The agrarian question in colonial Java: Coercion and colonial capitalist sugar plantations, 1870–1941

Abstract

The article sets out to restore the recently denied view that state‐backed coercion is vital to colonial sugar plantations in Java (as elsewhere). Most unusual for a plantation system the Java sugar mills owned no land (other than that on which the mill was sitting). They leased fresh land each year from irrigated rice farmers. Secondly, and also remarkable, all this system was legally and effectively regulated (at least for the leasing farmers whilst for the mills the legal side was rather more optional). This provided the basis for cheap land to the plantations that the farmers were obliged to lease. Thirdly, each year every mill would calculate its needs for land and forward those to the level of Resident. Having consulted with his own and with lower staff, the Resident might amend the mills’ requirements and then approve them. These were then passed down through the various levels of the administration until reaching the village. However, they now appeared in the form of approved measures to which officials and village heads were supposed to adhere. Fourthly, the mills needed large contiguous areas of land to plant sugar cane whilst the average individual farmer had about half a hectare of irrigated land usually in more than one spot. This pushed the mills into favouring the leasing of ‘communal’ village land. These were in blocs. This procedure although widely used was illegal for most of the period. Whilst most satisfactory to Dutch colonial capitalism the system constituted the Agrarian Question (with no solution except Independence) in Java.