Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T08:12:08.810Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Extract

In 1976 I published an article in the Acta Historiae Neerlandicae (an annual series of publications in English on the history of The Netherlands, 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 origins of the ‘decay’ of the system. In this connection I mentioned in particular Wertheim's well-known study on Indonesian Society in Transition 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 development 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’. 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.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Day, Clive, 1904, The Dutch in Java (Oxford UP 1966, reprint).Google Scholar
Elson, R. E., 1986, ‘Sugar Factory Workers and the Emergence of “Free Labour” in Nineteenth-Century Java’, Modern Asian Studies, 20, 139–74.Google Scholar
Fasseur, C., 1975,1Kultuurstelsel en koloniale baten, De Nederlandse exploitatie van Java 1840–1860 (Leiden). English translation, Cornell University Southeast Asia program, 1990.Google Scholar
Fasseur, C., 1975,2Van suikercontractant tot Kamerlid. Bouwstenen voor een biografie van Fransen van de Putte (de jaren 1849–1862)’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 88, 333–54.Google Scholar
Fasseur, C., 1976, ‘Some Remarks on the Cultivation System in Java’, Acta Historiae Neerlandicae. Studies on the History of The Netherlands, X, 143–62.Google Scholar
Fasseur, C., 1987, Onhoorbaar groeit de padi. Max Havelaar en de publieke zaak (Leiden/Amsterdam).Google Scholar
van de Putte, I. D. Fransen, 18721873, Parlementaire Redevoeringen, 2 vols (Schiedam).Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford, 1963, Agricultural Involution. The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia (Berkeley).Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford, 1984, ‘Culture and Social Change: The Indonesian Case’, Man, 19, 511–32.Google Scholar
Goedhart, A., 1948, De onmogelijke vrijheid. Het gouvernement als koffieondernemer (Utrecht).Google Scholar
Kielstra, E. B., 1904, De financiën van Nederlandsch-Indië ('s-Gravenhage).Google Scholar
Koloniale Verslagen; published annually since 1849.Google Scholar
Kuitenbrouwer, M., 1981, ‘N. G. Pierson en de koloniale politiek, 1860–1909’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 94, 128.Google Scholar
Multatuli, , 1987, Max Havelaar or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company, translated by Roy, Edwards (London).Google Scholar
Trenité, G. J. Nolst, 1942, Inleiding tot de agrarische wetgeving van het rechtstreeks bestuurd gebied van Nederlandsch Indië, 2nd edn (Utrecht).Google Scholar
Oud, P. J., 1982, Honderd jaren. Een eeuw van staatkundige vormgeving in Nederland 1840–1940, 8th edn (Assen).Google Scholar
Reinsma, R., 1955, Het verval van het cultuurstelsel ('s-Gravenhage).Google Scholar
Reinsma, R., 1957, ‘Sociaal-economische denkbeelden van Fransen van de Putte’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedeins, 70, 6275.Google Scholar
Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië (Indisch Staatsblad); published annually since 1816.Google Scholar
Staatsblad van Nederland (Nederlands Staatsblad); published annually since 1814.Google Scholar
Wertheim, W. F. 1959, Indonesian Society in Transition. A Study of Social Change, 2nd edn (The Hague).Google Scholar