The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia : Industrial Production, 1770-2010 9781107421080, 9781107039698

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The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia European markets almost exclusively relied on Caribbean sugar ­produced by slave labor until abolitionist campaigns began around 1800. Thereafter, importing Asian sugar and transferring plantation production to Asia became a serious option for the Western world. In this book, Ulbe Bosma details how the British and Dutch introduced the sugar plantation model in Asia and refashioned it over time. Although initial attempts by British planters in India failed, the Dutch colonial administration was far more successful in Java, where it introduced in 1830 a system of forced cultivation that tied local peasant production to industrial manufacturing. A century later, India adopted the Java model in combination with farmers’ cooperatives rather than employing coercive measures. Cooperatives did not prevent industrial sugar production from exploiting small farmers and cane cutters, however, and Bosma finds that much of modern sugar production in Asia resembles the abuses of labor by the old plantation systems of the Caribbean. Ulbe Bosma is a senior researcher at the International Institute of Social History and a professor of international comparative social history at the University of Amsterdam. He is coauthor of Being “Dutch” in the Indies: A History of Creolisation and Empire, 1500–1920 (with Remco Raben, 2008).



 Studies in Comparative World History Editors Michael Adas, Rutgers University Patrick Manning, University of Pittsburgh Philip D. Curtin, The Johns Hopkins University Other Books in the Series Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order (1979) Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (1984) Leo Spitzer, Lives in Between: Assimilation and Marginality in Austria, Brazil, and West Africa, 1780–1945 (1989) Philip D. Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History (1990; second edition, 1998) John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 (1992; second edition, 1998) Marshall G. S. Hodgson and Edmund Burke III (eds.), Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam and World History (1993) David Northrup, Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834–1922 (1995) Lauren Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900 (2002) Victor Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, vol. 1: Integration on the Mainland (2003) Kerry Ward, Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company (2009)



The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia Industrial Production, 1770–2010

Ulbe Bosma International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam

32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107039698 © Ulbe Bosma 2013 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2013 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bosma, Ulbe, 1962– author. The sugar plantation in India and Indonesia : industrial production, 1770–2010 / Ulbe Bosma, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. pages  cm. – (Studies in comparative world history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-107-03969-8 (hardback) 1.  Sugar plantations – India – History.  2.  Sugar plantations – Indonesia – Java – History.  3.  Sugar trade – India – History.  4.  Sugar trade – Indonesia – Java – History.  I.  Title. HD9116.I415B67  2013 338.1′73610954–dc23    2013008595 ISBN 978-1-107-03969-8 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

page ix x xi 1 10 Where It All Began 10 Chinese Plantations around Batavia 13 From Luxury to Bulk: The Revolution in Sugar Consumption 17 The Atlantic Plantation System: Its Origins and Persistence 21 Explanations for the Divergent Trajectories 30 Taxation and Class and Property Relations 34 Financial Circuits 38 Imperial Ambitions 41 2. East Indian Sugar versus Slave Sugar 44 Plantation Experiments in Late Eighteenth-Century India 45 Ryotwari Taxes and Sugar Experiments in South India 52 East Indian Interests and Non-Slave Sugar 57 The Rise of the East India Sugar Industry 63 Plantations in South Asia? 71 The Downfall of Industrial Cane Sugar in North India 75 Surviving Sugar Manufacturers 79 3. Java: From Cultivation System to Plantation Conglomerate 88 Van den Bosch and His Cultivation System 91 The Cultivation System and the Advance of Wage Labor 100 List of Figures and Tables List of Illustrations and Maps Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Producing Sugar for the World

The Growth of Wage Labor Attending the Advance of Technology vii

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Contents Marginal Peasants and Sharecroppers Providing the Labor Tied to the Sawah Limitations of Colonial Liberalism Free Labor?

4. Sugar, Science, and Technology: Java and India in the Late Nineteenth Century The Role of Irrigation New Mills and Other New Devices Statistics and Botany The Bombay Deccan: The Double Frontier Java: Labor and Technology Journalism, Business, and Botany Ever More Hands Are Needed

5. The Era of the Global Sugar Market, 1890–1929 Cane Fires, Conflict, and Resistance Multiple Resistance in the Sugar Industry Labor Policies during High Colonialism Champaran: From Indigo to Sugar Agriculture or Industry?

6. Escaping the Plantation? The End of a Golden Era Suffering from the Collapse of the Java Sugar Industry The Final Years of Java’s Colonial Sugar Industry The Reappearance of the Sugar Plantation in Java India: Price Control, Zones, and Cooperatives The Sugar Syndicate, Sugar Factories, and Congress Factory Zones, Cooperatives, and Gur in West Champaran Vertical Integration The Factory Cooperatives in the Bombay Deccan (Maharashtra) The Plantation and the Cane Cutters



Conclusion

Appendix I Appendix II Weights and Measures Glossary Abbreviations Archives Bibliography Index

109 113 116 124 130 136 138 142 147 151 156 159 164 175 180 186 193 203 211 214 220 222 227 231 236 239 246 251 257 262 269 273 277 279 281 283 285 313

Figures and Tables

Figures 2.1. Average prices of muscovados, yellow and brown sugars of British colonies in British pounds per cwt page 77 3.1. World market sugar prices set by the London market in current shillings per cwt 105 5.1. Share of Java and Cuba in world cane sugar production 173 6.1. Distribution of sugar production over India, 1950–1985 240

Tables 1.1. Total sugar production (industrial and nonindustrial) for India and Java/Indonesia compared with world production (cane and beet) 2.1. Comparison of local prices at the port of departure and freight, insurance, and wastage per 250 tons AII.1. Costs of producing and shipping 250 tons of sugar to European markets

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Illustrations and Maps

Illustrations 1.1. Pestle and mortar sugar cane press, ca. 1905. Courtesy of the University of Houston Digital Library page 39 2.1. One of the sugar bowls that became part of the abolition campaign, crafted about 1820. ©The Trustees of the British Museum 61 3.1. Festive meal in the hall of the sugar factory celebrating the beginning of the sugar campaign. The guests are village heads and other Javanese local officials. Source: De Suikerfabrieken Watoetoelis en Poppoh in beeld 121 4.1. Field with Reynoso trenches in East Java. Source: De Suikerfabrieken Watoetoelis en Poppoh in beeld 154 4.2. Caterpillars plowing the field at Sugar Factory Boedoean. Courtesy of personal collection of Mr. Tom Etty 155

Maps 3.1. (a) Administrative divisions (Residencies) of Java; (b) Java’s sugar-producing regions, 1920 5.1. Sugarcane map of India

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Acknowledgments

The idea to write a book about the transfer of the plantation system from the Caribbean to Asia was born during discussions with my colleagues at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam. More than a decade ago, my institute adopted global labor history as a research focus. As part of this pursuit, it initiated a series of projects on globally traded commodities like diamonds, tobacco, oil, indigo, coffee, and, last but not least, sugar. Together with Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhof, Willem van Schendel, Marcel van der Linden, Ratna Saptari, and Anil Persaud, I worked on the multiyear research project “Plants, People and Work: The Social History of Cash Crops in Asia, 18th to 20th Centuries.” The project was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. Over the years, my project on the sugar plantation in Asia has benefited tremendously from their input, from discussions with my colleagues at the IISH research department, and from my institute’s participation in different academic networks on global commodities. A most appropriate thank you is for Bhaswati Bhattacharya and Masoom Reza. Without their help this book would never have materialized. Bhaswati collected most of the material at the National Archive in The Hague. Masoom went through the archival indexes in Calcutta, Delhi, Patna, and Chennai and collected the immensely valuable documents on nineteenth-century sugar production in India. He also conducted a series of interviews in Champaran to help the book reach the contemporary era. Furthermore, I would like to thank my colleagues Jean Stubbs, Anand Yang, Jon Curry-Machado, and Roger Knight, who read the manuscript

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while it was still in statu nascendi and who provided many helpful comments and generously shared their insights with me. I am also ­grateful for the valuable comments of the two anonymous referees. Anne Lee and Richard Bowles removed many linguistic infelicities from the manuscript. My colleagues at the library of the IISH deserve my gratitude for their unstinting help in providing the necessary materials from our extremely rich collections. Last but not least I would thank the editors and the copyediting team of Cambridge University Press for making this book possible.

Introduction

The industrialization of sugar production in Asia was initiated by European colonial powers in the early nineteenth century. The crop itself was not a novelty, of course, as its production was deeply embedded in some of the major, rural economies of Asia. Mainland China and India each produced more sugar than the Atlantic “sugar plantation complex” up to 1800. As Sucheta Mazumdar described in her excellent book Sugar and Society in China, peasant-produced sugar was very much part of the global trade. This was not just true for China, but also for Bengal, for example. Only in the late nineteenth century did Chinese and Indian sugar exports decline and industrially produced sugar begin to conquer their markets. The bulk of these imports was produced in other parts of Asia, where industrial sugar manufacturing had been successfully introduced earlier on. In the nineteenth century, Mauritius and Java were by far the most important industrial producers in Asia. Their example was followed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Australia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, and India. This book is about the attempts of colonial powers and affiliated entrepreneurs to involve certain parts of Asia in the manufacture of sugar for the global market. These powers tried to change local social conditions to make them suitable for industrial sugar production, which usually came down to introducing a plantation format. Because of the resilience of local rural economies, such transfers of methods of sugar production only succeeded in exceptional circumstances. The plantation model had flourished for many centuries in insular environments where there was full control over land and labor, and could not simply be transferred to Asia. For example, coerced labor conditions were to a certain extent already present in Java, but almost inconceivable in mainland India. This was 1

