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Conditions on Sugar Estates in Colonial Java: Comparisons with Deli

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Wim F. Wertheim
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam

Extract

In September 1990 the Centre for Asian Studies Amsterdam (CASA) organized an International Workshop on “Plantation Labour in Colonial Asia”. Most of the presented papers dealt with plantations where the workforce had to be imported from distant regions, sometimes even from abroad. The type of human community originating from such recruitment policies often resulted in a typical frontier society, characterized by extreme harshness on the part of the white planters, and by a sense of utter alienation and isolation among the Asian labourers.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1993

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References

1 A selection of papers, prepared for the workshop, has been published in Plantations, Proletarians and Peasants in Colonial Asia, Special Issue of The Journal of Peasant Studies (1992).

2 Stoler, Ann L., Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra's Plantation Belt, 1870–1979 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Breman, Jan, Koelies, planters en koloniale politiek: Het arbeidsregime op de grootlandbouwondernemingen aan Sumatra's Oostkust in het begin van de twintigate eeuw (3rd rev. ed., Leiden, KITLV Publications, 1992)Google Scholar; Breman, has published a slightly abbreviated English-language version of this work under the title Taming the Coolie Beast: Plantation Society and The Colonial Order in Southeast Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

3 See Fasseur, C., Kultuurstelsel en koloniale baterv De Nederlandse exploitatie van Java 1840–1860 (Leiden, 1975), pp. 6376Google Scholar.

4 For the Pasuruan area in East Java, such practices have been described by Elson, R.E., Javanese Peasants and the Colonial Sugar Industry: Impact and Change in an East Java Residency, 1830–1940 (Singapore/New York, 1984), pp. 143–44Google Scholar.

5 Dermoût, Maria, Nog pas gisteren (Amsterdam, 1951), pp.79Google Scholar. The translations from Dutch texts, as incorporated in the present article, were made by me.

6 Ibid., p. 75.

7 Uit de suiker in de tabak (Semarang, 1885)Google Scholar. Reprinted under the author's name P.A. Daum (Amsterdam, 1963, pocket ed.).

8 Termorshuizen, Gerard, PA. Daum: Journalist en romancier van tempo doeloe (Amsterdam, 1988), p. 229Google Scholar.

9 Wertheim, W.F., Indonesian Society in Transition: A Study of Social Change (2nd. rev. ed, The Hague, 1959), p. 174Google Scholar.

10 Daum, , Uit de suiker (1963 pocket ed.), p. 18Google Scholar.

11 Termorshuizen, , PA. Daum, p. 237Google Scholar.

12 Ibid., p. 236.

13 Daum, , Uit de suiker, pp. 9598Google Scholar.

14 ibid., pp. 60–61.

15 Termorshuizen, , PA. Daum, p. 128Google Scholar.

16 Nieuwenhuys, Rob, Oost-Indische Spiegek Wat Nederlandse schrijvers en dichters over Indonesië hebben geschreven, etc. (Amsterdam, 1972), p. 279Google Scholar.

17 Boeka, (pen name of P.C.C. Hansen), Beschaving (Vols. I and II, Amsterdam, 1903, in series Uit Java's Binnenland)Google Scholar.

18 Boeka, , Beschaving, vol. II, p. 228Google Scholar.

19 The negative effects of Western irrigation on behalf of the sugarcane cultivation upon peasant agriculture have been confirmed by a doctoral dissertation written by the geographer van Schaik, Arthur, “Colonial Control and Peasant Resources in Java: Agricultural Involution Reconsidered” (Univ. of Amsterdam, 1986), pp. 124 ffGoogle Scholar.

