Waiting For The Just King

Waiting for the 'Just King': The Agrarian World of South-Central Java from Giyanti
(1755) to the Java War (1825-30)

Author(s): Peter Carey
Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 20, No. 1 (1986), pp. 59-137
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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Modern Asian Studies 20, I (I986), pp. 59-137. Printed in Great Britain.
Waitingfor the 'Just King':

The Agrarian World of South-Central
Java from Giyanti (1755) to the
Java War (1825-30)
PETER CAREY
University of Oxford
I. Introduction
STUDENTS ofJavanese society have long recognized that theJava War

(i825-30), the bitter five-year struggle against European colonial rule
in Java, constituted a watershed in the history of modern Indonesia. In
his recent textbook, Professor Ricklefs has characterized the year 1830 as
'the beginning of the truly colonial period .in Java', arguing that the
Java War marked the transition point between the 'trading' era of the
Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the years of 'colonial'
exploitation ushered in by Johannes van den Bosch's well known
'cultivation systems'.1 In military and political terms, the costly Dutch
victory over theJavanese made them, for the first time in their three and
a half centuries of involvement in the archipelago, the undisputed
masters of Java.2 At the same time, scholars of Javanese Islam have
suggested that the defeat of the Javanese leader, Dipanagara (I785-
I855), and the religious ideals for which he fought (most notably his goal
of strengthening the institutional position of Islam inJavanese society),
temporarily undermined the morale and self-confidence of the Islamic
The author would like to thank the following for their comments and help on earlier
drafts of this paper: Professor Ben Anderson (Cornell University), Professor Merle
Ricklefs (Monash University), Dr C. A. Bayly (St Catharine's College, Cambridge), Dr
Jeya Kathirithamby-Wells (University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur) and Dr Peter
Boomgaard (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam). Much of the material in this paper was
originally presented at the 2nd Anglo-Dutch Conference on Comparative Colonial
History in Leiden in September 198I.
See end of text for note on currency values and abbreviations.
1 M. C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia c. I300 to the Present (London and
Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd, I98I), pp. I05, I 14.
2 Ibid., p. I I4.
oo26-749X/86/ogo6-o50I$02.00 ?I986 Cambridge University Press
59
60 PETER CAREY
communities in Java.3 Specialists in the history of the central Javanese

principalities (vorstenlanden), especially those interested in cultural
developments, have also seen the Javanese failure in 1825--30 as a
setback to the vitality and independence of the Javanese cultural
tradition, a time whenJavanese society began to turn in on itself and lose
something of its strength and flexibility.4
While all these aspects are crucial, it seems to be often overlooked that
there could have been no Java War without the support of the central
Javanese peasantry, and that the war itself was almost unique in the
annals of Javanese history before the present century in that it was
fuelled by an agrarian revolt of impressive social dimensions. This was
clearly recognized by contemporary Dutch observers who spoke of the
massive support forthcoming for Dipanagara from the rural areas of
south-central Java and the spirit of hostility to the Europeans which
gripped the indigenous inhabitants of the archipelago at this time. 'It is
not the war as such or the number of our enemies which causes my
greatest concern about [the future of] our rule here', wrote one of the
most percipient of these contemporaries, Willem van Hogendorp (1795-
I838), 'but it is the spirit of the whole population ofJava from one end to
the other, and I include in this the spirit [of the populations] in the most
important of our possessions in the outer islands, in Borneo and
Makasar, and throughout all Sumatra, they are fed up with us [zij zijn
ons moede]'.5 This opinion was echoed by others such as Francis Valck, an
official with more than twenty years' experience in various central
Javanese Residencies, who stressed somewhat anachronistically perhaps
that
the spirit of the ordinary Javanese is against us, not because we Dutchmen treat
him badly, but because he is imbued with a feeling of national identity [met
gevoel van nationaliteit], and because, despite all the benefits he obtains from us, he
3 See Philip van Akkeren, Sri and Christ. A Study of the Indigenous Church in East Java
(London: Lutterworth Press, 1970), p. 44; and Mitsuo Nakamura, 'The Cresent Arises
over the Banyan Tree. A Study of the Muhammadiyah Movement in a CentralJavanese
Town', unpublished Ph.D. Thesis (Cornell University, 1976), pp. 27ff, IOI.
4 See Th. G. Th. Pigeaud, Javaanse Volksvertoningen. Bijdrage tot de Beschrijving van Land
en Volk (Batavia: Volkslectuur, 1938), p. 29; Id., Literature of Java. Catalogue Raisonne of
Javanese Manuscripts in the Library of the University of Leiden and other Public Collections in the
Netherlands, vol. I (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, i967), pp. 7-9; and P. B. R. Carey,
'Aspects ofJavanese History in the Nineteenth Century', in Harry Aveling (ed.), The
Development of Indonesian Society from the Coming of Islam to the Present Day (St Lucia:
University of Queensland Press, I979), pp. I04-5.
5 H. Graafvan Hogendorp (ed.) Willem van Hogendorp in Nederlandsch-Indie, 1825-1830
('s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 19I3, p. I79. An original copy of Willem van
Hogendorp's report on his visit toJava during the height of theJava War (1825-30) can
be found in Hogendorp no. 53I pt C.
WAITING FOR THE 'JUST KING' 61
cannot suppress the wish to be ruled, albeit in a worse fashion, by his own rulers
and chiefs. He [thus] constantly sees us as foreign tyrants whose manners,
customs, religion and dress differ [completely] from his own ....6
At the local level between 1825 and I839 these anti-European
sentiments and sense ofJavanese identity were translated into tangible
support for Dipanagara and his armies in a number of important ways.
InJuly 1825, shortly after Dipanagara had set up the standard of revolt
to the south of Yogyakarta, a widespread popular uprising took place in
one of the southern provinces of the neighbouring Kedhu Residency
which nearly engulfed the administrative capital of Magelang. In the
country areas, the houses of European land-tax inspectors were burnt to
the ground and Javanese officials associated with the colonial govern-
ment were harassed.7 It was the same in other areas such as Demak,
Ngawi and along the Sala river, a vital trade route, where many Chinese
traders and tollgate keepers (bandar) were put to the sword and the
survivors besieged in Dutch garrison outposts.8 The fortifications of
major port cities like Batavia (Jakarta), Semarang, Rembang and
Surabaya, which had been demolished or allowed to fall into ruin
during the peaceful years of the later eighteenth century, were hastily
rebuilt, and it seemed for a time as if the whole of centralJava might be
lost to Dutch control.9 In the core apanage regions (nagara agung)
around the royal capital of Yogyakarta, there was scarcely a village or
district which did not play some part in the initial rebellion, and
adjacent territories belonging to the other central Javanese courts, or
the inhabitants of government areas who were caught up in the
hostilities, were also forced to follow suit.10 According to Dutch
estimates, some two million Javanese, or four-fifths of the population of
central Java, were exposed to the ravages of war, one-fourth of the
cultivated area sustained damage and upwards of a quarter of a million
Javanese died, mostly from famine and disease.1l
6 Dj. Br. 18, F. G. Valck, 'Geheime Memorie behoorende bij het Algemeen Verslag
der Residentie Djocjocarta over het jaar 1839', 31 March I840.
7 P. B. R. Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara. An Account of the Outbreak of the Java
War (1825-30) (Kuala Lumpur: Art Printing Works Sdn. Bhd. for the Council of the
Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, i98I), p. 260 n. Io6, p. 266 n. 123; and
P.J. F. Louw, De Java-Oorlog van 1825-30, vol. I (Batavia: Landsdrukkerij & 's-Hage: M.
Nijhoff, 1894), pp. 25 ff, 36 ff.
8 See Peter Carey, 'Changing Javanese Perceptions of the Chinese Communities in
CentralJava, I755-1825', Indonesia, no. 37 (April I984), pp. 1-47.
9 See Louw, Java-Oorlog, vol. I, chs X-XIV.
10 Dj. Br. 9B, H. MacGillavry, 'Nota omtrent den staat derJavasche Vorstenlanden,
de thans bestaande onlusten en de middelen welke tot herstel en verzekering der rust
kunnen worden aangewend', 13 May i826.
11 W. Bosch, De vermeerdering van Java's bevolking beschouwd als de grootste bron van rijkdom
62 PETER CAREY
But, despite the terrible destruction of lives and property, and the
devastating epidemics which the war brought in its wake, large numbers
of centralJavanese peasants remained loyal to Dipanagara almost to the
end. They provided the bulk of the recruits for his armies, porters for the
transport of valuable war material (including the smuggling of
gunpowder from the north coast in dried fish), the manufacturers of
explosives and shot in secret village locations, the operators of ferry
services across the main river arteries, and organizers of mountain
sanctuaries. A Dutch officer even noted how farmers would leave work
in the ricefields to take part in the destruction of Dutch mobile columns

worsted in battle by Dipanagara's regular troops.12 Women also appear
to have played a prominent role in the war effort: female soldiers dressed
in men's clothes were found amongst the slain outside Yogyakarta in
September I825, and at least two ladies of good birth became prominent
cavalry commanders.13 The Indonesian Women's Assault Regiment
(Barisan Srikandi/Laskar Putri Indonesia) was not an invention of the
twentieth century!14
The most important aspect of the rural support afforded Dipanagara
during these years, however, was the willingness of the local peasant
communities to carry out marketing activities in areas controlled by his
troops and to continue to pay the market taxes to his designated officials.
In the last year of the war, the narrow strip of land between the Praga
and Bagawanta rivers in south-central Java was providing upwards of
three thousand guilders a month in market taxes, and without this
income Dipanagara's armies could not have stayed in the field.15
Indeed, it was the success of the Dutch strategy of building small fortified
outposts to guard the areas recently 'pacified' by Dutch troops, the
benteng stelsel (fortification system), which had the effect of denying
Dipanagara access to local taxes and forced him reluctantly to the
voor Nederland (Rotterdam: M. Wijt en Zonen, 1851), pp. 113-14; H. J. de Graaf,
Geschiedenis van Indonesia ('s-Gravenhage & Bandung: W. van Hoeve, 1949), p. 399; and
Peter Carey, 'The origins of theJava War (I825-30)', English Historical Review, vol. XCI
no. CCCLVIII (January 1976), p. 52 n. I.
12 Dj. Br. i9u, F. V. H. A. de Stuers (?), 'Inleiding tot de geschiedenis van den oorlog
opJava', n.d., p. 9; and see Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, pp. xxxixff, 276 n.
160.
13 Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, pp. XLIII, 284 n. 205.
14 For a photograph of the Laskar Putri Indonesia in Surakarta in 1946 during the
Indonesian Revolution against the Dutch, see Nugroho Notosusanto (ed.), 30 Tahun
Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia (Jakarta: Departemen Pertahanan-Keamanan,
Pusat Sejarah ABRI, 1976), p. 23.
15 Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p. LXVIII n. I85; E. S. de Klerck, De Java-
Oorlog van 1825-30, vol. IV (Batavia: Landsdrukkerij & 's-Hage; M. Nijhoff, I905), p.
682.
WAITING FOR THE 'JUST KING6 63
conference table in February-March I830.16 Even then, had it not been
for his dishonourable arrest by the Dutch at Magelang (28 March I830)
at the beginning of the so-called 'peace negotiations', it is likely that he
could have continued to hold out for many months longer. The crowd of
supporters which he drew to himself even on his short march from his
mountain retreat in northern Bagelen to Magelang in late February
1830 was proof enough that his name still commanded widespread
allegiance.1 7
Certainly Dipanagara himself was well aware of the need to maintain
a close link with the common people. Brought up in a village
environment on an estate surrounded by rice farming communities some
miles from Yogyakarta, Dipanagara had experienced a rather unique
education by the courtly standards of his day.18 His aged great-
grandmother, a powerful personality who oversaw his spiritual and
religious instruction, had inculcated in him the need to identify with the
common man, and, in his youth, he had undertaken extensive journeys
on foot to various religious sites in the Yogya area where he had mixed
with low born santri (students of religion) and ordinary pilgrims.19
Later, after he had taken over the management of his great-grand-
mother's estate, he won himself a reputation for his unusually economi-
cal and careful administration which made him one of the richest and
most popular landlords in the Yogya area by the time of the outbreak of
theJava War in I825.20 In a retrospective conversation, he remarked to
his Dutch captors in I830 that he had always taken care to participate
personally in the planting and harvesting of rice (padi) in the lands under
his control, stating that these activities 'helped to popularize the chiefs
with the people'.21 The Dutch, for their part, noted that in their
experience there had never been a Javanese leader with so much
16 De Klerck, Java-Oorlog, vol. IV, pp. 682ff; Peter Carey, 'The Indonesian Army and
the State: Problems of Dwi Fungsi in Early Nineteenth Century Perspective', Indonesia
Circle (Java Number), no. 26 (Nov. 1981), pp. 53-4.
17 dK 209,J. B. Cleerens (Menoreh) to F. D. Cochius (Magelang), 27 Feb. I830; E. S.
de Klerck, De Java-Oorlog van 1825-30, vol. V (Batavia: Landsdrukkerij, & 's-Hage: M.
Nijhoff, I908), pp. 554-5, 723.
18 Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, pp. xLff.
19 See Carey, 'Pangeran Dipanagara and the Making of the Java War (1825-30):
The End of an Old Order inJava', VKI (forthcoming, 1986), ch. III; and M. C. Ricklefs,
'Dipanagara's Early Inspirational Experience', BKI, vol. 130 (i974), pp. 227-49.
20 S. Br. 55,J. I. Van Sevenhoven, 'Nota over de landverhuringen aan partikulieren
in de Vorsten Landen op Java', i6 March 1837; and Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad
Dipanagara, pp. LXVIII n. I86, 238 n. 20, 240 n. 27. Dipanagara's personal wealth was
important in helping to finance the opening stages of the war.
21 De Klerck, Java-Oorlog, vol. V, p. 744; Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p.
240 n. 27.
Map 1. Map of Central and East Java Showing the Core Apanage Areas and Outlying (mancanagara
Javanese Courts pre-1811. (Map outline taken from De Klerck, De Java-Oorlog, vol. VI, 'Kaart der Vors
and adapted by J. Wilbur Wright of Oxford.)
personal influence over the south-central Javanese populations as
Dipanagara, and they ascribed the secret of his unusual charisma to his
extraordinary ability for getting on as well with the common people as
with the most elevated officials, a talent which had made him 'much
loved everywhere'.22
During the course of theJava War, Dipanagara tried to live up to the
popular expectations of him as the long-awaited Javanese 'Just King'
(Ratu Adil) who would institute a period of light taxation and provide a
cornucopia of cheap provisions after a time of darkness, oppression and
depravity, the classic jaman kala-bendu'.23 Thus he gave out that he
would only demand a maximum of four Spanish dollars (i Sp.D. = 63-
66 stuivers) on ajung of land (an area which could be worked by four
peasant households, on average around four hectares), regardless of
whether the latter was 'fat or thin' (i.e. fertile or infertile), and in his
instructions to his subordinate officials he prohibited changes in existing
irrigation networks, the levying of additional taxes and the sequest-
ration of plundered goods.24 There is evidence that his orders were
sometimes enforced: at least one local official was flogged for demanding
more taxes than he was allowed, and one ofDipanagara's own brothers
was forced to commute all the tribute payments in an area to the south of
Yogyakarta because the local inhabitants were so impoverished.25 It is
difficult to draw any firm conclusions about the efficacy of Dipanagara's
style of administration during the war years. But the practical impact
was perhaps less important than the popular image of a 'Just Ruler'
which he cultivated amongst the common people. With consummate
skill he succeeded in embodying the widespread millenarian expec-
tations of the time, and made himself the focus for the ideals and longings
which had gripped the Javanese countryside in the years before the
outbreak of the war.
It is not the intention of this essay to consider the scattered
22 Van Hogendorp, Willem van Hogendorp, p.. 154; Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad
Dipanagara, pp. xLff; Dj. Br. 6, P. H. Van Lawick van Pabst, 'Nota ter betoogen der
gelijkmatigheid van den oorlog van den jare 1746 met dien van den tegenwoordigen tijd
[i.e. Java War (ed.)]', 5 Nov. 1828, f. 3.
23 On the Ratu Adil beliefs in Java, see G. W. J. Drewes, Drie Javaansche Goeroe's. Hun
Leven, Onderricht en Messiasprediking (Leiden: Vros, 1925), pp. 168-82; A. C. Harjaka
Hardjamardjaja, Javanese Popular Belief in the Coming of Ratu Adil, a Righteous Prince
(Rome: Pontifica Universitas Gregoriana, 1962); Sartono Kartodirdjo, Religious
Movements of Java in the Igth and2oth Centuries (Jogjakarta: Pertjetakan U.I.I., 1970); and
Id., 'Agrarian Radicalism in Java: Its Setting and Development' in Claire Holt (ed.),
Culture and Politics in Indonesia (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1972), pp.
7 - 25, esp. pp. 94-7.
24 Carey (ed. and Trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p. XL. 25 Ibid., p. LxvIII n. 183.
66 PETER CAREY
millenarian movements which manifested themselves in the Javanese

countryside in the decade before the Java War.26 Instead, the main
focus will be on the tensions and pressures which built up in the agrarian
society of south-central Java from the late eighteenth century onwards.
It should be stressed that the picture presented here is a very fragmented
and partial one. The sources used derive mainly from the Residency
Archive of Yogyakarta in the Indonesian National Archives (Arsip
Nasional) in Jakarta. Some additional materials have also been taken
from volumes in the Surakarta Residency Archive in the Arsip Nasional,
from the detailed reports drawn up by British administrators (notably
John Crawfurd) on Yogyakarta and the annexed provinces in Central
and East Java (Kedhu, Pacitan, Wirasaba and Japan [Majakerta]) in
I812-13, and from the Dutch surveys of the territories acquired from the
central Javanese courts in the aftermath of the Java War, namely
Banyumas, Bagelen, Madiun and Kedhiri.27 These latter have recently
been the subject of an important paper by a Dutch historian, W. R.
Hugenholtz, who is currently preparing a thesis on the history of the
land-rent and the process of economic unification in nineteenth-century
Java.28 The geographical weighting of the present essay will thus be
very much towards the core apanage regions of south-centralJava, with
particular reference to Yogyakarta, although occasional comparative
forays will be made into the western and eastern outlying provinces
(mancanagara) of the Central Javanese courts. At the same time, the
period discussed will be a restricted one, namely the seventy years from
the Peace of Giyanti in I755, which divided central Java between the
two main courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta, and the outbreak of the
Java War in 1825. Despite these restrictions, it is hoped that the
information presented here can provide a basis for a more wide-ranging
study of the central Javanese peasant society in the late eighteenth and
26 For a discussion of these see Carey, 'Pangeran Dipanagara', VKI (forthcoming,
I986), ch. X.
27 For a survey of these sources see P. B. R. Carey, 'The Residency Archive of
Jogjakarta', Indonesia, no. 25 (April 1978), pp. I 5-50; Id. (ed. and trans.), Babad
Dipanagara, pp. xxxiI--xxxvi; C. 0. Blagden, Catalogue of Manuscripts in European
Languages belonging to the Library of the India Office. Volume I: The NMackenzie Collections. Part
I: The 1822 and The Private Collection (London: Oxford University Press, 1916), pp. 107-
12; V. J. H. Houben, 'Afstand van Gebied met Behoud van Aanzien. Een onderzoek
naar De Koloniale verhouding op midden-Java in I830', unpublished Doctoraalscriptie
(M.A. Thesis) (Leiden, 1982), passim; and E. S. de Klerck, De Java-Oorlog van i825-3o,
vol. VI (Batavia: Landsdrukkerij & 's-Hage: M. Nijhoff, I9go), passim.
28 W. R. Hugenholtz, 'Traditional Javanese Society and the Colonial Exploitation
System: Regional Differences in the 'Appropriated Principalities' in I830', paper
presented to the Fourth Indonesian-Dutch Historical Congress, 23-29 July I983,
Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
early nineteenth centuries which can elucidate still further the complex
economic and social background to the Java War.29
II. The Structure of the Javanese Apanage System
Before embarking on a detailed examination of the economy and society

of south-central Java in the 755-1825 period, it is necessary to turn
aside for a moment to consider the structure of the late eighteenth-
century Javanese apanage system as it is revealed in the contemporary
European reports.30
According to the Javanese conception of sovereignty, the ruler was
'overlord' (i.e. enjoyed usufruct and ultimate disposition) of all the lands
in his kingdom. His overriding concern was for the upkeep of his court,
his extensive family, his provincial administrators (Bupati) and officials
(abdi-Dalem), and, perhaps most important of all, his military establish-
ment of court-based bodyguard troops and mounted levies from the
outer regions (mancanagara). All this was maintained by labour services
(corvee) and tribute payments, both in cash and kind, produced by the
agricultural population. The essentially military nature of the Javanese
apanage system, which harked back to the days of the Javanese 'war
band', can be seen in the conditions of the royal land grants (piagem-
Dalem) which stipulated that armed levies should be produced whenever
the ruler required them.31 The very names of the old office-holders of
theJavanese state, Panewu, Penatus, Paneket and Penglawe (i.e. heads over
one thousand, one hundred, fifty or twenty-five armed men), and the
titles of some of the provincial administrators such as Arung Binang
('Lord of the Red Pikes') and Sawunggaling ('Golden Fighting Cock'),
or the older toponyms for some of the apanage districts in south-central
Java, such as Tanah Sulastri (lit.: 'Land of the Pikes'), present-day
Bagelen, underlined the essentially military character of the original
Javanese polity.32
29 See Carey, 'Pangiran Dipanagara', VKI (forthcoming, I986).
30 On the sources used, see above n. 27. Reference has also been made to the two
classic descriptions of the traditional Javanese apanage system by G. P. Rouffaer,
'Vorstenlanden', Encyclopaedia van \Nederlandsch-Indie, vol. IV (Ist edn, 's-Gravenhage:
Martinus Nijhoff & Leiden: E.J. Brill, I905), pp. 587-653; and Soemarsaid Moertono,
State and Statecraft in Old Java: A Study of the Later Mataram Period, i6th to igth Century
(Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, I968).
31 IOL Mack. Pr. 2I pt 7,John Crawfurd, 'Remarks on the Nature and Condition of
landed tenures under the Native Government of Java with some suggestions for the
improvement of the Land Revenue in the territories of the European power', 7 May
1813 (henceforth: Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures'), p. 232.
32 Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', p. 6 o n. i. The use of the term tumbak ('lance') to refer
68 PETER CAREY
By the early nineteenth century, this military basis of the Javanese

apanage system had been modified somewhat, and military exigencies
no longer loomed quite so large: the word 'cacah' ('household'), for
example, had come to refer to the number of cultivators and their
dependants (anywhere between three and thirty people) who could be
maintained on a particular area ofirrigated riceland (sawah) rather than
to the number of armed men an area could produce. It had thus become
as much a unit of economic measurement as a military term.33 But the
princes and nobles of the blood (putra-sentana) and the ruler's senior
officials, thepriyayi (lit.: 'parayayi' = 'younger brothers' of the sovereign),
who were often allied to him by family ties, still had military obligations
even in the early nineteenth century. Thus they were required to parade
on horseback with some of their mounted troops on the occasion of
important court ceremonies such as the Garebeg, the thrice-yearly
Javanese-Islamic feasts, and were expected to take part in major
military exercises and reviews as ordered by the ruler.34 The warrior
ethic still pervaded the cultural life of the centralJavanese courts which,
in the apt description of one recent historian, had the aspect of'armed
camps constantly celebrating the virtues of war in song and dance,
maintaining the solidarity between rulers and followers in almost daily
court rituals, constantly alert for opportunities to strike out at rival
kings'.35 Later, during the Java War, Dipanagara was able to make
extensive use of the levies of those Yogya princes and royal officials who
to the lengths of one rood in land measurements is also significant here and dated back at
least to the Demak dynasty of the late 5th to mid- i6th centuries, see ibid., p. 6 7. On the
military origins of other Bupati titles in Yogya (e.g. Natayuda, Yuda-asmara,
Yudakusuma, Yudaprawira etc.) and the military character of the I8th century
Javanese state, see further IOL Mack. Pr. 2 pt 30, pp. 175-7, 'List ofJavanese titles and
proper names of persons with explanations of their meanings', n.d.; and M. C. Ricklefs,
Jogjakarta under Sultan Mangkubumi 749--I792: A History of the Division of Java (London:
Oxford University Press, I974), pp. 422-3 n. I.
33 Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', pp. 617-I8; NvB Portfolio 22 pt 4, H. G. Nahuys van
Burgst, 'De Montjonegorosche-Djocjokartasche Landen', n.d. (c. 1830); and Hiroyoshi
Kan6, 'Land Tenure System and the Desa Community in Nineteenth Century Java'
(Tokio: Institute of Developing Economies Special Paper no. 5, 1977), p. 22 n. 43.
34 Dj. Br. 45, M. Waterloo, 'Opgave van Sulthan's Inkomsten en Troepen', 22 March
I808; and Dj. Br. 23, P. Engelhard (Yogyakarta) to H. W. Daendels (Batavia/
Buitenzorg), 2 June I808, who gave an account of a military review held by HB II (r.
1792-I8IO/I8I I-I2/I826-28) at the royal country estate of Arja(Raja)winangun to the
east of Yogyakarta during the early period of the Sultan's confrontation with Daendels,
in which over 5,000 men took part including sizeable detachments from the eastern
outlying (mancanagara) provinces (N.B. when compared to Surakarta, Yogyakarta had
very few western mancanagara provinces, see Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', p. 589 and above
Map i).
35John Anthony Day, 'Meanings of Change in the Poetry of Nineteenth-Century
Java', unpublished Ph.D. Thesis (Cornell University, 1981), p. 86.
WAITING FOR THE JUST KING' 69
)re apanage areas Outlying provinces

agara agung) ( \mancanagara)
Ruler
OURT COURT
2/5' Apanage Bupati 2/5

holder
ROVINCE / PROVINCE
)ptional) /5 Demang/Mantn-desa
v--- 1/5s De ng Mnt-d Junior
j l riyayl1/
ISTRICT DISTRICT
- 1/5 Beei Bekel ee D eman Be el / Dem \ 1/5
I LLAGE V\ \ \ / \ VILLAGE
_2/5 K ( sikep sikep sikep sikep sikep s kep 2/5 - HAMLET
dependents (numpang/rayat) dependents (numpang/rayat)