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particularly so in Bengal, which was the most important sugar-producing region in (South) Asia around 1800, when exports from the French and British West Indies sharply declined and Asia came into the picture as a producer for European markets. Two important assumptions have to be made explicit before moving on to the obstacles and problems involved in the “transfer of the sugar plantation” to Asia, where peasant production had previously dominated. The first is that it is possible to distinguish between sugar as a peasant crop and as a plantation crop, a distinction made in the Asian context by Mazumdar and Peter Boomgaard, as a matter of fact.1 The use of the term peasant crop by these two authors implies that cultivators have a choice of where and when to plant cane, that they mill their own cane, and that they may deliver the raw sugar to urban refiners. By contrast, plantations control both the growing and processing of the cane. A more elaborate definition of plantation and a discussion that addresses its variations in time and place follows later in this book. The second premise is that the sugar plantation existed beyond its original confines of preindustrial Caribbean sugar production and outside the Atlantic world. Here we rely on Sidney Mintz and Eric Wolff, who disentangled the concept of the sugar plantation from slavery and made plantation an appropriate term to describe, for example, sugar production in the Caribbean in modern times.2 Today, the word plantation is also used to describe the situation in twentieth-century Java and contemporary West India, locations for sugar production that are widely distanced from the Caribbean world.3 See Mazumdar, Sugar and Society. Peter Boomgaard in his article “Treacherous Cane” argues: “If we accept that there are basically two systems of cane-growing in any tropical society, cane as a plantation crop or as a peasant crop, the system of production in Java at that time must be regarded as a plantation system, even though the factories did not own their fields. It was the manager of the sugar factory who decided what to plant when and where, who hired the workers, and who took the responsibility for all production decisions,” p. 159. 2 See Mintz and Wolf, “Haciendas and Plantations” and Bosma, Giusti-Cordero, and Knight, “Sugarlandia Revisited,” p. 11. In 1958, the International Labour Organization (ILO), in the context of its Plantations Convention (110), defined in article 1 a plantation as: “any agricultural undertaking regularly employing hired workers which is situated in the tropical or subtropical regions and which is mainly concerned with the cultivation or production for commercial purposes of coffee, tea, sugarcane, rubber, bananas, cocoa, coconuts, groundnuts, cotton, tobacco, fibres (sisal, jute, hemp), citrus, palm oil, cinchona or pineapple; it does not include family or small-scale holdings producing for local consumption and not regularly employing hired workers.” 3 Breman defines the constellation in West India as one that “closely approximates the plantation model,” Wage Hunters, p. 214. Boomgaard classifies the Java sugar industry as a plantation system, “Treacherous Cane,” p. 159. 1

Introduction

3

This leaves a lot to be said about the word transfer itself, with regard to the nexus between the plantation complex in its Atlantic context and more contemporary plantation-style sugar production in Asia. It seems to me that the connection is twofold. First, the plantation was the dominant business model in the early nineteenth century when the transfer from West to East took place and the industrialization of sugar production began. It had emerged from a long historical trajectory as the model best suited to large-scale, globally competitive sugar production. Apart from the specific historical circumstances under which the transfer was taking place, there were the more permanent economic and technological requirements of industrial sugar production for the global market. The basic argument presented in this book is that industrialization favored the plantation model, encompassing total control over the entire production process: land, labor (slaves or wageworkers), technology, and botany. In the nineteenth century, sugar went through a remarkable transformation from a relative luxury item to a bulk commodity. World sugar production rose from about one million metric tons around 1800 to fifteen million in the early twentieth century.4 Sugar not only increasingly became a bulk commodity, but also a standardized one. Pure sugar is a simple carbohydrate, like alcohol and gasoline, which industrial sugar producers could provide in large quantities by the end of the nineteenth century. By that time, the preindustrial sugar mills had evolved into highly capitalized factories. For a long period, peasant and plantation production for the world market had coexisted, but by the late nineteenth century the global technological convergence of cane processing tilted the balance toward the direct control by factories of the agricultural part of the process, portending the victory of the plantation over peasant sugar production. Meanwhile, industrialization and the concomitant emergence of plantation-style sugar production in the East were largely responsible for a major relocation of production for the world market. Whereas Asia’s share of the total worldwide cane sugar exports was only 6 percent in 1830, it would reach 39 percent by the late 1920s.5 In the same period, the share of sugar exports from Latin American countries (including the Caribbean) declined from 85 percent to 47 percent, most of which at that time came from Cuba.6 Throughout this period, India was the

Robertson and Deerr, World Sugar Production, p. 131. Another tenfold increase was attained in 2005, when world sugar consumption reached 150 million metric tons. 5 Bairoch and Etemad, Structure par produits, p. 100. 6 Ibidem, p. 79. 4

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largest producer of sugar, but almost exclusively for its own domestic market. The expansion of Asian sugar exports should be attributed primarily to the industry in Java, followed by the Philippines, Taiwan, and Mauritius. This major shift in cane sugar exports from the West to Asia was the largest within a wide history of relocations of sugar production, the beginnings of which coincided with the emergence of large regional markets for sugar in Asia and the Mediterranean about 800 years ago.7 These relocations are an essential mechanism within a global history, in which an expanding world population generated a growing demand for sugar. Sugar producers in different areas of the world struggled to satisfy an ever-increasing demand. The unabated expansion of sugar production led to a constant search for new locations to replace the ones that had exhausted or overstretched their social and ecological resources. Over the past 800 years, there has been a restless opening up of new areas for global sugar production, a constant advance of “sugar frontiers,” a phrase borrowed from the conceptual arsenal of the world systems ­theory.8 This culminated in a rearrangement of the world of sugar that took on truly global dimensions around 1800. At that time, two fundamental changes in the history of sugar coincided: the abolition of the slave trade by the British Parliament and the spread of sugar consumption among the urban lower-middle classes in Europe. This encouraged attempts in the early nineteenth century to develop industrial sugar production in India and Java. Underlying the larger picture of relocation from the New World to Asia are numerous individual attempts at producing sugar using industrial technology. From the late eighteenth century onward, Caribbean sugar planters brought their methods to the British and Dutch possessions in Asia. These were processes of trial and error, taking place within a complex background of local variables such as labor and property relations, as well as ecological and climatic constraints. In Asia, many locations proved unsuitable for particular cash crops for a variety of reasons, as detailed in Chapter 2 of this book. Colonial powers tried to change these parameters, sometimes with success but more often in vain. The consequence was that, although many regions in Asia offered physical Mazumdar, Sugar and Society, p. 66; Labib, Handelsgeschichte Ägyptens, pp. 319–320; Von Lippmann, Geschichte des Zuckers, p. 237. One can perceive the emergence of the global sugar trade as part of the “Great Convergence.” For the notion of the Great Convergence, see Northrup, “Globalization and the Great Convergence.” 8 Moore, “Sugar and the Expansion,” p. 414. 7

Introduction

5

conditions conducive to cane growing, industrial sugar production was successfully introduced in only a few during the nineteenth century. Global capitalism, and its capacity to connect production and markets and to relocate capital and technology, is a driving force in modern history. However, it has dominated neither every sphere of life nor all patterns of production and consumption. Sugar provides a case in point by illustrating how demanding the world market can be, but also by showing how cultivators and local banking and trade networks, as well as consumers, can resist its power both culturally and economically. Financial circuits and consumption patterns are therefore important variables that may not always have received the attention they deserve. The history of sugar production in India is an example. While worldwide urbanization created an unprecedented demand for industrially manufactured sugar, people in the Indian countryside continued by and large to prefer a semi-refined cottage sugar called gur (or gul in West India). In 1990, still less than half of the cane grown in India was processed into industrial sugar.9 However, in spite of the perception of India’s delayed industrialization of sugar, the nonindustrial sector did innovate rather than stagnate in a state of backwardness. The available evidence strongly suggests that local sugar manufacturing was competitive enough to resist the advance of industrial sugar factories in India. Production and consumption of gur have proved their resilience to date, particularly in rural areas. This study of the emergence of the Asian sugar plantation confines itself to Java and India, the two major colonial empires where the introduction of industrial sugar plantations was attempted in the early nineteenth century. At the same time, it takes note of the wider context of peasant sugar production in mainland China, and the emerging sugar industries in Taiwan, the Philippines, and Mauritius. Although the divergent trajectories of India and Java are central to this book as a comparative exercise, the study goes beyond a straightforward comparison between the two colonial possessions. It also examines the different trajectories followed in various parts of Java, particularly in India. In terms of climate, ecology, labor, and land, conditions in India varied widely and the histories of sugar production there are part of very different regional histories. This may explain why, in spite of the important step in that direction by Shahid Amin, the history of sugar in India has yet to be written. Drafting the chapters on India for this book was a journey through a 9

Sinha, Sugar Industry, p. 109; Kiyokawa and Ohno, “Technology and Labour Absorption,” p. 346.

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largely uncharted landscape, and this is particularly the case with regard to the nineteenth century. This is in contrast to Java, where Bob Elson and Roger Knight have mapped the increasing entanglement of Java’s colonial sugar production into rural life. Various publications are available concerning Chinese sugar production and the world market, and this book owes a great debt most notably to Mazumdar’s Sugar and Society in China, as is detailed later. The book’s focus is on systems of production rather than the experiences of the millions of workers involved, even though the social consequences of the sugar plantation systems that emerged in Indonesia and India will form part of our discussion. The actual conditions experienced by the workers are, however, widely recorded in many other publications. It is a grim tale that contrasts sharply with the expectations of the promoters of the relocation of sugar production from the Caribbean to Asia, a project that was so closely linked to the abolition of the slave trade and slavery. In the mid-1980s, The Economist observed: “TWO HUNDRED years after enslaving people to work on sugar plantations, rich countries are enslaving them again by ruining those same plantations and poor countries that rely on them.”10 This was quoted by an Indian scholar who has published widely about the Indian sugar industry and who in the 1980s witnessed how this industry was suffering as a result of declining sugar prices on the world market. It is a bitter irony that the relocation of sugar production from the Caribbean plantation colonies to India was advocated by early nineteenth-century abolitionists in Britain. They argued that bringing Indian sugar to the Empire was a way to expand the supply of sugar at a lower price, which had expectedly devastating consequences for the old mercantile and slave-based system of sugar production in the West Indies. It was a combination of idealism and economic thinking, and a combination of ethics and science, which produced Ricardo’s famous law of comparative advantages: that all would benefit from a global division of labor. It was a promise moreover to set slaves free and to release the enormous populations of the Asian colonies from the thralldom of their local moneylenders by making them producers of cash crops for the European markets. The Ricardian promise turned into disenchantment for the rural workers of Asia, and in fact for the Global South as a whole.11 The The Economist, August 10, 1985, p. 1, cited in Baru, “Structural Changes,” p. 58. For a critique on Ricardo, see Patnaik, “The Costs of Free Trade,” in Patnaik, The Republic of Hunger, pp. 17–50.

