ABSTRACT
The public debate in the metropolis on whether to continue the cultivation system began to gain momentum after the middle of the nineteenth century and focused on the role of the government in the colonial economy. The question also arose of whether forced levies should be replaced by free labour as the basic principle of the cultivation of crops for export. The political choice that would ultimately be made was the outcome of a long-drawn-out dispute between the various schools of thought within and outside Dutch parliament. Advocates on all sides of the argument had to take account of the impact on public opinion in the mother country of the publication in 1860 of Max Havelaar. The book, written by former Dutch colonial official Eduard Douwes Dekker under the pen name Multatuli 34 and subtitled ‘Or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company’, had in the words of the leader of the liberal lobby sent ‘a shudder’ through the country (Van der Meulen 2002: 418). The change in the foundations of colonial policy that gradually took shape was preceded by an extensive survey of the production of the two main commercial crops regulated under the cultivation system, coffee and sugar. In 1863, the government of the East Indies was ordered to recommend improvements in the coffee production of Java. The investigations which would be the basis for the new policy were initially entrusted to C.P.C. Steinmetz. As former Resident of the Priangan Regencies (1851-55) and as the author of yet another manual on the cultivation of coffee (1865), he was eminently qualified for the task. However failing health prevented him from what he set out to do and after his death in 1865 C.J. Bosch, Chief Inspector of the Department of Cultivations, was designated to complete the official enquiry. In 1868 he had completed his report – Algemeen Verslag der Uitkomsten van het onderzoek betreffende de Koffijkultuur op Java – which found its way through the bureaucracy to parliament in the Netherlands where it was included in the Proceedings of the States-General 1870-71. Because coffee cultivation was organized along different lines in the Priangan Regencies than in the rest of Java, the situation in this region and the problems that occurred there were described in a separate memorandum. 35 What is striking is the exceptionally critical tone of this account on the working and impact of the coffee regime in the Sunda highlands. ‘A system that is arbitrary, repressive and secretive’, was the judgment on the mode of production in the Priangan Regencies, which had previously received so much praise. Each of these three condemnations was explained in detail.