shares of harvest and agricultural produce.
This would be reduced by about a fifth for
apanage holders if Demang/Mantri-desa manacanagara
were used. Some tribute (pajeg) in money (outlying areas)
and kind (eg. uwang bumi and hanks of
weaving cotton) was due to the ruler \ nagara agung
as his share (usually 17-20%) of the (core apanage lands)
taxes from the mancanagara areas.
Fig. I. The Javanese Apanage System in the Early Nineteenth Century Showing the
Major Administrative Levels and Tribute Division.
PETER CAREY
70
rallied to his cause. Thus the essentially military character of the central
Javanese apanage organizations persisted until the final defeat of 1830,
when the reforms and land annexations of the post-war period
dismantled the old system for good.36
Before theJava War, the lands of the centralJavanese kingdoms were
divided into two main sorts: the core apanage regions or nagara agung,
situated close to the court, and the outlying territories or mancanagara,
located at some distance from the royal capitals (see Map I). This
geographical separation mirrored a more profound political difference
for the two types of area were administered along very different lines.
The first were either taxed directly for the upkeep of the ruler's court and
his personal retainers (in which case they were usually referred to as bumi
pamajegan [or pamosan]-Dalem) or they were given out as apanages for
members of his family and royal officials. In this case the apanage
holders enjoyed usufruct rights over the land, i.e. they had the right to
collect the taxes (pajeg) and some of the labour services which rested on
the lands and the population. Once a ruler had formally granted a
certain area in apanage, he himself no longer received any harvest
tribute from the lands, although the local population, in addition to
their duties to the apanage holders, still had to pay a certain amount per
jung of arable land to the royal administration as uwang-kerigaji (lit.: 'the
ruler's corvee' [kerig-Aji ) for public works and the upkeep of the Gunung,
officials who combined the roles of policemen and magistrates in the core
regions.37 The sovereign also enjoyed a modest income from the ground
rent tax for houses (pacumpleng),38 and the special levies imposed on the
36 For a detailed discussion of the I830-31 government reforms and territorial
annexations, see Houben, 'Afstand van Gebied', passim; and Klerck, J7ava-Oorlog, vol.
VI, passim.
37 Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', p. 6I4; M. H.J. Kollmann, 'Bagelen onder het bestuur
van Soerakarta en Djojakarta', TBG vol. 14 (1864), pp. 355-7; and Anon., 'De toestand
van Bagelen in I830', TNJIvol. 20 (1858), p. 76. In some Yogya areas the police officials/
magistrates bore the title of 'Tamping', see J. F. C. Gericke, Javaansch-NVederduitsch
Woordenboek (ed. T. Roorda) (Amsterdam: Johannes Milller, I847), p. 290; Carey (ed.
and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, pp. 12-13, 60-i, 245 n. 39.
38 IOL Mack. Pr. 2I pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', p. 223; Id., pt 4, 'Sultan's
Country by Mr. Crawfurd in I812. Observations on the Nature and Resources of the
Territories under the authority of the Sultan of Mataram' (henceforth: Crawfurd,
'Sultan's Country'), pp. I28-30; and P. H. van Lawick van Pabst, 'Beschrijving der
onderscheidene belastingen welke in de Oostelijke Montjo-Negorosche Landen geheven
worden', 21 Aug. I830 (henceforth: Van Pabst, 'Beschrijving') in De Klerck, Java-
Oorlog, vol. VI, p. 381 . The tax was levied at the rate of between one and two-and-one-
halfJava Rupees (post- 826 Dutch guilders) perjung, depending on the fertility of the
land, of which only about a quarter reached the royal treasury, the rest being left as a
douceur ('sweetener') for the village and provincial tax-collectors, who were charged with
assessing the tax according to the personal wealth of each householder. In some areas
local population at the time of court festivals (e.g. the Garebeg), royal
marriages, circumcision ceremonies and funerals, and visits by high-
placed European dignitaries such as the Governor-General, or, up to
1808, the Governor ofJava's North-East Coast.39
The outlying territories were ruled by officials known as Bupati (in
Dutch parlance, 'Regents'), who collected the taxes that were due on
these lands on behalf of the ruler, a task for which they and their
subordinates were paid by the allotment of tax-free 'official' ricefields
(tanah bengkok). Apart from small tribute payments in cash (uwang bumi)
which were delivered to the ruler, and the 'presents' (uwang bekti) given
to the latter by newly appointed officials,40 the majority of the taxes
from the mancanagara regions appear to have been rendered in kind (e.g.
hanks of weaving cotton or special delicacies for the ruler's table)41 or in
labour services, this situation being reflected in the low level of
monetization of the economies of the outlying areas when compared to
the nagara agung.42 Above all, the labour services were important both
for the Bupati and their subordinates, who used them for opening out
new ricefields, and for the ruler, who relied on the military levies from
the mancanagara in times of war, and on the building labourers from the
same areas in times of peace to work on royal construction projects and
maintenance to the existing fabric of court buildings. These workmen,
often numbered in thousands, accompanied the mancanagara Bupati to
the court capitals at the time of theJavanese-Islamic festival to celebrate
the birth of the Prophet (Garebeg Mulud), when their yearly tribute
payments fell due.43 After the British imposed treaties on the courts in
(e.g. Bagelin and the eastern mancanagara provinces) the tax was either paid in, or used
for the purchase of, hanks (tukel) of cotton yarn for broad cloth weaving, see Anon., 'De
toestand van Bagelen', p. 77; and T. S. Raffles, The History of Java, vol. I (Kuala
Lumpur: Oxford University Press, I978), p. 134.
39 On these special levies, sometimes known as 'taker-turun' (kr. 'taker-tedhak') or 'uwang
bekti pasumbangan', see Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', pp. 625-6; and Anon., 'De toestand
van Bagelen', p. 79.
40 Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', p. 623.
41 Kollmann, 'Bagelen', pp. 360-2; and above n. 38.
42 See below Section IV, 99-i00.
43 IOL Mack. Pr. 2I pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', p. 234; and Dj. Br. 2, J. G.
van den Berg, 'Memorie op het Hof van Djocjocarta onder den Sulthan Hamengcoe-
boena den tweede ... aan zijn Successeur... Matthias Waterloo', I Aug. 1803
(henceforth: Van den Berg, 'Memorie'), who pointed out that a three to four month
work stint was normal although HB II, a Yogya ruler notorious for his labour demands,
sometimes kept the easter mancanagara workforce in the royal capital for ten months at a
stretch. For a reference to the mancanagara Bupatis having to act as 'overseers' (mandur) of
their work forces during these periods, see Anon. (signedJ. L. V.), 'Bijdrage tot de kennis
der residentie Madioen', TNJI vol. 17 (I855), p. 2.
PETER CAREY
72
August I812, which annexed some of the outlying territories and

severely restricted the military establishments of the central Javanese
rulers, these labour services were apparently no longer demanded,
although the Bupati of the outlying areas still under Javanese rule
continued to journey to the courts for the Mulud festival until the end of
the Java War, when the last mancanagara territories were taken over by
the colonial government.44
Two other differences separated the administration, land settlement
and government of the outlying areas from the core regions. The first
concerned judicial and police arrangements: whereas in the nagara
agung, as has already been noted, these were in the hands of special
officials appointed by the royal administration who were answerable to
the ruler's prime minister (Patih) in the capital; in the mancanagara, the
Bupati themselves had responsibilities for these duties and there was very
little supervision from the centre apart from the personal contacts with
the court which were reinforced at the time of each Garebeg Mulud
ceremony.45 Even more important than this was the difference in
territorial administration between the two areas. In the mancanagara, the
Bupati governed contiguous administrative regions known as kabupaten
with the provinces belonging to the different courts being clearly distinct
from each other (see Map i). In the nagara agung, however, there was a
minute division of villages and lands between the apanage holders of the
two main courts (i.e. Yogyakarta and Surakarta), a situation which was
complicated still further by the creation of the two minor courts of the
Mangkunagaran and the Pakualaman in 1757 and i 8 2 respectively.46
The reasons for this 'patchwork quilt' pattern of landholdings and
villages seem to be quite clear. It had long been the practice ofJavanese
rulers to divide the apanage areas close to the court in order to prevent
possible political threats to their authority. In the ninth century, for
44 NvB Portfolio 22 pt 4, Nahuys van Burgst, 'De Montjonegorosche-Djokjokartasche
Landen', n.d. (c. I830), on the commutation of the labour services to a money payment
in 1812; and, on the 1830-3 reforms in the mancanagara territories, see De Klerck, Java-
Oorlog, vol. VI, pp. 152-228.
45 See above n. 43. According to Van den Berg, 'Memorie', the mancanagara Bupatis
were entirely dependent on the ruler's favour during their sojourns in the royal capital,
and they could be dismissed if their tribute (uwang bumi) payments were too low or their
workforce deserted. Many returned to their kabupaten, at least during the first period of
HB II's reign (i.e. 1 792-1810), almost bankrupted by their long stays in Yogya. On the
extensive intermarriage between the Yogya royal family and the offspring of mancanagara
Bupatis, another way in which the Sultans maintained political control over the senior
officials in the outlying territories, see Carey, 'Pang6ran Dipanagara', VKI (forth-
coming, i986), ch. II.
46 Hugenholtz, 'Traditional Javanese Society', pp. 12-14; Anon., 'De toestand van
Bagelen', p. 76; and Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', p. 624.
example, the settlements belonging to the watek (intermediate adminis-

trative units which had evolved out of the old pre-state chiefdoms
absorbed by the central Javanese state of Mataram in the eighth
century) were organized on a widely scattered basis. This dispersal of the
core landholdings of the local administrators and the frequent reassign-
ments of tax rights had reduced the danger of powers competing with
the raja by making it almost impossible for a local lord to consolidate a
rival power base.47 The same policy of'divide and rule' had character-
ized the second kingdom of Mataram founded by Panembahan
Senapati (r. c. I584-I60I) in the late sixteenth century. The Giyanti
Settlement of I755, however, had greatly confused the situation because
the central Javanese apanage holders of the defunct Mataram kingdom
had been allowed to opt for one of the courts (i.e. Surakarta or
Yogyakarta) while still retaining their original pre-Giyanti landhold-
ings, regardless of where they were situated.48 Although some of the
'hopeless cadastral confusion' which resulted was sorted out by the new
land registers and apanage boundaries agreed between the two main
courts in I773-74, the chequer-board pattern of landholdings in the
nagara agung persisted right up to the territorial settlements of I830-3 .49
Indeed, south-central Javanese peasants in the nineteenth century used
to refer to this mid-eighteenth-century period as the 'tumpangparuk', 'the
time when everything was heaped together'.50 In his seminal article on
the Javanese principalities published in I904, the Dutch scholar, G. P.
47 Jan Wisseman Christie, 'Raja and Rama: The Classical State in Early Java', in
Lorraine Gesick (ed.), Centers, Symbols and Hierarchies. Essays on the Classical States of
Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, Monograph Series
no. 26, I983), pp. I7-2 (esp. p. I8).
48 George D. Larson, 'Prelude to Revolution: Palaces and Politics in Surakarta,
I912-I942', unpublished Ph.D. Thesis (Northern Illinois University, 1979), p. 38. On
the first Sultan (HB I's, r. 1749-92) role in the physical division of the core apanage areas
of the erstwhile Mataram state in 1755, and his insistence on the minute subdivision of
territory to ensure that the fertile areas were divided equally between Yogyakarta and
Surakarta, see Ricklefs, Mangkubumi, p. 7 ; and P. H. Van der Kemp (ed.), 'Brieven van
den Gouverneur-General Van der Capellen over Dipanegara's Opstand', BKI, vol. 46
(1896), pp. 545-6. According to Ricklefs 'Some Statistical Evidence onJavanese Social,
Economic and Demographic History in the later Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries' (see pp. 6-7) the Giyanti partition of 1755 was not based on a new census
or cadastral survey as previously asserted by him (Mangkubumi, p. 158), but on older
conventionalized cacah ('household') figures dating back probably to Sunan Amang-
kurat I's (r. I646-77) census of I65I.
49 See Ricklefs, Mangkubumi, pp. 158-9, for a discussion of the new census (Serat Ebuk
Anyar) completed in late 1773 and ratified by the rulers of Yogyakarta and Surakarta on
26 April 1774. A copy of this important land register can be found in Dj. Br. 43 of the
Yogyakarta Residency archive collection in the Arsip Nasional in Jakarta, see Carey,
'Residency Archive', p. 144; and Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', p. 591 n. I.
50 Kollmann, 'Bagelen', p. 354.
PETER CAREY
74
Rouffaer, pointed out some of the most important effects of this land
settlement on the village communities, namely, the division ofricefields
and common lands, the increase in the number of court officials salaried
in land, the heavier tribute burdens and the aggravation of the security
situation in country areas with the multiplication of disputes about
lands and offices, and problems over the upkeep of local irrigation
channels.5 1
The position of the apanage holders themselves was hardly more
secure. Their actual landholdings, or, in Javanese, lungguh (lit.: 'seat'),
varied in extent according to their seniority in the official hierarchy or
their blood relationship to the ruler. But, as the royal families grew
larger in the late eighteenth century and the amount of apanage land
available drastically decreased, especially after the territorial annexa-
tions in August I 812, the average size of the apanages also grew smaller.
In certain cases quasi-hereditary rights over apanages were admitted for
members of the ruler's close family, or for trusted officials who were
linked to him by marriage. Other royal servants, however, were liable to
lose their landholdings and their means of support for their families
when they were dismissed from office, a frequent occurrence in Java,
especially at times of changes of ruler. The precariousness of these office
holders and their utter dependence on the ruler's favour for the
continued enjoyment of their lands and offices can be seen in the
Javanese words 'gadhuhan', 'anggadhuhi' or 'anggadhuhake' ('a temporary
grant', 'to loan provisionally', 'to give as a temporary grant') which
were used in their official letters of appointment (nuwala [or piagem]-
Dalem).52 In the core apanage regions, which were governed directly
from the courts, the Javanese landholding system was thus firmly
subordinated to the requirements of the royal administrations and never
acquired the nature of a full-blown system of fiefs for prominent families
characteristic of Medieval Europe.
As part of the royal policy of control, all those holding apanage lands
in the nagara agung were required to reside in the court capitals for most
of the year. They thus had far less scope for forging close personal ties
with the populations on their lands than would have been the case if they
had lived, like the mancanagara officials, in their designated districts.
According to Crawfurd, many apanage holders never took the trouble
to visit the apanage lands allotted them by the ruler, and some were even
ignorant of their geographical location.53 Indeed, with landholdings
52 Ibid., p. 621; IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', p. 232.
53 IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', p. 229.
spread out over a wide area, sometimes many miles apart from each
other, the actual process of visiting them, at a time when road
communications in south-central Java were poor, would have been a
major undertaking.54 Conscientious landlords like Dipanagara or
Mangkunagara II of Surakarta (r. I796-1835), who took a personal
interest in the lands under their charge and who were in the habit of
inspecting them regularly, were thus exceptional.
In general, the court-based apanage holders left the administration of
the populations assigned to them in the hands of local tax-collectors
(Bekel), drawn from the village sphere, who gathered the land-rent
tribute (pajeg) and the other levies due to them, and exercised some
judicial authority (supposedly under the supervision of the Gunung) in
their localities.55 These Bekel were usually responsible for one village or
part of a village, with areas of agricultural land ranging from two to
twenty-four hectares (about one-half to six jung), depending on the
fertility of the region. They also received a portion of the other taxes,
such as the pacumpleng (ground-rent tax on houses), and enjoyed rights
over personal services from the village community. Thus it was
customary for the tax-collectors to take a few villagers with them to the
royal capital in order to enhance their own authority and help in the
performance of small tasks for the apanage holders when the land-rent
payments (pajeg) fell due at Mulud and Puwasa (the festival to celebrate
the end of the fasting month).56
54 On the road network in south-centralJava at this time, see IOL Map Room MS.
24, G. P. Baker, 'Memoir of a Survey in the Native Princes' Dominions ofJava', 25 Nov.
I816. There are also useful published surveys of the I 7th century Mataram network in P.
W. van Milaan, 'Beschouwingen over het i 7e Eeuwse Mararamse Weggenet', Sociaal
Geographische Mededeelingen, vol. 4 (I942), pp. 205-39; and B.J. 0. Schrieke, Indonesian
Sociological Studies. Part Two: Ruler and Realm in Early Java (The Hague & Bandung: W.
van Hoeve, 1957), pp. I05-I I.
55 Ibid., pp. 225-9: Louw, Java-Oorlog, vol. I, p. 23 n. I.
56 IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', p. 227; Rouffaer,
'Vorstenlanden', p. 625. On festive occasions such as marriages, circumcisions and
births, cultivators were expected to make presents of eggs, chickens, coconuts and other
farm produce to the apanage holder as well as undertaking some personal services for the
apanage holder's family. Building materials were also supplied free of charge for the
upkeep of the apanage holder's residence, see GKA, 20 Sept. I830 no. 56k, 'Verbaal van
de verrigtingen van Commissarissen te Djokjakarta en Aanteekeningen gehouden in
comparitien ter zake van hunne Commissie met onderscheidene personen' (henceforth:
'Verbaal'), interviews with Panembahan Mangkubumi, 18 April 1830; and Haji Ngisoh
(Ngisa), 2I April I830. According toJ. I. van Sevenhoven, who served as Resident of
Surakarta from I824 to I825, tenjung of Mangkunagaran land brought in an annual
tribute payment of 500 Spanish dollars (i Sp.D. = 63-66 stuivers), but the additional
services and presents accounted for another 200 Sp.D., see S. Br. 55, 'Nota over de
landverhuringen', I6 March 1837. On these 'fringe benefits', see further Raffles, History,
vol. I, p. 302.
76 PETER CAREY
In Crawfurd's view, it was usually in the interests of the Bekel to treat

the local cultivators with moderation, and they often consulted with
them over the yearly division of agricultural land in the villages and over
questions of irrigation. On these occasions the tax-collectors would
address the 'landowning' peasants (sikep) in familiar terms as 'comrade'
or 'friend' (kanca). At the same time, their social position does not seem
to have set them apart from their village neighbours, since, for the most
part, the Bekel were themselves drawn from the group of'landowning'
peasants or from established village head (Lurah) families.57
But Crawfurd's optimistic picture must be treated with caution. It is
known that at the time he was writing this report about the Bekel he was
trying to persuade Raffles (in office as British Lieutenant-Governor of
Java, I81 i- 6) to use them as the basis for his land-tax scheme in I812-
I3, rather than attempting to settle with the cultivators themselves.58
Besides, even Crawfurd had to admit that the Bekel's insecurity of
tenure, and the practice of paying a part of the land-rent (pajeg; i.e.
harvest tribute) payments in advance, encouraged some tax-collectors
to resort to unscrupulous methods.59 It was often the case, for example,
that, on the replacement of an apanage holder in the royal capital (an all
too frequent occurrence), the Bekel dependent on that apanage holder
would be removed by the new incumbent to make way for his own
appointees. On such occasions, it was not unusual for the dismissed Bekel
to abscond with the cash advances from the cultivators, or to refuse point
blank to accept the authority of the new appointee. A local conflict
would then break out in the village, the issue being settled by force of
arms. These local disputes over tax-collectorships were the most
common cause for the numerous 'village wars' (prang desa) which
plagued the countryside of south-central Java at this time, and which
one Dutch traveller referred to as being almost a daily occurrence in the
years immediately preceding theJava War.60 Another contemporary, a
57 IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', p. 242; Id., pt 8, 'Report upon
the District of Cadoe by Mr. Crawfurd', 15 Nov. I 8 2 (henceforth: Crawfurd, 'Report
on Cadoe'), pp. 290-5.
58John Bastin, 'Raffles' Ideas on the Land Rent System in Java and the Mackenzie
Land Tenure Commission', VKI, vol. 14 (i954), pp. 94-104, 118-I9; and Clive Day,
The Policy and Administration of the Dutch in Java (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press,
I972), p. I8o n. 3. Crawfurd's idea was to give the Bekel security of tenure in the hopes
that they would cease to exploit.
59 IOL Mack. Pr. 2I pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', p. 226.
60 A. P. Buchler, 'Soerakarta v66r 63 jaren', TNI, vol. 50 (i888) pt 2, p. 3. On the
prang desa, see further C. E. van Kesteren, 'Een bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van den
Java-oorlog', De Indische Gids, vol. 9 (1887) pt 2, pp. 1268-9; IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 7,
Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', p. 226; and Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p.
LXX n. 212.
WAITING FOR THE JUST KING7 77
Yogya prince, pointed out that there were also frequent differences of
opinion between the apanage holders, the village tax-collectors and the
'landowning' peasants over questions of land-rent payments and labour
demands during these years. These differences were compounded by the
fact that the villages themselves were frequently divided up between
different apanage holders who each appointed their own tax-collectors
to look after their interests.61
Despite the abuses associated with the activities of the Bekel, the
system of using village tax-collectors as the direct agents of the apanage
holders in the countryside was far less onerous for the local population
than the tax-farming practices which were increasingly introduced into
the core apanage regions from the late eighteenth century onwards.
These seem to have arisen for various reasons, most notably the
contraction of the average size of the apanage holdings due to the factors
mentioned above and the need for apanage holders to maximize their
cash income from their lands to support their burgeoning families and
dependants. Many apanage holders also contracted debts, especially to
European and Chinese inhabitants in the principalities, and were forced
to mortgage their lands or transfer usufruct of them to their creditors for
guaranteed cash payments.62 It is also likely that some apanage holders
found this method of tax-farming convenient, for they were too indolent
or disinterested to exercise general supervision over the numerous
village tax-collectors in the apanage areas assigned to them.
The provincial tax-farmers to whom they delegated authority were
known as Demang or Mantri desa. These men gathered the land-rent
(pajeg) payments from between ten and thirty village tax-collectors
according to the size of the apanage. In return, they were permitted to
retain one-fifth of the rents as their own remuneration, and they became
the main link between the apanage holder and the village tax-collectors
with wide scope for personal enrichment. On the basis of a survey
carried out in late 1812, Crawfurd noted that some of these provincial
tax-farmers administered as much as one hundred jung (about four
hundred hectares) of land in fertile apanage provinces such as Kedhu.63
61 GKA, 20 Sept. I830 no. 56k, 'Verbaal', interview with Pangeran Mangkudin-
ingrat II, 13 April I830.
62 IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', pp. 228, 230. The desire for
office apparently attracted many richJavanese to seek relatively low ranking positions as
Mantri desa, see J. W. Winter, 'Beknopte Beschrijving van het Hof Soerakarta in 1824'
(ed. G. P. Rouffaer), BKI, vol. 54 (1902), p. 44. For some contemporary examples of tax-
farm leases to Europeans dating from the period I809-12, see BL Add. MS. 12342
(Crawfurd coll., original letters and land grants from the Yogya court), f. i8ir-I85r.
63 IOL Mack. Pr. 2I pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', pp. 228-9.
78 PETER CAREY
They were also rather more distant socially from the 'landowning'
peasants than the village tax-collectors (Bekel) since they were often
drawn from lower-ranking families of court officials (priyayi) or from the
provincial gentry.64
The spread of this iniquitous system of tax-farming went hand in hand
with two related developments. The first of these was the tendency for
the multitude of village taxes and labour services (except for the kerigaji)
to be replaced by a fixed cash sum, which was paid annually and known
as 'pajeg matl' (lit.: 'fixed tribute'). This gained ground in certain core
apanage areas (e.g. Bagelen) after I812, when the annexation of Kedhu
by the British put pressure on the remaining nagara agung regions.65 It
also mirrored developments in the adjacent territories controlled by the
European Government, where, during Raffles's administration, the
single land-rent tax, likewise designed to be paid in cash rather than
kind, was introduced from 1812-I3 onwards.66
The second related development was the great increase in the
numbers of Chinese and Europeans resident in the principalities after
the turn of the nineteenth century, especially in the decade (1815-25)
before the outbreak of the Java War. As the question of Sino-Javanese
relations during this period has already been the subject of a recent
article by the present author,67 and the role of the Europeans has been
touched on in the works of nineteenth-century Dutch historians,68 it is
not necessary to go deeply into the background here. The available
sources, however, clearly indicate that even prior to the 18 2 territorial
annexations, the Chinese were already important in the agrarian
economies of certain areas of the south-central Java. Crawfurd, for
example, drew attention in his report on Kedhu to the plight of the
peasantry in that province, some of whom were subject to the extortions
of Chinese Demang whose 'skill and frugality' enabled them to pay higher
tax-farm rents than their Javanese rivals.69 Since it is known that
64 See above n. 62.

65 Anon., 'De toestand van Bagelen', pp. 78-80; and Hugenholtz, 'Traditional
Javanese Society', p. 2 .
66 John Bastin, The Native Policies of Sir Stamford Raffles in Java and Sumatra. An Economic
Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I957), pp. 2I-5, 58ff; Day, Dutch in Java, pp.
I74ff; and Raffles, History, vol. II, Appendix L no. II, 'Revenue Instructions', clauses
82-92, pp. cclv-cclvii.
67 Carey, 'ChangingJavanese Perceptions', pp. 1-47.
68 Louw, Java-Oorlog, vol. I, ch. V; and P. H. van der Kemp, 'De Economische
Oorzaken van den Oorlog op Java van 1825-30', BKI, vol. 47 (1869), pp. 1-48.
69 IOL Mack. Pr. 2 pt 8, Crawfurd, 'Report on Cadoe', pp. 300-1. For references to
Chinese tax-farmers (Demang Cina) in contemporary land grants (piagem [or nuwala-]
Crawfurd was not particularly well disposed to the Chinese at this time,
and was also very much against the Demang as a group, his evidence
should again be treated with caution.70 But, it is clear that after 1812,
with the increasing change to money taxes in the core apanage areas and
the pressures on available apanage land, the Chinese were propelled
into an ever more prominent position as tax-farmers, entrepreneurs and
moneylenders in the principalities.71 A senior Dutch official, who gave
evidence to the Commissioners charged with the incorporation of the
annexed territories in I830-3I, reported that over one-third of the
Surakarta eastern mancanagara province of Kedhiri and the whole of
Srengat-Wetan (see Map I) had been farmed out by the local Bupati to
the Chinese. Elsewhere, in the adjacent Yogya regency of Madiun, the
Chinese had apparently played a key role in the collection of the land-
rent (pajeg) from the local population under the supervision of the Chief
Regent (Bupati Wedana) and his subordinates.72 At the same time, in
both areas (i.e. Madiun and Kedhiri) numerous villages and lands in the
south of the regencies had been leased out to Europeans who functioned
as 'white' Demang for the court administrations.73
Where did all this leave the long-suffering Javanese farmer? The
impact of the Javanese apanage system, at least on lands subject to the
land-rent and other contributions, was clearly of major importance,
affecting both his livelihood and his security of tenure. Every year he was
required to negotiate a new lease agreement with the local apanage
holder through the latter's tax-collectors, and there were no written
undertakings to act as a guarantee. Instead, the individual rent
arrangements were witnessed by the 'landowning' (sikep) farmer's
Dalem), see BL Add. MS. 12342 (Crawfurd coll., original letters and land grants from the
Yogya court), f. 49v, f. 5iv.
70 On Crawfurd's anti-Chinese sentiments, see F. de Haan, 'Personalia der Periode
van het Englesch Bestuur over Java i8ii-i816', BKI, vol. 92 (I935), p. 529; on his
disparaging views of the Demang when compared to the Bekel, see IOL Mack. Pr. 2 pt 7,
Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', pp. 245-9; pt 8, Id., 'Report on Cadoe', pp. 290-5; and
above n. 58.
71 Hugenholtz, 'Traditional Javanese Society', p. i9; Bastin, .Native Policies, p. 58;
Carey, 'Changing Javenese Perceptions, pp. 32-41; Afdeling Statistiek, De Residentie
Kadoe naar de uitkomsten der Statistieke opname en andere officiele Bescheiden bewerkt door de
afdeling Statistiek ter Algemeene Secretarie (Batavia: Landsdrukkerij, 187 1), p. 78; and GKA
20 Sept. I830 no. 56k, 'Verbaal', interview with Pangeran Mangkudiningrat II, I3
April I830, who stated that the renting out of inhabited land (cacah), especially to the
Chinese, should be absolutely forbidden.
72 Van Pabst, 'Beschrijving', in De Klerck, Java-Oorlog, vol. VI, pp. 378-9.
73 Hugenholtz, 'Traditional Javanese Society', p. 5, p. I 7; De Klerck, Java-Oorlog,
vol. VI, p. 443 art. i.
80 PETER CAREY
neighbours and that act was considered as binding.74 When the land-
rent(pajeg) was rendered in money, as it was increasingly in the core
apanage areas from the late eighteenth century onwards, the usual
procedure was for it to be paid in advance at the time of concluding the
agreement. If the apanage holder or his local tax-collector were
removed from office during the term of the lease, the farmer would find
himself defrauded because the new apanage holder would invariably
demand fresh terms.75 This situation was particularly serious for
farmers with small landholdings, but it was not uncommon, even in the
fertile core apanage districts, for long-established cultivators, hard
pressed in this way, to flee to another village. The actual procedure
governing such an enterprise was quite simple: a farmer would only have
to present his local apanage holder (through his Bekel) with a fowl and a
basket of rice (tompo) in order to obtain permission to move with his
material effects. Sometimes a whole village would decamp in this
fashion only to return to their original settlement when the exactions of
the new apanage holder had eased slightly. In the richer nagara agung
provinces like Mataram, Pajang and Kedhu, such temporary emig-
rations were apparently less common than in the more sparsely
populated outlying districts. This was because the lands in the core areas
were more productive and there was increasingly less waste ground
available for new agricultural development. Cultivators in the longer
established villages of the central regions were also more attached to
their place of birth, their ancestral tombs, and, most important of all,
their networks of dependants and relations, a circumstance which
unscrupulous apanage holders and Demang often exploited to raise rents
exorbitantly.76
A consideration of the reactions of the central Javanese peasantry to
the increasingly harsh demands of the apanage holders cannot,
however, be answered properly without first considering the social
structure of the village world and the economic opportunities open to
cultivators during this period.
74 IOL Mack. Pr. 2 pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', p. 222; Raffles, History, vol. I,
p. I47. The leases usually covered two harvests in irrigated areas. For an account of the
different arrangements in the Surabaya area where rent arrangements were negotiated
by the village heads (Petinggi) on behalf of the 'landowning' cultivators, see Raffles,
History, vol. I, pp. 284-5.
75 IOL Mack. Pr. 2I pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', p. 222.
76 Ibid., pp. 223-4; Dj. Br. 86, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard
(Semarang), 28 Feb. I8o6.
WAITING FOR THE 'JUST KING8 8i
III. The Social Structure of the South-central Javanese Village
In their descriptions ofJavanese villages in the early nineteenth century,

