The culture system on the Indonesian island of Java between 1834 and 1879 led to a considerable additional death among the population. Historians from Wageningen University and Utrecht University conclude that an increase in the number of people forced to perform forced labor led to an increase in the number of deaths. In 1840, at its peak, an increase in one thousand forced laborers equaled an additional thirty deaths per year. The researchers published their findings on Monday in The Journal of Economic History.
The Culture System was a system in which the Dutch government forced Indonesians to grow highly profitable crops such as coffee, sugar and tea. The earnings of the sale disappeared into the pockets of the Dutch state and the pockets of native monarchs. The population was able to grow less rice, which led to food shortages. In the second half of the nineteenth century, this particularly profitable construction came under increasing attack, partly thanks to the novel Max Havelaar (1859) by Multatuli. The system was phased out in the 1970s.
“We thought it was important to investigate exactly what the consequences of the Culture System were for the inhabitants of Java,” says Pim de Zwart, lead author of the article and assistant professor at Wageningen University. “A lot of historical research focuses on the economic impact of the system, and whether it may have had a beneficial influence on Indonesia’s later economic development. Our focus is on human costs.”
For their research, De Zwart and his co-authors collected death and birth rates on Java between 1834 and 1879. These were accurately recorded by the local government. They compared the culture system administration: how many Javanese were forced to work on the cultivation of crops that yielded a lot of money in Europe at a given moment? The conclusion of that comparison: there is a clear correlation between rising death rates and a growth in the number of forced labourers.
Now such a correlation does not mean that there is a causal relationship, De Zwart knows. “So we looked for other factors that could play a role in an increase in the death rate. We looked at indicators of economic development such as livestock numbers and rice prices, but we found nothing that explained the death rates better than an increase in the number of forced laborers.”
De Zwart’s research also shows that there is a clear link between forced labor and the prices paid in Amsterdam for goods such as coffee and sugar. “If prices are low, you will see next year that more people have to work on the plantations. For example, local colonial officials wanted to increase production in order to maintain earnings. Our analyzes show that the market prices for cultural products in Amsterdam, via the demand for forced labour, were related to mortality in Java.”
The extra mortality on Java was probably caused by the appalling hygienic conditions on the plantations where the forced work was performed, De Zwart thinks. Poor nutrition will also have played a role. Many Javanese became ill, and took those infectious diseases with them to their village when their shift on the plantation was over.”
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