ABSTRACT
The cultivation of coffee on Java for the world market started in the early years of the eighteenth century. This study examines colonialism and its impact on the social structure of the main coffee producing area in Southeast Asia. The advent of Dutch domination considerably contributed to the expansion of the world economy, a process of long duration. The Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC; Dutch East India Company) sought colonial commodities in various parts of the Indonesian archipelago. The coffee plant, imported from southern India, proved to thrive in the highlands surrounding the colonial headquarters in Batavia and the VOC’s agents encouraged cultivation of this exogenous crop. At first, they bought the harvest from peasant growers, but what started as a regular commercial transaction soon evolved into the compulsory cultivation and delivery of coffee at a price far below the market value. Rising demand for this new consumer good in the Atlantic world led to pressure on the growers to supply more and more beans. This required the VOC to extend its control deep into the hinterland. In the Sundanese region of West Java known as the Priangan lands, the VOC did not achieve this by building up its own machinery of governance. It remained at a distance, installing indigenous chiefs and binding the peasantry in servitude to them. This system of indirect rule, imposed through regents and the lower ranks of the Sundanese aristocracy, kept management costs down. The same mode of cheap exploitation continued after the fall of the VOC and the emergence of the early-colonial state in a regime that lasted far into the nineteenth century.