European reporters tended to gloss over the fact that they contained
very distinct social groups which enjoyed unequal access to the common
village ricefields and the use of village labour, an error perpetuated in
one of the most influential modern books on the subject.77 By the end of
the Java War (I825-30), the picture had become slightly clearer due to
the detailed land settlements worked out by Dutch and Javanese
officials in 1830-31. A Surakarta report of 1832, for exampe, referred to
three main social groups in the south-centralJavanese village communi-
ties: the sikep (lit.: 'users of the ground'), who bore the full tax burden of
the village; the ngindhung, often close relations of the sikep, who owned
their own houses and yards but had no stake in the common village
ricefields; and, finally, the wong numpang (lit.: 'one who gets board and
lodging') or bujang, unmarried strangers or bachelors, who lived in the
house or yard of the sikep and performed various agricultural and labour
services for him.78 Within these broad categories, there were, of course,
even finer distinctions (i.e. between farmers who lived with the sikep but
did not receive food from him, and the rayat [full boarders] who were fed
and clothed by him). The names of these groups and sub-groups varied
from area to area throughout Java.79
77 Raffles, History, vol. I, pp. 81-2, p. 146; IOL Mack. Pr. 2 I pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed
tenures', p. 22I; and Jan Breman, The Village on Java and the Early-Colonial State
(Rotterdam: Comparative Asian Studies Programme (Erasmus University) Paper no. I,
I980), passim. The modern study which has perpetuated the myth about 'shared
poverty' at the village level and the absence of social differentiation inJavanese agrarian
society is, of course, Clifford Geertz's Agricultural Involution. The Processes of Ecological
Change in Indonesia (Berkeley: University of California Press, I963).
Based almost entirely on secondary sources, this brilliant essay was apparently
published as an oeuvre a these to provoke thoughtful reaction and debate. Unfortunately,
for the best part of two decades, it has exercised an influence out of proportion to its
scholarly content. It is only now that primary research has begun to be carried out again
on the impact of the cultivation systems on the Javanese peasant economy and village
society in the nineteenth century by scholars such as Elson, Knight, Fernando, Breman,
Van Niel and Husken that the flaws in Geertz's attractive thesis are at last being
highlighted. See Benjamin White, "'Agricultural Involution" and its Critics: Twenty
Years after Clifford Geertz' (The Hague: Institute of Social Studies, Working Papers
Series no. 6, Feb. 1983), passim.
78 S. Br. 2A, Hendrik MacGillavry (?), 'Statistieke Beschrijving der Residentie
Soerakarta', 1832.
79 On the different classes in Bagelen villages at this time, see Kollmann, 'Bagelen',
pp. 366-8, who enumerated the following groups: (I) kuli baku (sikep), 'landowning'
farmers who had their own houses, yards and shares in the common village ricefields
(sawah kongsen); (2) pondhok tempil, farmers who had their own houses which were usually
82 PETER CAREY
It was above all the latter category (i.e. the numpang or bujang),
especially the full boarders, who approximated most closely to a class of
landless labourers in south-central Java at this time. They were in the
fullest sense the servants of the sikep and provided their economic
strength for they could be used as a resident, unpaid labour force. Unlike
the ngindhung who could sometimes improve their social position by
marrying into sikep families, the unmarried strangers or bachelors had
very little chance of raising their'social status unless they were prepared
to leave the village entirely and open up new ricefields in hitherto
uncultivated areas. It seems likely that there were many opportunities
for such a course of action in the immediate post-Giyanti period (i.e.
after 755) when the population was recovering from decades of warfare
and political turmoil80 and when there was much uncleared or
uninhabited agricultural land available, but by the early nineteenth
century, with increased demographic pressure and fiscal burdens, the
scope for manoeuvre was much less.. Moreover, even if an enterprising
farmer did open up new lands in a waste area, especially if he did not
enjoy the sort of local influence which accrued to established sikep
families, his right of usufruct possession after three successive years of
cultivation, as laid down in the Javanese agrarian law codes, was not
assured: good lands pioneered in this fashion could be occasionally
claimed back by the ruler.81 More important still, numpang and other
situated in the yards of the kuli baku (sikep); (3) ngindhung, farmers who had their own
houses and yards, and were subject to the commercial taxes (bedrijf pacht) raised on
the weaving of cotton, but had no share in the common village ricefields; (4) pondhok
slusup, farmers who lived with the kuli baku (sikep) but who did not receive food from him
and thus preserved some degree of independence; (5) rayat (numpang/bujang), landless
labourers who lived with the kuli baku (sikep) and were fed and clothed by him.
On the social groups in Javanese villages in the latter part of the nineteenth century,
see Onghokham, 'The Residency of Madiun: Pryayi and Peasant in the Nineteenth
Century', unpublished Ph.D. Thesis (Yale University, 1975), pp. I67-71, p. I98. I have
gained many insights from Dr Onghokham's interesting (but sadly unpublished) thesis
and I hereby acknowledge my considerable debt to him.
80 On the steady decline in Java's population from the 670os to the I 75os on account
of the turbulent political situation (36 years of which witnessed major military
campaigns in Central and East Java), see Ricklefs, 'Statistical Evidence', pp. 24-8.
81 IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 4, Crawfurd, 'Sultan's Country', p. 73; S. Br. 2A,
MacGillavry (?), 'Statistieke Beschrijving Soerakarta', I832; and Soeripto, Ontwikkel-
ingsgang der Vorstenlandsche Wetboeken (Leiden: Eduard IJdo, 1929), p. I59, referring to
art. 44 of the Javanese agrarian law code (Angger Sepuluh) (codified 4 Oct. i818) which
allowed farmers conditional possession (gadhanipuin siti) or usufruct of lands which they
had cleared and which were unclaimed by any original owners after three years. See also
AN BGG, 17 Feb. i84 no. i6,J. F. T. Mayor (Surakarta) to P. Merkus (Batavia), i
Feb. I841 containing an original copy of the Javanese law code on village policing and
labour services (Angger Gunung, codified I2 Oct. I840), art. 6o of which laid down the
procedure for claiming newly cleared land. A similar text from the Mangkunagaran in
landless labourers were frequently deterred from setting themselves up
on their own as 'landowning' peasants because of the prospect of having
to compete with established sikep in winning and retaining the favour of
local apanage holders. This favour would invariably be granted to those
cultivators promising the most abundant taxes and labour services, a
situation which placed aspiring numpang at a disadvantage.82
For these reasons, landless labourers who wished to break out of the
cycle of rural servitude to powerful sikep families often adopted the
course of leaving the land completely. Some drifted into marginal
employment as porters (kuli) on the principal trade routes: nearly all
contemporary European reports comment on the crowds of porters and
carriers which thronged the main roads of south-central Java at this
time.83 Others took service in the entourage of influential noblemen at
the courts where they were frequently used for criminal activities (i.e.
robberies perpetrated to augment a nobleman's income).84 Still others
joined the numerous bands of robbers, vagrants and highwaymen
terrorizing the Javanese countryside, a phenomenon which persisted
right through the nineteenth century.85
Although the recent work by Hugenholtz, which will be discussed
further below (see Section V), has shown up major differences in the
peasant societies of the core apanage regions and the outlying provinces,
and the ways in which those societies responded to the increased tax
demands in the early nineteenth century, it is possible to sketch out in
broad terms the implications of theJavanese landownership structure at
the village level.
Until the fiscal pressures of the years immediately preceding theJava
Surakarta (Pranatan Desa, codified 3 March I855) can be found in Stephen C. Headley,
'I1 n'y a plus de cendres. Description et histoire du finage d'un hamcau Javanais',
unpublished these doctorale de troisieme cycle (EHESS, Paris, I979), pp. 202-10. Art. I I of
this latter code allowed for the non-payment of labour services for the space of three
harvests (ajot) after the land had begun to be cleared.
82 Kollmann, 'Bagelen', p. 368.
83 Dj. Br. 86, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 28 Feb. i806;
IOL Mack. Pr. 2I pt 8, Crawfurd, 'Report on Cadoe', p. 283, who reckoned that there
were between 20,000 and 30,000 porters on the roads of Kedhu alone, a province which
in 1822 had a total population of about 324,000, see Schneither 92, 'Statistieke der
Reidentie Kadoe', 1822.
84 Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p. 243 n. 36; and for a fascinating
description of the connections between impoverished Yogya noblemen and criminal
elements in the late nineteenth century, see J. Groneman, Een Ketjoegeschiedenis.
Vorstenlandsche Toestanden II (Dordrecht: J. P. Revers, 1887).
85 Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p. 243 n. 36; and Djoko Suryo, 'Social
and Economic Life in Rural Semarang under Colonial Rule in the Later gth Century',
unpublished Ph.D. Thesis (Monash University, I982), pp. 265-77.
84 PETER CAREY
War began to have an effect, it seems that the sikep class wielded the
greatest influence in the local agrarian economy of south-central Java.
They held rights over the fields cultivated by the village in common
(sawah kongsen) since they were either the first cultivators of the land
(cakal-bakal) or their immediate descendants. As such they were
responsible for the payment of the land-rent (pajeg) and the other village
taxes in money and kind to the apanage holders by way of the local tax-
collectors (see above Section II). At the same time, they provided the
candidates for the position of village head (Lurah). This post carried far
less economic prestige than it did in the post-Java War period when
Lurah were given 'official' ricefields (tanah bengkok) by the government in
return for acting as brokers guaranteeing the supply of labour and land
for the cultivation system.86 But it did give the encumbent a certain
authority in terms of the yearly division of village ricefields and common
lands, the latter sometimes covering extensive areas of woodland and
pasture. 7 They also had a say in the appointment of the local tax-
collectors (Bekel), who were, as we have seen, nearly always drawn from
the sikep class.
Lands cultivated by the sikep were often passed down from father to
son, and sikep families of long standing were found in many south-central
Javanese villages.88 Although there were some regional variations, the
lands worked by the sikep appear to have fallen into two main categories:
tanah pusaka or 'heirloom' lands, which were part of the original
patrimony of the founding families of a village and were usually
registered in royal land grants; and lanahyasa or 'individually developed'
lands which had been opened up on the initiative of the sikep or, in the
outlying regions, the provincial priyayi (officials).89 As regards the first
86 Cees Fasseur, 'Organisatie en Sociaal-Economische Betekenis van de Gouverne-
ments-Suikerkultuur in Enkele Residenties op Java omstreeks I850', BKI, vol. I33
(I977), pp. 267-8; and R. E. Elson, 'The Cultivation System and "Agricultural
Involution"' (Melbourne: Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian Studies,
Working Paper No. I4, 1978), p. 28.
87 S. Br. 2A, MacGillavry (?), 'Statistieke Beschrijving Soerakarta', i832; Onghok-
ham, 'Residency ofMadiun', pp. i67ff; and on the communal possession of land in igth
century Javanese villages, see Kan6, 'Land Tenure System and Desa Community', pp.
15-21, who based his research on W. B. Bergsma (ed.), Eindresume van het bij
Gouvernementsbesluit dd. io Juni 1876 no. 2 bevolen Onderzoek naar de rechten van den Inlander op
den Grond op Java en Madoera, 3 vols (Batavia: Landsdrukkerij, I876-96).
88 Dj. Br. 86, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 28 Feb. I806.
89 Kollmann, 'Bagelen', pp. 367-8; Onghokham, 'Residency of Madiun', pp. 169-70,
185-8; and on the role of the provincial priyayi in the eastern mancanagara provinces, see
Hugenholtz, 'Traditional Javanese Society', pp. I9-20. The special position and
influence of the provincial elite in south-western Bagelen known as the kenthol,
descendants of erstwhile pryayi gunung (magistrates/police officials) should also be noted
category, the sikep technically had only usufruct rights and not full
possession or ownership, for their tenure was conditional on the
performance of labour services and their payment of the land-rent to the
ruler or his delegate, the apanage holder. These lands were also subject
to yearly redistribution by the village head (Lurah) as noted above.
According to some contemporary Dutch commentators, the central
Javanese sovereigns retained residual rights over the eventual disposi-
tion of this 'heirloom' land, and a sikep could be dispossessed if he failed
to perform his duties. Thus the latter's tenure of tanah pusaka was closely
akin to the lungguh or land grants given by the ruler to his royal officials
and family relations.90 Such insecurity of tenure on 'heirloom' lands was
a major hazard for the sikep (see above Section II), but, unlike the
situation at the courts where there are frequent records of the dismissal of
apanage holders, the sources are largely silent on the dispossession of
sikep.91
The second category of lands, namely the lanahyasa, were more truly
the sikep's own property because these had been established by their own
endeavours, or, more correctly, by the endeavours of their dependent
labourers (numpang; rayat) who could be used at will to carry out daily
agricultural duties, to perform the labour services required of the sikep
by the apanage holders, and to extend his usufruct rights over adjacent
waste lands. Indication that numpang and rayat were used in this fashion
to develop new land can be seen from a late nineteenth-century report
on land rights which stated that in about I830 there were quite a few
sikep peasants with as much as ten bau (about seven hectares) of
ricefields, of which only around one-fifth was in fact 'heirloom' land
(tanah pusaka).92 Just how wealthy an individual sikep could be at this
time is also illustrated by a list of stolen possessions drawn up in I8o8
after a robbery in the village of Pedhalangan in the Beji district near
Klathen, a fertile and well irrigated area where much cotton (kapas
here, see Hugenholtz, loc. cit.; Kollmann, 'Bagelen', pp. 355-356; and Soekardan
Pranahadikoesoema, 'De Kentol der Desa Krendetan', Djawa vol. 19 (1939), pp. I53-
60.
90 Onghokham, 'Residency of Madiun', pp. 186-7.

91 On the frequent turn-over in apanage holders, see Carey (ed.), The Archive of
Yogyakarta. Vol. II: Documents relating to Economic and Agrarian Affairs (Oxford: Oxford
University Press for the British Academy, I988, forthcoming).
92 Onghokham, 'Residency of Madiun', p. i70, I86 quoting Bergsma (ed.),
Eindresume. According to reports in the Eindresume concerning Banyumas in the pre-i825
period, the tax (pajeg) liability of the sikep would usually be estimated on the basis of the
number of his 'dependants' (rayat), the latter including both kin and non-kin members
(i.e. ngindhung and numpang) of his extended household, see Kano, 'Land Tenure System
and the Desa Community', p. 20.
86 PETER CAREY
Jawa) was grown. Amongst the individual losses, one sikep reported the
disappearance of 180 silver ducatoons, a very sizeable sum, which was
then worth the sterling equivalent of f65.oo, or about /I,ooo in
present-day money.93 It is rather hard to imagine any 'landowning'
peasant having such a cash hoard at his disposal in contemporary
Indonesia, yet by the standards of the early nineteenth century such a
personal fortune seems to have been by no means unusual. Amongst the
eleven other names listed in the same report, admittedly for the most
part village tax-collectors (Bekel), village heads (Lurah) and 'priests', all
acknowledged the theft of considerable personal property in the shape of
hundreds of hanks (gendhel) of weaving cotton, sheafs ofpadi, chickens,
ducks and Spanish dollars.94
The economic background to the wealth generated through agricul-
tural production and trade at the village level will be discussed in more
detail shortly. But it is clear that the structure of Javanese peasant
society, at least until the first decade of the nineteenth century (see below
Section V), gave important advantages to the group of 'landowning'
peasants who could prosper independently by drawing on the labour
services of a resident work-force of dependants and landless peasants. A
Dutch writer, who conducted interviews with surviving members of the
village elite in Bagelen in the I86os, wrote of the quasi 'patron-client'
relationship prevailing in that fertile core apanage province in the years
before the Java War, by which he meant that a group of sikep farmers
and descendants of low-ranking provincial officials (i.e. the kenthol) had
usufruct rights over most of the ricefields and enjoyed the services of a
large mass of dependants who had little hope of ever setting themselves
93 For a full report on this robbery, see Dj. Br. 23, Lt. W. Driessen (Commander of the
Yogya garrison) to P. Engelhard (Resident of Yogyakarta), 14 Nov. 80o8. The
comparative value of the silver ducatoon (both milled and unmilled) against the late
i8th century Dutch guilder (Generaliteits gulden) and pound sterling have been taken
from J. J. Stockdale, Sketches, Civil and Military of the Island of Java and its Immediate
Dependencies (London: J.J. Stockdale, 1812), pp. 102-3, which gives a list of the exchange
rate quotations in Batavia. I have based my comparison on the slightly higher value
milled (rather than unmilled) ducatoon. Present-day values have been estimated by
comparing the equivalent purchasing power of money in relation to rice in the early gth
century and in I984: one kilogram of best quality, polished white rice which today sells
for about 325 Indonesian Rupiah in the main Yogya market (Pasar Beringharjo) could be
purchased for about ten cents before the Java War. For a discussion of the copper and
silver cash which was often buried by a peasant owner to be occasionally delved up and
spread out in the sun (Jav. jemur') in front of his dwelling as a way of displaying his
wealth, see Leonard Bluss6, 'Trojan Horse of Lead: The picis on Early I7th Century
Java', in Francien van Anrooij et al. (eds), Between People and Statistics. Essays on Modern
Indonesian History Presented to P. Creutzberg (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, I979), p. 41.
94 Dj. Br. 23, Lt. W. Driessen to P. Engelhard, 14 Nov. I808.
WAITING FOR THE 'JUST KING 87
up independently.95 Elsewhere, it seems that established sikep acted as

virtually self-sufficient cultivators with only loose links with the local
village communities. In Kedhu, for example, Crawfurd noted that each
cultivator worked the lands which he had rented and cleared for his own
advantage, shared no property in common, and gathered together in

village associations only in order to have some mutual protection in a
highly insecure countryside. 'Peasants who live as close neighbours in
the same village,' he wrote, 'often have as little to do with each other as
those who live at a distance of twenty miles'.96 Crawfurd's remarks were
probably exaggerated, but it is clear that the pre-Java War village with
its loose association of cultivators and dependants was a very different
entity from the closely ordered community of the late nineteenth
century, shaped as the latter was by the economic exigencies of the
cultivation systems and the administrative policies of the Dutch colonial
government with their passion for uniformity and social control.97
Owing to the chaotic nature of the apanage arrangements in the core
regions before 1830 and the haphazard manner in which new areas were
opened up, the field-systems of the pre-Java War village were also
marked by extreme complexity. Rice plots belonging to different
'landowning' cultivators were closely juxtaposed and no landmarks
were used to demarcate ownership, but one Javanese source asserted
that disputes over land between sikep were rare because each farmer was
able to recognize his own ground.98 In some villages, enterprising
village heads and members of the cakal-bakal families rented out teams of
oxen and ploughs for cultivators who needed them during the ploughing
season, and, occasionally, Lurah also took care to ensure that there was
enough seedpadi (bibit) available at planting time, especially if there had
been a harvest failure in the previous year.99 But such instances of co-
95 Kollmann, 'Bagelen', p. 368. On the kenthol, see above n. 89.
96 IOL Mack. Pr. 2I pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', p. 221. On the loose
institutional structure ofJavanese villages and the lack of communal organization in the
pre-Java War period, see further Kano, 'Land Tenure System and the Desa
Community', pp. 34-5. On the endemic insecurity in rural areas, especially in Kedhu
where the villages were usually surrounded by stone walls, see Carey (ed. & trans.),
Babad Dipanagara, p. XLIII, p. LXVIII n. 8 , p. 243, n. 36.
97 SeeJan Breman, The Village on Java and the Early-Colonial State, pp. 38-9 and passim.
98 IOL Mack. Pr. 82 pt 3I, Kyai Adipati Sura-Adimanggala of Demak, 'Notices of
the Arrangement of the Native Administration or Government & Magistracy ofJava as
continued under the Dutch Government from ancient times', Aug. I8I2, p. 299.
According to Crawfurd (IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt.4, 'Sultan's County', p. 67), the average
size of ricefields in Mataram were between fifty and sixty square. feet.
99 Dj. Br. 86, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 28 Feb. 1806,
where Waterloo (Resident of Yogyakarta, I803-08) remarked that villages with
enterprising village heads (Lurah) were usually the most prosperous.
88 PETER CAREY
operation were exceptional, and most aspects of the agricultural cycle,

including the much vexed problem of irrigation, were left to the
discretion of individual cultivators, a point which underlines just how
inapplicable Karl Wittfogel's famous thesis on Asian hydraulic systems
is to the Javanese setting in this period.100
An agrarian society of this nature, in which the premium was placed
on individual family endeavour and the exercise of social influence
through congeries of patron-client relationships, clearly worked in
favour of those best able to benefit from the economic opportunities at
the village level, namely the sikep. Although a great deal more research
needs to be done on the rural world of late eighteenth-century Java, it
seems that in certain areas such as the fertile core regions of the
principalities, these 'landowning' peasants were experiencing some-
thing of a 'golden age', an impression further confirmed by what little is
known about the economic and demographic developments in south-
central Java at this time.
IV. The Economy and Demography of the South-central

