ABSTRACT
As legitimate successor to the kings on Java, Raffles decreed that the peasants had to pay rent to the state for the land they tilled. The initial intention was to give responsibility for collecting the tax to the demang, bekel and loerah, the lowest level of indigenous chiefs who, as petty landlords, were closest to the agrarian population. They were in charge of collecting the tribute that had to be paid by the landowning households of each peasant locality in money or in kind. The Lieutenant-General changed his mind, however, when he received new information suggesting that the people in various parts of Java were certainly no strangers to the notion of agrarian property. The information came from officials who had gained experience with the introduction of the ryotwari system in the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay in British India. Under this system of land rule, individual peasants were recognized as the primary targets of taxation. Some members of the inquiry committee sent out by Raffles to investigate the tribute levied from the peasantry had already established earlier that individual property was also known in West Java. In addition, they determined that only the inhabitants of a settlement were permitted to lay claim to the waste land around it (Bastin 1954: 57). The report on land rights that J. Knops submitted to Raffles noted that peasants who cultivated dry land to grow rice were considered the individual owners of the fields.
The Javanese who clears such lands from the root of trees, brushwood, &c., and renders a wilderness fit for cultivation, considers himself as proprietor of the same, and especially as owner of what it produces, on which no taxes are levied. These lands admit of cultivation every second year only, which, however, is no loss to the proprietor, whose [next] harvest is more abundant in consequence. (Raffles 1814: 131)
