Cultivation System

The Cultivation System (Dutch: cultuurstelsel), or less accurately the Culture System, was a Dutch government policy in the mid-19th century for its Dutch East Indies colony (now Indonesia). Requiring a portion of agricultural production to be devoted to export crops, Indonesian historians refer to it as Tanam Paksa ("Enforcement Planting").

Despite increasing returns from the Dutch system of land tax, Dutch finances had been severely affected by the cost of the Java War and Padri Wars. The Belgian Revolution in 1830 and the resulting costs of keeping the Dutch army at a war footing until 1839 brought the Netherlands to the brink of bankruptcy. In 1830, a new governor general, Johannes van den Bosch, was appointed to increase the exploitation of the Dutch East Indies' resources.

The cultivation system was primarily implemented in Java, the center of the colonial state. Instead of land taxes, 20% of village land had to be devoted to government crops for export or, alternatively, peasants had to work in government-owned plantations for 60 days of the year. To allow the enforcement of these policies, Javanese villagers were more formally linked to their villages and were sometimes prevented from travelling freely around the island without permission. As a result of this policy, much of Java became a Dutch plantation.

To handle and process the cash crops, the Dutch set up a network of local middlemen who profited greatly and so had a vested interest in the system: compradores somewhat like the cottier system in Ireland. This was financed partly by bonds sold to the Dutch themselves and partly by introducing a new copper coinage at about a 2:1 ratio to the old, thereby gaining a massive seigneurage from the depreciation at the expense of the local economy. From Some Notes on Java and its Administration by the Dutch, by Henry Scott Boys, 1892:

...
Wikipedia