Javanese Village in the late Eighteenth and Early
Nineteenth Centuries
The examples cited above indicate that the two main sources of wealth
for the sikep were the development of new ricefields and the trade in cash
crops. Other sources confirm this picture. Nearly all European observers
of the south-central Javanese countryside were unequivocal about the
100 On the great problems of irrigation in southern Bagelen, where Surakarta and
Yogyakarta lands were closely intermingled, see Kollmann, 'Bagelen', p. 354. Crawfurd
(IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 4, 'Sultan's Country', p. 67) suggested that these difficulties might
have been compounded by the fact that cultivators usually chose their own time for
planting in irrigated areas, a practice dictated by the system of making separate rent
agreements with landlords (see above Section II). Karl Wittfogel's most important work
is his Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Chinas (Leipzig: Verlag C. L. Hirschfeld, 193 ), a book
which is much more balanced than his Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total
Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977) with its overemphasis on hydraulic
systems. It should be stressed that the hydraulic works described by Wittfogel were not
primarily irrigation channels for local ricefield production but complex systems for flood
control of gigantic rivers like the Huangho (Yellow River), systems which no individuals
or communities could establish on their own. Although even here, it must be said, he
greatly over-exaggerated the role of the Chinese state in the establishment and
maintenance of these vast constructions, see Ch'ao-ting Chi, Key Economic Areas in Chinese
History as Revealed in the Development of Public Works for Water Control (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1936); and Mark Elvin, 'On Water Control and Management during the Ming
and Ch'ing Periods', Ch'ing-Shih wen-ti, vol. 3 no. 3 (Nov. I975), pp. 82-Io3.
WAITING FOR THE cJUST KING8 89
impact of this great enlargement of the acreage ofsawah in the years after
1755: 'one has only to direct one's eyes to the lands which today produce
rice', wrote one Dutch Resident of Yogyakarta in I804, 'and which
twenty years ago were still waste and uncultivated'.101 According to this
official, the new irrigation systems constructed in the immediate
environs of the Sultan's capital, partly on royal initiative, had led to a
twenty-five per cent increase in local rice production in the space of ten
years (I796-I8o6), and he noticed on a tour through the village of
Gamping to the west of Yogya that the roads were so thronged with
traders and packhorses making for Yogya that he could barely get by on
horseback.102 Even in isolated areas such as Pacitan, on the south coast,
many new ricefields had been pioneered by local farmers living in the
fertile valley of the Grindulu river in the late eighteenth century, and a
Dutch contemporary asserted that they were enjoying a period of
unparalleled prosperity.103 It was the same story to the north of
101 AvJ, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 29 Dec. I804.
Waterloo was particularly impressed by the transformation of the wooded area of the
Jambu hills on the Kedhu-Semarang border into 'magnificent' sawah (irrigated
riceland), see Dj. Br. 38, Id. to Id., 3I Jan. I8o8; and further vAE (aanwinsten, 1900) 235,
'Speculatieve Memorie over zaken betreffende het bestuur van Java's Noord Oost
Kust', May I808; and Anon., Lettres de Java ou Journal d'un voyage dans cette lte en 1822
(Paris: privately printed, 822), p. I I I. Many new ricefields had also been laid out in the
adjacent province of Grobogan close to the Dutch-controlled north-east coast, and this
region had become a major rice supplier for the pasisir, see Dj. Br. 22, G. W. Wiese
(Yogyakarta) to H. W. Daendels (Batavia/Bogor), 12 Sept. I809; and the rice
production figures given in Raffles, History, vol. II, pp. 268-9.
102 Dj. Br. 86, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 28 Feb. i8o6.
Apart from the trade in rice to Yogya, many cloth merchants from Bagelen also passed
through the tollgate at Gamping on their way to the Sultan's capital, see Dj. Br. 27, Tan
Jin Sing (Kapitan Cina of Yogyakarta) toJ. W. Moorrees (Yogyakarta), 22 May i81o.
On the large amount of recently opened up sawah in the vicinity of Yogyakarta, see IOL
Mack. Pr. 21 pt 4, Crawfurd, 'Sultan's Country', p. 146. For the royal initiatives taken
by the first two Yogya rulers in encouraging the establishment of new ricefields in areas
adjacent to the court by building stone dams in the main rivers and the appointment of
supervisory irrigation officials (Mantri Jurusawah), see dJ vol. XII, p. 260, P. G. Van
Overstraten (Semarang) to W. A. Alting & Raden van Indie (Batavia), 25 April 1792; Dj.
Br. I8, F. G. Valck, 'Statistieke der Residentie Djokjokarta', 1838, sub: 'Werken in het
Belang van den Landbouw en den Handel'; Dj. Br. i, C. P. Brest van Kempen, 'Politieke
Verslag der Residentie Djokjokarta over het jaar I86I', 24 March 1862; and BL Add.
MS. 12342 (Crawfurd coll., original letters and land grants from the Yogya court),
f.239r, Piagem-Dalem (Letter of Appointment) of Demang Samaradirana as Mantri
J7urusawah of Gamping, i8 Sapar A.J. 1734 (28 Feb. i807). Many of the second Sultan's
(HB II, r. 1792-1810/I8I 1-12/I826-28) royal retreats (pesanggrahan), which he built to
the east and west of Yogyakarta also had small dams and irrigation channels attached to
them, see Dj. Br. 86, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 28 Feb.
i806.
103 Dj. Br. 45, W. H. van IJsseldijk (Yogyakarta) to P. G. Van Overstraten
(Semarang), I5 Jan. 1793 containing a special report on the Dutch-leased pepper and
9o PETER CAREY
Yogyakarta, where the greater part of the local irrigation systems based
on the Mt Merapi watershed were the work ofJavanese peasants living
in the Sleman and Kalasan districts.104 Similar activities were also
noted in parts of Kedhu, where Crawfurd pointed out that many of the
best ricefields had been created by simple irrigation channels at the foot
of the western volcanoes (Mt Sumbing and Mt Sundara).105
Obviously there were areas such as Kulon Praga and Gunung Kidul
where this period wrought little change.106 Elsewhere, in low-lying
regions near the swamps (rawa) of Bagelen and southern Banyumas, the
lands lay flooded and useless for months on end, and irrigation walls and
ditches had to be painstakingly rebuilt every year. 107 But, despite all the
technological shortcomings of the contemporary irrigation systems, it is
clear that the decades of peace between i755 and I825 witnessed a
transformation of the agricultural landscape of many districts in south-
indigo estates of Lowanu and Genthan in north-eastern Bagelen and Pacitan on the
south coast entitled, 'Eerbiedige Bericht aangaande de Landen van Z. H. den Sulthan
van Djojcjocarta'.
104 Dj. Br. 86, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 28 Feb. I806;
and Louw, Java-Oorlog, vol. I, pp. 242-3 (on the irrigated area between Klathen and
Kalasan).
'10 IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 8, Crawfurd, 'Report on Cadoe', pp. 272-3; and Baud 9I, P.
le Clercq, 'Copie-Verslag der Residentie Kadoe over hetjaar 1823', 30 March i824, p.
I7.
106 MvK 3055, 'Beschrijving en Statistieke rapport betreffende de Residentie
Djokjokarta', 1836, mentioned that whereas nine-tenths of the available agricultural
land in Mataram (present-day districts of Bantul and Sleman) were under cultivation,
two-thirds of which were irrigated ricelands (sawah), only one-hundredth of the hilly
limestone area of Gunung Kidul was farmed. Labour services (blandhong diensten) in the
extensive Gunung Kidul teak forests also bore hard on the local inhabitants, many of
whom migrated during the east monsoon rice harvest (May/June) to find seasonal work
on the Mataram plain. Comparative figures for the cultivated and uncultivated areas in
Yogyakarta shortly after the end of the Java War can be found in Dj. Br. 19 I, Report of
Raden Adipati Danureja IV, Feb. 1833:
cultivated uncultivated
jung jung TOTAL/DISTRICT
Mataram 5,77I (24,048)* 2571 (I,073) 6,028 (25,121)
Gunung Kidul 26I (1,091) 5532 (231) 3162 (1,322)
Kulon Praga 1,838 (7,658) I 2 (467) 1,950 (8,125)
TOTO'I'AL/ARhA 1
TOTAL/AREA 7,870 (32,797) 4242 (1,771) 8,2942 (34,568)
* The numbers in brackets refer to cacah.
By I836, the total area of cultivated land had apparently risen to 9,goojung, see MvK
3055, 'Statistieke rapport'.
107 Dj. Br. 86, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 28 Feb. 80o6;
and Louw, Java-Oorlog, vol. I, p. 246, for references to the periodic floods (banjir) in the
areas bordering on the great swamps of Rawa Tambakbaya and Rawa Wawar in
western and eastern Bagelen. On the location of these marshlands, see Map 2.
central Java. As Crawfurd put it in I812, 'a traveller could now pass a
hundred miles in [south-central] Java without encountering an unculti-
vated spot'.108 In the light of the available evidence, it is thus possible to
modify the statement of Dr Onghokham in his recent doctoral thesis on
Madiun who wrote: 'the Java we know today covered by ricefields was
mainly the achievement of the nineteenth century peasantry'.109 While
this may have been the case with the regions east of Mt Lawu which
began to undergo a significant agricultural expansion only after I830,
south-centralJava can be said to have been transformed by the labours
of the generation of farmers who lived during the seventy years between
the Giyanti Settlement and the outbreak of the Java War.
The energy manifested by the south-central Javanese peasantry in
opening up new lands in this period was reflected in the steady rise in
agricultural production and the increased volume of trade in cash crops
noted by European contemporaries in the early nineteenth century.
Food staples bulked large inJavanese agriculture, with rice production
occupying pride of place. Maize (jagung) and other dry field crops were
also popular in areas such as the central plain of Kedhu where there was
a lack of water for irrigated ricefields.l10 In this region, too, profits from
the fruit and vegetable gardens (pekarangan) represented a significant
addition to the domestic economy of most peasant households. 11 After
conducting interviews with local sikep cultivators in Kedhu and Pacitan
in I812, Crawfurd noticed how they often compared their condition
favourably with that of their compatriots who lived under European
colonial rule on the north-east coast (pasisir), for, as they pointed out, at
least they were free to choose the crops which were most suitable for the
local soils."12 This led, in turn, to the cultivation of several important
cash crops which were usually rotated with rice: tobacco in Kedhu,
indigo in Mataram, and Javanese long staple cotton (kapas Jawa), the
latter being grown in many places throughout the central apanage
regions and outlying provinces (see Map 2). All these products were
108 IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 4, Crawfurd, 'Sultan's Country', p. 148.
09 Onghokham, 'Residency of Madiun', p. 200.
110 Raffles, History, vol. I, pp. 121-2. On the use of other secondary crops (Jav.
'palawzia'), see Winter, 'Beknopte Beschrijving', p. 49.
111 Raffles, History, vol. I, pp. 8I-2, I io; IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 4, Crawfurd, 'Sultan's
Country', pp. 75-7; and Baud 177, Willem van Hogendorp. 'Extract rapport over den
toestand van Java, den particuliere eigendommen aldaar en den staat der zaken in de
Residentie Kadoe', n.d. (? I827). On the orchards (pekarangan) and dry fields (tegalan)
which were free of communal regulations and nearly always held in 'heritable individual
possession', see further Kano, 'Land Tenure System and the Desa Community in
Nineteenth Century Java', pp. 26-8, 32-4.
112 IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', p. 241.
Map 2. Map of Central Java Showing the Main Areas of Cash Crop Production in t
Period.
(Map outline taken from Raffles, History of Java, vol. I (I918) and adapted by J.
Oxford).
traded extensively in the region, especially with the north-east coast,

and brought in a significant supplementary income to a number of
peasant families living in the more fertile zones.113
In terms of the volume of trade in south-centralJava, rice was easily
the most importantarticle of commerce accounting for over twenty-five
per cent of the Sultan of Yogyakarta's tax returns in Kedhu, Mataram
and Pajang in i805.114 The second principal trading commodity was
Kedhu tobacco, an estimated one million kilograms of which were
traded annually outside the principalities, mainly to other parts ofJava,
but also to eastern Indonesia and the Malay peninsula (e.g. Kedah)
where it was known as 'Pinang' tobacco.115 The third most significant
export item from south-central Java was cotton piece goods and cotton
thread. This enjoyed a particularly buoyant period during the years
I795--I8I when the rigours of the British naval blockade cut off
traditional supplies of Indian cloth from Dutch trading posts in the
subcontinent. In I808, a Dutch official reckoned that close on seven
thousand kodhi (bundles of twenty lengths) of coloured sarong material
and one thousand kodhi of shawls were woven in the Bagelen region
alone out of locally grown cotton cloth, a village industry which was
almost totally destroyed by the ravages of the Java War.116 In-
neighbouring Mataram, a further one thousand five hundred kodhi of
plain white cloth (kain mori) and one thousand two hundred kodhi of block
printed bathik (wax dyed cloth) were produced for export.117 The same
113 IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 8, Crawfurd, 'Report on Cadoe', pp. 275-7 (on tobacco);
and Raffles, History, vol. I, p. 132 (on indigo), and p. I34 (on cotton).
114 Dj. Br. 86, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 28 Feb. I806,
who mentioned that the eight tollgates (bandar) in Mataram, which controlled the rice
trade in that province (i.e. Kemlaka, Bantul, Gamping, Kadilangu, Brosot, Kalasan,
Wates and Kretek), brought in 9,500 ronde realen (i r.r. (Sp.D.)=63-66 stuivers)
annually; one unspecified tollgate in Kedhu (? Pasar Payaman) and subordinate
markets yielded 2,800 r.r., and four tollgates in Pajang (Masaran, Serenan,Jatinom and
Bayalali) together with the important market-cum-tollgate of Prambanan, a further
3,450 r.r. Thus a total of 15,750 r.r. (Dfl. 50,400) from the rice trade alone out of a total
customs' farm of 56,000 r.r. (Dfl. 179,200) in I805. See further Carey, 'Changing
Javanese Perceptions', Appendix 3. According to Waterloo (loc. cit.), the Chinese
tollgate keepers made most of their profits from the rice trade and would not dare to bid
for the customs' farms in the principalities if rice ceased to be a dutiable item, an idea
which had been proposed by some senior VOC officials as a way of bringing down rice
prices on north coast markets during the poor harvests of the early i8oos.
115 IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 8, Crawfurd, 'Report on Cadoe', p. 285; and Afdeling
Statistiek, De Residentie Kadoe, pp. 96-7.
116 dK 145, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 22 March I808
in M. Waterloo, 'Memorie van Overgave' (Yogyakarta), 4 April I808; and Anon., 'De
toestand van Bagelen', p. 68, p. 75.
94 PETER CAREY
province also sent four hundred and eighty pikul (i pikul=61.76i

kilograms) of dyed blue thread to Semarang each year. Local indigo
Jav. 'tom'), grown extensively in the Yogya region, was likewise used for
making the typical Mataram blue patterned bathik pieces known as kain
kelengan which were traded widely with the north-east coast.118 These
simple Javanese cloths and coarsely woven striped materials known as
lurik or ginggang found a ready sale in the markets of eastern Indonesia
(especially the Moluccas), and were even used by Daendels (in office as
Governor-General, I808- i) to equip his colonial army.l19 Their hard
wearing qualities made them extremely popular, so much so that after
the reopening of the Indonesian market to foreign imports during the
British period (181 -I16), locally produced cotton cloths continued to
hold their own against Indian and European piece-goods until well into
the nineteenth century.120
Besides these major exports, another local product from Kedhu and
Mataram, cold pressed peanut oil (lisah kacang), was much in demand on
the north-east coast where it was usually sold at twenty-five per cent
profit.121 The former region likewise exported two thousand five
hundred corges (bundles of twenty) finely woven pandanus reed mats
(klasa pesantren) which took their name from the important religious
centre of Pesantren in southern Kedhu.122
in M. Waterloo, 'Memorie van Overgave' (Yogyakarta), 4 April I808. On bathik

production in Central Java in the i9th century, see G. P. Rouffaer, De Voornaamste
Industrieen der Inlandsche Bevolking van Java en Madoera ('s-Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, 1904),
pp. I5-3 I

in M. Waterloo, 'Memorie van Overgave' (Yogyakarta), 4 April I808; Raffles, History,
vol. I, pp. 132-3; and W. Thorn, Memoir of the Conquest of Java with the Subsequent
Operations of the British Forces in The Oriental Archipelago (London: T. Egerton Military
Library, I815), p. 2I4.
119 See (on cloth exports from Bagelen to Eastern Indonesia), Dj. Br. 37, Raden
Adipati Danureja II (Yogyakarta) toJ. W. Moorrees (Yogyakarta), I6 May I8Io; and
Dj. Br. 6I, R. C. N. d'Abo (Yogyakarta) toJ. de Bruijn (Semarang), 4 Dec. i818; and,
for references to dispatches of cloth from Bagelin and other weaving areas to Semarang
for army uniforms, see S. Br. 23, J. W. Winter (Tanggang/Karang Bolong) to W. N.
Servatius (Surakarta), 2 July I8o8; W. N. Servatius (Surakarta) to H. W. Daendels
(Batavia/Bogor), 5 July I808; P. Engelhard (Yogyakarta) to Id., I8 Aug. I808; De
Graaf, Geschiedenis, p. 364; and Raffles, History, vol. I, p. I80.
120 Dj. Br. 3, F. G. Valck, 'Algemeen Verslag der Residentie Djocjocarta over hetjaar
1836', 31 March -1837; and Rouffaer, Voornaamste Industrieen, p. 120.
in M. Waterloo, 'Memorie van Overgave' (Yogyakarta), 4 April I808; IOL Mack. Pr.
21 pt 8, Crawfurd, 'Report on Cadoe', p. 287; Raffles, History, vol. I, p. 124; and Afdeling
Statistiek, De Residentie Kadoe, p. I 20.
122 MvK 3054, 'Beschrijving en Statisticke Rapport betreffende de Residentie
Kadoe', 1836, p. 38; and Raffles, History, vol. I, pp. i66-7.
Regional trade in south-central Java was not entirely confined to

local agricultural products. There is evidence, in Yogyakarta at least,
that some overseas imports also found their way into local markets,
although the volume was very restricted. In I808, these were mainly
confined to annual supplies of European bar iron (600 pikul) and steel
(20 pikul), Bengal opium (40 chests of I48 avoirdupois pounds), Chinese
silks (80 chests), paints and blue porcelain (trade ware), ginger from
Eastern Indonesia (6-700 pikul), gambir (U. Gambier Roxb., an
ingredient used in the preparation of betel) from Kalimantan (Borneo),
and small quantities ofJapanese red copper (30 pikul).123 The latter is a
rather interesting statistic for historians of the money economy in central
Java at this time for there are indications that, like the Dutch on the
north-east coast,Javanese metalworkers (e.g. in Kutha Gedhe) used this
expensive commodity for minting locally produced copper duit (far-
things) and other low denomination coins as late as July 181 .124
Although the Chinese had begun to assume an ever more dominant
role as middlemen in the commercial economy of south-central Java by
the early nineteenth century, and were particularly important in the
rice trade, there were still apparently some local markets which
remained the exclusive preserve of Javanese traders,125 namely,
Sangkeh (near Kebumen), Tangkilan and Gunung Saren in Bagelen,
and Imagiri, Mangiran (south-west of Yogya), Kembang-Arum
(north-west of Yogya near Sleman), Kadiraja (east of Yogya), Pramba-
nan and Kutha Gedhe in Mataram.126 In all these places trade was
carried on in jewellery and precious metals, piece goods, cotton thread,
peanut oil, beeswax, benzoin (incense) and spices, but by far the most
123 dK I45, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard, 22 March i808, in M.

Waterloo, 'Memorie van Overgave' (Yogyakarta), 4 April i808. References to the
purchases of European and Chinese goods by the Yogya court at this time can be found
in BL Add. MS. 12341 (Crawfurd coll., original letters and land grants from the Yogya
kraton), f. I63r-i64r, Report of Rad6n Tumenggung Mangundipura and Rad6n
Tumenggung Mangundirja, 20 Rejeb, A.J. I703 (23 Aug. 1777).
124 Dj. Br. 27, P. Engelhard (Yogyakarta) toJ. W.Janssens (Batavia), I2 July i8I i,
who referred to the melting down of copper coins from the Dutch-controlled Tawangsari
mint near Surabaya and the minting of debased copper duit by artificers in Kutha Gedhe
during the period of specie scarcity and rampant inflation just prior to the British
invasion of Java (Aug. 1811). See further Carey, 'Pangeran Dipanagara', VKI
(forthcoming, 1986), ch. V.
125 On the growing commercial importance of the Chinese in the principalities in the
early igth century, see Carey, 'ChangingJavanese Perceptions', pp. i6ff; and above n.
I 14; and, on theJavanese-controlled local markets, see Dj. Br. 3, F. G. Valck, 'Algemeen
Verslag der Residentie Djocjocarta over hetjaar 1836', 31 March 1837; and MvK 3055,
'Beschrijving en Statistieke Rapport betreffende de Residentie Djokjokarta' (I836).
126 Ibid.
96 PETER CAREY
important commercial centre was Kutha Gedhe (see Map 2) where, in

the i83os, some merchants could apparently boast individual trading
capital of between 50,000 and 60,ooo Dutch guilders (Dfl.) and business
contacts in Bagelen, Surakarta, Gresik, Demak, Cirebon, the Priangan
Highlands (West Java), and in some of the outer islands (e.g. Bali,
Lombok and Sumbawa).127'
The tollgate tariffs collected by Dutch officials in the i82os give a
good insight into the sort of merchandise which was being carried on the
main trade routes in the principalities in the early nineteenth century.
The following is an example of the tariff of the main tollgate at
Panaraga, a Surakarta-controlled outlying province in East Java (see
Map i):
Peanut oil (lisah kacang), palm sugar (gula Jawa), garlic, husked rice (beras),
unhusked rice (padi), seed padi (wijen), dried deer flesh (dhendheng), checked
cloths (kain poleng), raw cotton (kapas), beeswax (lanceng) for the bathik process,
white linen (kain mori), wax dyed (bathik) cloth, wild saffron flowers for the
preparation of red dye (kasumba), cubeb pepper (kumukus), galanga herb (laos),
potatoes (kenthang Welonda), sweet potatoes (katela), indigo (tom), red peppers
(lombok), tamarind fruit (asem), shrimp paste (trasi), soyabeans (kedhele), yellow
ochre (boreh), European iron and steel (wesi), catechu (gambir), areca (betel)
nuts (pinang), fine Chinese blue porcelain (trade ware), sweet apples, maize
(jagung), black pepper (merica), Javanese coffee (kopi Jaawa; i.e. Arabica
robusta), Javanese herbal medicines (jamu), cinnamon (kayu manis), tobacco
(tembakau), castor oil (lisah jarak), candle wax (lilin), and Javanese treebark
paper (kertas dluwang; a local Panaraga product from the famous religious
school at Tegalsari).128
SomeJavanese villages appear to have specialized in the manufacture

of particular products. A post-Java War report on the state of industry
and handicrafts in the Yogyakarta area, for example, detailed the
number of peasant families engaged in specialized occupations as
follows: five hundred cloth weavers in Sleman, three thousand palm oil
pressers and one hundred liquid indigo (nila) makers in Kalasan, one
thousand five hundred palm sugar boilers in Bantul Karang and
Sleman, three hundred limestone burners in Sleman and Gamping, one
127 Ibid.; and see also Dj. Br. 3, F. G. Valck, 'Algemeen Verslag der Residentie
Djocjocarta over hetjaar I833', 30 Nov. I834 (on the main market centres in the Yogya
area post- 830 and the shift in trade from Yogya to Kutha Gedh6 during theJava War);
Dj. Br. 4, A. H. W. Baron de Kock, 'Algemeen Verslag der Residentie Djokjokarta over
hetjaar I850', March 85I (on Kutha Gedh6); and Mitsuo Nakamura, 'The Crescent',
p. 64, 87-8, p. 222 (on the immense wealth of the Kutha Gedh6 'Ratu Dagang'
['merchant kings'] in the early part of the present century and their wide trading
contacts).
128 S. Br. 170, Tariff List for the tollgate of Panaraga (East Java), i830.
hundred stone cutters and pot bakers in Bantul Karang, Sleman and
Galur, four hundred teak-wood foresters and sirap (teak tile) cutters in
Gunung Kidul, and seven hundred and seventy-three families of
saltmakers on the south coast. In addition, the same report estimated
that there were eight hundred indigo dyers and one hundred and fifty
families of charcoal brazier smelters scattered throughout the region.129
The general level of specialization in sotlth-central Javanese villages at
this time should not be over-exaggerated, however. There appear to
have been very few skilled artisans such as carpenters and smiths
resident in the countryside. For the most part,Javanese farmers made all
their own implements and repaired their own ploughshares and other
agricultural equipment. Only in the event of a major repair having to be
undertaken, such as the welding of a metal point on to a plough, was
specialist help enlisted, usually in the form of skilled artificers from the
Kalang community, a separate cultural subgroup of unknown origin
(perhaps forest dwellers) who were renowned as carpenters, metal-
workers and merchants.130 A contemporary source noted that senior
Javanese provincial officials (Bupati) would often have such men in their
service, and it was they who built and maintained all the carts (jengkalan;
pedhati) used in country areas. 131 The 'tax free' villages (desapradikan) set
aside for Islamic scholars (ulama) and students of religion (santri) were an
exception here: they often counted expert artisans (especially car-
penters) amongst their inhabitants and certain crafts, such as fine mat
weaving and paper making, were their speciality.132
Product specialization in some villages, the burgeoning trade in local
products and the cash demands of the tribute (pajeg) and tollgate
(bandar) systems (see below), all led to an increased level of monetization
in the local economy of south-central Java by the turn of the nineteenth
century. There are numerous indications, at least in the fertile core
apanage regions, that low denomination coins, especially copper duit
and halfduit (Jav. 'sigar'; lit.: 'cleft' money) enjoyed a wide circulation.
129 Dj. Br. 3, F. G. Vaick, 'Algemeen Verslag der Residentie Djocjocarta over hetjaar
I836', 31 March 1837.
130 IOL Mack. Pr. 82 pt 3 , Kyai Adipati Sura-Adimanggala of Demak, 'Notices of
the Arrangement of the Native Administration or Government & Magistracy ofJava as
continued under the Dutch Government from Ancient Times', Aug. I812, p. 297; and
(on the Kalang), see T. J. Bezemer (ed.), Beknopte Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indie ('s-
Gravenhage & Leiden: Nijhoff/Brill, 192 ), p. 218; and Raffles, History, vol I, pp. 327-9.
131 IOL Mack. Pr. 82 pt 3I, Kyai Adipati Sura-Adimanggala of Demak, 'Notices', p.
297.
132 Anon. (signedJ. L. V.), 'Bijdrage tot de kennis der residentie Madioen', TJVIvol.
17 no. 2 (1855), p. I I; and Claude Guillot, 'Le dluwang ou "papierjavanais"', Archipel 26
(I983), PP. 105-I6.
98 PETER CAREY
In the aftermath of the British assault on Yogyakarta in June 1812,

which had led to a temporary flight of coinage from the local markets,
the new Sultan (Hamengkubuwana III, r. I812-14) had to take steps to
see that enough ten cent copper pieces (picis) from his own treasury were
placed in circulation in order to revive trade.133 Indeed, the Javanese
phrase 'lir arebutpicis' ('like [crowds] scrabbling for ten cent pieces') was
commonplace enough to be.used as a derogatory metaphor in the
Javanese historical literature of the period.T34 After the return of the
Dutch colonial administration in August i8I6, steps were taken to
ensure that enough government copper coinage from the Tawangsari
mint in Surabaya was in circulation in the principalities so that locally
minted Javanese coins (e.g. from Kutha Gedhe), Balinese rupiah, false
bank notes and other counterfeit money could be withdrawn.135 These
measures met with partial success. By 1823, the Dutch Resident of
Kedhu was remarking on the greater readiness of the local population to
make market purchases in cash. But the increased circulation of copper
money led to the disappearance of silver coinage from the local
economy.136
133 Peter Carey (ed.), The British in Java, s8ii-i6: A Javanese Account (Bangkok: White
Lotus, 1986), n. 227 of the babad.
134 Ibid., Canto LXII v. 3 of the babad.
135 Dj. Br. 60, Besluit van den President en Raad van Finantien, 13 Jan. I 8 17 no. 17 (on the
phasing out of circulation of Balinese and Javanese copper duit); ibid., 13 Aug. 8 I 7 no.
32 (on the circulation of false bank notes in the principalities); Dj. Br. 6I, Proclamation
of the Commissioners-General (signed R. Dozy), 20 April I818; and ibid., 25June I818
(on the decision to mint copper duit and double duit (Jav. 'gobang') at the Tawangsari
mint); Dj. Br. 60, President Raad van Finantien (Batavia) to H. G. Nahuys van Burgst
(Yogyakarta), 24 Jan. 1817 (on the regular monthly imports of 5,000 Java Rupees [7
J.R. = 30 stuivers] worth of copper duit and other coins from the north coast to Yogya);
Dj. Br. 6i, F. de Bruijn (Semarang) to H. G. Nahuys van Burgst (Yogya), I2 Aug. i818
(on the dispatch of f. I767.I7 worth of Yogya duit which had been phased out of
circulation); Dj. Br. 64, R. H. Cateau van Rouveld (Surabaya) to H. G. Nahuys van
Burgst (Yogyakarta), 24 March 82 ; and Dj. Br. 5 C, R. C. N. d'Abo (Yogyakarta) to
R. H. Cateau van Rouveld (Surabaya), i o April I821 (on the arrest of a Surabaya-born
counterfeiter named Nala Gareng caught minting false money in Yogya and travelling
under a forged passport).
136 Baud 91, P. le Clercq, 'Copie-Verslag der Residentie Kadoe over het jaar I823',
30 March I824, p. 6. The depreciation of the copper duit in relation to the silver Java
Rupee (post- 826 Dutch guilder) from par to 122: oo in I823 is mentioned in Dj. Br. 53,
A. H. Smissaert (Yogyakarta) to G. A. G. Ph. van der Capellen (Batavia/Bogor), I Jan.
I824. See also L. de Bree, Gedenkboek van de Javasche Bank (Weltevreden: G. H. Kolff,
1928), vol. I, p. 154, who noted that copper had virtually taken over the role of silver by
the I820's. In 1826 there was an official revaluation of copper duits in relation to Dutch
guilders in connection with the coinage reform (see Note on Currency Values and
Abbreviations), but this had little impact at the village level where transactions were
now wholly in copper tender.
WAITING FOR THE JUST KING9 99
Before these developments occurred there is evidence that a consider-

able amount of silver money had circulated alongside copper in the
principalities. These included Spanish silver dollars (Jav. 'ringgit';
'pasmat'; 'reyal'; Dutch: 'ronde real'; 'Spaansche mat') worth at this time
about 3.30-3.60 Dutch guilders (i.e. 63-66 stuiver), and silver ducatoons
minted in Holland which could be exchanged for as much as four Dutch
guilders (i.e. 8o stuiver).137 Tribute (pajeg) payments by apanage holders
were usually required to be made in silver money and some rulers
amassed sizeable sums in royal treasure. In I808, for example, it was
reckoned that the second Sultan ofYogyakarta (Hamengkubuwana II,
r. I792-i81o0/8 1I -12/1826-28), a sovereign renowned for his covetous-
ness and heavy tax demands, had a fortune worth about 1.2 million
Spanish dollars in gold and silver money, besides a very large sum in
diamonds, most of which was carried off as war booty by Daendels and
Raffles between 181 and I812.138 At the same time, as we have already
seen, substantial hoards of silver money were also built up by some sikep
peasants living in fertile cash crop areas.139
But it would be wrong to conclude that the rural economy of the
principalities was everywhere extensively monetized. It seems that
poorer peasants found it especially difficult to meet their land-rent
payments to the European government after the introduction of
Raffles's land-rent scheme in 1812-13, and many were forced into the
hands of Chinese moneylenders who alone were able to make advances
upon their crops in cash.140 Raffles even seems to have exacerbated the
situation by discriminating against the poorer peasant cultivators in his
land-rent regulations ('Revenue Instructions') of February I 814 which
prohibited payment in kind by owners of dry crop fields producing
maize and cassava, while permitting it under certain conditions for rice
137 On the contemporary exchange rates, see Stockdale, Sketches, pp. o02-3; and
Carey (ed.), Archive, vol. I, Appendix IV. The amount of silver money in circulation in
early gth centuryJava is mentioned in G. F. Davidson, Trade and Travel in the Far East or
Recollections of Twenty-one years passed in Java, Singapore, Australia and China (London:
Madden & Malcolm, i846), pp. 2-3 ('. . . silver money was as plentiful in Netherlands
India in those days [i.e. pre Java War], as copper doits have since become .. .'.)
138 dK I45, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 2I Feb. I808 in
M. Waterloo, 'Memorie van Overgave' (Yogyakarta), 4 April I808. On the war booty
taken by Daendels in January i8I I and Raffles in June I812, see H. W. Daendels, Staat
der Jederlandsche Oostindische Bezittingen, onder het Bestuur van den Gouverneur-Generaal Herman
Willem Daendels, Ridder, Luitenant-Generaal, &c. in de jaren i808-1i8i ('s-Gravenhage:
Gebroeders van Cleef, 1814), Bijlage 2, Additioncle Stukkcn no. 24; and Carey (ed.),
Archive, vol. I, p. 12 n. 4.
139 See above Section III pp. 85-6.
140 See above n. 66, esp. Bastin, Mative Policies, p. 58.
I00 PETER CAREY
farmers.141 The difficulties experienced by the less well off members of

