Welcome to the electronic edition of Sugar, Steam and Steel: The Industrial Project in Colonial Java, 1830-1885. The book opens with the bookmark panel and you will see the contents page. Click on this anytime to return to the contents. You can also add your own bookmarks. Each chapter heading in the contents table is clickable and will take you direct to the chapter. Return using the contents link in the bookmarks. The whole document is fully searchable. Enjoy. G Roger Knight Born in deeply rural Shropshire (UK), G Roger Knight has been living and teaching in Adelaide since the late 1960s. He gained his PhD from London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, where his mentors included John Bastin and CD Cowan. He is an internationally recognised authority on the sugar industry of colonial Indonesia, with many publications to his name. Among the latest is Commodities and Colonialism: The Story of Big Sugar in Indonesia, 1880-1940, published by Brill in Leiden and Boston in 2013. He is currently working on a 'business biography' — based on scores of his newly discovered letters back home — of Gillian Maclaine, a young Scot who was active as a planter and merchant in colonial Java during the 1820s and 1830s. For a change, it has almost nothing to do with sugar. The high-quality paperback edition of this book is available for purchase online: https://shop.adelaide.edu.au/ Sugar, Steam and Steel: The Industrial Project in Colonial Java, 1830-18 by G Roger Knight School of History and Politics The University of Adelaide Published in Adelaide by University of Adelaide Press The University of Adelaide Level 14, 115 Grenfell Street South Australia 5005 [email protected] www.adelaide.edu.au/press The University of Adelaide Press publishes externally refereed scholarly books by staff of the University of Adelaide. It aims to maximise access to the University’s best research by publishing works through the internet as free downloads and for sale as high quality printed volumes. © 2014 G Roger Knight This work is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. This licence allows for the copying, distribution, display and performance of this work for non-commercial purposes providing the work is clearly attributed to the copyright holders. Address all inquiries to the Director at the above address. For the full Cataloguing-in-Publication data please contact the National Library of Australia: [email protected] ISBN (paperback) 978-1-922064-98-1 ISBN (ebook: pdf) 978-1-922064-99-8 ISBN (ebook: epub) 978-1-925261-00-4 ISBN (ebook: kindle) 978-1-925261-01-1 Editor: Rebecca Burton Editorial support: Julia Keller Book design: Zoë Stokes Cover design: Emma Spoehr Cover image: De suikerfabriek 'Kedawong' bij Pasoeroean op Java by H Th Hesselaar (1849), courtesy of Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands Paperback printed by Griffin Press, South Australia Contents Abbreviations and Glossary vii Acknowledgements xi Introduction 1 Java Sugar, an Industrial Project and the ‘Oriental Cuba’, 1830-85 Part I — The ‘Industrial Revolution’ in Sugar Manufacture 1 Java’s Singular Trajectory: Steam, Steel and the Industrial Project 11 in Sugar 2 A Creole Prometheus: Steam, Paddle Boats and Sugar Factories 33 3 The Industrial Sugar Factory: Wonopringgo, Thomas Edwards and 63 the Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (NHM) Part II — The ‘Peasant’ Economy, the Money Trail and the Bourgeoisie 4 Sugar without Slaves: The Agrarian Basis for the Industrial Project 95 5 The Money Trail: State, Suikerlords and Bourgeoisie 133 Part III — Metamorphosis 6 Metamorphosis: Machinery, Science and the Manufacture of Sugar 177 in Java on the Eve of the Crisis of the Mid-1880s Conclusion 203 The Future of an Industrial Project: The 1880s and Beyond Archival Sources 213 Bibliography 225 v Abbreviations and Glossary AD Arsip Daerah (Local Archive), ANRI ANRI Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, Jakarta ASNI Archief voor de Suikerindustrie in Nederlandsch-Indië AV Algemeen Verslag (General Report) BC Bataviasche Courant Bij Bijlage [Appendix] Bouw 0.709 65 hectares Bupati High ranking Javanese provincial official (see also Regent) Cacah Unit of taxation Cultuurstelsel System of (State) Cultivations inaugurated in 1830 to secure the expanded production of export commodities in Java, primarily coffee, sugar and indigo Desa Village DNB Dictionary of National Biography DNL De Nederlandsche Leeuw Exh. Exhibitum (Agenda item), NA, MK f. guilder Factorij to A’dam Letters from the NHM Batavia Factorij to NHM Head- Office located in Amsterdam, unless otherwise stated, in Tweede Afdeeling/B, NA, NHMA JV Jaarverslag [Annual Report] vii G Roger Knight JVFB