As before, the produce due from the peasants cultivating Government lands was commuted into a money payment assessed upon the rice crops; but this payment was made, not by the individual peasants, but by the wedanas, or village chiefs, on behalf of the whole community. Beside the land tax, an additional source of income remained in the profit arising from the sale of coffee, grown either by the Preanger Regents and sold to the Government at prices fixed by treaty, or on the coffee plantations established by Marshall Daendels, which were now restored.
These two methods of raising revenue were resorted to by the Dutch upon their return to the island, and continued in force during the period 1816-1833. They were wholly inadequate. Whether the Dutch were right or not in characterizing Raffles' reforms as a failure, it is certain that nothing could be more desperate than the state of the island in the years immediately preceding the introduction of the culture system. At the end of the period 1816-1833 both revenue and population seem to have become stationary. The mass of the natives were becoming so impoverished that they ceased to be able to keep a supply of domestic animals and implements necessary for the cultivation of their lands. Apart from the princes, there was no class, merchants or tradespeople, possessing any wealth that could be taxed. Not only was the revenue stagnant, but, owing to a war with the sultans of the interior, a debt of over 35,000,000 florins was incurred by the Government. In a word, the colony seemed likely to become an intolerable burden to Holland. It was at this crisis that General Van den Bosch proposed the culture system as a means of rescuing the island from its financial and social difficulties.
The immediate object of the culture system was to extend the cultivation of sugar, coffee, and other produce suited for European consumption; its ultimate object was to develop the resources of the island. This latter was, of course, the most important. Van den Bosch saw that the natives would never be able to do this by themselves. In the first place, they were still organized on the patriarchal model in village communities; and, in the second, owing to the tropical climate and the extreme ease with which life could be sustained in so fertile a country, they were naturally indolent and unprogressive. He therefore proposed to organize their labour under European supervision. By this method he thought that he would be able both to raise the revenue and to improve the condition of the peasants by teaching them to grow valuable produce in addition to the rice crops on which they depended for subsistence. Van den Bosch became Governor-General of Java and its dependencies in 1830. Before leaving Holland he had made his proposals known, and obtained the approval of the Netherlands Government. He took with him newly appointed officials free from colonial traditions, and his reforms inspired such confidence, that a number of well-educated and intelligent persons were willing to emigrate with their families to Java in order to take up the business of manufacturing the produce grown under the new system. Upon his arrival in the island, a special branch cf the Colonial Administration was created. The first work of the new department was to found the sugar industry. It was necessary to supply the manufacturers with both capital and income. Accordingly, a sum amounting to £14,000 was placed to the credit of each manufacturer in the books of the department. Of this sum he was allowed to draw up to £125 per month for the expenses of himself and his family during the first two years. From the third year onwards he paid back one-tenth annually. Thus at the end of twelve years the capital was repaid. The manufacturer was to apply the capital so advanced to the construction of the sugar-mill, which was to be fitted with the best European machinery, and worked by water-power. Free labour, and timber from the Government plantations, was supplied; and the customs duties upon the machinery and implements imported were remitted. The building of the mills was supervised by the contrôleurs, the officials of the new department, and had to be carried out to their satisfaction. The department also undertook to see that the peasants in the neighbourhood of each mill should have from seven hundred to a thousand acres planted with sugar-canes by the time the mills were in working order. In Java, as in other Eastern countries, the landlord has the right of selecting the crop which the tenant is to plant, and therefore the peasants saw nothing unusual in this action of the Government. The contrôleurs ascertained, in the case of each village, how much rice land was necessary for the subsistence of the village, and they then ordered the remainder, usually one-fifth, to be planted with sugar-canes. At the same time, they explained that the value of the crop of sugar would be much greater than that of the rice crop, and promised that the peasants should be paid not only for the crops, but also for the labour of cutting the canes and carrying them to the mill. When, at the end of two years, the mills had been built and the plantations established, another advance was made by the department to the manufacturers. This was capital sufficient to pay for the value of the sugar crop, estimated as it stood, for the wages of the peasants, and generally for the expenses of manufacture. This second advance was at once repaid by the produce of the mill. At first the department required the manufacturer to deliver the whole amount of produce to them at a price one-third in excess of the cost of production. Subsequently he was allowed the option of delivering the whole crop to Government, or of delivering so much of the produce only as would pay for the interest on the crop advance, together with the instalment of the original capital annually due. Working on these terms, large profits were made by the manufacturers, and there soon came to be a demand for such new contracts as the Government had at their disposal.
A PRODUCE MILL.
As for the peasants, they were undoubtedly benefited by the introduction of the system. While the land rent continued to be calculated as before, on a basis of the produce of ricefields, the value of the sugar crop was so much greater than that of the rice, which it partially displaced, that the money received for it amounted on the average to twice the sum paid to Government for land rent on the whole of the village land. Moreover, although the estimated price of the crop was paid to the wedanas, or village chiefs, the wages for cutting and carrying were paid to the peasants individually. The value of the crop, the rate of wages, and the relations between the peasants and the manufacturers generally, were settled by the contrôleurs.
In 1871, when the culture system was in full operation, there were 39,000 bouws, or 70,000 acres, under sugar-cane, giving employment to 222,000 native families, and ninety-seven sugar-mills had been started. One-third of the produce was delivered to Government at the rate of eight florins per picul,[17] and the remaining two-thirds were sold by the manufacturers in open market. In the five years 1866-1870 the Government profit on sugar amounted to rather more than 25,000,000 florins.
Subsequently the cultivation of coffee, indigo, cochineal, tobacco, pepper, tea, and cinchona was added to that of sugar. The system pursued was not identical in the case of all produce. Cochineal, indigo, tea, and tobacco were cultivated in a manner similar to that adopted for sugar. But in the case of coffee, cinnamon, and pepper it was not found necessary to have any manufacturers between the contrôleurs and the peasants. Of these coffee, the most important, is grown on lands having an elevation of from 2000 to 4500 feet. Each head of a family is required to plant a certain number of trees in gardens (the maximum was fixed in 1877 at fifty a year), and to keep a nursery of young trees to replenish the plantations. These gardens and nurseries are all inspected by native and European officials. The process of harvesting the berry is similarly supervised, but after that is accomplished the peasants are left to dry, clean, and sort the berries by themselves, and are allowed to deliver the crop at the coffee stores at their own convenience. Finally, private persons contract for periods of two or three years to pack and transport the coffee to the central stores at the ports. Of the coffee produced on Government account, one-fifth only is sold in Java, and the remainder is sent home to Europe and sold there.