the Javanese village community in getting access to money can also be
seen in a report by a Dutch official in 1812, which noted that peasants
selling small quantities of local produce at neighbouring markets would
often have to borrow the money for the tollgate dues from their village
heads.142 It is also clear that in some outlying regions such as Banyumas
and Japan (present-day Mojokerto), and even in far-flung nagara agung
territories like Pacitan and Gunung Kidul, the vast majority of market
transactions were carried out by barter.143
An insight into the very frugal lifestyle of many non-sikep peasants and
landless labourers (numpang; bujang) in the south-central Javanese
countryside at this time was given byJ. W. Winter (c. I779-1839), the
father of the renowned Javanologist C. F. Winter Sr (1799- 859), who
served as Residency Translator in Javanese at both Yogyakarta (I 799-
I806) and Surakarta (1806-20).14 He described how twelve copper
farthings (duit) a day was the usual daily allowance of an unmarried
man, and these would be spent in the following fashion: three farthings
on sirih (betel) and tobacco, three on vegetables, salt and soyabean cake
(tempe), and six (i.e. half his allowance) on rice.145 A farmer with a wife
141 Raffles, History, vol. II. Appendix L no. II, 'Revenue Instructions', clauses 86-9,
pp. cclv-cclvi, esp. clause 86 dealing with the severe conditions imposed on payments in
kind by rice cultivators which was done, in Raffles's words, 'chiefly with a view to
discourage such species of payment, government wishing to receive as far as practicable,
their revenues in money alone'; and clause 88, which stated that only unhusked rice
(pari/beras) and not maize (or cassava) would be considered as an alternative revenue
payment since cultivators, in most cases, hold some of each description of land (ie. sawah
and dry fields (tegalan))', and 'this distinction will not be felt as a hardship', an
assumption which was much too optimistic for areas such as the dry central plain of
Kedhu where maize fields abounded and a considerable part of the pre- 1812 revenue
payments were made in kind not money, see IOL Mack. Pr. 2I pt 8, Crawfurd, 'Report
on Cadoe', p. 304.
142 KITLV H 503, J. I. van Sevenhoven, 'Aanteekeningen gehouden op eene reis
overJava van Batavia near de Oosthoek in ... I812' (6 April-2 August I812) (ed. F. de
Haan), p. 74.
143 IOL Mack. Pr. 2I pt o1, H. G. Jourdan, 'Report on Japan and Wirosobo', 28
April I813, p. 357; AN Kabinet, 13 Sept. 1832 no. 599, J. E. de Sturler (Banyumas) toJ.
van den Bosch (Batavia/Bogor), 5 Sept. I832; R. A. Kern, 'Uit Oude Bescheiden
(Geschiedenis van de Afdeling Patjitan in de Eerste Helft der ige Eeuw) met bijlage',
Tjdschrift van het Binnenlands Bestuur (Batavia), vol. 34 (I908), p. i65; and MvK 3054,
'Beschrijving en Statistieke Rapport betreffende de Residentie Djokjokarta' (i836).
144 See G. P. Rouffaer's introduction toJ. W. Winter's, 'Beknopte Beschrijving van
het HofSoerakarta in I824', BKI, vol. 54 (I902), pp. 16-20.
145 Ibid., pp. 46-7. On wage rates for coolies in CentralJava at this time which ranged
between I0-20 cents (8-I6 copper duit) a day in the principalities and 30 cents (25
copper duit) in Semarang, see Dj. Br. 30, D. Ainslie (Yogyakarta) to T. S. Raffles
(Batavia/Bogor), 30 Nov. i815; KITLV H 530, Van Sevenhoven, 'Aanteekeningen',
WAITING FOR THE 'JUST KING' IOI
and children could exist on about twenty-five farthings, with the woman
contributing an extra fifteen farthings a day to the family budget by her
activities at the loom or by acting as a tradeswoman (bakul) carrying
goods produced by the family to the local market.146 In this context the
sale of agricultural products from a farmer's yard or orchard (pekaran-
gan) was often of crucial importance for the economic survival of peasant
families, especially during the times of scarcity (jaman paceklik) between
two harvests.147
According to Winter, a poor farmer would usually leave for his fields
before sunrise at five o'clock each morning. His first meal of the day
would be eaten at noon, and a second repast would be taken after sunset
on his return home. Some of the more indigent cultivators, however,
would eat only once a day. In the evening they would rarely burn oil
lamps, relying instead on the light of their hearth fires which were
kindled in the centre of their houses to protect them against the clouds of
night-time mosquitoes and for communal warmth.148 The houses and
huts used by the Javanese peasantry at this time were often of very
simple construction, the single-hipped 'omah limasan' being preferred in
view of its low building costs.149 In this respect, the style of peasant
architecture in the central and eastern districts ofJava was considerably
less elaborate than in the mountainous western regions (i.e. the
Priangan Highlands) which enjoyed a greater abundance of building
materials and had not suffered from the Dutch encroachments on the
teak forests in the provinces of the princely states bordering on the
European-controlled north coast.150
The ambitions of the poorer Javanese peasantry, in Winter's view,
pp. 49-50; Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p. 252 n. 70; Anon., 'Journal of an
Excursion to the Native Provinces ofJava in the Year 1828 During the War with Dipo
Negoro', Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia (Singapore), vol. 9 (1854), p.
158; and Dj. Br. 58, J. F. W. van Nes (Yogyakarta) to Commissarissen ter regeling der
Vorstenlanden (Surakarta), 3 June I830. See also dK 145, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta)
to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 22 March i808, who reckoned that the annual savings of
the poorer Javanese peasant households, after taxes had been paid on the rice harvest,
only amounted to two ronde real (Dfl. 6.40).
146 Winter, 'Beknopte Beschrijving', pp. 47-8; and see further IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 4,
Crawfurd, 'Sultan's Country', p. 148; and pt 5, Id., 'Report upon the District of
Pachitan', Nov. I812, pp. I69-70.
147 Raffles, History, vol. I, p. I Io.
148 Winter, 'Beknopte Beschrijving', p. 49.
149 Raffles, History, vol. I, pp. 79-8i; and Baud 9I, 'Copie-Verslag der Residentie
Kadoe over het jaar 1823', 30 March I824, p. 7, where the Dutch Resident of Kedhu,
Pieter le Clercq (in office, 1821--25), remarked that, on the eve of the Java War, the
standard of houses used by peasants in the region, indicated 'very scanty and poor
resources'.
150 Raffles, History, vol. I, p. 81.
102 PETER CAREY
were very modest and were limited to saving enough money for the
purchase of a buffalo which could give a peasant sufficient independence
to be able to work his lands by himself for about half a day. 'Then', in
Winter's words, 'he [counts himself] rich and more satisfied than the
wealthiest man.' 51
Although the averageJavanese peasant lived in a plain fashion, there
were few restraints on marriage and European observers noticed that it
was customary forJavanese living in rural areas to marry early: the men
at around sixteen, and women at between thirteen and fourteen. 152 This
was because marriage had distinct financial advantages, women being
generally recognized as having more dexterity than men in money
matters and being able to make an important contribution to the
household budget by their marketing activities.153 Celibacy was also
viewed with distaste in Javanese peasant culture,154 but divorces were
frequent and partners would separate with very little ceremony in order
to choose new spouses. The practice was apparently so common that, on
his inspection journeys, Crawfurd had been pointed out individuals of
both sexes who had been married as many as ten or twelve times.155
Modern rural sociologists have pointed out that frequent divorces
usually mean fewer births per woman, and longer gaps between them,
but it is clear that children were highly valued by peasant cultivators at
this time and played a vital role in the Javanese peasant economy.
According to Raffles, most cultivators would raise families of between
eight and ten children, of whom about half would survive into
adolescence.156 Infants were an economic burden on their parents for
151 Winter, 'Beknopte Beschrijving', p. 48. Raffles, History, vol. I, p. I I , reckoned
that the price of a buffalo in the 'eastern districts' was I2-16Java Rupees (Dfl. I5-20);
whereas Crawfurd (IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 4, 'Sultan's Country', p. 88) estimated the cost
of smaller bullocks at betweenJ.R. 8 and 20 (Dfl. 10-25) and the larger kind at between
J.R. 50 and 80 (Dfl. 62-100).
152 Raffles, History, vol. I, p. 70; IOL Mack. Pr. 2I pt 4, Crawfurd, 'Sultan's Country',
p. I49; and pt 5, Id., 'Report on Pacitan', p. I69. The same marital ages were common
for the two sexes in court circles, see dK I45, M. Waterloo, 'Memorie van Overgave', 4
April I808. On the early marriages amongst young women in present-day Java, see
Hildred Geertz, The Javanese Family. A Study of Kinship and Socialization (New York: Free
Press of Glencoe, I96I), p. 56, who points out that girls are usually married after their
first menstruation, especially if they have evinced a keen interest in the opposite sex, in
order that they do not acquire a reputation for loose morals and thus diminish their
chances of making a successful marriage.
154 IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 4, Crawfurd, 'Sultan's Country', p. 149.
155 Ibid., p. 150; and IOL Mack. Pr. 2I pt Io, H. G.Jourdan, 'Report on Japan and
Wirosobo', 28 April 1813, p. 349 (on the frequency of divorces and unfaithfulness of
women in the eastern outlying provinces).
156 Raffles, History, vol. I, pp. 70, 109.
WAITING FOR THE 'JUST KING' I03
only a very short time and, provided they survived the scourges of
endemic diseases like smallpox (see below), they soon became valuable
assistants in the houses and fields. Boys were sometimes given a short
period of Qur'anic education with a local kaum or modin (village 'priest'),
but most started work immediately when they reached the age of
eight.157 At this stage, boys were taught the rudiments of agriculture,
and girls began to receive instruction from the older womenfolk in
spinning and weaving, an occupation at which they would sometimes be
active, in Winter's words, 'day and night' turning out coarsely woven
clothes for their families and more finely worked materials for the local
markets.158 Some also took part in various agricultural duties, espe-
cially the transplanting and harvesting of rice, activities which were
regarded as the particular preserve of women. Thus a large family was
an undoubted asset to peasant cultivators with opportunities to open out
new land and who were faced in the early nineteenth century with
increasingly onerous fiscal and corvee demands from the rulers and
apanage holders (see below Section V). The financial incentives
propelling Javanese peasants into contracting early marriages and
having extensive families, led, in times of peace such as existed in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to a rapid population growth
in many country areas.159
Reliable population figures are not available for this period, but
estimates of general demographic trends in the principalities can be
established by comparing the number ofcacah (households) recorded at
the time of the Giyanti Settlement in I755 with those registered in the
'New Cadastral Survey' (Serat Ebuk Anyar) in I773. This shows an
increase of seventeen per cent over eighteen years, or an annual growth
rate of o.9 per cent.160 As Ricklefs has pointed out, however, the 1755
157 Dj. Br. i9g, F. V. H. A. de Stuers, (?), 'Inleiding tot de geschiedenis van den
oorlog opJava', n.d., p. 37 (on the education of village boys in Qur'an repetition [turutan],
Arabic prayers, and the'study of Arabic letters [alip-alipan] from their seventh year); AN,
Kabinet 43 I, 9 Sept. 1831, Secretary of Kedhu Residency (Magelang) toJ. van den
Bosch (Batavia/Bogor), 29 Sept. 1831 (on the reluctance of parents to allow their
children to remain long at local religious schools because they needed them for light
agricultural duties); and Winter, 'Beknopte Beschrijving', p. 49, who asserted that most
peasant families neglected the formal education of their children entirely and
concentrated on giving them instruction in agriculture and weaving.
158 Raffles, History, vol. I, p. 86; IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 4, Crawfurd, 'Sultan's Country',
pp. 97-104; and Anon., Lettres de Java, p. IoI.
159 Raffles, History, vol. I, p. 70; and for a modern view of the crucial role of children in
the Javanese peasant economy, see Benjamin White, 'The Economic Importance of
Children in a Javanese Village', in Moni Nag (ed.), Population and Social Organization
(The Hague: Mouton, I975), pp. I27-46.
160 Ricklefs, Mangkubumi, pp. 159-60.
PETER CAREY
104
cacah figures were undoubtedly too high since they were based on
conventionalized figures from the mid-seventeenth century and bore no
relationship to the demographic realities of mid-eighteenth-century
Java when the population had declined sharply after years of warfare
and political instability between 1675 and I755.161 Ricklefs thus
suggests that, given this artificially inflated I755 figure, the population
in the Javanese kingdoms and the European-controlled areas of the
north-east coast (pasisir) was almost certainly growing at a rate in excess
of one per cent per annum, and probably substantially more than that
for many areas in the late eighteenth century.162 This may have some
important implications for recent scholars of Java's demographic
history, who have all tried to explain the island's remarkable 'popula-
tion explosion' entirely in nineteenth-century (especially post-I83o)
terms.163
Percipient observers of the agrarian society of south-central Java
before theJava War were particularly struck by the age structure of the
population and the large numbers of children under the age of twelve.
The Resident of Yogyakarta, Matthias Waterloo (in office, 1803-08),
for example, reckoned that births had exceeded deaths in the Yogya
area between 1785 and I805 by a factor of seven to five,164 and about
two-fifths of the estimated 328,921 inhabitants of Kedhu in 1823 were
said to be children.165 Although infant and child mortality rates inJava
at this time remained very high (in some areas, forty-five per cent of all
children died before their twelfth birthday), sufficient numbers were
surviving into adulthood to ensure a steady rise in the peasant
population of the principalities.166 Meanwhile, the geographical spread
161 Ricklefs, 'Statistical Evidence', pp. 28-9; and see also IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 4,
Crawfurd, 'Sultan's Country', p. 147 (on the destructiveness of the Giyanti wars ( I746-
57) and the great increase in population since 1755).
162 Ricklefs, 'Statistical Evidence', pp. 29-30; and see also Dj. Br. 86, M. Waterloo
(Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 28 Feb. i806 who estimated (on the
conservative basis of five persons per cacah ('household')) that the population of the
princely territories had risen from 905,000 in I755 to 1.4 millions in I806.
163 See A. Peper, 'Population Growth in Java in the i9th Century: A New
Interpretation', Population Studies, vol. 24 no. I (March 1970), pp. 7 -84, who advances
rather dubious theoretical figures for Java's demographic growth in I8o0; Widjojo
Nitisastro, Population Trends in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), pp. I-
26; and Peter Boomgaard, 'Bevolkingsgroei en welvaart opJava (I800-1942)', in R. N.
J. Kamerling (ed.), Indonesie toen en nu (Amsterdam: Intermediar, I980), pp. 35-52.
164 Dj. Br. 86, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 28 Feb. i806.
165 Baud 91, P. le Clercq, 'Copie-Verslag der Residentie Kadoe over het jaar 1823',
30 March 1824, p. 3.
166 Ibid.; and Bram Peper, Jumlah dan pertumbuhan penduduk asli di Jawa dalam abad
kesembilanbelas. Suatu pandangan lain, khususnya mengenai masa I800-I850 (trans. M. Rasjad
St. Suleman) (Jakarta: Bhratara, 1975), p. 13.
WAITING FOR THE 'JUST KING' IO5
of this demographic growth appears to have been rather uneven. The

core apanage regions, where the greatest amount of land development
had taken place, supported a rapidly growing population, whereas in
some of the eastern outlying provinces the number of inhabitants
actually fell by about five per cent between 1755 and 1773.167 This was
partly due to internal administrative changes at the courts which had
seen large areas of the mancanagara regions reclassified as core territories
(nagara agung) in order to provide more apanage land for the fast
increasing kraton populations (see further below Section V).168 But,
even if this reclassification had not taken place, the figures for
population growth in the eastern districts would still have shown a
slower rate of increase than in the central areas.169 The causes for this
may have been local: namely the prevailing insecurity in the outlying
regions where the number of robberies appears to have been far higher
than in the nagara agung, and the structure of the royal administrations
which delegated power to the provincial officials (Bupati) in the outlying
regions, but ruled directly (and usually more effectively as far as local
security was concerned) through the court chancelleries in the core
lands (see above Section II).
The steady population growth in the central apanage districts from
the mid-eighteenth century can be partly ascribed to the factors already
mentioned, namely the long period of peace (until 1825), the incentives
for opening up new land, the very early marriages in the rural
communities and the great importance of children in the Javanese
peasant economy. To these can be added the generally healthy
167 Ricklefs, Mangkubumi, p. 159. See also Raffles, History, vol. I, p. 62 facing, Table
no. II, 'Table exhibiting the Population ofJava and Madura, according to a Census
taken by the British Government in the Year 1815', which shows that the most densely
populated areas in 1815 were Semarang, with 281 inhabitants per square mile, and
Kedhu with 238.75. Yogyakarta and Surakarta, both with an estimated 147.50 people
per square mile, came sixth in density of population after Pekalongan, Batavia and its
Environs (Ommelanden), Cirebon, and Gresik. The average for Java as a whole,
including the very sparsely populated Oosthoek (Pasuruan, Prabalingga and Banyu-
wangi) with an average of 33.66 inhabitants per square mile and the Priangan
Highlands with an average of 24.33, was a little over one hundred souls.
168 Ricklefs, Mangkubumi, p. 159, who mentions that amongst the more important
districts included in the central apanage regions (nagara agung) in I773 were
Kadhuwang, Banyumas, Pamerdin and Pacitan. On Banyumas, see further Hugen-
holtz, 'Traditional Javanese Society', pp. i6-17 and below Section V.
169 See Raffles, History, vol. I, p. 62 facing, Table no. II; and vol. II, p. 288 facing,
tables for 'Population of the Territory of the Susuhunan, 8 I 5' and 'Population of the
Territory of the Sultan, i815', which contain figures apparently confirming this
imbalance. Thus, with nearly half the land area of the principalities in I815, the eastern
outlying areas (mancanagara) accounted for only about ten per cent of the population of
Surakarta and just over seventeen per cent in Yogyakarta.
Io6 PETER CAREY
condition of the peasantry, the lack of large-scale epidemics between

1760 and 1821, the availability of adequate food supplies and the
balanced diet of families in country areas.
The generally healthy condition of the Javanese peasantry in the
early nineteenth century was commented on by Raffles.170 It is likely
that he may have been drawing as favourable a picture as possible in
order to reflect creditably on the condition of the local population
during the period of his administration in Java (I8II--I6). But what
does seem clear is that there were no large-scale epidemics in the central
part of the island from the mid-eighteenth century (cf. the 1757/60
epidemic in western Java, Pekalongan, Banyumas and Bagelen) until
April 182I when the first of a cycle of virulent Asiatic cholera epidemics
reachedJava from Bengal and the Malay peninsula.171 The only serious
ailment in terms of mortality during the years between 1755 and I82I
was smallpox, and this wrought such havoc amongst infants and
children that it was known as the 'lara bocah' ('children's ailment')
amongst theJavanese.172 Despite its virulence, however, it only reached
epidemic proportions in the more sparsely populated areas ofJava such
as the eastern outlying provinces (e.g. Madiun and Kedhiri) of the
principalities and the remote Priangan Highlands, where, during an
outbreak of the disease in 1780, some twenty per cent of those affected
are said to have succumbed. 73 Elsewhere, in densely settled regions like
171 See M.J. E. Muller, 'Kort verslag aangaande de cholera-morbus opJava', VBG,
vol. I3 (I832) pt i, pp. I-I I ; H. Schillet, 'Eenige waarneming omtrent de cholera
orientalis', ibid., pt 2, pp. I3-82; Crawfurd, A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands
and Adjacent Countries (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, I971), pp. I20-I, sub:
'Diseases' (where he stated erroneously that the first outbreak of Asiatic cholera
occurred in Java in 1820 and not I82I); IOL Mack. Pr. 2I pt 4, Crawfurd, 'Sultan's
Country', p. I46 (on the lack of epidemics and pestilence in central Java); and Peter
Boomgaard, 'Disease, death and disasters inJava, 1820-1880: a preliminary survey and
analysis of changing patterns of morbidity and mortality', paper prepared for the
Conference on Disease, Death and Drugs in Modern Southeast Asia (ANU, Canberra,
May 1983), passim, esp. pp. 12-13.
172 Raffles, History, vol. I, p. 72; Boomgaard, 'Disease, death and disasters', p. 5; and
Baud 306, W. H. van IJsseldijk, 'Nota voor den Prov. Res. den Majoor Nahuijs te
Djocjocarta', 22 Oct. I816 in 'Rapport van W. H. van IJsseldijk omtrent de
Vorstenlanden', II Dec. I816, in which the erstwhile Patih of Yogyakarta, Raden
Adipati Danureja I (in office, 1755-99), is quoted as having said that 'too long a period
of peace was just as disastrous as a time of warfare for the inhabitants of (south-central)
Java and the (Javanese) people regard child deaths as a wise provision of Providence'.
173 Boomgaard, 'Death, disease and disasters', p. 5 quoting W. van Hogendorp,
'Redevoering der inentinge tot de ingezetenen van Batavia, na haare terug komste van
Samarang; overhandigd door Mr. W. van Hogendorp', VBG (ISt printing), vol. 2
(1780) pt. I 5, p. 209. On the sparse population of the Priangan Highlands at this time,
see above n. I67.
WAITING FOR THE 'JUST KING I07
the core apanage territories, the adult population appear to have

developed a high degree of immunity. The fact that smallpox was
referred to locally in these areas as the 'children's disease' indicates that
it had been there for a long time, for only 'old' (i.e. long established or
endemic) diseases affect predominantly young children.174 Moreover,
as we have seen, Javanese parents usually made provision for the high
infant mortality rate by having more babies.175 A start was also made
on smallpox vaccination in the principalities in I804, although the
number of children actually immunized was insignificant until after the
Java War.176
Thus, from the medical point of view, the main factors influencing the
decline in the death rate in south-central Java from the mid-eighteenth
century onwards were the negative ones of a lack of deaths caused
directly or indirectly by warfare (here the long lasting political
settlement at Giyanti was of central importance) and the absence of
serious epidemics until the third decade of the nineteenth century. The
latter was partly the result of good fortune, but it was also due to a
greater resistance to disease on the part of the south-central Javanese
adult population as a whole, itself the outcome of a greater availability
of nutritious foodstuffs during this period (see above pp. 88-93). It is
significant in this respect that the Asiatic cholera epidemics of the early
i82os should have occurred during times of drought, harvest failure and
famine (see below Section VI). The localized food shortages which
resulted from the deteriorating agricultural situation in these years led
to a sharp decline in the health and dietary patterns ofJavanese living in
rural areas. Between 1821 and 1825, for example, European and
Javanese observers noted an increased consumption of less nourishing
secondary crops such as maize and cassava (sweet potato), as well as
tubers, leaves and grasses grubbed up from forests and waste lands.177
174 Boomgaard, 'Death, disease and disasters', p. 5.

175 See above ns. I56 and I72.
176 Peper, Jumlah dan pertumbuhan penduduk asli di Jawa, pp. 49-70; Winter, 'Beknopte
Beschrijving', p. 78; and for Governor-General G. A. G. Ph. van der Capellen's (in
office, 1816-26) decrees concernings smallpox vaccination in Indonesia (Reglementen op
de uitoefening der koepokinenting in Nederlandsch-Indie), see AN, BGG in rade, i April 1820
and 19 April I821 no. i6.
177 Dj. Br. 5iC, R. C. N. d'Abo (Yogyakarta) to President Raad van Finantien
(Batavia), 26 June 82 1; Soekanto, Dua Raden Saleh. Dua Nasionalis dalam Abad ke-9g.
Suatu Halaman dari Sedjarah Nasional Indonesia (Djakarta: N. V. Pusaka Asli, i95 ), p. 29
(quoting a letter of February 1822 from Raden Mas Muhamad Saleh, a son of Kyai
Adipati Sura-Adimanggala V of Semarang (died I837), to the Governor-General,
about the plight of the inhabitants of Kedhu who had been forced by famine to eat leaves
and weeds). See further Winter, 'Beknopte Beschrijving', p. 49; Raffles, History, vol. I, p.
Io8 PETER CAREY
The case mortality due to the cholera epidemics was thus much higher
than it might have been under normal circumstances. But, until these
terrible years before theJava War, mostJavanese peasants seem to have
been able to enjoy a predominantly rice diet, and times of serious dearth
178
were rare.7
Much more research will have to be done on Javanese agrarian

society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries before any
firm conclusions can be drawn about the demographic history of the
period. It should be remembered, however, that quite apart from
medical and dietary factors, population growth is also influenced by
psychological conditions which are much harder to quantify. A useful
insight is given here by Winter's charming description of the poorer
peasant and his ideal of owning his own buffalo and being able to work
his lands for himself (see above). The possibility of such advancement in
itself may have acted as a powerful spur to procreation. Especially
important in this respect was the availability of agricultural land in the
core apanage regions immediately after the Giyanti Settlement (1755),
and, more crucial still, the possibilities for disguising newly developed
land from the unwelcome attentions of royal land surveyors. In order to
illustrate this, and ascertain why agrarian conditions began to deterior-
ate so sharply in the years before the Java War, it is necessary to turn
back briefly to the Javanese apanage system and examine the ways in
which this was modified to cope with the increased fiscal demands of the
rulers.
V. The Javanese Apanage System and the Village

Community in the Late Eighteenth and Early
Nineteenth Centuries
Reference has already been made above (see Section II) to the
increasing use of tax-farming methods by members of the Javanese
official (priyayi) elite from the late eighteenth century onwards, and the
change to a fixed money tax known as 'pajeg mati' in many core apanage
I22; and Dj. Br. 4, W. C. E. Baron van Geer, 'Algemeen Verslag der Residentie
Djokjokarta over den jaar I855', March i856, on the types of foodstuffs, including
malinjo (G. Gnemon L.), maize, beans (kacang) and yams (ubi), comsumed byJavanese at
times of harvest failure and dearth. See also below n. 290.
178 Raffles, History, vol. I, pp. 99, Io9; Peper, Jumlah dan pertumbuhan penduduk asli di
Jawa, pp. 42-3; and IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', p. 237. On the
poor harvests of the decades 1790- 81 o, which led to rice shortages in south-centralJava
but not famines, see below Section V p. I I3).
WAITING FOR THE 'JUST KING IO9
areas as a response to the British territorial annexations of I812. The