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Introduction

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advantages of this part of the world were not embedded in relative institutional strengths and weaknesses as the Ricardian model supposed, but were based on the climatic conditions. This meant that for the cultivators in these parts of the world, the only way to participate in economic exchange was, in the words of Patrick O’Brien, to work within a “restricted range of natural advantages allowed by their ecologies [that] provided opportunities for more intensive participation in international trade.”12 Throughout the nineteenth century, sugar was the most important export product of what would become known as the Third World after decolonization, followed at a significant distance by cotton and coffee.13 Sugar could have given Java, India, and many other countries in the tropics an excellent position in world trade during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, comparable to that of the oil-producing countries. This did not happen, however, because Europe had embarked on the manufacture of beet sugar. While only 14 percent of world sugar production came from beet by around 1850, the figure stood at 65 percent in 1900. The European continental powers tenaciously protected their beet sugar industries with national cartels and dumping practices. These practices continued after the Second World War, when the European Community engaged in mass exports of its surplus cheap beet sugar to developing countries. Only in 2005 did the World Trade Organization compel the European Union to drastically reduce its subsidies to the beet sugar industry.14 Beet sugar was one of the most heavily protected crops in the northern hemisphere, providing cheap calories for consumers while creating misery in cane sugar-producing countries due to constant downward pressure on global sugar prices.15 The order of this book is as follows: the first chapter deals with the emergence of the sugar plantation as a historical phenomenon and the way property relations and financial circuits determine modes of sugar production. The introduction of industrial sugar production in Java and India is detailed in the second and third chapters. Both Java and India tried to emulate the Caribbean plantation model, only to rapidly find out O’Brien, “Colonies in a Globalizing Economy,” p. 32. In 1830, sugar was by far the most important commodity produced by the Third World or Global South. In terms of value, it amounted to 25 percent of the total commodity flow from the Global South. In terms of volume it continued to be the most important export crop during the nineteenth century, only its relative value declined because of its new status as a bulk commodity. O’Brien, “Colonies in a Globalizing Economy,” p. 57. 14 BBC News, “EU gets WTO sugar export deadline” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ business/4386912.stm, (accessed October 24, 2012). 15 Marks and Maskus, The Economics and Politics, p. 2. 12 13

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that “the plantation” could not simply be transferred in its entirety, but had to be taken apart and reconstructed over time. Property relations had to be changed and financial circuits constructed to create a conducive environment for the plantation. The Dutch colonial government developed a successful strategy in this respect, turning Java into the world’s second largest cane sugar exporter after Cuba. This does not mean that Indian sugar production did not increase in the course of the nineteenth century, as is explained in the fourth chapter. In their own ways, the sugar sectors of Java and India each caught up with modernity and absorbed innovations. By the late nineteenth century, India was still the largest cane sugar producer in the world. Despite this, as discussed in Chapter 5, by around 1900 India could no longer satisfy its own domestic demand for sugar and began to import rapidly increasing quantities from Java. By that time, the Java factories had reached the vanguard of sugar production, successfully coping with declining sugar prices by forcing down wages and by making considerable investments in cane processing and botany. The Brussels Convention of 1902, which more or less confined beet sugar to the European markets, paved the way for Java to become the dominant supplier of sugar to Asia. The immense Chinese and Indian markets seemed to be waiting for its cheap industrial sugar. In those times, sugar was Java’s main crop, comprising 45 percent of the total value of its exports in 1925.16 Eventually, worldwide overproduction of sugar brought the Java sugar industry to the brink of collapse in the 1930s. A direct cause of this downfall was that India, the largest consumer of sugar from Java, fenced off its home market after it had reached the conclusion that dumping practices could have jeopardized even its gur sector, which would have had massive consequences for the country’s rural social fabric. Inspired by the example of the Java sugar industry, India developed its own industrial sugar sector, alongside and in competition with traditional gur production. Wherever the plantation emerged in Asia as the dominant mode of sugar production, any precolonial mechanisms of bondedness that were present, particularly between the richer and poorer peasant strata, were rechanneled into coercive mechanisms that could sustain the plantation. The introduction of cooperatives of cane growers did not change this, as became apparent not only in postcolonial Java but also in the industrial sugar belt that emerged in Southwest India from the 1940s onward. The argument for this is presented in Chapter 6. The extra-economic Van der Mandere, De Javasuikerindustrie, p. 102.

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Introduction

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pressures called upon to overcome the usual fragmentation of landholdings and to engage labor against subeconomic conditions in the growing, cutting, and haulage of cane did not disappear in postcolonial Indonesia and India. In the course of decolonization, the governments of these two countries made attempts to escape from the colonial plantation model, but as a business model for cash crop production in the global economy it proved long lasting. Its colonial aftermath was often equally resilient, as is detailed in the final chapter. Once local inequalities had mixed with the power of the world market, new structures emerged with long-lasting effects that usually survived decolonization. Alliances between factory management and the richer peasant strata were crucial to the development of sugar production and remained in place during postcolonial times. Although the interests of factory management and rural elites were far from identical and could easily collide, in the long run the latter constituted the backbone of the Asian sugar plantation.

1 Producing Sugar for the World

Where It All Began Historians have mostly directed their attention toward the large plantation complexes in the New World.1 Situated at the vanguard of global capitalism, early modern sugar plantations were larger than almost any proto-industrial plants in Europe and were more advanced in terms of labor management and the discipline that was enforced on slave laborers.2 The precociousness of the Atlantic sugar complexes set the tone, and practically eclipsed the histories of the Asian peasants who milled their own cane into raw sugar for local consumption or for selling to urban artisanal refiners who manufactured luxury white sugars. Nevertheless, Asia was the continent where it all began, and, in terms of total output, it has always widely exceeded the Atlantic region. For thousands of years, cultivators in North India pressed juice from sugarcane and boiled it long enough for it to solidify into a crude brown sugar. Bengal was probably the heartland of sugar production in those ancient times, and the location where more refined sugars were first manufactured. Some sources suggest that crystallized or granular sugar had been produced in India from 500 BC onward.3 From this location, As a result of this historiographical bias, even Galloway, who has a rare if not unmatched overview of the global history of sugar production, devoted only one-tenth of his classic The Sugar Cane Industry to Asia. 2 Regarding the advanced nature of the labor management of sugar plantations, see Van der Linden, “Re-constructing the Origins of Modern Labor Management.” 3 Gopal, “Sugar-making in Ancient India,” pp. 64–65; The Sanskrit word sarkara means gritty particles or crystalline sugar. See Joges Chandra, “Sugar Industry in Ancient India,” p. 435. 1

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the art of sugar making spread far to the East and West. Westward, the techniques traveled via Persia to the Arab world to reach the shores of the Mediterranean. Eastward, Buddhist monks went from India to China in the seventh century. While establishing monasteries, they introduced the art of sugar making at the emperor’s court, from where it spread out among the Chinese urban elites. Later, in the tenth century, Arab and Persian merchants brought innovations in sugar boiling and refining to China.4 As long as white crystalline sugar remained difficult and expensive to manufacture, it was a luxury item and a sign of royal wealth and power among Chinese emperors, Indian rajas, Egyptian caliphs, the Persian courts, and later, European royalty.5 When the British extended their rule over the hinterlands of India, they discovered that in many places sugar refining was of a high standard. This was reported, for example, by Francis (Hamilton) Buchanan (1762– 1829), a Scottish physician and botanist who carried out extensive surveys commissioned by the government of Bengal. Buchanan emphasized the skillfulness of Indian sugar manufacturers, which put their products on the same level as those from China and the West Indies. The account of his travels around Mysore in the early nineteenth century informs us about local rulers who employed their own sugar manufacturers capable of making highly refined white sugar in accordance with an age-old recipe that was jealously guarded as a secret and handed down from father to son for many generations. Their only customer was the local court, which did not allow others to enjoy the same luxury.6 For obvious reasons, Buchanan was not permitted to watch this manufacturing process, but elsewhere he was able to observe the most common way of purifying sugar – putting the brown sugar mass in an earthen cooler with a hole in the base. The brown color came from the molasses that coated the white sugar crystals. Buchanan must have seen how waterweed was placed on top of these baskets to allow water to trickle down through the sugar mass and clean the crystals.7 The whole process was based on the Mazumdar, Sugar and Society, pp. 35, 136–137; Von Lippmann, Geschichte des Zuckers, pp. 262–263; Deerr, The History of Sugar vol. i, pp. 36–37. 5 Von Lippmann, Geschichte des Zuckers, pp. 225, 653, 655. In addition, since time immemorial sugar water has been used as a medicine, for example, to keep patients alive who are suffering from diarrhea. Gopal, “Sugar-making in Ancient India,” p. 61. See also Von Lippmann, Geschichte des Zuckers, pp. 237, 245–247, 275–276, 568; Mintz, “Sweet Polychrest,” 92; Mazumdar, Sugar and Society, p. 25; Smith, Consumption, p. 266, n. 84. 6 Buchanan, A Journey from Madras i, pp. 157–158 and see in the same book vol. iii, p. 340. 7 Buchanan, Geographical, Statistical and Historical Description of the District, or Zila, of Dinajpur, pp. 301–307. 4

