PRIVATE EUROPEAN LANDHOLDING IN JAVA, 1812-

By far the greater part of Java in the first quarter of the ninet'-eenthl century was either claimed as government land or was still administered hy its indigenous rulers in

alliance with the Dutch# Such private European landholding

as there was fell into three main categories* In many respects the most important and substantial of these was that of the private estates, the particuliere landerijen of Dutch Colonial historiography, which were found almost

exclusively in the westerh parts of Java, more especially in the ommelanden, the hinterland of the town of Batavia* A second category of private lands was formed hy the estates leased from members of the Javanese nobility in the up- country principalities of Jogjakarta (jogja) and Surakarta

(Solo,)* A third and final category was made up of the numerous agricultural undertakings based on village and waste ground in the government lands of coastal East Java,

stretching from Tjeribon eastwards to Banjuwangi#

The West Java Estates#

The estates of West Java came into existence as the result of sales and gifts of land to private individuals by

4*I

establishment was gradual, and took place oyer a period of more than one hundred and seventy years* Nevertheless,

there were in this process several clearly defined stages* The first stage was the development of the estate system up to the end of the period of East India Company

Rule. Although the Company itself was wound up in 1799,

its system remained effective on Java until the arrival there of Governor-G-eneral Baendals in 1808* It is this latter event which has been taken here as the terminal date of the Company era* Land sales or grants began soon after the Company established itself at Batavia in 1619, but made little progress until the peace with Bantam in 1659 removed

i the immediate threat to the countryside around the town. As conditions in the hinterland grew quieter, more and more land was alienated by the Company, for the most part

territory which was sparsely populated and possessing little in the way of indigenous social or political organisation. Only in the mid-eighteenth century, when the lands around Buitenzorg in the foothills to the south of the hinterland were sold, did European landowners come into contact with anything resembling organised indigenous authority*

1

J* S* Ottow, Be gorsprong der Conservatieve Righting* Utrecht 1937, p.18-21.

2

Moreover, even there the population was only sparse* In this way Batavia came to he surrounded hy a network of some hundred or more small estates hy the end of Company rule* According to an account dating from the last decade of the

eighteenth century, some eighty to ninety of these were

owned hy people who hore European names, the rest hy Chinese and other Asians* Many of the estates retained or adopted Indonesian names, such as Sukapura and Pondok Cede* Ihe names of others, such as Kampong Melayu, revealed a rather

different origin. Only a few names were more redolent of the metropolitan country than of the East, among them

Amstelveen, Vrednlust and Zorgwijk.^

The extent of territory occupied hy these estates was not very considerable. lo the west the estates spread as far as Tenjerang, some thirteen Java miles from Batavia, and to the east some fifteen Java miles in the direction of

Bekasi. In a southerly direction, the estates extended as far as Buitenzorg, some twenty miles from Batavia.^- Most of these estates lay, therefore, in the flat lands surround­ ing the town of Batavia. Only the Buitenzorg estate sold

2

Ottow, Qorsprong, p*23; J* J* van Klaveren, The Butch Colonial System in the East Indies, Rotterdam 1953, p.65*

3

t. /J* leissiere, Beschrijving van een gedeelte der

Omme-en-Bovenlanden dezer Staat, V.B.G. 6, 1792, p.1-107* 4

Melville van Carnhee, Algemeen Atlas van Nederlands-Indie» Batavia 1853-62*

A3

in the mid-eighteenth century included some of the foothills to the south* This estate, however, hardly fell into the same category as the other properties* It existed in

effect as the ex-officio possession of successive Governors- General until the time of Daendals* Pew of these concerned

themselves directly with the property* Por much of the

time it was rented out to the Regent of Kampong Baru, from whom it had "been taken by Governor-General Imhoff in the

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mid-eighteenth century* Elsewhere on the island little or no land was sold to private individuals in the Company

period, except in the neighbourhood of the towns of Semarang and Surabaja* Even here only one of the estates, near

Surabaja, was at all extensive.^

The second stage in the development of the estates was the land sales which took place between 1808-13, under the regimes of Governor-General Daendals (1808-11) and Lieutenant- Governor Raffles, appointed after the conquest of Java by the British in 1811 and in office until a few months before the

5

0* H* P* Riesz, De particuliere handerijen en de

Geschiedenis van Buitenzorg, Batavia 1884, p*17 and 37-48; P* de Haan, Briangan, De Brianger Regentsehappen onder

Nederlandsch Bestuur tot 1811* Batavia 1910-;2, 1, p*475-8, give conflicting views on the legal status of Buitenzorg* See also Van Klaveren, Colonial System* p*65*

6

Questions and Answers - Surabaja Land Sales 1812, Mackenzie Coll (Private)* 35, p*59*

m

island1s return to the Dutch in August 1816. Between

them Raffles and Daendals disposed of more land in the

space of five years than the Company had disposed of during the whole period of its tenure. It was their land sales, rather than those of the Company, which put the private estates on the map. Daendals*s most spectacular sale was of the Buitenzorg lands which he had bought on taking

office in 1808. Divided into lots, this netted him

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personally a profit of f .900,000. This was far from being the full extent of his land sales. Between 1809 and 1811 he proceeded to sell areas of the Krawang district, on the

east side of the Batavia hinterland, while on the western side of the hinterland he sold areas of what had once been parts of Bantam. In this latter area Daendals also sold the former Tanjerang Regency. Among the large estates created at this time were Jassinga, Kuripan and Tagal Waru

O

and Sumandangan. These West Java lands were sold for the

most part to Europeans. In East Java, however, Daendals sold huge tracts of land to the Chinese, including the

Q

entire Qoalhoek district of Probolinggo. The evidence

7

De Haan, Priangan. 1, p.476-8,

8

H. C. Pennink, Het Reglement van 28th February. 1836