Restoration and Reform of Dutch Power, 1816-1910.—Various disputes between Great Britain and the Netherlands, arising chiefly out of the transfer of power in Java and the British occupation of Singapore (1819), were settled by treaty between the two powers in 1824. By this treaty the Dutch were given almost entire freedom of action in Sumatra, while the Malay Peninsula was recognized as within the British sphere of influence. In 1825-30 a serious rebellion in Java involved the despatch of a large military force from the Netherlands, and was with difficulty suppressed. An outbreak of Mahommedan fanaticism in Sumatra also gave much trouble.
The reform movement inaugurated by the commission of 1803 was resumed in 1830, when Governor-General Johannes van den Bosch endeavoured to improve the conditions of land-tenure and agriculture by introducing the so-called “culture system.” The native cultivators were to be exempted from the ground-tax, but were to cultivate one-fifth of their land as the government might direct, the government taking the produce. This culture-system worked fairly during Van den Bosch’s tenure of office, but gave rise to many abuses between 1833 and 1844, involving, as it did, a combination of the métayer and corvée systems.
In 1848 the Grondwet, or fundamental law of the Netherlands, recognized for the first time the responsibility of the Dutch nation for its colonial dependencies. The Grondwet involved certain important changes, which were embodied in an act passed in 1854 and commonly known as the Regulations for the Government of Netherlands India. The Regulations substituted statute law for administrative and military despotism, and made the governor-general in council responsible to the minister of the colonies at the Hague. They reformed the judicature, introduced elementary education for the natives, and abolished slavery in Java as from the 1st of January 1860. They also prepared the way for further legislation tending towards the gradual emancipation of the natives from the culture system, and from semi-feudal servitude to their native rulers. That servitude existed in many forms all over the archipelago, but among the most curious must be reckoned the pandelingschap or “pledgedom,” which originated in Borneo, and according to which a man had the power to make his debtors his serfs until their debts were paid.
The reform movement was aided by the publication in 1860 of Max Havelaar, a romance by E. Douwes Dekker (q.v.), which contained a scathing indictment of the colonial system. Many important financial and agrarian measures were carried between 1860 and 1890. In 1863 Fransen van de Putte, minister for the colonies, introduced the first of the annual colonial budgets for which the Regulations had provided, thus enabling the states-general to control the revenue and expenditure of Netherlands India; in 1865 he reduced and in 1872 abolished the differentiation of customs dues in favour of goods imported from Holland, substituting a uniform import duty of 6% and establishing a number of free ports throughout the archipelago. The import duty was considered so moderate that an increase required for revenue purposes was readily conceded in 1886. In 1876 the practice of paying a yearly surplus (batig slot) from the revenues of Netherlands India to the treasury at the Hague was discontinued. The chief reforms in the land system were those introduced by De Waal, then minister for the colonies, in 1870. The cultivation of pepper, cochineal, cinnamon and indigo for the government had already ceased; De Waal restricted the area of the sugar plantations (carried on by forced native labour) as from 1878, and provided for their abolition after 1890. He also enabled natives to secure proprietary rights over the land they cultivated, and legalized the leasing of Crown forest-lands to Europeans.
The extension of Dutch political power—notably in Java, Sumatra, Celebes, the Moluccas, Borneo, the Sunda Islands and New Guinea—proceeded simultaneously with the reform movement, and from time to time involved war with various native states. A large expedition was sent to Lombok in 1894, and almost the whole of that island was incorporated in the Dutch dominions. The long and costly war with Achin (q.v.) began in 1873 and reached its climax in the military occupation of the country after 1905, when the native sultan surrendered and was deported. A guerrilla war was still carried on by his subjects, but their principal leader, the chief Panglima Polim, was captured in 1907; in 1908-1910 the condition of Achin under the military rule of General Swart was one of almost unbroken peace, and taxes were regularly paid.
While the Dutch were thus consolidating their authority, other countries were acquiring new commercial or colonial interests in the archipelago. Immigration from China and Japan steadily increased, especially towards the end of the period 1816-1910. The enterprise of Sir James Brooke (q.v.) led, after 1838, to the establishment of British sovereignty in North Borneo; in 1895 New Guinea was divided between Great Britain, Germany and the Netherlands; and the Spanish-American War of 1898 resulted in the cession of the Philippines, Sulu Island and the largest of the Mariana Islands to the United States, and the sale of the Caroline group to Germany. Australian and Japanese trade in the archipelago was stimulated by the establishment of the Australian Commonwealth (1901) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5). In 1910 the nations most directly interested in the future of the archipelago were the Netherlands, Great Britain, the United States, Germany, Japan, China and Portugal.
Bibliography.—For the period 1511-1595, the chief Portuguese authorities are the chronicles of Barros, Corrêa, Castanheda and Couto (see [Portugal]: History), with the letters of Xavier (q.v.), and the Tratado of A. Galvão (Lisbon, 1563 and 1731), of which a translation entitled Discoveries of the World was made for Richard Hakluyt and reprinted by the Hakluyt Society (London, 1862). See also M. F. de Navarette, Coleccion de los viages (vols. 4 and 5, Madrid, 1837). For later history see John Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820), which quotes from native as well as European records, and Twentieth-Century Impressions of Netherlands India (ed. A. Wright, London, 1910), which gives references to the principal English and Dutch authorities. Further bibliography will be found in J. A. van der Chijs, Proeve eener nederlandsch-indische Bibliografie, 1659-1870 (Batavia, 1875).
(K. G. J.)
[1] For more detailed information respecting the several islands and groups of the archipelago, see the separate articles [Borneo]; [Java]; [Philippine Islands]; [Sumatra], &c.