20 The formulation is by Knight, G.R., “The Java Sugar Industry as a Capitalist Plantation: A Reappraisal”, in Plantations, Proletarians and Peasants in Colonial Asia, Special Issue of The Journal of Peasant Studies 3/4 (1992): 74Google Scholar. However, on the same page Knight criticizes as an oversimplification the contention that the Java industry's access to land for cane cultivation was determined by “extraeconomic” coercion rather than through the working of “free market forces”. Boeka's picture of the overwhelming rate of “extraeconomic coercion” is fully corroborated in a recent article by Tichelman, Fritjof, “Problems of Javanese Labour: Continuity and Change in the Nineteenth Century: Servitude and Mobility”, in The Heyday of Colonial Rule: India and Indonesia from the 1830s to 1914, Special Issue of Itinerario 11, no. 1 (1987): 169–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, dealing with desa services.

21 Fabricius, Johan, “De schending van het land”, De Nieuwe Stem (Vol. 5, 1952), pp. 631 ff.Google Scholar; reprinted in Fabricius, Joh., De gordel van smaragd (The Hague, 1953), pp. 242–74Google Scholar.

22 Toer, Pramoedya Ananta, Child of all Nations (Penguin Books, 1984), pp. 122–23Google Scholar. Elson mentions similar manipulations by Indonesian officials on behalf of the sugar industry in the Pasuruan area of East Java.

23 Breman, Jan, Control of Land and Labour in Colonial Java- A Case Study of Agrarian Crisis and Reform in the Region of Cirebon during the first Decades of the 20th Century (Leiden, 1983), pp. 5051Google Scholar, describes such malpractices in the Cirebon region (West-Java). The system of periodical redistribution of sawah, strongly supported by the sugar companies, contradicts Knight's contention that in the nineteenth century “state officials in charge of organising cane production sought to reinforce existing ties between cultivators and the soil” (“The Java Sugar Industry”, p. 72).

24 Ph. Levert, , “Inheemsche arbeid in de Java suikerindustrie” (doctoral diss., Wageningen, 1934), p. 246Google Scholar.

25 Ibid., pp. 119, 193–94.

26 Ibid., p. 120.

27 Ibid., p. 138.

28 Cf. Knight, “The Java Sugar Industry”, p. 77. For Sukarno's rejection of the term “Proletariat” for the poor peasantry of Java, who were “barely making a living”, see Worsley, Peter, The Third World (2nd. rev. ed., London, 1967), pp. 128–29Google Scholar.

29 See Larson, George D., Prelude to Revolution: Palaces and Politics in Surakarta, 1912–1942 (Leiden, 1987), pp. 102125Google Scholar; Shiraishi, Takashi, An Age in Motion: Popular Radicalism in Java, 1912–1926 (Ithaca, 1990), chs. 4 and 5Google Scholar.

30 Levert, , “Inheemsche arbeid”, p. 212Google Scholar.

31 The Volksraad, or “People's Council”, was a consultative assembly convened for the first time in 1918.

32 Elson, Javanese Peasants, p. 203Google Scholar.

33 Verslag van de Suiker-Enquête Commissie, Surabaya, 1921Google Scholar.

34 Levert, , “Inheemsche arbeid”, p. 212Google Scholar.

35 Ibid., p. 279.

36 Bakker, P., “Eenige beschouwingen over het geldverkeer in de inheemsche samenleving van Nederlandsch-Indië” (Doct. Diss. Leiden, 1936), p. 85Google Scholar.

37 Ibid., pp. 60, 87.

38 I may refer to Living Conditions of Plantation Workers and Peasants on Java in 1939–1940 (publ. in the Translation Series of the Modern Indonesia Project, Ithaca, 1956)Google Scholar; and to a summary in Wertheim, W.F., Indonesian Society, pp. 258–65Google Scholar. See also Huizenga, L.H., “Het Koeliebudgetonderzoek op Java in 1939–1940” (Doct. Diss. Wageningen, 1958)Google Scholar.

39 Multatuli, (pen name of Ed. Douwes Dekker), Over vrijen arbeid in Nederlandsch-Indië en de tegenwoordige koloniale agitatie, a famous pamphlet published in Amsterdam, 1862Google Scholar.