The History of Java, v. 1-2

by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles

A few years of repose to these islands, and of safe uninterrupted commerce, with its attendant blessings, would repay with gain incalculable, what they now claim from the benevolence and philanthropy, if not from the justice of Europeans, who have so essentially contributed to their degradation. If left neglected, without capital, without a safe navigation, almost without laws, the government disunited, the people groaning under vassalage and slavery, these races must descend still further in the scale of degradation, until scarcely a vestige will remain to vindicate the records of their history; and their political existence will only be testified by acts of piracy perpetrated on defenceless vessels, which from accident or ignorance may visit their inhospitable shores.

In all their Eastern settlements, the favourite policy of the Dutch seems to have been to depress the native inhabitants, and give every encouragement to the Chinese, who, generally speaking, are only itinerants and not children of the soil, and who follow the almost universal practice of remitting the fruits of their industry to China, instead of spending them where they were acquired. The Chinese, in all ages equally supple, venal, and crafty, failed not, at a very early period, to recommend themselves to the speculating Hollanders. They have, almost from the first, been their agents; and in the island of Java, in particular, they acquired from them the entire monopoly of the revenue farms and government contracts. Many of the most respectable Dutch families were intimately connected with the Chinese in their contracts and speculations, and whole provinces had been sold in perpetuity to some of them, the extensive population of which were thus assigned over to their unfeeling oppression, for the purpose of raising temporary supplies of money.

On Java, the Chinese have been generally left to their own laws and the regulations of their own chiefs; and being, for the most part, merely temporary residents in the country, they devote themselves to the accumulation of wealth, without being very scrupulous about the means of obtaining it: when, therefore, they acquire grants of land, they generally contrive to reduce the peasants speedily to the condition of slaves. The improvement of the people, which was never much attended to by the Dutch, was still less so by the Chinese, and the oppression which they exercised in the vicinity of Batavia had opened the eyes of the Dutch themselves. A report of the Council of Batavia, a short time prior to the landing of the English, accordingly states, that "although the Chinese, as being the most industrious settlers, should be the most useful, they on the contrary have become a very dangerous people, and are to be considered as a pest to the country; for which evil," they add, "there appears to be no radical cure but their expulsion from the interior." Wherever the Chinese formed extensive settlements in Java, the native inhabitants had no alternative but that of abandoning the district or becoming slaves of the soil. The monopolising spirit of the Chinese was often very pernicious to the produce of the soil, as may be seen even at this day in the immediate vicinity of Batavia, where all the public markets are farmed by them, and the degeneracy and poverty of the lower orders are proverbial.

The Chinese of Batavia are a very numerous body, and possess considerable wealth. They are active and industrious, enterprising and speculative in the highest degree in the smallest or most extensive concerns, and equally well adapted for trade or agriculture; but, at the same time, they are cunning, deceitful, covetous, and restless, and exceedingly unwarlike in their habits and dispositions. This is the character given of them by Mr. Hogendorp, who, in considering the injurious consequences of their extensive influence on Java, has drawn a very just and able representation of it[67].

In all the Malayan states, the Chinese have made the greatest efforts to get into their hands the farming of the port duties, and this has generally proved the ruin of the trade. In addition to these circumstances it should be recollected, that the Chinese, from their peculiar language and manners, form a kind of separate society in every place where they settle, which gives them a great advantage over every competitor in arranging monopolies of trade. The ascendancy of the Chinese requires to be cautiously guarded against and restrained; and this, perhaps, cannot be better done, than by bringing forward the native population, and encouraging them in useful and industrious habits.

Some of these observations regarding the Chinese are, in a high degree, applicable to the Arabs who frequent the Malayan countries, and under the specious mask of religion prey on the simple unsuspicious natives. The Chinese must, at all events, be admitted to be industrious; but by far the greater part of the Arabs are mere useless drones, and idle consumers of the produce of the ground: affecting to be descended from the Prophet and the most eminent of his followers, when in reality they are commonly nothing better than manumitted slaves, they worm themselves into the favour of the Malayan chiefs, and often procure the highest offices under them. They hold like robbers the offices which they have obtained as sycophants, and cover all with the sanctimonious veil of religious hypocrisy.

Under the pretext of instructing the Maláyus in the principles of the Mahometan religion, they inculcate the most intolerant bigotry, and render them incapable of receiving any species of useful knowledge. It is seldom that the East is visited by Arabian merchants of large capital, but there are numerous adventurers who carry on a coasting trade from port to port, and by asserting the religious claims of Sheikh, generally obtain an exemption from all port duties in the Malayan states. They are also not unfrequently concerned in piracies, and are the principal promoters of the slave-trade.

This may serve, in some degree, to illustrate the necessity of establishing an equal and uniform system of port regulations throughout the whole of the Malayan countries; for if the Chinese, on the one hand, are permitted to farm import and export duties in different ports, they have every facility allowed them to form combinations, in order to secure a monopoly to Chinese traders; and on the other hand, if the Arabs, under religious pretexts, are entirely exempted from duties, they may baffle all competition, and engross the trade of the Malayan countries to the exclusion of European traders altogether.

Let the Chinese and Arabs still trade to the eastward. Without them, the trade would be reduced to less than one-third of even what it is at present, for it is only through the stimulus which they give to the industry of the country that its resources are to be developed: but let their trade be regulated; and above all, let them not be left in the enjoyment of immunities and advantages, which are neither possessed by Europeans, nor the indigenous inhabitants of the country. Since the reduction of the Dutch influence in the East, several of the ports formerly dependant on them have almost become Arab colonies. The evil is obviously increasing every day, and can only be checked by encouraging the native population, and regulating on equal terms the duties of the Malayan and other Eastern ports.

In many other respects besides those which we have stated, the commercial policy adopted by the Dutch, with regard to the Eastern islands and the Malayan states in general, was contrary to all principles of natural justice, and unworthy of any enlightened and civilized nation[68].