi-
farious unpaid services which the Javanese population was expected
to perform for its superiors—one calls to mind the grasscutters in Max
Havelaar who were ordered off the grounds of the bupati by the
assistant-resident Douwes Dekker—was exposed to mounting criti-
cism. A person like Otto van Rees, mentioned earlier, (who became
an influential member of the Council of the Indies in 1864; a fact
which earned him the sobriquet 'King Otto' afterwards) saw the
abolition of these pancen and other personal services as a sine qua non
in the introduction of economic reform in Java. As long as these
services existed the Javanese would never be master of his own time
and would always remain subject to the 'despotism' of his chiefs. The
abolition of pancen services would have to go hand in hand with a
reorganization of the native administration and a salary rise: The
expenditure that this would give rise to, according to Van Rees who
succeeded in winning Minister Fransen van de Putte over to his way
of thinking in 1865, would be covered by imposing a monetary tax on
the people, for instance by increasing the land-rent tax.
In fact these measures—the complete abolition of the pancen servi-
ces and a salary increase for the native chiefs—were announced at the
beginning of 1866 in the Indisch Staatsblad. But this time Fransen van
de Putte and Van Rees had overplayed their hand: these reforms,
which should have come into force on 1 January 1867, needed,
according to the new Indies Budgetary Law, the consent of the
Second Chamber. This consent was refused after the fall of Fransen
van de Putte's liberal ministry and the appearance of a conservative
cabinet towards the middle of 1866. Finally these measures were
reduced to a restriction of the pancen services rather than a total
abolition (the complete abolition would only follow in 1882). A
modest rise in the salaries of the native chiefs took place in 1867—
another shortcoming of the Indies administration, denounced in Max
Havelaar, was thus partly remedied. At the same time penal provisions
for extortion and abuse of power by the native chiefs and officials were
introduced. This latter move—an initiative of the colonial administra-
tion— did not have the approval of the conservative Colonial Minister
J. J. Hasselman (1867-1868) who thought that such regulations could
23
Pancen service; from panci = destine for, assign to (a native chief; cf. Encyclopedie van
Nederlandsch-Indie, 2nd edn, II (1918), 77.

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 DUTCH COLONIAL POLICY IN THE 1860S 49

create the false impression that the regents and other native leaders
were the 'daily oppressors' of the Javanese. Nonetheless, in this par-
ticular case, the Indies government stuck to its guns: the controversial
penal clauses were accorded their rightful place in the Native Crimi-
nal Code that came into force on i January 1873 (Fasseur, 1987, 11).
The conviction that the colonial administration as a whole left a lot
to be desired was fairly widespread in the 1860s. In 1864 Minister
Fransen van de Putte argued in the Second Chamber: 'It is not the
cultivation system as such but the entire system of administration that
is vicious' (Fransen van de Putte, Parlementaire redevoeringen, II, 1873,
177)-
In 1863 an indignant Governor-General Sloet van de Beele thought
that 'it cries to Heaven' that the Dutch still flogged the Javanese. 24 In
the same year he himself was made painfully aware of the bad repu-
tation of the colonial government among the Javanese population
when he visited the 'private estates' of Hofland in Krawang. It seems
that the Javanese had hidden themselves away in the forest under the
impression that the arrival of the Governor-General with his military
retinue was a sign of impending hostilities (in the turbulent Krawang
region the Dutch had taken military action several times in the recent
past). Only after Sloet himself, clad in a simple black coat and
without any escort, had shown himself in a few villages, did the people
seem to be reassured 'that the Tuan Besar had not come with any
hostile intention', as Sloet drily remarked in a letter to Fransen van de
Putte.25 The mutual conviction of these two men that a great deal had
to be changed in Java, created the conditions for a policy of reform, a
conviction as much inspired by Max Havelaar as by anything else. This
policy did not leave the cultivation system unscathed.

Conclusions

The aim of this article has been to bring some line into the processes of
political decision-making in the Netherlands which were to affect the
conditions in Java in the period after i860. It would seem to confirm
the hypothesis that the cultivation system did not disintegrate because
of the irreversible march of Western capitalism and Western
entrepreneurial activities, but rather because of a principle aversion to
24
Governor-General Sloet van de Beele to Minister of Colonies Fransen van de
Putte, 14-11-1863, Private Papers Storm de Grave.
'•" Ibid., 26-7- [863.

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50 C. FASSEUR

a system of government intervention in economic activities. In fact,

the fate of the cultivation system had already been decided by the
Indies constitution of 1854. The fact that it took more than a quarter
of a century—until 1879—before a start could be made on the actual
liquidation of the compulsory sugar cultivation—the government cof-
fee culture would be continued for some decades to come—was the
direct result of the attempts to take into consideration the interests of
the treasury and those of the Western entrepreneurs within the
cultivation system. The 'free' entrepreneurs outside the cultivation
system continued to lead a precarious and uncertain existence, largely
the result of lack of capital, for a long time to come. The generally held
view that the cultivation system had already begun to be dismantled
during the sixties, especially as Colonial Minister Fransen van de
Putte then abolished the indigo and other small-scale cultures, is not
justified.26 The abolition of the forced cultivation of these minor cash
crops had been prepared before i860 and, in itself, was not very
significant. In contrast the government coffee and sugar cultivations,
in which important interests were involved, were easily able to main-
tain themselves throughout the sixties. It is true that this decade was
characterized by the quest for 'good government' which seems to have
been largely inspired by Multatuli's famous novel Max Havelaar. It
would be interesting to try to find out from which of the two institu-
tions— the Colonial Office or the Indies Government—the initiative
emerged in each concrete instance of reform.27
Nor should too much emphasis be accorded to the laws of De Waal.
The year 1870 was not the watershed it was often claimed to be in the
literature. For instance, in 1871, a new regulation for the government
sugar cultivation was introduced that favoured the sugar contractors
more than those of i860 and 1863 had done. The reform policies of
Fransen van de Putte showed little respect for the rights of the
Javanese population. Witness also his remark in the Second Chamber
that it would be easier to teach the Dutch Civil Code to future civil
servants in Leiden that that 'hotch-potch' of religious customs,
institutions and usages which was known as adat.28 De Waal, the
i(>
This was also Pierson's conclusion in his short biography of Fransen van de Putte
(Kuitenbrouwer, 1981, 5) Pierson argued that it was a misunderstanding to see
Fransen van de Putte as the 'demolisher' of the cultivation system.
27
See also the interesting and useful essay o f j . I. (Hans) Bakker, 'A neglected
reformer on Java: Governor-General Sloet van de Beele, 1861-1866' in: Anita Beltran
C h e n , Contemporary and Historical Perspectives in Southeast Asia (Carleton University
Printshop, Ottawa, Canada, 1985), pp. 74-108.
w
C. van Vollenhoven, De ontdekking van het adatrecht (Leiden, 1928), 86.

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 DUTCH COLONIAL POLICY IN THE 1 8 6 0 S 51

Colonial Minister who finally managed to solve the 'colonial ques-

tion', adopted yet another tactic. Possibly the member of the First
Chamber, Van Rhemen van Rhemenshuizen, was not far off the mark
when, during a discussion of the Agrarian Law in 1870, he said that
he could not understand how De Waal could claim to be a liberal:
'he's a dyed-in-the-wool conservative cursed with a few liberal illu-
sions!'29 Anyhow, a study of the period in which the cultivation system
met its end will be served when we manage to break down 'the paper
wall' formed by the year 1870 when discussing the historiography of
Indonesia.

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<a
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