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principle that as the molasses are more soluble than the crystals themselves, they can be rinsed out using water. Through the use of waterweed, a third of the total mass was produced as refined sugar and two-thirds as molasses. Cleansed of perishable particles, these sugars were ready to be carried over long distances by traders. There was also an intense trade in gur and molasses through Bengal’s system of rivers. Patna (Bihar) was a nodal point in the Indian sugar trade, from where gur from Tirhut and Gorakhpur was bought and, often in refined form, traded on to Calcutta, Hooghly, and Channock. Patna had gained this position after the Mughals had established control over Bengal in the early seventeenth century.8 Fine khandsari (sugar manufactured using traditional Indian refining methods) found its way over the icy Hindu Kush and into Tibet, a trade that must have existed at the time of Ibn Battuta. Even more important routes for sugar exports from upper India ran through Afghanistan via Herat, from Punjab to Kabul and Kandahar, and of course there were the trade routes into contemporary Uzbekistan: to Bukhara.9 The Persian market was supplied with khandsari from Bengal in substantial quantities: approximately 250 to 500 metric tons of sugar annually by the second half of the seventeenth century.10 Indian vessels carried sugar by various trade routes around the Indian subcontinent. The Europeans had not yet established general control over Asian production for the global commodity market in Buchanan’s time, although the cultivation of coffee in Java and spices in the Moluccas were notable exceptions. The role of Europeans was mostly that of traders, even though in that role they could become powerful players affecting local markets. The Portuguese, the Dutch, and later the British bought sugar in Patna (Bihar), for example, where they wielded considerable power over the local traders.11 The system worked through a hierarchy of traders extending into rural areas, which was kept moving by the system of forward purchases or advances. These local traders bought up the sugarcane standing in the field shortly before the harvest.12 Sugar was carried in a Even though Buchanan wrote his travelogues in the first decade of the nineteenth century, the picture may still apply to the eighteenth century. See also Sinha, From Decline to Destruction, p. 129. 9 Davies, Report on the Trade, p. 9. 10 Singh, Modern World System, pp. 421–423. 11 For the role of Patna as a nodal point of trade, including sugar, around 1800, see Yang, Bazaar India, p. 79. 12 Chatterjee, Merchants, Politics and Society, pp. 17, 48–50, 92. 8

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crisscross pattern over the Asian waters: the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) sold its poor-quality Bengal sugar to Japan, supplying the emporium of Surat with sugar produced by the Chinese entrepreneurs around Batavia.13 The Dutch and British East India Companies often took sugar as ballast to trade it against other items that found willing markets in Europe: first spices and later tea and bone china. For the British East India Company (EIC), the sugar and opium trade was to a large extent supportive of the Canton tea trade, much as the intra-Asian trade of the VOC had once assisted the trade in spices. This also explains why sugar was a commodity that traveled in multiple directions across the Indian Ocean. It found consumers throughout Asia, Africa’s east coast, and Europe.14

Chinese Plantations around Batavia Up to the nineteenth century, China was second only to India as the world’s largest sugar-producing cultural zone. Its sugar belt was located in southeast China, which had become a burgeoning region for production after the ban on coastal shipping had been lifted in the late seventeenth century, allowing this part of China to connect with the Asian and European markets.15 Increased demand for Chinese sugar, particularly from European trading companies, led to the introduction of technological innovations such as the vertical roller mill, which in all likelihood was copied from the Portuguese or Spanish.16 This method of cane processing became widespread throughout East and Southeast Asia, when the Chinese developed overseas sugar plantations where sugar manufacturing was carried out by labor gangs. Up to the nineteenth century, Cochin China (part of contemporary Vietnam), Siam, and the Philippines had Reesse, De suikerhandel van Amsterdam i, pp. 169, 182–183; Mazumdar, Sugar and Society, p. 89. 14 In the early nineteenth century, sugar from Bengal alongside sugar from China was still imported into Persia. See Buckingham, Travels in Assyria, pp. 352–353. 15 Marks, Tigers, Rice, pp. 163–194. 16 There is an extensive discussion about the provenance of the sugar mill with its two or three vertical rollers, use of which spread throughout the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Chinese sugar-producing worlds from the early seventeenth century onward. Who introduced this mill: the Europeans or the Chinese? The most plausible explanation is that it was the Jesuits, who had been traveling around the sugar plantations in the New World and who came to Manila or even to Guangdong (southeast China). In all likelihood, it is through these encounters that the Chinese adapted the vertical roller mill and used it at their plantations throughout East and Southeast Asia. See Mazumdar, Sugar and Society, pp. 152–153, 157. See also Sabban, “L’industrie sucrière.” 13

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The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia

been important locations for Chinese sugar production.17 A great number of Chinese resided in Manila and Luzon, where they grew cane and other crops. In the suburbs of the cities, Chinese entrepreneurs owned factories where the sugar was clayed. These muscovado sugars were readily accepted by the British and North American markets during most of the nineteenth century.18 Until at least the mid-nineteenth century, Siam was another important site for the production of sugar by Chinese millers for consumption in China. Chinese settlers had established dozens of plantations, some of which employed hundreds of Chinese laborers.19 And last but not least, the Chinese introduced the production of cane sugar into the Indonesian archipelago, perhaps as early as the thirteenth century. From different parts of the archipelago, sugar was brought to Bantam (West Java), at that time the marketplace of Southeast Asia, where it was sold. In contrast to China and India, until the late nineteenth century cane sugar was little consumed by Java’s domestic market. Java sugar was palm sugar. Most of the sugarcane for local consumption went to distilleries, which were quite often built adjacent to sugar mills.20 At the time the Dutch set foot in West Java and encountered Chinese sugar mills, the Dutch Republic had just begun to play a key role in the European sugar trade.21 Amsterdam was on its way to becoming Europe’s staple market for sugar. Large quantities came from Brazil, which the Dutch had wrestled from the Portuguese in the 1630s. The Dutch East Indies Company was keen to feed both its intra-Asian trading network and the Amsterdam market with sugar, and started to collaborate with Chinese entrepreneurs to develop sugar production, not only in Batavia but also in Taiwan (Formosa).22 In addition, attempts were made to start sugar production in Mauritius, which the VOC hoped to transform into a sugar colony when the Dutch relinquished their territory in Brazil to Around 1800, the production of clayed sugar in Cochin China seems to have seriously diminished, however, because of political instability. See White, Voyage to Cochin China, pp. 251, 261. According to Willem Wolters, sugar exports from the Philippines in 1830 amounted to 20,000 metric tons, whereas sugar exports from Java had declined to 6,467 metric tons. See Wolters, “Sugar Production in Java and in the Philippines,” p. 412. 18 White, Voyage to Cochin China, pp. 119, 132, 134; Larkin, Sugar and the Origins, pp. 22, 26, 43, 56. 19 Bowring, The Kingdom of Siam, p. 203. 20 Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, pp. 55–56. Raffles wrote in 1811, “the sugar used by the natives is not prepared from the sugar-cane, but from the áren and other palms,” The History of Java i, p. 97. 21 Hooyman, “Verhandeling over den tegenwoordigen staat,” p. 184. 22 Mazumdar, Sugar and Society, p. 85. 17

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the Portuguese in the 1650s. After Taiwan was lost to the Chinese in 1662, Mauritius became even more important to the VOC. However, the island suffered from floods and labor shortages, problems the Dutch were unable to overcome, and it was another century before Mauritius rose to a prominent position as a sugar producer under French and British rule, respectively.23 It is interesting to see how the story of the VOC trying to establish sugar production in Asia mirrors the problems encountered in the Caribbean region. In a similar way to what occurred in the Atlantic area, sugar production jumped from island to island in the Asian region. The VOC eventually came to rely exclusively on Java for its sugar production and it therefore established a sugar monopoly on the island. The epicenter of production was south of Batavia (the Ommelanden), where the land was privately owned by Europeans who usually rented it out to Chinese millers. Most of the labor in the fields around Batavia was carried out by bujangs (labor gangs of bachelors) who came on their own initiative. Other laborers were engaged by paying village heads a recruitment fee. Javanese labor was hired from as far away as Cirebon and Tegal, about 125 miles from Batavia.24 Java might have moved further in the direction of a joint Chinese-Dutch sugar consortium if the Dutch had not become distraught by the way Chinese economic interests became entrenched on the island. In 1740, the government of Batavia planned to deport a proportion of the Chinese labor immigrants to Ceylon, but before this plan could be implemented a rebellion flared up among the Chinese in the sugar fields and the European residents of Batavia responded by the mass murder of their Chinese fellow townspeople. In the course of the eighteenth century, however, when sugar became an increasingly important commodity for the VOC, Chinese sugar millers were given more room and encouragement. This happened in particular after 1790, when sugar supplies from the Caribbean to Europe diminished because of the revolution in Saint Domingue (Haiti) and the Napoleonic wars. Even before that time, the Amsterdam sugar market was more profitable to the VOC than were its Asian markets, but this fact apparently escaped the attention of its bookkeepers.25 At any rate, the VOC rapidly responded to the diminishing production from the Caribbean – in the same way the EIC would in North-Coombes, A History of Sugar Production, pp. 3–7. Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, pp. 60, 63. 25 Reesse, De suikerhandel van Amsterdam i, pp. 182–183. 23 24