Jaarverslag Factorij Batavia NHM [Batavia Branch Office NHM], NA, NHMA GG Governeur-Generaal HCHO Handboek voor Cultuur-en-Handelsondernemingen in Nederlandsch-Indië, Amsterdam, De Bussy, 1888-1940 IB Indische Besluit [Indies Government Decision] IN De Indische Navorscher JV Jaarverslag [Annual Report] JVFB Jaarverslag Factorij Batavia NHM [Batavia Branch Office NHM], NA, NHMA JC Javaasche Courant Kring Area of land assigned to each sugar factory for the cultivation (Beschikkingskring) of cane and commandeering of labour KV Koloniale Verslag (Bijlage bij de Handelingen van de Tweede Kamer der Staten Generaal), The Hague, Landsdrukkerij Lurah Javanese village headman Menumpang Landless, dependent peasant MT Metric tonne MK Archief Ministerie van Kolonien, NA NA Nationaal Archief, The Hague NAB Nederlands Adelsboek NFB Notulen [Minutes] Factorij Batavia, NA, NHMA NHM Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij NHMA Archief Hoofdkantor [Head Office] Nederlandsche Handel- Maatschappij, NA NHM Factorij Branch Office of the NHM in Batavia NHMR Registers houdende inschrijjvingen van overeenkomsten met diverse Suikerfabrieken …, [Registers recording agreements with Sugar Factories …] 1858-1879, 7 vols, NA, NHMA viii Sugar, Steam and Steel NP Nederland’s Patriciaat Oosthoek Java’s eastern salient Paal 1.507 kilometres Pangeran High ranking Javanese aristocrat Pasisir Java’s Northeast Coast Picul 61.72 kilograms Priyayi Elite Javanese official PV Politiek Verslag [Political Report] Regent Dutch term for Bupati (see above) Resident Dutch official in charge of a Residency Sawah Irrigated (rice) field Sf. Suiker Fabriek [Sugar Factory] SU Stukken Betreffende het Onderzoek de Benoemde Commissie [Umbgrove Commissie] voor de opname der verschillende suikerfabrieken op Java, Batavia, 1857. The copy cited here is a separately bound version in the library of the Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen in Amsterdam, but the compilation forms part of Appendix C to Handelingen van de Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal 1862-1863 VMK Verbaal Ministerie van Kolonien, NA, MK VOC Vereenigde Oostindische Campanie [Dutch East India Company] ix Acknowledgements Over more years than I care to remember, scores of fellow academics, librarians, archivists and friends have greatly facilitated the research that produced this book. I would like, however, to specifically acknowledge five people: Dr Margaret Leidelmeijer, Dutch scholar extraordinaire, for sage advice and vital information; Peter Christiaans of the Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie in The Hague for his invariably generous assistance and vast knowledge of 'Indies People'; Professor Ulbe Bosma of the IISH and the Vrij Universitiet in Amsterdam for his invaluable support and encouragement; and, here in Adelaide, Margaret Hosking of the Barr Smith Library for her unwavering assistance over many years in tracking down and obtaining research materials close to home, and Rebecca Burton, Senior Editor at the University of Adelaide Press. xi Introduction Java Sugar, an Industrial Project and the 'Oriental Cuba', 1830-85 This is a book about cane sugar and the transformation of an Indonesian island into the 'Oriental Cuba' during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Between the 1830s and the 1880s, sweetener manufacture in Dutch-controlled Java — the crown jewel of the erstwhile Netherlands Indies — drew decisively away in matters of technology and sugar science from other Asian centres of production which had once equaled or, more often, surpassed it in terms of both output and know-how. Along with its larger and altogether more famous Caribbean counterpart, Java's industry came to occupy a position at the apex of the trade in what had become by this date a key global commodity. Along with the beet sugar producers of (post-1870) Imperial Germany, Cuba and Java accounted for a little over one-third of the world's recorded output of the industrially manufactured kind of sugar usually referred to as 'centrifugal'. 'Industrially manufactured' is the key phrase here, since during the third quarter of the nineteenth century, it was these two island producers that became the prime centres of industrialised manufacture of cane sugar in their respective hemispheres. In neither case has this fact always been grasped. Cuba, along with the United States, was the nineteenth century's greatest holdout of slave-based commodity production, and the institution of slavery there outlasted its American counterpart for the better part of two decades, only coming to a (de facto) end in the 1880s. As a result, the industrial dimension of the Cuban 'project' in sugar has been obscured