KEBIJAKAN GUBERNUR JENDERAL VAN DEN BOSCH DALAM MENERAPKAN CULTUURSTELSEL (SISTEM TANAM PAKSA) DI JAWA

Abstract

This article examines the policy of the Dutch Governor-General Johannes van den Bosch in implementing the Cultuurstelsel, or forced cultivation system, in Java between 1830 and 1870. The study is motivated by the need to understand how a colonial financial crisis, caused by the Java War (1825–1830) and the Belgian Revolt (1830–1831), gave rise to a policy that reshaped the agrarian and social structure of colonial Java. Using a historical research method consisting of heuristics, source criticism, interpretation, and historiography based on secondary literature, this study finds that the Cultuurstelsel obliged villages to allocate approximately one-fifth of their land, or its labour equivalent, to cultivate export commodities such as coffee, sugar, tea, and indigo for the colonial government. Although the policy was designed with formal safeguards, its implementation was distorted by the culturprocenten (cultivation bonus) system, which encouraged local officials to exceed the stipulated quotas, resulting in excessive land confiscation, forced labour beyond the agreed limits, crop failure, and famine in several regencies of Java, most notably Cirebon, Demak, and Grobogan. Economically, the policy generated a substantial surplus, known as the batig slot, which financed Dutch state expenditure and infrastructure. Socially and politically, the suffering it caused eventually triggered humanitarian criticism, most famously through Multatuli's novel Max Havelaar, and contributed to the rise of Dutch liberal politics that ended the system through the Agrarian Law and Sugar Law of 1870. The study concludes that Van den Bosch's policy exemplifies the tension between colonial fiscal interests and indigenous welfare that characterised nineteenth-century Dutch rule in the Indies.