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India, as we will see in Chapter 3 – by trying to raise the output produced by the Chinese millers. The government in Batavia made some efforts to reinvigorate sugar production around Semarang and Cirebon, where it had once thrived but had experienced a serious setback in the wake of the massacre of the Chinese in 1740.26 It was more or less compelled to do so, because in the late eighteenth century production around Batavia had reached its ecological limits in terms of soil exhaustion, the disappearance of the forests that provided wood for fuel, and a shortage of buffaloes to transport cane and power the mills.27 Labor shortages in the Batavian Ommelanden caused further problems.28 Chinese sugar producers took measures to reduce labor costs, for example, by ratooning (allowing the cane stubs to sprout new stalks two or three times after the harvest). They used plows not only to prepare the land but also for weeding between young canes, which they planted in rows separated widely enough to allow plowing.29 Although deforestation led to the introduction of methods of cane processing that were in use in the West Indies, these attempts were too piecemeal to be effective. The use of ampas (dried cane waste) for fuel worked in the Caribbean, but not in Java. The Chinese plantations around Batavia used hard cane varieties and wooden rollers, which left the ampas too wet for use as fuel, even after it had been dried in the sun.30 The VOC authorities in Batavia encouraged experiments to save fuel by using the Jamaica train, which was probably brought in from Mauritius, and a three-cylinder mill to extract more juice and leave drier ampas. For a number of reasons, including the hardness of the Chinese cane, these endeavors were not very successful. Equally disappointing was an experiment with an improved furnace imported by Gaudin Dutail, a sugar manufacturer who arrived in Java from Saint Domingue in 1804 and claimed that his device could run entirely on ampas. No further attempts were made to introduce West Indies equipment until 1820.31 These are some of the many stories of the early adoption of Caribbean methods that illustrate the numerous obstacles on the way toward their successful implementation. Hoadley, Towards a Feudal Mode of Production, p. 110. See Blussé, Strange Company; Teisseire, Verhandelinge over den tegenwoordigen staat; Leidelmeijer, Van suikermolen tot grootbedrijf, pp. 75–78. 28 See Teisseire, Verhandelinge over den tegenwoordigen staat. 29 Porter, Nature and Properties of the Sugar Cane, p. 238. 30 Tichelaar, “De exploitatie eener suikerfabriek,” p. 212; Leidelmeijer, Van suikermolen tot grootbedrijf, p. 110. 31 Leidelmeijer, Van suikermolen tot grootbedrijf, pp. 78–79; Tichelaar, “De exploitatie eener suikerfabriek,” pp. 265–266. 26 27

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From Luxury to Bulk: The Revolution in Sugar Consumption In spite of the technological progress made in the Caribbean region, sugar production around the world was preindustrial until the early nineteenth century. It is true that the refineries along the Amsterdam canals were tall, seven-story buildings adorned with high chimneys emitting plumes of smoke from heating systems. However, despite their outward appearances of being proper factories, inside the walls the process of refining was artisanal and basically the same as in the Chinese and Indian worlds. By around 1800, the world of sugar was ruled by three different circuits of consumption and production that were in many ways equal to each other. First, there was the South Asian area, stretching from India to central and west Asia. Second, the Chinese, stretching into the Philippines, Taiwan, Indochina, and Indonesia, and finally the Atlantic system. Like the Europeans, the Chinese had developed overseas plantations. These could employ as many as 300 workers, when most workshops in Europe counted a few dozen laborers at most. The three global systems were all capable of producing granular white sugar by highly similar means and trading it over long distances. In this world, Europe was a latecomer. Up to the nineteenth century, per capita consumption of sugar in India and China surpassed that of Europe, with the possible exception of Great Britain.32 In terms of sugar production, both India and China widely exceeded the European colonies in the Caribbean. A figure of 750,000 metric tons of gur production (equivalent to 500,000 metric tons of raw sugar in nutritional value) in early nineteenth-century India under British rule seems a safe assumption.33 China (including Taiwan) produced about 390,000 metric tons of For China, consumption could have ranged between 1.5 and 2 kilograms per capita per annum, according to Pomeranz, “Political Economy,” p. 430 and Souza, “Hinterlands, Commodity Chains,” forthcoming. Interesting, Mazumdar comes to a considerably lower estimate of annual sugar consumption in China, as being more or less equal to that of France at one kilogram per capita around 1800, Sugar and Society, p. 49. For India as a whole, consumption of gur might have been within the same range, which is slightly higher than contemporary consumption in France and comparable to that in Great Britain. Stein, The French Sugar Business, pp. 99–100. Data for the mid-nineteenth century suggests that annual per capita consumption in kilograms for the various parts of India was as follows: Bengal 1.36, North Western Provinces 3.75, Madras 0.88, and Bombay 3.2. See Sykes, “Contributions to the Statistics of Sugar,” p. 15. 33 See Sykes, “Contributions to the Statistics of Sugar,” p. 15. Sykes equates three metric tons of gur with one ton of sugar. These government statistics did not include Oudh, Mysore, Nizma Raiput, Punjab, or Kashmir, which were protectorates at the time. If we include these regions, another 50,000 metric tons might be added in the early nineteenth century. 32

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sugar in the mid-eighteenth century. Chinese sugar manufacturers abroad may have manufactured another 40,000 metric tons in Cochin China and additional unknown quantities in Siam and the Philippines.34 At that time, Europe’s colonies yielded about 245,000 metric tons of semi-refined sugar, clearly less than India and China.35 A radical change to this global configuration began around 1800. This was not, as might be thought, because the British established their maritime hegemony in Asia, or because of the impact of the Industrial Revolution. Instead, the real momentum came from changing consumption patterns in Europe. With the arrival of coffee, tea, and sugar onto the European markets in the seventeenth century, Sidney Mintz notes, consumption patterns of “plebeians” changed, marking a turning point in Western history.36 For the first time, the masses began to consume items not produced by themselves or in their immediate vicinity. This change in consumption patterns was the concomitant of what Jan de Vries termed an “industrious revolution.” A growth in demand emerged through more market-oriented agriculture, a reduction in the number of feast days, and the more intensive involvement of women and children in paid labor. Last but not least, this revolution in consumption also antedated the Industrial Revolution and happened at a time of stagnating wages.37 The growth in demand for sugar in Europe was far from even and only occurred over time, as tea and coffee were still often sweetened with honey in the seventeenth century. As was the case in other parts of the world, local sweeteners might delay the advance of refined sugars, and this was particularly true for rural areas. In France, especially in the rural parts of its south, honey, grapes, and other sweeteners made sugar more or less redundant.38 In the major British, Dutch, and French cities, sugar was no longer a luxury by the late eighteenth century, but had become part of urban Pomeranz arrives at a total production of 353,000 metric tons for mid-eighteenth-century China with the inclusion of Taiwan, The Great Divergence, p. 121. Souza includes Fujian and arrives at 389,000 metric tons. The latter figure derives from Souza, “Hinterlands, Commodity Chains,” forthcoming. 35 Mintz, Sweetness and Power, p. 73. 36 According to Mintz and Smith, the use of sugar in tea dates from probably just before 1700. See Mintz, Sweetness and Power; Mintz, “The changing roles of food,” p. 266; Smith, Consumption, p. 122. 37 De Vries, “Between Purchasing Power,” pp. 107–121; Berg, “New Commodities,” pp. 64–65. 38 Smith, Consumption, p. 9; Stols, “The Expansion,” p. 271. Likewise, it should be noted that in India a whole range of sweeteners was also known. See Gopal, “Sugar-Making in Ancient India,” p. 67. 34

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life, a fact that became manifest when crowds in Paris rioted in 1792: not for bread but for sugar.39 Yet at this time, sugar was still consumed in small quantities. Even in England, the most sugar-craving nation in Europe, the amount was no more than ten kilograms per capita per annum. Although consumption was concentrated in the higher and middle levels of society, sugar did reach broader layers of the population and therefore became a commodity of strategic interest. This explains why European governments around 1800 became keen to develop an alternative, as connections with the tropics were often interrupted by war. Napoleon strongly encouraged the manufacture of sugar from beet, initially to make up for the loss of the French cane sugar industry that was completely ruined after 1790.40 However, this was also to compensate for some of the consequences of the Continental System that he had imposed on the countries under his control and that prohibited all trade with Great Britain. In 1798, the first successful experiment to produce sugar from beet was carried out, paving the way for the first beet sugar factory to be built in 1802 in Silesia (Poland). The Industrial Revolution provided the next breakthrough by introducing steam-powered equipment to the beet sugar industry. By 1835, 400 beet sugar factories operated in France, producing 36,000 metric tons of sugar, enough to satisfy a third of French demand.41 Sugarcane was the first tropical or semi-tropical cash crop that was under threat of being outcompeted by an alternative from a cold climate. Cotton and rubber, for example, would follow. Fierce competition between metropolitan beet and colonial cane led to a relentless race of sugar prices to reach their lowest levels, which precipitated the transformation of sugar into a global bulk commodity. In addition, the ascendency of the beet sugar industry contributed greatly to the worldwide spread of industrial sugar manufacturing methods. Industrialization and urbanization brought sugar within the reach of the lower-middle classes and eventually the lower classes in the mid-nineteenth century. Crystalline white sugar became the marker of industrial-urban globalization, putting its stamp on eating habits across the globe. As Mintz has pointed out, sugar (both cane and beet) became a crucial necessity for malnourished European factory laborers in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Sugar became the cheapest Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution, p. 96, quoted in Smith, Consumption, pp. 98, 101. 40 Stein, The French Sugar Business, pp. 165–166. 41 Ibidem, p. 167. 39

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possible source of calories, which turned it into a bulk commodity less costly than flour and much cheaper than dairy products or meat. One hectare of sugar beet or cane yields almost three times as many calories as a hectare of wheat.42 In densely populated areas, particularly in urbanizing regions, once local agricultural production could no longer provide sufficient calories, a cheap supply of carbohydrates from elsewhere became crucial. The role of sugar as a source of calories during the Industrial Revolution is also extensively discussed by Kenneth Pomeranz in his Great Divergence to explain how the colonies provided the necessary nutritional resources for Europe’s unique economic performance in the nineteenth century.43 Conversely, it could be argued (as Sucheta Mazumdar has done) that since urbanization in China did not progress as rapidly as in Western Europe, for most of the nineteenth century sugar was still a luxury for Chinese consumers rather than a nutritional necessity.44 Worldwide per capita sugar consumption soared after the mid-nineteenth century. If we confine ourselves only to the average, annual global consumption of sugar was more or less stagnant at around one kilogram per capita between 1750 and 1800, rising to nine kilograms in 1910, and further to twenty-five in 2005.45 Most of this growth took place in the nineteenth century, during which white crystalline sugar became a standard item in urban centers all over the world. For example, sugar consumption in rapidly industrializing Japan rose from two kilograms per capita in 1888 to five in 1897.46 In the same period, Bombay began to import increasing quantities of sugar from Mauritius, and in the urban centers of China the demand for white sugar also rose. Cuba, Germany, and Java were the top three producers by around 1900, and Java began to enter the Indian and Chinese markets. This was the culmination of a threefold process. First, industrially manufactured sugar began to approach the pure form of a simple carbohydrate (C12H22O11), which made it possible for it to be stored for longer than a year. At this stage, the production costs of industrially produced sugars had become so low they In terms of calories, in 1949 sugar was twenty times as cheap as steak. Cottrell, Beet-Sugar Economics, p. 4. The yield of calories per hectare for sugar beet is 3,632, for sugarcane 2,782, for paddy 1,482, for potatoes 1,318, and for wheat 1,083. See http://www.gardeningplaces.com/articles/nutrition-per-hectare1.htm (accessed November 12, 2012). 43 Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, pp. 274–275, 313–314. 44 Mazumdar, Sugar and Society, pp. 51–52. 45 These figures are based on estimates and figures for the world population of 978 million in 1800, 1.65 billion in 1900, and 5.978 billion in 2000. 46 Mazumdar, Sugar and Society, p. 375. 42

