Ambonese

The Dutch colonial state has its foundation in conquest.

Unlike the violence used earlier by the VOC, the military expansion of the nineteenth century is deliberately territorial and penetrates far beyond the coastal areas.

It generally has as its goal fundamental regime change and—although in truth this is often beyond Batavia's capability—the establishment of control by a centralized authority.

Quite different from the eighteenth century, too, colonial forces enjoy a degree of technological superiority over most of their adversaries, a result of the industrial revolution.

And, whereas the VOC had fought with an assortment of indigenous allies, now the colonial state fights for its own interests, engaging indigenous men as soldiers.

The colonial government's separate fighting force, known as the Royal Netherlands Indies Army (KNIL), had been founded only a few weeks before Diponegoro's surrender in 1830.

Although assigned the task of maintaining rust en orde (tranquillity and order) throughout the colonial state's territories, the KNIL will become best known for its role in the colonial wars of expansion.

Dominated by ethnic Dutch, and later Eurasian, officers, in the mid-nineteenth century about two-thirds of KNIL troops will be Indonesians, predominantly Javanese and Ambonese, and the rest "European," a confusing category that includes not only white Europeans but also a small number of black Africans and others.

Modern military intrusions in Indonesia began around the same time as the Java War (1825–1830) and continued well into the early twentieth century. However, the circumstances of these interventions varied.

In some cases, such as the Padri Wars (1821–1837) in Minangkabau, western Sumatra, indigenous factions themselves sought colonial military assistance. Here, aristocrats and village clan leaders, threatened by Wahhabi-influenced Muslim reformers, turned to the Dutch colonial government for support. Though the reformers were ultimately defeated, the aristocracy and clan leaders eventually lost their authority as power shifted to the colonial state.

In other instances, such as the Banjarmasin War (southern Kalimantan, 1857–1859) and the Palembang conflicts (southern Sumatra, 1823–1829), the colonial government imposed, then deposed rulers without invitation, but with similarly far-reaching consequences—increasing Dutch control over local governance.

The war against Aceh (1873–1903) in northern Sumatra is the most extensive and costly of all Dutch colonial conflicts in Indonesia.

The Dutch pursue this war for multiple reasons:

• Imperial rivalries with other Western powers,
• Commercial and military competition from Aceh, and
• The spread of anti-Western, anti-colonial Islamic movements originating in Aceh.

For a time, Batavia appears to align itself with the uleebalang—Aceh’s traditional, more secular elite—as it had previously done in Minangkabau. However, this proves to be a temporary strategy. In the end, the uleebalang themselves fall under Dutch control, and the colonial state ultimately annexes Aceh outright.

A Dutch colonial state aimed at managing the territories and people acquired in Indonesia as a result of these conquests—or "pacifications," as some prefer to describe them—emerges gradually and piecemeal.

It first begins to take shape around the time of Diponegoro's defeat, with the inauguration in Java of policies that will come to be known as the Cultivation System (Cultuurstelsel).

This is the brainchild of Johannes van den Bosch, a military man and social reformer who becomes governor general (1830-34) and later minister of colonies (1834-39).

He seeks to solve the fiscal problems of Batavia and the Netherlands, both of which are on the brink of bankruptcy, as well as those of a populace devastated by warfare on Java.

Van den Bosch believes that Java is a rich but underproductive land, primarily because Javanese farmers, even when their own prosperity is at stake, will not or cannot produce beyond a subsistence level unless guided, even compelled, to do so.

"Force," he writes, "is everywhere the basis of industry ... where it does not exist there is neither industry nor civilization."

Johannes Van den Bosch's plan forces Java's farmers either to use existing agricultural lands or open new ones in order to cultivate crops for export, deliver them to the government at fixed prices, and utilize the income to offset or pay the government taxes on their land.

The crops first targeted are sugar and indigo, but coffee and pepper are soon added, followed by newer crops, such as tea, tobacco, and cinnamon.

Unlike the system that Stamford Raffles had contemplated, van den Bosch proposes dealing with whole villages rather than individuals, and using government officials and local authorities (who receive a percentage of revenues their areas generated) to regulate which crops will be grown, on which and how much land, with which and how much labor, and at what prices.

Bringing the produce to the world market through the Netherlands becomes the monopoly of the Netherlands Trading Association (NHM), a private company in which the Dutch king is a major stockholder.

Entrepreneurs in general are locked out of the state-run system.

This approach, van den Bosch argues, will assure production and profits great enough not only to subsidize the colonial administration and contribute handsomely to the treasury of the Netherlands but also to substantially improve the well-being of the Javanese.

Scholars and politicians alike have argued ever since over what exactly those results were.

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.

It is much less clear whether the Javanese benefited from or were impoverished by the Cultivation System.

Generalization about this question is made particularly difficult by the fact that the system as actually implemented is not very systematic and varies considerably according to time, place, and circumstance.

In some regions, for example, forty percent of the adult population labors for the system and in others, pone hundred percent; in some areas, less than four percent of agricultural land is used and in others, fifteen percent.

Abuses of the system's provisions, including official corruption, also vary sharply by locale.

The principal criticisms are, and continue to be today, moral ones.

The Cultivation System will be portrayed as having been founded on greed and as being not only coercive and exploitative but also prone to a range of abuses, all of which produce, for the average villager, only impoverishment.

This view will be put forth most memorably in the 1860 Dutch novel Max Havelaar by Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820-77), an embittered former colonial official who will write under the pseudonym Multatuli ("I have suffered much").

Douwes Dekker's account will be widely understood, probably not entirely accurately, as a thoroughgoing indictment of colonial rule in general and the Cultivation System in particular, which he will accuse of having created a uniformly desperate, destitute peasantry.

This, or something much like it, will become the received view.

Recent studies, however, based on rereadings of old evidence as well as on archival information that will become available only in the mid-twentieth century, suggest a far more complex picture.

While acknowledging that the burdens of the Cultivation System fell on the laboring Javanese populace, they also argue that the majority probably saw at least limited economic improvement and took advantage of new economic opportunities, although at the cost of a more regimented and government-controlled existence, and with the added risk of dependency on world markets.

This is a form of circumscribed change that shapes Java's village world far into the future.

The Cultivation System in the Dutch East Indies does not require an elaborate state apparatus.

It is deliberately a form of indirect rule using an existing hierarchy of the Javanese priyayi elite, especially the upper ranks of traditional local officeholders known as the pangreh praja (rulers of the realm) and village heads.

As late as the mid-1850s, European officials and regional supervisors numbered fewer than three hundred for an indigenous population of more than ten million.

A small number of freelance European engineers and locally requisitioned laborers have undertaken the construction of roads and irrigation works needed for the new plantations.

This begins to change, however, as the system grows, undergoes reform, and, especially after the Sugar Act and Agrarian Act of 1870, gradually gives way to private enterprise.

The responsibilities of the colonial government burgeon, and in order to meet them, it expands pangreh praja ranks by dividing and standardizing their administrative territories and tightens control, by rescinding their traditional rights to symbols of status and access to villagers' labor and services, tying them to government salaries and procedures.

Alongside the pangreh praja now served a growing parallel hierarchy of European officials—ostensibly functioning as advisers or "elder brothers" of their native counterparts but increasingly directing them—whose reach, by 1882, will extend as far down as the subdistrict level, just above the village head.

In addition, more specialized government offices come into being: a Bureau of Public Works (with its own corps of engineers and an irrigation division), as well as departments of agriculture, education, finance, justice, and religion, all with their own structures and technical staffs.