Mobilizing labour for the global coffee market : profits from an unfree work regime in colonial Java | Breman, Jan, author

Book Series: Social Histories of Work in Asia

Abstract

Coffee has been grown on Java for the commercial market since the early eighteenth century, when the Dutch East India Company began buying from peasant producers in the Priangan highlands. What began as a commercial transaction, however, soon became a system of compulsory production. This book shows how the Dutch East India Company mobilised land and labour, why they turned to force cultivation, and what effects the brutal system they installed had on the economy and society.

1 online resource (404 pages, viii pages of plates) :
Coffee has been grown on Java for the commercial market since the early eighteenth century, when the Dutch East India Company began buying from peasant producers in the Priangan highlands. What began as a commercial transaction, however, soon became a system of compulsory production. This book shows how the Dutch East India Company mobilised land and labour, why they turned to force cultivation, and what effects the brutal system they installed had on the economy and society
Includes bibliographical references (pages 381-401) and index
Machine generated contents note: I. The company as a territorial power -- Intrusion into the hinterland -- Retreat of princely authority -- Territorial demarcation and hierarchical structuring -- The Priangan highlands as a frontier -- Clearing the land for cultivation -- The composite peasant household -- Higher and lower-ranking chiefs -- Rendering servitude -- Peasants and their lords in the early-colonial era -- II. The introduction of forced cultivation -- A colonial mode of production -- From free trade to forced delivery -- The start of coffee cultivation -- Increasing the tribute -- Coercion and desertion -- Indigenous management -- Under the Company's control -- Tardy population growth -- Tackling `cultivation delinquency' -- III. From trading company to state enterprise -- Clashing interests -- Failing management -- After the fall of the VOC -- A conservative reformer -- Strengthening the government apparatus -- Social restructuring -- Stepping up corvee services
Note continued: Sealing off the Priangan -- The land rent system -- IV. Government regulated exploitation versus private agribusiness -- Discovery of the village system -- Land sale -- In search of a new policy -- The deregulation of coffee cultivation, except in the Priangan -- Patching up leakage and other irregularities -- Increasing leverage for private estates -- The downfall of the free enterprise lobby -- The policy dispute continues -- Political turmoil at home -- V. Unfree labour as a condition for progress -- Shifting coffee cultivation to gardens -- Mobilizing labour -- Expansion of forced labour -- Beyond the reach of the government -- The obligation to perform coolie labour and the need for tight surveillance -- In search of the hidden labour reserve -- Indispensability of the chiefs, for the time being -- The Priangan variant as a `colonial constant' -- Spreading benevolence at home and on Java -- VI. The coffee regime under the cultivation system
Note continued: Anew surge in the colonial tribute -- Coffee and more -- More and more coffee -- Approaching the workfloor -- The happiness of the innocent -- Stagnation -- Crisis -- Non-compliance -- VII. Winding up the Priangan system of governance -- `A system that is arbitrary, repressive and secretive' -- Taxation, resistance and retribution -- Cultivating coffee and growing food -- The welfare of the people -- Good governance -- From protectors to exploiters -- The reform operation -- Release from servitude -- VIII. Eclipse of the coffee regime from the Sunda highlands -- The dilemmas of political expediency -- A turn for the better? -- Impact of the reforms on the peasantry -- Establishment of the village system -- Shifting the onus of servitude -- The contours of a new economic policy -- The agrarian underclasses
Print version record