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were outcompeting the local muscovados in India and China.47 Relatively uniformly designed factories emerged in every continent from the final decades of the nineteenth century onward, irrespective of whether they processed cane or beet.48 At the same time, long distance transport costs went down thanks to the arrival of larger, steel-built ships. In addition, of paramount importance was the elimination of extraneous flavors. The closer sugar came to pure sweetness, the more easily it found its way into different markets, although in some cases it was remilled to bring local flavor back. An example of this was in India, where early in the twentieth century, imported, cheaply produced white Java sugar was quite often mixed with local gurs. In India, the local gur markets never disappeared from the countryside and gur is still widely consumed in rural areas today. In the early twentieth century, the advocacy of gur became part of the struggle for independence. For Gandhi, cottage gur was as Indian as homespun cloth. However, gur did not need the support of the nationalist movement because it was far less vulnerable to competition from industrial sugar than the local Indian cotton products were to competition from the metropolitan cotton industry. Gur was still completely embedded in the peasant way of life, whereas spinning and weaving, even where they were part of village life, had always been an artisanal sector. For the same reason, the khandsari (refined classical sugar) sector was more greatly affected by the ascendency of industrial sugar than was gur, although it resisted “factory white” until the 1930s and even made a modest comeback in the late 1950s.

The Atlantic Plantation System: Its Origins and Persistence The starting point for this book is the attempt to transfer the Caribbean plantation model for sugar production to Asia. It was part of a broader if not a universal pattern driven by an ever-increasing demand for sugar. This led to an unstinting search for new locations when old sugar-producing areas reached their ecological and social limits. By around 1800, the plantation was the business model to follow, propagated by a constant In the case of what are termed factory whites, it should be noted that these sugars were not always refined with carbon, but could be bleached to whiteness by inducing sulphur dioxide gas into the juice (produced by burning sulphur in air). This was clearly a matter of price. These sugars are also known as mill whites or plantation whites. 48 See Bosma and Knight, “Global Factory and Local Field.” 47

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trickle of planters from the West Indies who wanted to try their luck in Asia. While on one hand the plantation seems to have had, and still has, an intrinsic logic as the best method for producing sugar, on the other hand it could not simply be transferred from one continent to another. The plantation model was universally available, but its applicability was bound by local, limiting factors. The constraints encountered were rarely, as I will argue, a matter of technology or capital. Neither were they climatic or ecological, because sugarcane could be grown in many parts of India and Indonesia. The constraints were invariably of a social and economic nature. Meanwhile, the basic elements of the plantation model were certainly not confined to Caribbean locations. They had existed long before in the Mediterranean, and the Chinese had also established their own sugar plantations outside the Chinese mainland. It is therefore important to place the plantation in its proper historical perspective and present a definition of the term sugar plantation before we move on to the question of why the transfer to India and Indonesia of the Caribbean way of producing sugar for the world market did not work in either case, at least not straightaway. The history of sugar production comprises a long chain of transfers stretching back into antiquity, and it is a history in which the Atlantic world is covered by just a few chapters. On its march toward a uniform industrial process, sugar manufacturing made a global detour. It traveled from its original base in North India, via the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, and back to India in the nineteenth century. Medieval Mediterranean sugar manufacturing had been germinal for the Atlantic system plantation model, as has already been detailed by Braudel, Curtin, Dockès, Galloway, and Schwartz.49 In the sixteenth century, the Mediterranean way of making sugar reached the New World, Brazil in particular, via Madeira. In the New World, the plantation complex gained its specific connotations of relying on a single crop, imported chattel slavery, and the partly industrial organization of labor.50 Sixteenth-century Brazilian plantations were large compounds where 200 to 300 slaves worked. This system came to Barbados, together with the Dutch, who were expelled from Brazil by the Portuguese. The transfer of the Brazilian plantation model to Barbados in the mid-seventeenth century led to a replacement of indentured European labor by African chattel slavery, and Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex; Schwartz, Tropical Babylons; Braudel, Civilisation and Capitalism; Dockès, “Le paradigm sucrièr”; Galloway, “The Mediterranean Sugar Industry.” 50 Schwartz, “Introduction,” p. 7. 49

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is generally referred to as the Barbados plantation revolution, or sugar revolution, that brought about the plantation in the sense of “a large, centralized unit of forced labor engaged in mono-crop production.”51 The sugar plantation is usually understood as preindustrial but at the same time precocious in global capitalism: as a self-contained unit, isolated like a ship at sea, with a highly organized division of labor and close supervision of chattel slaves.52 The notion of the plantation revolution or sugar revolution tends to obscure the fact that the development of sugar manufacturing was a slow and incremental process, from the earliest times to the emergence of highly industrialized factories.53 The production of sugar has always been of a hybrid agro-artisanal or agro-industrial nature. This is because sugarcane, a member of the family of grasses, is highly prone to rotting after harvesting. The stalks must be processed within forty-eight hours or they lose a considerable part of their sucrose through fermentation. Therefore, grinding or squeezing the cane and boiling the resulting juice need to be carried out in the immediate vicinity of the cane fields. Moreover, harvesting the cane and processing it into raw sugar need to be synchronized to avoid the deterioration of either the cane or the juice. Once boiled, raw sugar can be kept for a couple of months, which is sufficient time to allow for trade on local markets, but not much farther away. As long as the impurities are still within the sugar mass, it can easily decay, particularly if exposed to a humid environment. Within the long history of incremental technological change in sugar production, the Muslim Agricultural Revolution (from the eighth to the thirteenth century AD) has been of particular relevance to the development of the plantation model.54 Arabian entrepreneurs adopted and further developed techniques for sugar production from India. The Arabs and Berbers disseminated the cultivation of sugar throughout their Mediterranean territories and along the coast of East Africa, as far south as Zanzibar. Particularly in the lower Nile delta around Alexandria, the most prominent city and harbor in the Islamic world, sugar (together with indigo) was an important crop in the thirteenth century, the production See Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex; Dockès, “Le paradigm sucrier”; Galloway, “The Mediterranean Sugar Industry”; Bosma, Guisti-Cordero, and Knight, “Sugarlandia Revisited: Introduction,” p. 10. 52 The sociological aspects of these insular complexes are detailed by Stinchcombe in Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment. 53 Schwartz, “Introduction,” pp. 7–8; McCusker and Menard, “The Sugar Industry in the Seventeenth Century,” p. 290. 54 Galloway, “The Mediterranean Sugar Industry,” p. 183. 51

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of which had to be sustained by extensive irrigation and canal systems. The most important Egyptian cities had dozens of sugar factories that applied the art of refinery using alkaloids and limestone. Caravans consisting of hundreds of camels loaded with sugar left Egypt for other parts of the Arab world.55 Though the milling was quite primitive, consisting of squeezing chopped cane stalks between two turning stones, the use of water power was widespread in the Mediterranean area. Water power also meant fixed mills, which required sufficient supplies of cane from within a short distance. It is therefore no coincidence that the first plantations with total control over soil, water, and last but not least labor, were established in the Mediterranean region.56 Cane cutting and grinding is monotonous and arduous work, and therefore perfectly suited to be carried out under forced labor regimes, and slavery in particular, as Stefano Fenoaltea has argued.57 Slave-produced sugar was a Christian innovation, or better an inherited institution from the Romans, that would cross the ocean to the New World. In the Arab world, corvée (unpaid labor) was used, but slaves were probably rarely seen in the cane fields.58 The Crusaders and the Venetians employed both slaves and indentured laborers, the latter subject to the same regimes as galley slaves.59 The introduction of African chattel slavery into sugar production was not a novelty of the New World, but introduced in the Mediterranean region after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, which blockaded access to the Black Sea for Italian slave traders. Contacts with trans-Saharan slave traders brought slaves to the sugar regions of southeast Spain and possibly Sicily as well.60 Almost simultaneously, the Portuguese developed sugar cultivation in Madeira, using a mixture of enslaved local populations, African slaves, and Portuguese settlers.61 Whereas India had its method of separating sugar crystals from molasses using waterweed, in the Chinese and Mediterranean Atlantic systems, claying became the standard technique from the sixteenth Labib, Handelsgeschichte Ägyptens, pp. 319–320; Von Lippmann, Geschichte des Zuckers, p. 237. 56 Curtin emphatically uses the word plantation here, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex, p. 5. 57 See Fenoaltea, “Slavery and Supervision.” 58 For the employment of slaves in agriculture, see Schatzmiller, Labour in the Medieval Islamic World, p. 39. For the introduction of the institution of slavery in sugar production, see Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex, p. 9. 59 Jacoby, “La production du sucre en Crète vénitienne,” p. 174. 60 Deerr, The History of Sugar ii, p. 259. 61 Vieira, “Sugar Islands,” p. 58. 55