Javanese rulers also played a part in stepping up the fiscal burdens on
the 'landowning' peasants at the village level through various adminis-
trative innovations designed to boost royal revenues and increase the
area of apanage land available for their relatives and retainers.
The background to these changes must be sought, paradoxically, in
the inefficiencies of theJavanese apanage system and the inability of the
rulers to tap the new sources of wealth being generated at the village
level by the activities of the 'landowning' sikep peasants and their
dependants. Despite the seemingly impressive power structure and
organization of the central Javanese courts, the fact remained that the
rulers did not have the administrative resources at their disposal to claim
back all the newly developed lands or even to impose new tribute
burdens on them. No revised cadastral registers of cultivated land were
drawn up after the I773 'New Book' (Serat Ebuk Anyar) survey,
apparently because both the major central Javanese rulers in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Sultan Hamengkubuwana II
of Yogyakarta (r. I792--I8I/OI8I I-12/I826-28) and Sunan Pakubu-
wana IV of Surakarta (r. I788-I820), feared that the Dutch would
either seek to even out the landholdings between the courts (and here
Yogyakarta would have been at the greatest disadvantage because its
inhabitants were reported to have been much more assiduous than those
of Surakarta in opening out waste ground), or that they would annex to
themselves all the new lands developed since the I773 census.179
Subsequent attempts by the British (1811-16) and post-i8i6 Dutch
administrations to compile accurate statistical accounts of landholdings
and population in the princely territories were successful only in certain
enclave areas like Pacitan on the south coast, Lowanu in eastern
Bagelen, and Nanggulon in Kulon Praga, where they were directly
179 dJ XII, pp. 259-60, P. G. van Overstraten (Semarang) to W. A. Alting and Raden
van Indie (Batavia), 25 April 1792 (on suggestions made by Van Overstraten to HB II for
a new cadastral survey and the greater assiduity of the Yogya inhabitants in opening out
new lands); AN, Geheim Kommissoriaal, 23 Sept. 1847 La L'1, f. 20ir-202r, f.228r (Notes
on conferences between Van Overstraten and PB IV, and Id. and HB II), 13 Aug. and
I9 Aug. 1792 (relating the difficulties experienced by Van Overstraten in getting the
rulers to agree to a new cadastral survey of the lands brought into cultivation since
1773); Java NOK I, P. G. van Overstraten, 'Memorie met derzelver bylaagen tot
naricht van den HeerJohan Frederik Baron van Reede tot de Parkeler', 13 Oct. 1796,
f. r-v; and Dj. Br. 38, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 31 Jan.
I804 (on the continuing refusal of the central Javanese rulers to countenance a new
census). On the 1773 land register, see above n. 48. The total absence of any up-to-date
land registers in the early Igth century is mentioned in IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 8,
Crawfurd, 'Report on Cadoe', pp. 296-7; and see also Carey (ed.), British in Java, n. 205
of the babad.
I IO0 PETER CAREY
involved in cash crop production (i.e. indigo and pepper) or in local

administration.180 Outdated eighteenth-century registers thus con-
tinued to be used for administrative purposes until well after the Java
War (I825-30).181
Torn between their desire to see the great increase in agricultural
productivity reflected in steadily rising tribute (pajeg) returns, and their
fear of Dutch annexation, the Javanese rulers were forced to rely on a
series of haphazard and arbitrary administrative expedients. Their
exasperation found voice in the very stringent (and ineffective) royal
decrees enacted against officers and officials found holding land in excess
of the amount to which they were entitled. A series of proclamations
issued by the Sunan of Surakarta and his Patih (prime minister) in the
I78os threatened punishments which involved chaining, beating and
imprisonment,182 although the number of officials who were actually
disciplined for the crime of 'concealing ricefields' (angumpet sabin)
appears to have been pitifully small.183 In the Yogyakarta court archive
there is an important royal order, unfortunately undated but probably
from around I800, which ordered recipients of apanage lands in the
sultanate to inform the ruler within two months of any discrepancies
between the amount of ricefields listed in their official apanage grants
(piagem-[or nuwala-]Dalem) and the actual extent of their holdings after
the new clearances had been accounted for. If no replies were
forthcoming in the appointed time, the ruler warned that his 'village
180 For references to early gth century attempts at map making and the compilation
of accurate population statistics, see J. A. van der Chijs (ed.), N'ederlandsch-Indisch
Plakaatboek, I602-1811, vol. XV ('s-Hage: M. Nijhoff, 1896), p. 1005 (Daendels's Besluit
of 28 Nov. 1809); P. H. van der Kemp (ed.), Het ,Nederlandsch-Indisch Bestuur in I8i7, tot het
vertrek der Engelschen ('s-Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, 19I 3), p. 24; AN, BCG, I May 1817, H.
G. Nahuys van Burgst (Yogyakarta) to Commissioners-General (Batavia), 14 April
1817; AvJ, A. H. Smissaert (Yogyakarta) to G. A. G. Ph. van der Capellen (Batavia/
Bogor), 19 April I823; and AvJ, Id. to Director of Military Academy (Semarang), 26
Oct. I823 (on the great difficulty of carrying out a statistical survey of the Yogya region
because of the juxtaposition of landholdings and because certain key maps of the
sultanate had been sent away to Semarang prior to the British attack in June 812). See
also Dj. Br. I, A. J. P. H. D. Bosch, 'Politieke Verslag der Residentie Djokjokarta over
hetjaar I865', March I866, on the completion of the first accurate topographical map of
Yogyakarta ('Topographische Kaart der Residentie Djokjokarta') by K. F. Wilsen. For
references to the European surveys of the enclave areas, see above nn. 143 and 146 (on
Pacitan), n. 103 (on Lowanu and Pacitan), and below n. 190 (on Nanggulon).
181 See Carey (ed.), British in _Java, n. 205 of the babad.
182 Ann Kumar, 'Javanese Court Society and Politics in the Late Eighteenth
Century: The Record of a Lady Soldier. Part I: The Religious, Social and Economic Life
of the Court', Indonesia no. 29 (April 1980), p. 36.
183 For a Yogya example from the reign of Sultan Hamengkubuwana IV ( 812-14),
see Carey (ed.), British in Java, Canto LIV v. 4-9, and n. 227 of the babad.
WAITING FOR THE 'JUST KING' III
surveyors' (abdi-Dalem priksa dhusun/Mantri papriksan negara) would make

independent enquiries, a threat which he must have known full well he
could not enforce because of the extremely limited number of surveyors
available to him and the far-flung nature of the Yogya apanage
territories.184 A clause was also often inserted in the official apanage
grants to the effect that beneficiaries should send in detailed reports as to
the extent and populousness of the lands under their charge.185 This led
to frequent notifications regarding cacah which had become unculti-
vated or depopulated, especially in the sparsely settled eastern outlying
provinces where a special distinction began to be made in royal land
grants between 'cacah gesang (ng. cacah urip)' ('living' or cultivated/
populated cacah) and 'cacah pejah (ng. cacah mati)' ('dead' or unculti-
vated/depopulated cacah).186 But there were naturally few admissions
regarding increased productivity on older established ricefields, or the
existence of newly developed lands, since every subject of the sovereign
from the humblest sikep to the most exalted apanage holder was loathe to
face new fiscal demands.
The degree of administrative confusion and downright concealment

which took place can be seen in reports on areas of the princely
territories annexed by the European administration in I812 and I830,
or temporarily administered by them in the post-Java War period. In
Pacitan, a district on the south coast where there had been Dutch-
administered pepper estates since the late eighteenth century, an official
reported quite bluntly in 1793 that 'the survey of ricefields shows that
since the Peace of 1755 [i.e. the Giyanti Settlement], [these] have
184 See Ibid., n. 524 of the babad. For references to the abdi-Dalem priksa dhusun, see BL
Add. MS. 1234I (Crawfurd coll., original letters and land grants from the Yogya court),
f. I77r-v, Report of Raden Ngabehi Resawikrama, n.d.; f. I86r-v, Raden Adipati
Danureja II (Yogyakarta) to Sultan Hamengkubuwana II (Yogyakarta), n.d.; GKA,
20 Sept. I830 no. 56k, 'Verbaal', Interview with Mas Tumenggung Sindujaya (Mantri
papriksan negara), 13 April 1830; and Louw, Java-Oorlog, vol. I, Bijlage I, p. 594, where
seven Lurah priksa negara are mentioned amongst the Sultan's officials in c. 1820.
185 See, for example, BL Add. MS. 14397 (Crawfurd coll., original letters and land
grants from the Yogya court), f. 45r, Piagem-Dalen of Sultan Hamengkubuwana II
(Yogyakarta) to Raden Tumenggung Sasranegara (Yogya Bupati of Grobogan), I3
Rabingulawal AJ. 1734 (21 May 807): '. .. sarta Sun patedhani lilinggih Kagunganingsun
bumi, ing Garobogan cacah gawene wong sewu walung-atus, telung-puluh telu, saiki Sun trima urip
cacah gawening wong sewu seket, lan ing saben-saben taun Kagugunganingsun bumi kang mati,yen
ana undhaki (u)tawa oraa, angunjukan uninga ing Panjenenganingsun.'
186 IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 7, Crawfurd, 'Landed tenures', p. 220. On the frequent
distinction between 'cacah gesang' and 'cacah pejah' in royal land grants to Bupati in the
eastern outlying areas (mancanagara witan), see BL Add. MS. 12342 (Crawfurd coll.,
original letters and land grants from the Yogya court), f. 33v-4Iv, f. I25r-i36r; and for
some rarer references to the distinction in the core apanage areas (nagara agung), see BL
Add. MS. 12341 (Crawfurd coll.), f. 230r-238v.
I12 PETER CAREY
greatly expanded in area, but that this increase has been hidden from
the courts so that the local farmers can appropriate the newly developed
lands for themselves'.187 In I820, when a more accurate assessment of
population and landholdings was completed, the number of'landown-
ing' peasant families was put at 3,757 (2,452 of which had rice paddies,
and the rest dry fields), and this in a district where the officially declared
taxable population was four hundred cacah ('households') divided
equally between the two main central Javanese courts!188 It was the
same story in the eastern outlying provinces where only two-fifths of the
33,500 cacah of Yogyakarta territory were officially declared as cacah
gesang (inhabited cacah), but where Dutch officials after the Java War
found 22,292 families paying taxes on their ricefields to local Bupati.189
Finally, in the lands around Nanggulon in the Kulon Praga area which
were administered directly by the Dutch government between 1833 and
85 i, European land-tax surveyors found huge discrepancies both in the
size of the cacah and the amount of land-rent levied on each cacah, with no
obvious connection being made between the population density, the
fertility of the soil and the level of land-rent payments.190
Given this situation and the patent inability of the central Javanese
rulers to keep track of the changing level of land use and agricultural
development in their respective territories, it is safe to assume that local
officials and 'landowning' farmers quietly benefited. Indeed, the
prosperity of the sikep in many areas in the late eighteenth century was
probably made possible by the intrinsic inefficiencies of the Javanese
apanage system and the facility whereby their 'individually developed'
lands (tanahyasa) (see above Section III) could be hidden from the royal
administrations.
187 Dj. Br. 45, W. H. van IJsseldijk (Yogyakarta) to P. G. van Overstraten

(Semarang), 15 Jan. 1793 (full reference above n. 103).
188 Ibid. (on the 'official' 400 cacah figure for Yogyakarta and Surakarta landholdings
in Pacitan); and Dj. Br. 63, C. F. Enger (Pacitan) to R. C. N. d'Abo (Yogyakarta), 29
Oct. 1820.
189 De Klerck, Java-Oorlog, vol. VI, p. i68; Carey (ed.), The Archive of ogyakarta. Vol.
II: Documents relating to Economic and Agrarian Affairs (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
forthcoming); and Dj. Br. 43, 'Register der landen van den Sultan opgemaakt te
Semarang A? I773' (for the official list of Yogya landholdings (cacah) in the eastern
mancanagara amounting to some 33,500 households). See also S. Br. 127, 'Oostelijke
Montjo Negorosche Landen', P. Merkus, 'Verslag', Aug. 1830; and De Klerck, Java-
Oorlog, vol. VI, p. I62 where the total population of both Surakarta and Yogyakarta
areas in the eastern outlying provinces in i830 is given as 304,700 souls, and the total
number of tax paying families as 56,540.
190 Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p. XLI, p. LXIX n. 196; and on
Nanggulon, see further Dj. Br 82, 'Stukken betrekkelijk het aan het Gouvernement
overgegaane land Nang-gulon gelegen bewesten de rivier Progo over 833-1 846', 4 vols.
WAITING FOR THE 'JUST KING' II3
By the turn of the nineteenth century, however, conditions had begun

to change. This was partly due to the demographic developments which
had taken place during the fifty years since the Giyanti Settlement of
I 755, and the growing population pressure on the land frontier in the
fertile core apanage areas.191 The decades 1790-I8Io also appear to
have witnessed a particularly large number of poor rice harvests.192 In
May-June I804, for example, rice prices reached record levels in south-
centralJava, the cost ofapikul (about 62 kilograms) more than doubling
in Yogya to close on ten guilders, and at the end of the same year the
Governor-General launched a special investigation into the causes of the
increasing rice shortages.'93 By then, grain prices had fallen back to
their usual levels and the immediate crisis had passed, although, right up
to the Java War, Yogyakarta remained particularly vulnerable to
harvest failures since it had to import rice from neighbouring provinces
(especially Kedhu) to feed its population and transport costs pushed up
the retail value of vital foodstuffs. It was thus far more susceptible to
grain riots and political disturbances linked to food shortages than the
neighbouring kingdom of Surakarta which could supply itself more
easily from its own hinterland, or by cheap imports along the Sala river,
and where rice prices were usually about thirty to forty per cent lower
than in the sultanate.194 In addition to this, the Yogya rulers pursued a
much more vigorous policy with regard to the rack-renting of the
tollgate (bandar) and market (pasar) farms in their dominions, which
placed additional burdens on peasant producers who sold their
agricultural goods locally, and exacerbated relations between the
indigenous Javanese inhabitants and the Chinese immigrants, who
came in from the north coast to man the customs' posts.l95
Even more serious for the welfare of the local 'landowning' peasants,
however, were the ways in which theJavanese rulers tried to circumvent
the shortcomings of their own fiscal administrations by resorting to
191 IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 8, Crawfurd, 'Report on Cadoe', pp. 274, 278 (on the more
extensive use of dry crop fields in central Kedhu and the cultivation of mountain rice
(gogo) at ever higher reaches of the volcanic foothills surrounding the province); AvJ, M.
Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 29 Dec. 1804 (on the pressure on
available land in the Yogya area); Dj. Br. 8i, A. H. Smissaert (Yogyakarta) to Raden
Adipati Danureja IV (Yogyakarta), 20 Aug. I824 (on the encroachment of ricefields
onto the main highway from Brengkilan to Lowanu because of local land shortages).
192 Boomgaard, 'Disease, death and disasters', p. 4.
193 Ibid., p. 4; AvJ, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 29 Dec.
I804.
194 AvJ, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 29 Dec. 1804;
Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p. XLII, p. LXX n. 204.
195 See Carey, 'ChangingJavanese Perceptions', pp. 25-7, 36-4I.
PETER CAREY
114
extraordinary administrative expedients. In Yogyakarta, a massive

attempt to resurvey the landholdings of the court was set in train by the
first Sultan (Hamengkubuwana I, r. 1755-92) shortly before his death,
when the old agrarian unit of the Majapahit rood was reintroduced into
the central districts.196 His successor, the second Sultan (Hamengku-
buwana II, r. I792-I8I0/I8I I-I2/I826-28), encouraged the extension
of this measure in order to create more 'unity' in the size of fields in the
sultanate and to discover undeclared apanage ground, thus enhancing
his tribute returns. But, although the survey aroused little active
opposition amongst the apanage holders (perhaps because it was so
ineffective), it proceeded too slowly to make any real impact on revenue
returns. The impatient ruler then decided on the truly drastic and
unprecedented step of measuring his lands with a cadastral gauge (Jav.
'cengkal' or 'tumbak'; lit.: 'lance length'), which had been deliberately
shortened for the purpose.197 This stratagem, which was known as
'pancas' (lit.: 'cutting in two' or 'pruning') in Javanese, first took place
sometime before 14 July 1802 and was apparently followed by a further
cadastral reduction some years later.198 Together they contracted the
size of the average Yogya cacah by about twenty per cent and increased
the Sultan's landed income accordingly for the ruler was able to
reclassify lands as royal domain which had earlier been given out as
apanages to his dependants (i.e. the latter retained the same number of
cacah which they had hitherto enjoyed, but, since these were now
considerably smaller in extent, a large number of ricefields remained
over which could be claimed back by the Sultan).199
196 Dj. Br. 20,J. G. van den Berg, 'Memorie op het Hofvan Djocjocarta, onder den
Sultan Hamengcoeboena den tweede ... aan zijn Successcur... M. Waterloo', i
Aug. I803.; Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', p. 593; IOL Mack. Pr. 21 pt 5, Crawfurd,
'Report upon the District of Pachitan', p. I79. One Majapahit rood was the equivalent
at this time of 12 Rhenish feet or 3.767 metres, see Rouffer, 'Vorstenlanden', p. 617.
197 Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', p. 593. On the term 'pancas', from the Javanese root
cas' or 'ecas' ('settlement' or 'decision'), seeJ. F. C. Gericke and T. Roorda, Javaansch-
Nederlandsch Handwoordenboek, ed. A. C. Vreede andJ. G. H. Gunning (Leiden: E.J. Brill,
I90I ), vol. I, p. 275 sub: 'cas', who also give the straightforward meaning, followingJ. A.
Wilkens (MS. Javanese dictionary) of'taking away a piece of village land' (mancas bumi
desa).
198 Dj. Br. 20, Van den Berg, 'Memorie', i Aug. 1803; and on the second pancas
which took place sometime during the administration of H. W. Daendels ( 808- I I), see
H. G. Nahuys van Burgst, Verzameling van offciele rapporten betrefende den Oorlog op Java in de
jaren 1825-30, vol. I (Deventer: M. Ballot, i835), p. 8 n. i; and S. Br. 55, J. I. van
Sevenhoven, 'Nota over de landverhuringen', i6 March I837.
199 Dj. Br. 86, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 28 Feb. i806;
Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', p. 593; and S. Br. 55, Van Sevenhoven, 'Nota over de
landverhuringen', i6 March 837, who suggested a figure nearer forty per cent when he
stated that 300 old size Yogya cacah had become 500 new size cacah after the two pancas
From this time onwards a considerable discrepancy existed between

the size of the land measurements (i.e. jung and cacah) in Yogyakarta
with those in adjacent areas, especially Surakarta, a situation which was
commented on by many European landowners during the course of the
nineteenth century.200 Those who suffered most were the tax-paying
sikep peasants, since as soon as the apanage holders realized that their
bitter opposition to the Sultan's measure was unavailing, they moved
swiftly to pass on the additional tax burdens to the 'landowning'
cultivators.201 Most serious of all, the pancas revisions sharpened all the
inherent imbalances in the level of tribute demands on individual cacah
which had already been fixed in the most haphazard fashion by the
apanage holders and the central Javanese rulers. The chaotic situation
in the lands around Nanggulon in the Kulon Praga area later discovered
by Dutch land-tax surveyors in the I833-5I period has already been
referred to. From other sources it is clear that the new land measurement
brought in by the pancas revisions was not applied consistently even in

the more fertile central apanage regions, and, as late as I830, there is
evidence that the old measurement of the Majapahit rood was still being
used in some Mataram villages.202 In this context, the third Sultan's
attempts to revert to the pre-pancas revenue demands during his brief
reign ( I 82-14) must have created additional complications in the fiscal
structure of the sultanate.203 Local migrations away from areas of high
taxation to those where burdens were lighter can thus be seen as partly
the outcome of this fiscal imbalance (see above Section II).
The whole episode ofthepancas revisions was the equivalent of a major
revisions. The latter estimate may be exaggerated. According to Crawfurd (IOL Mack.
Pr. 21 pt 4, 'Sultan's Country', p. I20), io,ooo new size Yogya cacah were added to the
Sultan's disposable apanage lands in the core territories, or about fifteen per cent of the
number of Yogya core apanage cacah recorded in the 1773 census, see Dj. Br. 43,
'Register der landen van den Sultan opgemaakt te Samarang A? 1773'. In the tribute
(pajeg) returns of I8o8, the second Sultan is recorded as having enjoyed an extra 20,000
ronde real (out of a total income from all sources of I64,905 ronde real) from the new royal
domain grounds (bumi pamajegan pancasan) created by the pancas, see Van Kesteren,
'Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van den Java-oorlog', Bijlage III, p. 13 5.
200 S. Br. 8811, H. Thomson (Rajawinangun) to R. C. N. d'Abo (Yogyakarta), 6Jan.
1823; Dj. Br. 5iC, H. G. Nahuys van Burgst (Yogyakarta) to H. J. van de Graaff
(Batavia/Bogor), I8 May 1821; MvK 3054, 'Beschrijving en Statistieke rapport
betreffende de Residentie Kadoe', 1836, p. 29; and AN, BCG, 15 Sept. 1844 no. 3.
201 Dj. Br. 20, Van den Berg, 'Memorie', I I Aug. I803; Dj. Br. 49,J. G. van den Berg
(Surakarta) to M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta), 26 Sept. I803; and Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlan-
den', p. 593.
202 GKA, 20 Sept. I830 no. 56k, 'Verbaal', interview with Mas Tumenggung
Malangnegara (Yogyakarta), 15 April I830.
203 Carey (ed.), Archive, vol. I, p. 2I.
PETER CAREY
currency devaluation with land being used instead of coin.204 It fuelled

inflation, a situation which was compounded by the poor harvests of the
I790--8I0 period (see above) and the record rice prices of May-June
1804. Although the stratagem permitted the grasping second Sultan to
tap some of his subjects' additional wealth, the rough-and-ready fashion
in which it was implemented seriously exacerbated problems at the
village level in the sultanate. In retrospect thepancas can be seen to have
been one of the most important of the economic developments which
prepared the ground for the widespread agrarian uprising ofJuly 1825
when Dipanagara's leadership seemed to many sikep peasants and their
dependants to hold out the only promise of an end to intolerable fiscal
oppression (see above Section I).
The sweeping annexations of lands and tax-farms (i.e. the tollgates
and markets) which took place under the terms of the new treaties
imposed on both central Javanese courts by the British in August I812
compounded the situation.205 Many districts bordering on government
areas in the eastern outlying regions and the north coast were taken,
including the crucially important central apanage province of Kedhu
where many courtiers and senior officials had their landholdings.206 All
these individuals had to be provided for elsewhere in the greatly
circumscribed core apanage regions left to the courts. A Javanese text
written in this period talks about the chaotic situation which prevailed
in the aftermath of the British annexations when there seemed to be at
least four claimants for every jung (i.e. four cacah) of available apanage
land.207 At the same time, new administrative districts (kabupaten) had
to be created out of existing regions in the eastern outlying provinces in
order to give lands to senior administrators (Bupati) who had lost their
positions during the British take-over.208 In Yogyakarta, the resultant
shortfall in landed income for court-based apanage holders was so great
that the Sultan was constrained to offer some of his relatives and officials
an additional salary in money which was paid out of the annual
indemnity agreed by the British for their annexation of the tollgate and
market farms.209

205 See M. L. van Deventer (ed.), Het .Nederlandsch Gezag over Java en Onderhoorigheden
sedert 18II. Vol. i: I811-1820 ('s-Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, 1891), pp. 321-31.
206 Ibid., p. Ioo; P. B. R. Carey, 'The Sepoy Conspiracy of 8I 5 inJava', BKI, vol. 133
(I977), pp. 305, 319 n. 80; Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', p. 593.
207 Carey (ed.), British in Java, Canto xxIIi v. 53 of the babad.
208 Ibid., Canto xxvi v. 6-8 of the babad; and Carey (ed.), Babad Dipanagara, p. 245 n.
39.
WAITING FOR THE 'JUST KING7 II7
Conditions were clearly difficult for the upper ranks of Javanese

society at this time, but, ultimately, all this new pressure on apanage
land was translated into increased tribute and labour demands on the
tax-paying (sikep) peasants in the remaining areas. In 181 6, for example,

a special Dutch envoy to the principalities noticed that sometimes three
times the proper tax was being demanded from tax-paying sikep
peasants by local officials and this, combined with the difficulties of
raising money taxes (? for the pajeg mati, see above Section II), had
caused many cultivators to leave their villages and become wandering
day labourers (bujang) or vagrants. He also noticed a great rise in the
number of armed robberies in the countryside in 18 I4-I6 compared to
the situation in the late eighteenth century, when he had served as
Resident ofYogyakarta, a phenomenon confirmed by his successor, H.
G. Nahuys van Burgst (in office, 1816-22), who reported that many of
the robberies took place at the end of the Fasting Month (Puwasa) when
the yearly taxes fell due in the nagara agung.210
The institution of the 'pajeg mati' (fixed money tax) and the tax-
farming of lands to the Chinese were just two of the ways in which the
hard-pressed apanage holders and local officials reacted to the 1812
crisis.211 Another was the tactic used by the Sunan of Surakarta who
attempted to solve the land problem by giving out new apanages in the
outlying provinces, areas hitherto administered as 'tribute' (pajeg) land
for the ruler by the mancanagara Bupati (see above Section II).212 Both in
the Surakarta-controlled eastern outlying provinces of Panaraga and
Kedhiri, and in the western mancanagara district ofBanyumas, pajeg areas
were reclassified as apanage lands (Jav. 'bumi-nara(su)wita', 'bumi
pangremb'e or 'bumi sentanan'), the majority of which were reserved for the
Sunan's own family.213 This was a Surakarta equivalent of the previous
Yogyakarta pancas revisions, and it fundamentally altered the way in
which large areas of the outlying regions were governed.
Instead of remaining under the direct rule of the Bupati as in the rest of
210 Baud 306, W. H. van IJsseldijk, 'Nota voor den Prov. Res. den Majoor Nahuijs te
Djocjocarta', 22 Oct. i816 in 'Rapport van W. H. van IJsseldijk omtrent de
vorstenlanden', 11 Dec. i816; NvB Portfolio 5 pt 2, H. G. Nahuys van Burgst
(Yogyakarta) to Commissioners-General (Batavia/Bogor), 20 Aug. i8 6. Van IJsseldijk
had served as Resident of Yogyakarta from Sept. 1786 to Aug. 1798.
211 See above Section II.
212 Hugenholtz, 'Traditional Javanese Society', pp. I6-17.
213 Ibid., pp. i6-17. The lands reserved for members of the Sunan's family were
usually known as 'bumi sentanan', although in Banyumas the term 'bumi pangrembe' was
more common. These latter were subdivided into 'bumi pancang' (the apanages of the
princes of Surakarta) and 'bumipangariwil' (the apanages of the courtiers of Surakarta),
see ibid., p. 26 n. 47; and De Klerck, Java-Oorlog, vl. VI, p. 168.
I 8 PETER CAREY
the mancanagara, the new apanage areas were farmed out to Demang
(provincial tax-farmers) many of whom were non-Javanese.214 This led
to a more ruthless fiscal exploitation of the local population, a situation
which paralleled developments in some of the traditional nagara agung
areas where Chinese Demang had been active since the late eighteenth
century.215 The Yogyakarta court also followed suit in transforming
some of their 'tribute' lands in the eastern outlying provinces into new
apanage territories, but they did this on a far smaller scale than
Surakarta. The statistics drawn up by a Dutch official in I830 give a
good idea of the extent of the change which had taken place during the
period I812-30. These show that out of a total of 56,540 tax-paying
families belonging to both courts in the eastern mancanagara, III,187, or
nearly twenty per cent, were in the newly created apanage districts and
the rest in the traditional kabupaten or in special villages set aside for
religious communities (desa pradikan) and grave sites (desa kuncen). But
the percentage for Surakarta (30%) was far higher than for Yogyakarta
(6.8%).216
The effect of all these developments on the village community in the
years immediately before the Java War is hard to quantify. Clearly fiscal
burdens on the tax-paying (sikep) peasants increased enormously, and
Hugenholtz has even suggested that they almost disappeared as a class of
wealthy landowners in the nagara agung during this period.217 In his
view, relations between the sikep and their dependants (numpang; rayat)
were fundamentally impaired by the new weight of taxation. Taxes on
arable land, he argues, were raised to such a level that the established
practice of sharecropping by the numpang was affected. Not only did the
increased taxes undercut all the benefits of the erstwhile sharecropping
practices for the sikep, but the numpang themselves began to demand
more tangible compensation for the heavier labour they performed in
the shape of more permanent rights over the land they cultivated. The
result, according to Hugenholtz, was that some of the numpang merged
with the sikep to form a broad agricultural population in which each
cultivator had a plot of land about the size one peasant household could
cultivate independently.218
In the outlying (mancanagara) provinces, however, he sees a funda-
mentally different development as having taken place. Here the
214 Hugenholtz, 'Traditional Javanese Society', p. 17.
215 See above Section II; and Carey, 'ChangingJavanese perceptions', p. 17.
216 De Klerck, Java-Oorlog, vol. VI, p. i68 quoting P. H. van Lawick van Pabst.
217 Hugenholtz, 'Traditional Javanese Society', p. 19.
218 Ibid.
collection of taxes remained in the hands of the Bupati, who continued to

employ a group of subordinate officials (priyayi) to assist them. As
already noted (above Section II) this administrative elite were paid for
their work by the usufruct of tax-free official ricefields, and, over time,
they succeeded in obtaining ever more rights over the land, either by
ordering the cultivation of waste areas, or by usurping ricefields already
in cultivation. Thus, Hugenholtz concludes, whereas in the core
apanage areas, the class of sikep broadened as they merged with the
numpang, in the outlying territories the group of'landowning' peasants
narrowed as they were absorbed by the provincial priyayi and became
their clients or sharecroppers.219 This explains why Dutch officials
noticed such a large number of numpang in the mancanagara provinces in
I830, and why the size of the priyayi group drawing income from local
villages was much higher than in the nagara agung.220
Hugenholtz's arguments are interesting, but, as with so many other
aspects ofJavanese agrarian society at this time, firm conclusions must
await the results of further monographic research. Given the great
regional differences in the principalities at this time, and the discrepan-
cies in tax burdens between the core apanage areas and the outlying
provinces, and, even within separate districts between the level of
tribute demands on individual jung or cacah, any generalizations
embracing the whole of south-centralJava would seem to be impossible.
The wealth and influence of the sikep may well have declined drastically
in the first three decades of the nineteenth century under the new fiscal
pressures and the problems of economic dislocation and war, but it is
unlikely that they underwent quite the metamorphosis described by
Hugenholtz. On the contrary, it seems from recently completed work on
the period of the cultivation systems (1830-70) that a class of hereditary
landholders not only survived through the nineteenth century, but also,
in some areas, consolidated their power and influence at the village
level.221
Even though the long-term social effects of the early nineteenth-
219 Ibid., pp. 19-20.

