There is little doubt that the Cultivation…

There is little doubt that the Cultivation System is an enormous success fiscally, and from a government perspective.

Java's exports will increase more than tenfold, and profits nearly sevenfold, between 1830 and 1870; the colonial government regains solvency almost immediately and between 1832 and 1877 will remit a budgetary surplus (batig slot) totaling eight hundred and twenty-three million Dutch guilders to the treasury of the Netherlands, on average about eighteen million guilders annually, about a third of the national budget.

It is no exaggeration to say that nineteenth-century Dutch prosperity rests very largely upon these funds.