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century onward.62 Claying was pivotal in enabling the New World and East and Southeast Asia to produce sugar for the distant European markets. Claying is a process in which hot sugar is put into earthenware cones that have a hole in the top. These cones were placed upside down on racks to allow the molasses to drain. To get rid of more molasses, the sugar was tapped into the cone a little bit and a layer of clay placed on top. This process could be repeated every time the clay dried. After claying, the sugar was further dried in the sun and, as a result, the bottom of the sugar layer was the whitest part, whereas the top (which had been underneath in the rack) was practically still a muscovado.63 The second important innovation was a watermill turning three rollers round (the Sicilian trapetum), which was introduced by the end of the fifteenth century and can be considered a forerunner of early modern roller mills.64 By the sixteenth century, the Mediterranean sugar industry had already acquired many of the elements of the later Barbados plantation model: a comparatively advanced level of technology, the use of slave labor, absentee capitalism, and overseas consumers. Even the insular character of plantations, either literally or metaphorically, had its provenance in the Mediterranean world. It is safe to assume that it was therefore not because of a lack of innovation that sugar production practically disappeared in this particular part of the world after 1600, but as the result of ecological factors. The decline of cane cultivation in the eastern part of the Mediterranean region in the fourteenth century was the combined result of climatic change, the bubonic plague, and increasing political instability.65 In the western part, sugar disappeared after 1600 as a result of soil exhaustion and deforestation; problems sugar factories could only surmount over the centuries. On sugar islands such as Cyprus, Crete, and Sicily, firewood for boiling the syrup became depleted at one point.66 While these islands were struggling with increasing production costs, plantations in Sabban, “L’industrie sucrière,” p. 851; Mazumdar, Sugar and Society, pp. 163–164. Galloway, The Cane Sugar Industry, p. 108. 64 The invention of the “Siculi trapetum” in Sicily in 1449 (consisting of three rollers vertically or horizontally placed within short distances of each other, between which the sugar cane was pressed) was, according to Von Lippmann, a major step in the direction of the modern sugar mill. According to Galloway, this was still not the widely used three-cylinder mill, which probably emerged in the New World around 1700. Von Lippmann, Geschichte des Zuckers, pp. 338–339; Galloway, “The Mediterranean Sugar Industry,” p. 186. 65 Galloway, “The Mediterranean Sugar Industry,” pp. 191–192. 66 For the ecological problems concomitant to sugar production on the Atlantic islands, see Smith, “The Mid-Atlantic Islands,” pp. 63–67. 62 63

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Brazil succeeded in reducing their expenses, thus compensating for the disadvantage of higher freight costs across the Atlantic. The economies of scale in the New World sealed the fate of sugar production in the Mediterranean area around 1600.67 In the eighteenth century, the small Caribbean sugar islands faced the same problem of forest depletion as had their Mediterranean forerunners, but this time fuel-saving equipment was developed – termed the Jamaica train, a series of boiling pans. Iron mills were also introduced, and by the end of the eighteenth century, the West Indies system had become the most advanced method of sugar manufacturing.68 Nevertheless, the smaller West Indies islands were not able to combat the problem of soil exhaustion effectively. This would give the larger and fertile island of Cuba, and the island of Java where cane was alternated with paddy on sawah (irrigated) lands, a distinct advantage in the nineteenth century. The arguments that can be made on the basis of this brief detour around the Mediterranean sugar industry are first, that the Caribbean plantation is much more part of a global evolution of the plantation than the expressions “Barbados plantation revolution” or “sugar revolution” suggest.69 Second, slavery was often part of the plantation, but not necessarily the only form of labor; other forms of forced labor were used as well. The abolition of slavery, therefore, did not end the long trajectory of the plantation model that had its provenance in the Mediterranean and the China Sea regions. It did set in motion a relocation of sugar production from the West to the East, as well as within the Caribbean, most notably toward Cuba. In other words, the plantation model crosses the divides between the New World and the Old World and encompasses the past 800 years of sugar production up to today. By way of a globally applicable definition, it could be said that a plantation is an entity in which the management of the cash crop-growing unit is in complete control of every aspect of the work process, as well as of the applied technologies (including horticultural).70 The question of Galloway, “The Mediterranean Sugar Industry,” p. 193. For an overview of the innovations that were driven by high benefits and the constant threat of the depletion of resources in the Caribbean sugar industry, see Galloway, “Tradition and Innovation.” 69 The elements that constitute the “sugar revolution” are summarized by Higman as follows: “The six central elements of the sugar revolution are commonly regarded as a swift shift from diversified agriculture to sugar monoculture, from production on small farms to large plantations, from free to slave labour, from sparse to dense settlement, from white to black populations, and from low to high value per caput output,” “The Sugar Revolution,” p. 213. 67 68

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whether or not the term plantation implies monocrop is less relevant in the case of sugar. Because of the fast deterioration of harvested cane, a sugar factory requires the planting of a substantial amount of cane within a specific area to run efficiently. Moreover, sugar production for the world market faces great difficulty in maintaining itself when cane growers can easily shift to other crops or when they can cater for local consumption by making raw sugars such as Indian gur. Control over cane growing has therefore been crucial to sugar production for the world market in Asia, as is argued in this book. This is a matter of management, not of ownership, which may be in the hands of a single person or dispersed over a family, an economic conglomerate, or a cooperative. Sugar was obviously not the only plantation crop in Asia, and several production systems for other commodities there were even more straightforward replicas of Caribbean plantations. The Dutch East Indies Company, for example, established nutmeg and mace groves early in the seventeenth century, and these operated using slave labor until 1860. In the early years of the nineteenth century, a few indigo plantations emerged in Java, in the vicinity of Batavia and in central Java, located on land owned or rented by Europeans. Later, the Agrarian Law of 1870 enabled European entrepreneurs to take long-term leases on large tracts of wasteland for a period of seventy-five years, which resulted in a vast expansion of plantation-type commodity production throughout the Indonesian archipelago. The thinly populated Eastern Salient of Java and the mountainous Residency of Priangan in West Java became famous for their coffee and tea plantations respectively. Furthermore, the sparsely populated east coast of Sumatra became the site of large-scale tobacco production, and by about 1900, rubber plantations began to spread rapidly in south Sumatra. All these enterprises also came closer to the West Indies model than Java’s sugar complex, which always had to rely on local peasant elites to obtain land and labor. Meanwhile, in South Asia, the coffee plantations in Sri Lanka and tea plantations in Assam were the most notable examples of plantation-type commodity production. By contrast, plantations hardly emerged in Bengal at all, even though it was a substantial commodity exporter. Here, European entrepreneurs had to negotiate with local farmers for deliveries of poppy, indigo, tobacco leaves, and later, jute. The indigo plantations that existed in north Bihar were an exception to the rule. Positioned on a sliding scale between peasant commodity production and plantation systems, industrial sugar production Derived from Breman, Wage Hunters, p. 214. See also Schwartz, “Introduction,” p. 3.

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in Asia leans toward plantation-type production without taking on all of its Caribbean characteristics. In short, plantations already existed for a variety of crops in Mauritius, Ceylon, Java, and the Moluccas in early modern history and these were joined by new plantation complexes such as those in Sumatra and Malaysia in the course of the nineteenth century. The Chinese plantations of West Java were, by the mid-nineteenth century, replaced by a European-dominated sugar complex. This emerged under the aegis of the Cultivation System and appeared to be a radical departure from the plantation system. However, as argued in Chapter 3, this was just taking a step back to make a big jump forward, to bring about a production system that showed all the features of a plantation conglomerate at that time. As a matter of fact, Java did not join the worldwide proliferation of the sugar “central” that emerged in the late nineteenth century. The central was a highly capital-intensive unit for cane processing that broke through the narrow confines of the plantation model by taking its cane from a variety of sources not owned by the factory itself. This became the model in the Caribbean, the Philippines, Taiwan, Louisiana, and Cuba, but only to a certain degree and with considerable local variations. Because the abolition of slavery and the arrival of centrals in Cuba coincided in the late nineteenth century, it has long been taken for granted that the dissolution of the plantation was the inevitable outcome of these two developments. The situation was much more nuanced, however. With regard to the Philippines, Alfred McCoy and Filomeno Aguilar have pointed out how the arrival of the centrals on the island of Negros enforced greater coordination between field and factory. The number of sharecroppers dwindled and wage work under indebted conditions became the rule: in effect, a type of bonded plantation labor.71 In Cuba, about 1,500 small plantations and mills were subsumed under fewer than 200 centrals, but here as well, wide variations existed with regard to control over land and labor. In the west of Cuba, centrals owned half the land and drew the other half of their cane from colonos, independent farmers. In contrast to that, in the eastern part of Cuba, a sugar frontier emerged dominated by American companies that had established huge, self-sufficient complexes. In the words of Robert Hoernel, these “took care to avoid dependence on anyone or anything they could not control.”72 This situation was remarkably similar to that in Java in the Aguilar, Clash of Spirits, pp. 218–221; McCoy, “Sugar Barons,” p. 118.