220 Ibid., p. 20. Another factor was the rapid turn-over of priyayi officials in the
outlying provinces.
221 See White, '"Agricultural Involution" and its Critics', p. 25: G. Knight,
'Capitalism and Commodity Production in Java', in H. Alavi et al. (eds), Capitalism and
Colonial Development (London: Croom Helm), p. 135, pp. 147-9; and Elson, 'The
Cultivation System and "Agricultural Involution"', p. 28. Elson's arguments are
worked out more fully in his Javanese Peasants and the Colonial Sugar Industry: Impact and
Change in an East Java Residency, I830--940 (Singapore: Oxford University Press in East
Asia, I985).
120 PETER CAREY
century fiscal and administrative changes on the sikep are still unclear,
there is plenty of evidence to suggest that there was a great deal of short-
term hardship in the south-central Javanese countryside during the
years immediately preceding theJava War, and it is to this that we must
now turn in order to understand the immediate causes of the widespread
agrarian uprising of I825.
VI. Economic Conditions in the South-central Javanese

Countryside, I81I2-25
Despite the huge problems faced by the Javanese peasantry, especially

the sikep, in the areas still controlled by the central Javanese rulers after
1812, it was generally recognized, even by European observers, that the
plight of the inhabitants in the newly annexed territories was frequently
much worse.222 With the introduction of Raffles's land-rent system in
Kedhu in September-November 1812, local cultivators discovered that
far from replacing previous taxes and labour services as was intended,
the new land-rent payments often had to be made in addition to all the
traditional demands which were still enforced unofficially by the local
priyayi.223 Moreover, as previously noted, the general requirement to
pay the land-rent in money forced many poorer farmers ever more
deeply into debt with the resident Chinese community, who had already
secured a foothold in the province as tax-farmers, tobacco brokers and
petty traders during the years of princely rule.224
These difficulties were, to some extent, masked in the immediate
aftermath of the European annexation by the low land-rent payments
demanded, the good tobacco prices, and a freak bumper harvest in the
aftermath of the Mt Tambora (eastern Sumbawa) volcanic eruption in
April-July I8I5,225 but the situation deteriorated rapidly in the decade
222 See, for example, IOL Map Room MS. 24, G. P. Baker, 'Memoir of a Survey in
the Native Princes' Dominions ofJava', 25 Nov. I816, p. 94; and Carey (ed.), British in
Java, n. 238 of the babad.
223 MvK 4132, P. H. Van Lawick van Pabst, 'Consideratien op de Nota van den Heer
MacGillavry', Aug. 1826; KITLV H 788, J. D. Boutet (Yogyakarta) to L. Boutet
(Nantes), n.d. (? 1831); Carey, 'Origins of the Java War', p. 64.
224 Afdeling Statistiek, De Residentie Kadoe, pp. 78-9, 96-7; Raffles, History, vol. II, pp.
266-7; Carey, 'Changing Javanese Perceptions', pp. 16-32 (esp. p. I7); and above
Section II, p. 77.
225 John Bastin, 'Raffles' Ideas on the Land Rent System inJava and the Mackenzie
Land Tenure Commission', VKI, vol. XIV (I954), p. IOI (on the low annual land-rent
fixed in 1812); Schneither 92, 'Statistieke der Residentie Kadoe', I822 (on tobacco
prices); Afdeling Statistiek, De Residentie Kadoe, p. 97 (on tobacco prices); IOL Mack. Pr.
WAITING FOR THE JUST KING2 I2I
before the Java War. By 1827, two years after the war had broken out,
the level of land-rent payments and other taxes had more than doubled,
while prices of crucial cash crops such as tobacco and coffee, which the
local peasantry had to sell in order to raise cash for the land-rent, had all
but collapsed.226 Meanwhile, a new Dutch Government tax on
domestically produced 'hedge' (pager) coffee and the introduction of
government coffee estates in 1819-20 added further burdens to a
peasant community already deeply suspicious of all estate cultiva-
tion.227 Natural disasters such as the prolonged droughts of 182 , 1822
and I824, a destructive eruption of Mt Merapi in December 1822
followed by floods in March 1823, exacerbated the desperate agrarian
conditions precipitating crop failures and scarcities of vital food-
stuffs.228 Dutch official reports penned in the period 1823-25 speak of a
severe contraction in internal trade and unprecedently high prices of
rice and other vital commodities, and this in a region previously
2, 'Points of Enquiry-Circular of the Hon'ble (T. S. Raffles) the Lieut.- Governor (of
Java)' p. 198, J. M.Johnson (Surakarta) to T. S. Raffles (Batavia/Bogor), April I815
(on the freak bumper harvest of i815).
226 Hogendorp i531 pt b, Willem van Hogendorp, 'Over den Staat van Java no. 2',
I827, f. 2r-v (who reckoned that Kedhu was three times more heavily taxed than
adjacent areas; in I827 the land-rent had nearly doubled from the 1812 figure toJ.R.
650,ooo, and, with other unspecified taxes, the total fiscal burden was over one million
guilders [Dfl.]). On the collapse in cash crop prices in 1820-25, see Schneither 92, P. le
Clercq, 'Algemeen Verslag der Residentie Kadoe over het jaar 1824', 30 May 1825;
Hogendorp I531, Willem van Hogendorp, 'Nota over de Residentie Kadoe', I827; MvK
3054, 'Beschrijving en Statistieke rapport betreffende de Residentie Kadoe', 1836, p. 26;
and Afdeling Statistiek, De Residentie Kadoe, pp. 97, pp. I08-9 which give the following
prices (expressed in Java Rupees J.R.], post-1826 Dutch guilders [Dfl.])
i819 I820 I82I 1822 I823 1824 1825 i832
TOBACCO 60 30 23 - - - - 10
(per kodhi of oo Amsterdam
ponden, or about 50 kgs)
COFFEE* 33 30 30 35 35 33 23 17
(per pikul of 125 Amsterdam
ponden, or about 62 kgs)
* Official Government prices. According to P. le Clercq (loc. cit.), Chinese brokers bought up the
crop from local producers for less than half these figures.
227 Schneither 92, 'Statistieke der Residentie Kadoe', 1822 (referring to BCG, 5 Jan.
18 19 no. I 9 which introduced the tax on pager coffee); Hogendorp 1531 pt. b, Willem van
Hogendorp, 'Over den Staat vanJava no. 2', I827, f. 3r-v (on the burdensomeness of the
tax for the local population, and the striking difference between the flourishing state of
the privately planted pager coffee and the neglect of the government coffee estates which
had been laid out on common village land).
228 Afdeling Statistiek, De Residentie Kadoe, p. 5, p. 89; Schneither 92, 'Statistieke der
Residentie Kadoe', 1822; Id., P. le Clercq, 'Algemeen Verslag der Residentie Kadoe
over het jaar I824', 30 May I825.
122 PETER CAREY
renowned as a major food exporter to less favoured neighbouring

provinces like Mataram.229
The spectre of famine stalked the land: in February 1822, at the time
of a local uprising in the region instigated by a Yogya prince, one of the
sons of the Bupati of Semarang complained openly to the Governor-
General about 'the pitiable state of the common Javanese who are so
poor and miserable that they have to try to assuage their hunger with
leaves and weeds; people who are required to fell and haul timber, and
plant coffee (for the European Government) at times when they should
be working in their own ricefields and attending to the needs of their
own families!'230 He concluded by giving a ghastly warning of the
serious agrarian disturbances which he felt were imminent, and which in
fact materialized in July I825 when the inhabitants of the southern
Kedhu district of Prabalingga (population around 35,000), an impor-
tant tobacco-growing area largely settled by Yogya migrants, rose en
masse after a major harvest failure and news of Dipanagara's own
rebellion in the sultanate.231 The main targets of popular vengeance at
this time underlined the intense local hatred of alien economic
domination and fiscal oppression, the first attacks being made on land-
tax posts, tollgates, the houses of European land-tax inspectors and
estate overseers, and on the resident Chinese community, most of whom
had to flee for their lives to the provincial capital of Magelang or to the
north coast.232
Much the same situation occurred in the south coast province of
Pacitan, an area considerably less well endowed than Kedhu in terms of
natural resources, but where some of the local inhabitants had enjoyed a
period of unusual prosperity in the late eighteenth century.233 A survey
conducted in 181 7 indicated that the total amount of annual land-rent
which might be expected from each 'landowning' household still did not
exceed oneJava Rupee (Dfl. 1.20-I.50), but that there was a possibility
of reactivating the old estate economy in the region.234 Acting on this
information, the government took the decision in January 1819 not to
include Pacitan in their revised land-rent scheme (landelijk stelsel), but to
introduce a form of 'cultivation system' which required each family
229 Ibid .; and see above Section V p. I 3.
230 Soekanto, Dua Raden Saleh, p. 29; Carey, 'Origins of the Java War', p. 65 (on the
revolt instigated by the Yogya prince, Pangeran Dipasana, in Feb. 1822).
231 Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p. 266 n. 123.
232 Ibid., p. 260 n. o16.
233 See above Section IV p. 89; and Section V p. 112.
234 NvB Portfolio 5 pt I, H. G. Nahuys van Burgst (Yogyakarta) to Commissioners-
General (Batavia/Bogor), 15 Sept. 1817.
possessing half a bau (about a quarter of an acre) or more of irrigated

ricefields (sawah) to plant a stipulated number of coffee and pepper
bushes, the produce of which was to be sold at fixed prices to the
government. In addition, a very small amount of land-tax was to be
demanded.235
From the start the whole scheme appears to have been dogged by a
series of disasters which undermined the fragile economy of the region.
Many of the local landholdings were unsuitable for estate cultivation,
and the crops themselves were repeatedly destroyed by unseasonable
weather conditions, such as the unusually heavy rains in February 1820
and the complete failure of the rain-bearing monsoons during the
growing seasons of I820/2 I, I82 I /22 and I823/24. Furthermore, despite
government promises, before 1827 no payments were made to cultiva-
tors for the crops they produced.236 Indeed, so much free labour seems
to have been demanded from the local inhabitants that both sawah and
dry fields went untended for months on end and local food supplies were
jeopardized. Writing in April 182 I, after four months of severe drought,
the local Dutch overseer (opziener) of cultivations reported that the
southern half of the residency was 'a very dismal sight' with many
ricefields unworkable for lack of water and those that had been planted
drying out quickly under the parching wind from the sea.237 In June
1821, the first Asiatic cholera epidemic struck causing many fatalities
amongst the already weakened population: every day farmers had to be
pulled from the pepper and coffee estates dead from exhaustion and
fever.238 By November of the same year, the overseer was speaking of the
'total demoralization' of the local work-force, many of whom, especially
those without access to irrigated riceland who were most at risk from
famine and disease, were eking out a miserable existence on roots and
leaves.239
Neither bribes nor repeated physical coercion, such as the whip lashes
to the face or buttocks administered to recalcitrant village officials who
235 AN, BGG, 26 Dec. 1817 no. 18; Dj. Br. 62A, BCG, 7Jan. 1819 no. 5; BGG in rade, 25
Jan. 1819 no. I (appointing C. F. Enger as Opziener in Pacitan); Kern, 'Uit Oude
Bescheiden', p. 166; AvJ, H. G. Nahuys van Burgst (Yogyakarta) to G. A. G. Ph. van der
Capellen (Batavia/Bogor), 2 Sept. I822.
236 Kern, 'Uit Oude Bescheiden', p. 164; Dj. Br. 64, C. F. Enger (Pacitan) to R. C. N.
d'Abo (Yogyakarta), 31 Dec. 1821.
237 Kern, 'Uit Oude Bescheiden', pp. I62, 173-4; Dj. Br. 64, C. F. Enger (Pacitan) to
R. C. N. d'Abo (Yogyakarta), 30 April 1821.
238 Dj. Br. 64, C. F. Enger (Pacitan) to R. C. N. d'Abo (Yogyakarta), 30 May I821;
Id. to Id., 2June 182I; Id. to Id., i6June I82I; Id. to Id., 30June I82I; Id. to Id., 31 Oct.
1821; Id. to Id., 5 Nov. 1821.
239 Dj. Br. 64, C. F. Enger (Pacitan) to R. C. N. d'Abo (Yogyakarta), 30 Nov. I82I.
124 PETER CAREY
reneged on their labour obligations, could keep sufficient workers in the

estate fields. Whole villages moved to adjacent areas controlled by the
princely states to avoid the forced labour, and the population of the
government lands declined by nearly ten per cent in the space ofjust two
years ( 8I9-2 I).240 Little revival took place before the end of the Java
War. In July 1824, in the midst of another drought, there were again
reports of famine conditions: rice prices had tripled, but attempts to get
the population to prepare the dry fields for an emergency maize crop
failed because of the rock-like hardness of the ground.241
The experience of these years of disaster embittered the local
inhabitants and turned them against the colonial government. Once
news of Dipanagara's rebellion reached them in early August 1825, the
population of Pacitan, like that of southern Kedhu, made common
cause with the prince. The few resident 'Europeans' (mostly Eurasians)
were attacked and the hapless Dutch overseer, the one representative of
government authority in the region, had to make good his escape across
the mountains dressed in the unlikely garb of a returned Mecca
pilgrim!242
Although the princely states escaped many of the harsher aspects of
the fiscal and administrative policies of the European governments after
1812, there was one development with very serious consequences for the
future which they did not avoid. This was the proliferation of the
tollgates and market excise posts which had been taken over by the
British from the courts under the terms of the August 1812 treaties, and
which continued to be farmed out to Chinese entrepreneurs. The
insatiable financial demands of the European administrations, espe-
cially the fiscally-pressed restored Dutch government after 18 6, meant
that the tollgates (bandar) became an increasing burden on the local
population and began to have a deleterious effect on the trading
economy of the principalities. This was especially the case in Yogyak-
arta, where there were double the number of major customs' posts than
in the neighbouring kingdom of Surakarta, an outcome of the more
aggressive tax-farming policies of the first two sultans.243
240 Kern, 'Uit Oude Bescheiden', p. I66, p. I73; AvJ, H. G. Nahuys van Burgst
(Yogyakarta) to G. A. G. Ph. van der Capellen (Batavia/Bogor), 2 Sept. I822 (on the
decline in population in Pacitan where numbers fell from 20,896 in Feb. 1819 to I8,735
in Feb. I821); Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p. 293 n. 243.
241 Dj. Br. 67,J. Wormer (Opziener Pacitan) to A. H. Smissaert (Yogyakarta), i July
1824.
242 Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p. 294 n. 243; Louw, Java-Oorlog, vol. I,
Pp. 576-8.
243 Section V passim; and Carey, 'Changing Javanese Perceptions', p. 27.
Since this whole issue, along with the role of the Chinese in the local
opium trade and the rapidly deteriorating relationship between the
Javanese and Chinese communities in the principalities, has already
been dealt with in a recent article,244 only the major developments need
be sketched in here.
The rapid proliferation of the tollgates can best be seen in the context
of the level of the Yogyakarta tax-farm (not including Kedhu) which
increased nearly fourfold between 1755 and 1812, and then, after a
period of gradual increase under the British (18I1-16), almost tripled
again the space ofjust seven years (I816-23) immediately following the
return of the Dutch.245 Revenue from the opium farm (a government
monopoly in Java since I677) went up even more dramatically. The
Yogyakarta records show a fivefold increase in the decade I814-24,
mainly due to the greater ease of imports from Bengal after the lifting of
the British naval blockade of Indonesian waters in August 1811 (at the
time of the successful British invasion ofJava) and the spread of retail
outlets in the countryside.246 Since the latter were nearly all attached to
the customs' posts and were administered by Chinese tollgate keepers,
the burgeoning of the opium farm and the bandar went hand in hand.247
Long before the European annexation of the tollgates and markets in
1812, Dutch officials had given warnings that the tollgates were
interfering with trade: the quantity of bulk goods, especially rice and
salt, traded along the Sala river between Surakarta and Gresik was
already reported to be declining in 1796, and, in Kedhu, the tobacco
customs' warehouses (gedhong tembakau) were hampering the vital
commerce in tobacco, the principal cash crop of the local peasantry.248
Most serious of all, the tollgates in the core apanage regions had led to an
increase in the price of foodstuffs in many areas, especially in
Yogyakarta, which, as we have seen (above Section V), was dependent
on rice imports from southern Kedhu to feed its population.249 The
situation deteriorated even more sharply in the years immediately
before the Java War, especially in the years 182I1-25 which witnessed a
series of severe droughts and harvest failures in south-central Java.
Nearly every Dutch official who studied the problem cautioned that the
tollgates were slowly paralysing commerce in the countryside and made
dire predictions of imminent agrarian unrest, but the post-I8I6 Dutch
244 Ibid., pp. I6-41. 245 Ibid., pp. 35-6; and Appendix 3.
246 Ibid., pp. 32-5; and Appendix 3 n. 7. 247 Ibid., p. 33 n. I55.
248 Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p. XLII, LXX n. 201.
249 Carey, 'ChangingJavanese Perceptions', p. 27.
I 26 PETER CAREY
administration felt that it could not forgo the lucrative tollgate revenues
(worth over one million guilders a year) from the principalities.250
The realities at the local level are brought home by reports sent in to
the Residents in Yogyakarta and Surakarta by Chinese tollgate keepers.
In November I824, for example, one reported his bankruptcy a mere
two months after taking over the toll-farms of the once remunerative
bandar ofJatinom and Bantul to the south of Yogyakarta: a prolonged
and severe drought since the beginning of the year, he wrote, had
destroyed the local cotton crop, and basic foodstuffs such as jarak
(castor-oil plants), soyabeans and maize were in desperately short
supply. Rice prices were soaring, but little trade was being carried on in
the local markets because commerce had collapsed.251
In these terrible months before the Java War, the south-central
Javanese countryside became a place of suspicion and terror. Armed
gangs, raised by the Chinese tollgate keepers for their own protection,
operated with virtual impunity, and the daily activities of Javanese
farmers took place under the ever watchful eyes of the tollgate keeper's
spies who were positioned on every country road to prevent the evasion
of toll dues.252 Even the dead on their way to burial were liable to tolls,
and mere passage through a bandar, even without dutiable goods, would
lay the traveller open to what the Javanese sarcastically referred to as
the 'bottom tax' (pajak bokong).253 Neither were high-placed Javanese
officials exempt. Mancanagara Bupati journeying to the royal capitals for
the yearly Garebeg Mulud ceremony (see above Section II) would often
take cross-country routes through the teak forests in order to avoid
passing through tollgates where their womenfolk were physically
searched for hidden jewellery.254
During the course of the Java War, the Dutch government did
eventually get round to modifying the administration of the tollgates in
the principalities. But by then, of course, it was too late: the war had
already engulfed the countryside, and the Chinese, who had earlier been
tolerated at the courts as useful financiers and entrepreneurs, had
become the objects of popular loathing and distrust.255
The Chinese involvement in the farm of the opium monopoly in
south-central Java also exacerbated feelings against them amongst the
indigenous population. The exact number of addicts in the principalities
250 Ibid., p. 39.
251 Dj. Br. 59, Gan Hiang Sing (Bantul) to A. H. Smissaert (Yogyakarta), 9 Nov.
I824.
252 Carey, 'ChangingJavanese Perceptions', pp. 36-40.
253 Ibid., p. 40. 254 Ibid., p. 40 n. 190. 255 Ibid., pp. 40-I.
at this time is difficult to determine: on the basis of consumption figures

in the late nineteenth century, a Dutch official came to the conclusion
that some sixteen per cent of the local inhabitants took opium, but, if one
counts the number who inhaled or digested 'poor men's' varieties such as
opium-soaked cigarettes, opium-seasoned coffee and opium-laced betel-
nut, the incidence of narcotic addiction was almost certainly very much
higher.256 Many early nineteenth-century reports dwelt on the harmful
social effects of the drug which encouraged rural vagrancy and
crime.257 The Dutch government was well aware of these problems, but
the opium monopoly, providing as it did nearly twelve per cent of all
government revenue in the period 1823-33 (i.e. before the 'cultivation
systems' had begun to make a significant impact on the colonial
exchequer) and half the total profits of the royal-sponsored Dutch
Trading Company (Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij) between
1827 and 1833 was too valuable a source of income to be abolished.258
The problem of opium addiction was thus left to grow apace, making its
own insidious contribution to the impoverishment and degradation of
sections of the Javanese peasantry on the eve of the Java War.
The Chinese were likewise associated with one last development
during this period which added to the local economic problems in the
principalities. This was the rapid extension of private estate leases
(which were forbidden in government-controlled areas) to Europeans
and Chinese under the aegis of the capable but ambitious Dutch
Resident ofYogyakarta, Huibert Gerard Nahuys van Burgst (in office,
I816-22).259 Imbued with an almost missionary belief in the efficacy of
256 Ibid., pp. 33-5; J. A. B. Wiselius, De Opium in .federlandsch- en in Britisch-Indie,
oeconomisch, critisch, historisch ('s-Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, I 886), p. 6; Raffles, History, vol.
I, pp. I02-3; and James R. Rush, 'Opium Farms in Nineteenth-Century Java:
Institutional Continuity and Change in a Colonial Society, I860-9gIo', unpublished
Ph.D. Thesis (Yale University, 1977), p. 20.
257 Carey 'Changing Javanese Perceptions', p. 35.
258 F. W. Diehl, 'The Opium-Tax Farm onJava, 813-r 914: A Quest for Revenue by
Government and Chinese Tax Farmers', Paper presented to the Conference on
Indonesian Economic History in the Dutch Colonial Period (ANU, Canberra, I6-i8
December 1983), pp. 4-5, who reckoned that the Dutch colonial administration made a
profit ofDfl. 17.6 million in the period 1827-33, almost enough to have covered the cost
of theJava War ( 825-30). The Chinese opium farmers were reckoned to have been able
to make almost as much again from the retail trade, see Diehl, op. cit., p. 5; and J. J.
Hasselman, 'Nota omtrent de opium-pacht op Java en Madoera', Handelingen en
Geschriften van het Indisch Genootschap. vol. V (1858), pp. 25.
259 On Nahuys van Burgst (born Amsterdam, I782-died Breda, I858), see his
autobiography, Herinneringen uit het Openbare en Bijzondere Leven ( 7g99-I88) van Mr. H. G.
Baron Nahuys van Burgst ('s-Hertogenbosch: Gebroeders Muller, i858); Louw, Java-
Oorlog, vol. I, p. 58; Van Hogendorp (ed.), l/illem van Hogendorp, pp. I65-6; and
Houben, 'Afstand van Gebied', pp. 36-41. His private papers are in the Dept. of
128 PETER CAREY
estate leases and the benefits he thought they would bring in terms of
economic development and improved infrastructure (i.e. roads and
irrigation systems), this official patronizingly referred to the western
estate owners whom he attracted to the princely states as 'my planters',
and saw them as the ineluctable bearers of European enlightenment to a
benighted populace. At the same time, he stressed ingenuously that the
leases would improve the financial position of many impoverished
princely apanage holders at the courts.260
His critics in the Council of the Indies (Raad van Indie) were not so
sanguine. One warned that the Javanese peasant would be brought
under a new yoke which would weigh on them much more heavily than
'all the bribery and corruption' of the princely administrations.261 'The
estate leases', this councillor wrote later, 'deprived theJavanese peasant
of his property rights and debased him to the level of a coolie'.262 The
Governor-General, G. A. G. Ph. van der Capellen (in office, 1816-26),
was swayed by these arguments and ordered the immediate abolition of
all estate leases in the principalities in May i823.263 But by then the
problem was not so easily resolved. Many long-term contracts involving
sizeable cash advances had been signed with apanage holders at the
courts, and the planters had sunk capital into their estates. All this had
to be reimbursed with interest by the original apanage holders, most of
whom were in no state to meet the financial demands. The abrupt way
in which the cancellation of the leases was handled by the colonial
administration was thus a powerful factor in prejudicing the south-
central Javanese court communities against the government on the eve
of the Java War.264
The impact of the leases at the village level was also considerable,
Western MSS. of the Leiden University Library (coll. no. BPL 616), see J. J. F. Wap,
'Bronnen voor de taal-, landen volkenkunde van Neerlandsch Indie', BKI, vol. I
(I864), pp. 179-91.
260 NvB Portfolio 9 pt 3, Nahuys van Burgst, 'Onlusten op Java', April I826; Id.,
Herinneringen, pp. I3 Iff, Id. (ed.), Verzameling van officile rapporten, vol. I, pp. 3o3ff; Louw,
Java-Oorlog, vol. I, p. 7I; Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', p. 628.
261 This critic was the President of the Board of Finances (Raad van Finantien), H. J.
van de Graaff (d. I826), one of Governor-General Van der Capellen's closest advisers.
For his criticisms, see NvB Portfolio 5 pt I I, H. G. Nahuys van Burgst (Yogyakarta) to
Commissioners-General (Batavia/Bogor), 15 Sept. 1817; and vAE (aanwinsten 194I) 20,
Van de Graaff (Batavia) to J. Fabius (Holland), 26 July I823.
262 vAE (aanwinsten 1941) 20, H.J. van de Graaff(Batavia) toJ. Fabius (Holland), 26
July 1823.
263 MvK 2778, BGG in rade, 23 May 1823 no. 7 (printed in Staatsblad van .rederlandsch-
Indie no. I7 [1823]); Louw, Java-Oorlog, vol. I, Bijlage IX; Van der Kemp, 'Economische
Oorzaken', pp. I6-38 (esp. p. 26).
264 Van der Kemp, 'Economische Oorzaken', pp. I6-38.
WAITING FOR THE 'JUST KING2 I29
although their territorial extent was quite limited: in Yogyakarta they

