ABSTRACT
When Thomas Stamford Raffles (former Lieutenant Governor of Java) and John Crawfurd (former Resident of Yogyakarta) sat down to write their respective histories of Java and South-East Asia, land tenure was foremost in their mind. Whilst working in the British colonial government in Java between 1811 and 1816, both men argued over reforming land taxes. Raffles favoured the Roytwari system of taxing, which taxed the individual peasant cultivators who worked the land, whilst Crawfurd preferred the village-based system (based on the Zamindari system of Bengal) of taxing the village chiefs (bekels) who organised the peasant cultivators. By establishing a legal obligation to pay taxes on land, Raffles and Crawfurd not only introduced European ideas of private property in land into Java, but also European ideas of history. Their respective ideas of history were linked to their different positions on land, legitimacy and the role of a colonial power.