covered just under four hundredjung, or seven per cent of the cultivated
area in the core region (i.e. the province of Mataram) around the court,
and only slightly more in Surakarta.265 Furthermore, many of these
leases, especially those set aside for coffee cultivation on the slopes of Mt
Merapi, were in quite inaccessible and underpopulated areas.266 The
main difficulties for the local inhabitants living in estate areas was the
regimentation of economic life which the estate system imposed. Instead
of being able to choose their own crops, as hitherto (see above Section IV
p. 9 ), they had to place about half their lands and half their labour at
the disposal of the estate owners. A form of rotation system (glebagan
stelsel) was established, very similar to that later introduced byJohannes
van den Bosch (in office as Governor-General, 1830-34) at the start of
the period of the 'cultivation systems', which allowed the cultivation of
cash crops such as indigo and sugar on irrigated riceland.267
The existence of these crops in the midst of a predominantly rice
growing economy, where plots of land were minutely subdivided,
caused serious problems in terms of irrigation control.268 The labour
services demanded on the estates were also more onerous than in the
traditional sector,269 and the European and Chinese estate owners
appear to have been resented because they expected to be treated as
'lords of the manor' (Tuwan Besar) by the local peasantry on their
lands.270 Their police officials (Gunung) and crop overseers (Opziener),
265 Carey, 'ChangingJavanese Perceptions', p. 40 n. I9i; Louw, Java-Oorlog, vol. I,
Bijlagen V & VI.
266 Ibid. 267 Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', pp. 627-633.
268 S. Br. 8811, H. Thomson (Rajawinangun) to R. C. N. d'Abo (Yogyakarta), 13
Dec. 1822; Id. to Id., 6 Jan. i823; KITLV H 699g (Rouffaer coll.) AvJ (section on
landrent), p. 76, Id. to A. H. Smissaert (Yogyakarta), n.d. (c.July I823), where he noted
that 'those lands [at Rajawinangun] which were given to me in rent for the cultivation of
indigo are so intermixed with those of other Javanese (farmers), that my crops have been injured by
the cultivation of their fields lying contiguous to mine (author's italics)'.
269 Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', p. 631. Labour services (kerigan) on the coffee estates
for villagers who were not employed by the estate owner as day labourers, took place on a
two day a week basis with one day being paid (at the rate of 71 cents (6 copper duit) per
villager, and 15 cents (I 2 copper duit) per overseer (mandur)), and one day unpaid, see S.
Br. g I1, C. van Vlissingen (Opziener Kembang Arum), 'Verdeeling der navolgende koffij
tuinen van het land Kembang Arum onder de bevolking van genoemd land', 14 May
I825; C. von Winckelman (Surakarta) to H. MacGillavry (Surakarta), 22 April I825.
On the other labour service demanded by estate owners, see Dj. Br. 5i C, H. G. Nahuys
van Burgst (Yogyakarta) to H. J. van de Graaff (Batavia), i8 May 1821. For a
comparison with daily wages for coolies, see above n. I45.
270 GKA, 20 Sept. i830 no. 56k, 'Verbaal', interviews with Raden Adipati Danureja
IV (in office, I813-47) and Pang6ran Prabuningrat (ex Raden Tumenggung
Wiranegara), 21 April I830 (on the Europeans); and Carey, 'Changing Javanese
Perceptions', pp. 40-I (on the Chinese).
13o PETER CAREY
usually Chinese or Eurasians, likewise created difficulties for the

population by acting in a harsh and insensitive way with regard to local
adat (custom).271 Life was particularly hard for those villagers who were
forcibly removed from their lands in the irrigated rice plains to provide a
resident work-force for the distant coffee estates.272 Conditions of work
and wage rates for day labourers in the coffee estates were not
particularly attractive, and the loss of a traditional place in the village
community was an irreversible disaster for the peasant families
involved.273
The depth of popular hatred towards the coffee estates at this time is
reflected in the report of the Dutch Commissioners charged with
winding up the estate leases in 1824. They warned that if the estates were
returned to the Javanese cultivators, the latter would immediately
uproot all the coffee trees, so intense was their dislike of the estate
system.274 The plight of many small Javanese producers selling locally
grown 'hedge' (pager) coffee and indigo, whose trade had suffered
severely from the twenty-two per cent devaluation in the bi-metallic
exchange rate in January I824 (see above Section IV n. I36) and the
competition from the estates, provided an added spur to local resent-
ment.275 The months immediately following the abolition of the estate
leases witnessed a dramatic rise in the number of armed attacks on
isolated European estate owners. Many of these were led by former
271 Ibid.
272 J. F. W. van Nes, 'Verhandeling over de waarschijnlijke oorzaken, die aanleiding

tot de onlusten van I825 en de volgende jaren in de vorstenlanden gegeven hebben',
TNI vol. 6 no. 4 (1844), p. 142; S. Br. 13 , 'Minuut-verbaal van het verhandelde door de
Kommissie belast met de verevening der zaken der verhuurde landerijen in de Res.
Soerakarta en Djocjocarta' (henceforth: 'Minuut-Verbaal verhuurde landerijen'),
entry of 3 Feb. I824; Louw, Java-Oorlog, vol. II, p. 273.
273 On the poor wage rates and conditions for day labourers (bujang) working in the
coffee estates, see Louw, De Java-Oorlog van 1825-30 vol. II (Batavia: Landsdrukkerij &
's-Hage; M. Nijhoff, 1897), pp. 269-74 (esp. p. 274); S. Br. I70, Commissioners
(Surakarta) to G. A. G. Ph. van der Capellen (Batavia/Bogor), 24 Oct. 1824; S. Br. 88",
'Report on Rajawinangun', Oct. 1823 (stating that the monthly rate for bujang was 4
Java Rupees or about 13 cents a day with no meals being provided); and S. Br. 9gI, C.
von Winckelman (Surakarta) to H. MacGillavry (Surakarta), 22 April I825 (stating
that bujang were paid io duit (22 cents) for every hundred coffee trees they cleaned and
weeded (about a day's work), and were given a rice meal twice a day). For comparative
wage rates of porters and coolies at this time, see above n. 145.
274 S. Br. 131, 'Minuut-Verbaal verhuurde landerijen', entry of i Aug. I824; Louw,
Java-Oorlog, vol. II, p. 274; Hogendorp I531, W. van Hogendorp, 'Over den Staat van
Java no. 2' (Kedhu, 1827).
275 S. Br. I3I, 'Minuut-verbaal verhuurde landerijen', entry of I Aug. 1824; P. J.
Veth, Java, Geographische, Ethnologisch, Historisch (2nd rev. edn, Haarlem: De Erven F.
Bohn, I898), p. 349.
WAITING FOR THE 'JUST KING3 13I
estate workers who had suffered dismissal or who harboured a particular

grudge against their erstwhile employers.276 Police reports also refer to
local 'bandit' groups operating in the Yogya area who had taken to
carrying clubs and axes with them so that they could batter down the
heavy teak shutters and doors which were fitted to all Chinese and
European dwellings.277 Indeed, the situation had become so bad at this
time that the colonial government was constrained to make special
allocations of gunpowder to estate owners in particularly exposed areas,
and, by the outbreak of the Java War, few Europeans, Chinese or
Eurasians could live with any security in the Javanese countryside.278
The sorry history of the estate leases in the principalities, combined
with the difficulties caused by the tollgates, the opium monopoly, the
increased fiscal demands, the droughts and harvest failure of the 182 1-
25 period, the breakdown of law and order in many country areas, and
the situation in the newly annexed territories, all give a picture of an
agrarian society in crisis. The prosperous years of the late eighteenth
century, the 'golden age' of the sikep, were now only a memory. For the
Javanese peasantry who lived through this period, all these develop-
ments confirmed that they were experiencing the 'Time of Wrath' (Jav.:
'jaman kala-bendu') which would inevitably precede the coming of the
messianic Javanese 'Just King' (Ratu Adil), who would institute an age
of justice and plenty, and whose arrival would be heralded by natural
portents and disasters.279 The massive eruption of Mt Merapi, the
volcano overlooking Yogyakarta, in December 1822, was just one of the
most spectacular of these omens.280 Another was the Asiatic cholera
epidemic of 1821 which had been predicted in the prophetic writings of a
revered Javanese mystic who lived in the forests of Lodhaya near
276 On these attacks, see, for example, Dj. Br. 52, A. H. Smissaert (Yogyakarta) to G.
A. G. Ph. van der Capellen (Batavia/Bogor), 5 Sept. I825; and S. Br. 881, Id. to H.
MacGillavry (Surakarta), 6 Sept. i823.
277 On the numerous robber (kampak) bands armed with pikes, muskets, axes (bijlen)
and clubs which operated in the Mt Merapi area in 1820, see Dj. Br. 5 B, R. C. N. d'Abo
(Yogyakarta) to H. G. Nahuys van Burgst (Surakarta), 23June I820; Id. to Id., 27July
I820; and for the description of an axe attack on a European's house in Yogakarta in
I819 , see S. Br. I3 , 'Translaten en Verbaalen, Solo, 181 6- I819', entry of 8 Feb. 18 9.
278 On the provision of gunpowder to estate owners, see Dj. Br. 52, A. H. Smissaert
(Yogyakarta) to Commander of the Yogyakarta Fort, o Sept. I823; Dj. Br. 53, Id. to
Id., 14 Feb. 1824; and on the flight of a Eurasian overseer to Surakarta just after the
outbreak of theJava War, see S. Br. 9 II, C. van Vlissingen (Opziener Kembang Arum) to
H. MacGillavry (Surakarta), 22 July i825.
279 See the passages from the Reksapustaka (Mangkunagaran) MS. of the Serat
Cabolang (c. 81I5) transliterated in KITLV Or. 471, pt. 4, pp. I 1-2.
280 See Carey, 'Pangeran Dipanagara and the Making of the Java War' (forth-
coming, I986), Chap. IX.
PETER CAREY
I32
Blitar.281 This man, who was arrested by the Surakarta authorities in

I819, had spoken of a terrible plague (pageblug luwih gedhe) which would
arrive from the west, and which would only be warded off if true Islamic
Believers held religious feasts (sedhekah) and uttered special litanies
(dhikr) from the Qur'an.282 He also referred to a 'Regulator and
Maintainer of Religion' (Ratu Paneteg Panatagama) of Mataram blood, a
clear allusion to the coming of a 'Just King' who would be sprung from
the royal line of the central Javanese courts.283
When it came, the Asiatic cholera epidemic of April-August 1821 was
every bit as terrible as the sage had predicted for it struck a 'virgin'
population who had no built-in immunity to the disease.284 In his
reminiscences, Nahuys van Burgst, at the time Acting Resident of
Surakarta (in office, I820-22), recalled the lethal virulence of the
cholera attacks, with many people succumbing after only a few hours
and some even falling dead on the spot as though felled by an apoplectic
fit.285 Brought by sailors from Pulau Pinang and Malacca in the Malay
peninsula (where it had broken out in I819), the epidemic first
manifested itself in the Malay kampung (urban settlement) of Torbaya in
Semarang, where, in the last week of April I82I, 1,225 people died.286
By early May, the disease had spread along the entire north coast ofJava
with the most devastating outbreaks occurring in the colonial capital of
Batavia (I 56 reported deaths a day at the height of the epidemic) and
Surabaya (76 reported deaths a day in mid-June).287 The main wave of
the disease appears to have spent itself by early August, but in some parts
of East Java, serious outbreaks persisted until the end of the year,
especially in Surabaya, Madura and the Eastern Salient (Oosthoek),
where a total of iIo,000 or seven per cent of the population are
281 This was Kyai Iman Sampurna ('The Sage of Perfect Faith') who lived for a long
time in the forests ofLodhaya near Blitar, see S. Br. 13 , 'Translaten en Verbaalen, Solo,
1816-I 819', entries of i I Feb. and 17 Feb. 1819; and Dj. Br. 4, 'Dagregister van de Res.
Soerakarta, 1819' (signed H. F. Lippe [Asst.-Res. Surakarta], 31 Dec. I819), entries of
5, 26 Jan., 15, 17, 19, 20, 22 Feb., 4, 7, 8 I , 23 March, and 4 May I819.
282 The original pegon (Javanese written in Arabic script) copy of Kyai Iman
Sampurna's prophetic script (with a partial Dutch trans. byJ. W. Winter), can be found
in S. Br. 13 I, 'Translaten en Verbaalen, Solo, 1819', entry of 17 Feb. 1819.
283 Ibid.; on the connections between the title 'Ratu Paneteg Panatagama' and the Ratu
Adil, see Peter Carey, 'The Cultural Ecology of Early Nineteenth Century Java:
Pangeran Dipanagara, a Case Study' (Singapore: ISEAS Occasional Paper no. 24, Dec.
I974), p. 29; and Id. (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p. XLV, 24I n. 30.
284 Boomgaard, 'Disease, death and disasters', p. 13.
25 Nahuys van Burgst, Herinneringen, pp. 123-4.
286 Muller, 'Kort verslag aangaande de cholera-morbus op Java', pp. 2-3.
287 Ibid., p. 3.
WAITING FOR THE 'JUST KING5 I33
estimated to have succumbed.288 The number of fatalities in inland

areas appear to have been slightly lower, although in Surakarta at the
worst period in late June about seventy deaths a day were reported.289
The situation was exacerbated by the exceptionally dry weather (it had
not rained heavily for several months), the scarcity and expense of all
foodstuffs, and the fact that the epidemic was at its height during the
Fasting Month (Puwasa) (23 May-22 June 182I) when resistance to
disease on the part of the population at large was lower.290 For the lucky
ones who survived, the memory of these terrible hot months of 182 I must
have been profoundly disturbing. The virulence of the disease and its
manifestation at one of the holiest and most religiously intense periods of
the year must have betokened to many an upheaval in the natural order
of things, a time of cosmic disturbance (Jav.: 'gara-gara') which augured
that the darkest days of the 'Time of Wrath' were at hand.291
VII. Conclusions
Space does not permit a further consideration of the millenarian

background to the Java War here, but there is plenty of evidence to
suggest that messianic expectations associated with the coming of a 'Just
King' were widespread in south-central Javanese society on the eve of
288 Ibid., pp. 4-6; the figure of seven per cent has been reached by comparing the
number of reported deaths in this area with the population figures given in Raffles,
History, vol. I, p. 62, Table no. II facing (British Government Census of I815) which
gives a total population of 7I0,657 for the districts of Gresik, Surabaya, Pasuruan,
Bangkalan, Pamekasan, Sumenep and Banyuwangi. It should be noted that we are
dealing here with reported deaths, the actual numbers who succumbed were probably
very much higher possibly amounting to about ten per cent of the total population of
Java (4-5-5 millions) at this time, see L. Chevalier (ed.), Societe d'Histoire de la Revolution de
'48 (La Roche-sur-Yon: Imprimerie Centrale de l'Ouest, 1958), p. xiv.
289 S. Br. 170, 'Handelingen van den Resident van Soerakarta voor het jaar I82 I',
entry of 26 June 82 1. See also Muller, 'Kort verslag aangaande de cholera-morbus op
Java', p. 4; Nahuys van Burgst, Herinneringen, p. I23 (who stated that Surakarta and
Semarang were the two towns most affected by the epidemic in Java); and Koninklijke
Bibliotheek (The Hague), A. D. Cornets de GrootJr. private coll., pt. 3, A. D. Cornets
de Groot Jr. (Surakarta) to A. D. Cornets de Groot Sr. (Gresik), I June 1821.
290 S. Br. 170, 'Handelingen van den Resident van Soerakarta voor het jaar 182 I',
entry of2oJune 1821 referring to a letter of instruction from the Resident of Surakarta to
local inhabitants urging them not to observe the fast during Puwasa because of the
cholera epidemic, and encouraging farmers to plant potatoes and root crops because of
the rice shortage. See further above Section IV n. I77.
291 See above n. 279.
I34 PETER CAREY
the Java War.292 Everywhere people were convinced that something

portentous was about to occur: the arrival of a liberator who would rid
the land of injustice and fiscal oppression, and roll back alien economic
influences. Even senior Dutch officials realized that a major agrarian
uprising was imminent in south-central Java, although their repeated
warnings were ignored by the Governor-General, Van der Capellen,
who noted in his diary on the day the news ofDipanagara's rebellion was
brought to him that it had occurred 'entirely unexpectedly' (op het aller
onverwachts) !293
As we have seen, the background of the war must be sought as far back
as the turn of the nineteenth century, when the conditions which had
permitted the consolidation of a rural landed elite, the opening out of
new ricefields in south-centralJava and the steady population growth in
country areas, began to change. The second Sultan's pancas revisions in
1802 and c. 1808, which added considerable new fiscal burdens on to the
village communities living in the core apanage regions of Yogyakarta,
were important here, as were the developments in the outlying areas
(mancanagara) after 812 which witnessed the rapid conversion of
'tribute' lands into apanages, especially in the provinces controlled by
Surakarta. In retrospect the year I812 heralded the most significant
changes, for, in the aftermath of the British territorial annexations
(especially of the key apanage province of Kedhu), Javanese apanage
holders and officials in the remaining regions ruled by the princes moved
swiftly to maximize their rents by the institution of the fixed money rent
(pajeg mati) tax and the tax-farming of ever larger areas to non-Javanese
Demang, especially the Chinese. The annexed regions also suffered for
the combination of Raffles's ill-judged land-rent scheme, the unofficial
survival of the old tribute demands, ever growing peasant indebtedness
to Chinese moneylenders, and the baneful effects of government-
sponsored cash crop cultivation. These all led to a sharp decline in living
standards. It is even possible that the social configurations of south-
central Javanese village society may have begun to shift under the
weight of the new fiscal demands in some areas with the numpang
sharecroppers merging with the 'landowning' sikep to form a broad
small-holding peasant mass. But the evidence is not available to confirm
such a development.
292 Carey, 'Cultural Ecology', passim; Carey, 'Pangeran Dipanagara and the Making
of the Java War' (forthcoming, I986), Chap. X.
293 Anon. (ed.), 'Aanteekeningen van den Gouverneur-Generaal van der Capellen
over den Opstand van Dipo Negoro in 1825', TNI, vol. 22 pt 2 (i860), p. 363 (entry of 24
July); Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p. 283 n. 201.
What is certain is that agrarian conditions continued to deteriorate in

the decade (1815-25) preceding the Java War, especially after I816
when the operation of the tollgate farm, market taxes and opium
monopoly began to affect trading activities in the principalities and
undermine village welfare. The extension of the estate leases to
Europeans and Chinese during the same period, although quite
restricted in scope, further dislocated peasant society, turning some
erstwhile 'landowning' peasants into day labourers. With all these
pressures intensifying in the five years before the Java War, the rapid
succession of droughts, harvest failures, cholera epidemics, floods and
the near-collapse of cash crop prices, plunged many Javanese peasants
into abject poverty, vagrancy and despair. Their only hope seemed to lie
in millenarian prophecies which predicted the coming of a 'Just King'
who would institute a 'golden age' (Jav.: 'jaman mas') of justice and
plenty, a longing which may have been partly inspired by the memory of
better times in the late eighteenth century. Many of the popular
movements in the years leading up to the Java War were thus inspired
by expectations of the restoration of a status quo ante, the revival of old
values and customs which had been rapidly eroded during the first three
decades of the nineteenth century. These expectations acted as the
catalyst in mobilizing the south-central Javanese peasantry behind
Dipanagara in 1825, a phenomenon clearly recognized and encouraged
by the latter when he adopted one of the titles of the 'Just King' (i.e.
Sultan Erucakra) in August 1825 and insisted that the old level of
ricefield tribute should be restored.294
It is probable, however, that by 1825 it was already too late to turn
the clock back, even if Dipanagara had ultimately proved victorious.
The combination of domestic and European pressures on the Javanese
peasant economy had already begun to change it irreversibly. Clifford
Geertz makes a useful point here when he writes that it might have been
easier for the Javanese to make the transition to a modern economy in
the early nineteenth century before the full impact of the European
presence had begun to make itself felt than they are able to do today.295
The society which might have developed out of the highly stratified
agrarian world of the late eighteenth century would certainly not have
been a fair one: considerable discrepancies in wealth and access to land
would probably have persisted. But who can deny that theJavanese as a
people would have retained a more competitive and entrepreneurial
spirit with which to confront the modern world?
294 Carey (ed. and trans.), Babad Dipanagara, p. 287 n. 21 8; and above Section I p. 65.
295 Geertz, Agricultural Involution, p. 82.
I36 PETER CAREY
Vote on Currency Values and Abbreviations
It should be noted that monetary practice and policy in Indonesia between the
late eighteenth century (I795) and I826 are complex for a number of reasons,
the most important being that (i) silver, copper and paper money were
circulating with changing agios (due to inflation) and the sources do not always
state explicitly which sort of money is meant; (2) even 'copper' is not an
unambiguous term since it can refer to copper doits (duiten or farthings), bonken
(lit.: 'lumps) or picis (cash), depending on the period one is dealing with; (3)
money of account and circulating coins are often not distinguished in the
sources; and (4) between I816 there was an artificial difference between the
Dutch guilder (Generaliteits gulden) and the Netherlands-Indies guilder (Indische
gulden). The latter never existed, however, as a circulating medium. Instead
there was theJava Rupee (Ropij) with the same value of I20 doits or 30 stuivers
(i stuiver =4 duits) and a fine silver content of 10.91 grams (as opposed to the
silver content of the Dutch guilder which was 9.613 grams). In I826, the fiction
of the Netherlands-Indies guilder was given up, and the Dutch guilder was
declared to be the official currency of account in Indonesia, at exchanging at
par with theJava Rupee, and consisting of 20 (new) stuivers, or ioo (old) duits,
see L. de Bree, Gedenkboek van de Javasche Bank (Weltevreden, 1928), vol. I, p.
I49, pp. 487-88; and W. M. F. Mansvelt (Re-ed. and continued by Pieter
Creutzberg), Changing Economy in Indonesia. A Selection of Statistical Source Material
from the Early Igth Century up to I940. Vol. 2: Public Finance, i8i6-i939 (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), pp. 12-I3. Other coins in circulation before the 1826
reform included the ronde real, silver real-of-eight or Spanish dollar ('Spaanse
Mat') with a fine silver content of 24.5 grams and a value of between 63 and 66
(old) stuivers; and milled silver ducatoons (imported from Holland) with
approximately the same silver content, but which was valued as high as 80 (old)
stuivers in Java. I am grateful to Dr Peter Boomgaard for all his help with this
note.
List of Abbreviations
AJ. Anno Javano (Javanese era).

AN Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, Jakarta.
ARA Algemeen Rijksarchief (General State Archives), The Hague.
AvJ Archief van Jogja, Rouffaer collection (KITLV H 698a-b).
Baud J.C. Baud private collection (ARA).
BCG Besluiten van Commissarissen-Generaal.
BGG Besluiten van den Gouverneur-Generaal.
BKI Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Leiden.
BL Add. MS. British Library (London) Additional Manuscript.
Dj. Br. 'Bundel Djokjo Brieven' (volumes of letters in the Yogyakarta
Residency archive, AN).
dJ J.KJ. deJonge and M.L. van Deventer (eds.), De Opkomst van
het Nederlandsch Gezag in Oost-Indie. Verzameling van onuitgegeven
Stukken uit het Oud-Koloniaal Archief, 6 vols. 's-Gravenhage: M.
Nijhoff, 1862-1909.
Dfl. Dutch guilder (Generaliteits gulden).

dK H.M. de Kock private collection (ARA).
GKA Geheim en Kabinets Archief (ARA).
HB Hamengkubuwana.
Hogendorp G.K. van Hogendorp private coll. (ARA).
IOL India Office Library and Records, London.
Jav. Javanese.
Java NOK Java's Noord Oost Kust (volumes of letters in the archive of the
Government ofJava's Northeast Coast, AN).
J.R. Java Rupee (post-1896 same as the Dutch guilder [Dfl.].
KITLV H Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Lei-
den) Western language MS. (H= Hollands.).
KITLV Or Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Lei-
den) Oriental language MS.
kr. krama (High Javanese).
Mack Pr. Mackenzie Private collection (IOL).
MvK Ministerie van Kolonien (archive of the former Minister of the
Colonies, ARA).
ng ngoko (Low Javanese).
NvB HJ. Nahuys van Burgst private collection (Bibliotheca Publica
Latina 616, Universiteits Bibliotheek, Leiden).
PB Pakubuwana.
r.r. ronde real (see Sp.D. below).
Schneither G.J.Chr. Schneither private collection (ARA).
S.Br. 'Bundel Solo Brieven' (volumes of letters in the Surakarta
Residency archive, AN).
Sp.D. Spanish dollar (worth about 63-66 stuivers).
TBG Tijdschrift van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetens-
chappen, Jakarta.
TNI Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indie, Jakarta.
vAE van Alphen-Engelhard private collection (ARA).
VBG Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en
Wetenschappen, Jakarta.
VKI Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Landen- en
Volkenkunde, Leiden.
VOC Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East India Com-
pany, I602-I799).

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Waiting for the 'Just King': The Agrarian World of South-Central Java from Giyanti

(1755) to the Java War (1825-30)

Waitingfor the 'Just King':

STUDENTS ofJavanese society have long recognized that theJava War

oo26-749X/86/ogo6-o50I$02.00 ?I986 Cambridge University Press

communities in Java.3 Specialists in the history of the central Javanese

in the ricefields to take part in the destruction of Dutch mobile columns

millenarian movements which manifested themselves in the Javanese

II. The Structure of the Javanese Apanage System

Before embarking on a detailed examination of the economy and society

By the early nineteenth century, this military basis of the Javanese

)re apanage areas Outlying provinces

2/5' Apanage Bupati 2/5

- 1/5 Beei Bekel ee D eman Be el / Dem \ 1/5

_2/5 K ( sikep sikep sikep sikep sikep s kep 2/5 - HAMLET

dependents (numpang/rayat) dependents (numpang/rayat)

August I812, which annexed some of the outlying territories and

example, the settlements belonging to the watek (intermediate adminis-

In Crawfurd's view, it was usually in the interests of the Bekel to treat

64 See above n. 62.

III. The Social Structure of the South-central Javanese Village

In their descriptions ofJavanese villages in the early nineteenth century,

90 Onghokham, 'Residency of Madiun', pp. 186-7.

up independently.95 Elsewhere, it seems that established sikep acted as

advantage, shared no property in common, and gathered together in

operation were exceptional, and most aspects of the agricultural cycle,

IV. The Economy and Demography of the South-central

traded extensively in the region, especially with the north-east coast,

province also sent four hundred and eighty pikul (i pikul=61.76i

in M. Waterloo, 'Memorie van Overgave' (Yogyakarta), 4 April I808. On bathik

118 dK 145, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard (Semarang), 22 March I808

Regional trade in south-central Java was not entirely confined to

123 dK I45, M. Waterloo (Yogyakarta) to N. Engelhard, 22 March i808, in M.

important commercial centre was Kutha Gedhe (see Map 2) where, in

SomeJavanese villages appear to have specialized in the manufacture

In the aftermath of the British assault on Yogyakarta in June 1812,

Before these developments occurred there is evidence that a consider-

farmers.141 The difficulties experienced by the less well off members of

of this demographic growth appears to have been rather uneven. The

condition of the peasantry, the lack of large-scale epidemics between

the core apanage territories, the adult population appear to have

174 Boomgaard, 'Death, disease and disasters', p. 5.

Much more research will have to be done on Javanese agrarian

V. The Javanese Apanage System and the Village

areas as a response to the British territorial annexations of I812. The

involved in cash crop production (i.e. indigo and pepper) or in local

surveyors' (abdi-Dalem priksa dhusun/Mantri papriksan negara) would make

The degree of administrative confusion and downright concealment

187 Dj. Br. 45, W. H. van IJsseldijk (Yogyakarta) to P. G. van Overstraten

By the turn of the nineteenth century, however, conditions had begun

extraordinary administrative expedients. In Yogyakarta, a massive

From this time onwards a considerable discrepancy existed between

brought in by the pancas revisions was not applied consistently even in

currency devaluation with land being used instead of coin.204 It fuelled

204 Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', p. 593.

209 Rouffaer, 'Vorstenlanden', p. 593.

Conditions were clearly difficult for the upper ranks of Javanese

tax-paying (sikep) peasants in the remaining areas. In 181 6, for example,

collection of taxes remained in the hands of the Bupati, who continued to

219 Ibid., pp. 19-20.

VI. Economic Conditions in the South-central Javanese

Despite the huge problems faced by the Javanese peasantry, especially

renowned as a major food exporter to less favoured neighbouring