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Table 1.1.  Total sugar production (industrial and nonindustrial) for India and Java/Indonesia compared with world production (cane and beet) Year

India Percentage Java/ Percentage (metric tons) of global Indonesia of global production (metric tons) production

Global (beet plus cane in metric tons)

1780 1820 1850 1880 1910 1940 1970 2000

500,000 500,000 500,000 2,000,000 1,600,000 3,480,000 1,080,000 27,000,000

1,145,000 1,300,000 2,152,435 5,767,385 13,705,000 30,499,463 78,668,051 139,024,330

43.7 38.4 23.2 34.6 11.6 11.4 13.7 19.4

5,000 6,000 102,000 221,000 1,319,000 1,606,600 873,000 1,780,000

0.4 0.5 4.7 3.8 9.6 5.3 1.1 1.3

Sources: India: For 1780, 1820, and 1850, see Sykes, “Contributions to the Statistics of Sugar.” For 1880, the figure is based upon the assumption of three million acres under cane producing three million metric tons of gur, which in nutritional value was equivalent to two million metric tons of sugar. For 1910, Department of Statistics, Estimates 1916–1917, p. 6. For 1940, Gandhi, “Problems of Sugar Industry in India,” p. ii. For 1970 and 2000, cane production according to FAO (http:\\faostat3.org) and assuming an average recovery rate of 8 percent for 1970 and 9 percent for 2000. Java/Indonesia: For 1780–1940, see Leidelmeijer, Van Suikermolen tot grootbedrijf, pp. 324–325. For 1970, Mubyarto, “The Sugar Industry”, p. 30 and for 2000, FAO. Global Production: For 1780: China 400,000; India 500,000; and the European sugar colonies 245,000 (all in metric tons). For 1820: the same figures for China and India as for 1780, whereas the production of the European sugar colonies had probably increased to 400,000 metric tons each. For 1850–1940: Deerr, The History of Sugar ii, pp. 490–491. However, for the year 1850 I have added 950,000 metric tons to compensate for the fact that India, China, and other sugar-producing countries in the Far East are not included in Deerr’s table. The figures for China for 1850 and 1880 are based on Prinsen Geerligs (Handboek, iv, p. 106), who estimates the production in China was in the range of 400,000 to 500,000 metric tons, only declining toward 300,000 tons at the end of the nineteenth century. For India, 500,000 metric tons in 1850 and 2,000,000 in 1880. For 1970, see FAO with an additional 6,168,000 metric tons to compensate for the FAO’s underestimation of Indian sugar production in that year. For 2000, also FAO, and with an additional 6,781,000 metric tons to compensate for the underestimation of India’s sugar output.

late nineteenth century, where the sugar industry featured an increasing integration of field and factory, in spite of the fact that the factories did not own the land. The degree of control over the field, combined with a high level of applied agricultural science, raised the Java sugar industry to the position of the most advanced in the world. The postcolonial Indian sugar industry that emerged after the 1930s adopted some of the Hoernel, “Sugar and Social Change,” p. 240.

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plantation characteristics of the Java sugar industry, which were combined with Indian farmers’ cooperatives. These sugar factory cooperatives, most notably those in West India, created plantation-like situations in the late twentieth century. The appalling living conditions of the cane cutters have been researched extensively by Jan Breman.73 In India, the plantation proved a crucial mechanism to prevent sugar cultivators from diverting their cane into a raw sugar for local consumption. Control over cane supplies has been a continuous struggle for industrial sugar manufacturers in India.

Explanations for the Divergent Trajectories By the late eighteenth century, when the colonial administrations of India and the Dutch East Indies were contemplating the import of the West Indies’ sugar production methods, the well-developed sugar sectors in Bengal and Java were facing serious difficulties. Chinese sugar production in Java came up against ecological limitations, while in Bengal political instability, famines, and depopulation caused a decline in production.74 Against this background, the British and the Dutch still had the choice of encouraging the existing systems or transplanting West Indian methods of sugar manufacture. The colonial administrations in both British India and the Netherlands Indies, as we will see in Chapters 2 and 3, made repeated and failed attempts to import state-of-the-art manufacturing methods and equipment – first in the late eighteenth century, when steam power had not yet been introduced into sugar manufacturing, and again in the early nineteenth century, when steam was first used to drive the roller mills. However, not until the 1830s did attempts to develop industrial methods of sugar production in India and Java reach serious levels. In the subsequent decades, the Java sugar industry would emerge as the second largest cane sugar producer for the world market, whereas the industrialization of sugar manufacture in India did not become substantial until the 1920s (Table 1.1). Let me first address what in all likelihood could not have caused this divergence. First, it is hard to see a major role for the availability of metropolitan capital and technology in explaining why Java and Cuba could become the two most important cane sugar-exporting countries in the world, while China and India with their immense resources of labor and Breman, Wage Hunters, p. 214; Breman, Of Peasants, Migrants. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen, p. 88.

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land had been demoted to the position of sugar importers by around 1900. Such an explanation apparently assumes that Java and Cuba received an influx of metropolitan capital that was withheld from China and India. It is on this assumption that Amiya Kumar Bagchi bases his argument that Indian sugar production was kept technologically stagnant by colonial interests.75 Such explanations appear highly unlikely because they assume access to technology and capital could only be provided by metropolitan banking. It should be noted that there was incipient capitalism in mainland China, as Mazumdar points out, even though it did not unfold.76 Similarly, India had a capitalist infrastructure capable of maintaining its existence throughout British colonialism. Furthermore, in the 1860s and 1870s China and India were still sugar exporters. In their coastal commercial centers, capital was available and machinery and engineers could easily have been brought in from abroad. In fact, sugar factories and refineries established by British and a small number of Indian entrepreneurs were operating in these locations. Before further addressing the question of why such a conversion to the industrial mode of sugar production did not happen, or happened only partially and belatedly in India and China, it is above all important to put things into the right perspective and to avoid projecting developments back in time. The Industrial Revolution brought steam and steel to sugar production, as well as patterns of urban mass consumption, but it took almost seventy years before this process fully unfolded. In a slow and incremental manner, steam technology and chemistry eventually became part of all aspects of sugar production. The industrialization of production commenced with the invention of vacuum crystallization of sugar by Howard in 1813, to be followed two years later by the technique introduced by Martineau of filtering sugar using bone black. However, for another three decades, sugar refining remained a time-consuming process taking about two weeks. This only changed when centrifuges, which could separate the molasses from the crystals, arrived on the scene in 1843.77 It would take another forty years for this industrial sugar to beat Chinese and Indian sugars in their own markets. Wherever European entrepreneurs built sugar factories in Asia, they rarely manifested themselves as enthusiasts of steam power. Water power and animal power were as effective as, or more effective than Bagchi, “Colonialism,” pp. PE40–PE42. Mazumdar, Sugar and Society, pp. 5–6. 77 Chalmin, The Making of a Sugar Giant, pp. 47–49. 75 76

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steam power, and continued to be used in European-owned factories in Java until the late nineteenth century. It took a long time for sugar produced by steam technology to become cheaper than locally developed methods tested over centuries. Almost intuitively, we are inclined to believe that innovation is synonymous with industrialization, and that outside the industrializing world labor productivity was low and stagnant. However, this is not the case, as I argue in this book. Relatively affordable new equipment, such as an improved transportable mill or a hand centrifuge, could easily have halved the labor input required for a particular stage of the process. This is exactly what happened in India, as is illustrated in Chapter 4. Moreover, in recent historiography, technological progress is perceived as occurring by fits and starts rather than through revolutions.78 The history of sugar production is a story of endless experiments and countless crossings of cane varieties, the overwhelming majority of which turned out to be failures. In many cases, state-of-the-art technologies were not applied because it was simply not economical to do so.79 This is quite a different perspective from the usual one: that the Indian sugar industry was kept at a technological standstill, starved of funds and expertise. Certainly, the sugar sector in India did not attain the level of agricultural and botanical research that developed in Java, but substantial improvements in labor productivity and cane yield per hectare were nevertheless accomplished in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In short, in spite of the global spread of technological knowledge, its impact was rather modest in many parts of the world for most of the nineteenth century. Only by close to 1900 had the industrialization of the sugar industry advanced to such a level that India as a sugar producer had to concede to industrial sugar imports. Climate, ecology, and the availability of labor are also potential explanations for the divergence between Java and India. However, these actually better explain the divergent trajectories of sugar production within India rather than between the two regions. The cold winters of North India were not the most hospitable to sugarcane growing, though the low labor costs in these densely populated parts of India were very attractive to producers. South India, and the hinterland of Madras, Bosma, Giusti-Cordero, and Knight,“Sugarlandia Revisited,” p. 16; Schwartz,“Introduction,” pp. 7–8; Knight, “The Visible Hand in Tempo Doeloe”; Bosma and Knight, “Global Factory and Local Field”; McCusker and Menard, “The Sugar Industry in the Seventeenth Century,” p. 306. 79 Dye, Cuban Sugar, 235–246. 78

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Bombay, and Surat, were very conducive in terms of climate, and the conditions for cane growing were excellent after large-scale irrigation works had been constructed in the course of the nineteenth century. However, these parts of India were not as densely populated as North India, which may have led to substantially higher labor costs.80 Java offered a combination of a tropical climate, high population density, and fertile soils. East Java was particularly conducive to the growing of cane, as it had clearly differentiated dry and wet seasons that allowed the cane to dry in its later phase of growth.81 Here too labor costs were substantially higher than elsewhere in Java. In sum, hardly any location in India or Java was perfectly suited to immediate industrial sugar production, but many locations were potential sugar belts if certain ecological or social conditions could be changed, through irrigation or by bringing in labor, for example. The heart of the matter is that apart from West Java and the plantation islands of Mauritius and Penang, none of the Dutch and British possessions in Asia offered circumstances suitable for the implementation of the sugar plantation model. A plantation requires large amounts of labor to accomplish extensive tillage and the arduous work of cane cutting and grinding, as well as large parcels of land in the vicinity of the mill. In fact, outside the confines of the plantation islands, the role of farmers with large holdings who controlled land and could recruit dependent labor became crucial in establishing Asian sugar plantations. However, these configurations did not emerge without the colonial governments manipulating the conditions they found, and in this respect, the policies of the British in India and the Dutch in Java were markedly different. It is therefore necessary to look at the interaction between colonial policies and local circumstances, rather than at the availability of capital or the physical conditions. This appears to concern three factors discussed in the next few pages: first, the existing class and property relations and how the colonial authorities sought to make them fit their needs, for example by changing revenue systems; second, the strength of indigenous money-lending sectors versus the banking and trading sectors backing up the industrial sugar producers; and third, the

This has most notably been reported by Parthasarathi, The Transition to a Colonial Economy, p. 2. However, the yield per acre was probably higher than in Bengal, which partly offset higher labor costs, Parthasarathi, “Rethinking,” p. 103. 81 Java is divided into two climate zones: the western part is tropical whereas the eastern part has dry and wet seasons. 80

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wider imperial context in which colonial governments took decisions regarding cash crop production.

Taxation and Class and Property Relations Property relations are crucial determinants of the successful introduction of plantation or industrial methods of sugar cultivation. Cane growing for a market having centralized mills is preferably carried out on larger plots of land. The breakup of communal restrictions on land use and sales after the Arab conquest has been described by Galloway as pivotal to the Arabian agricultural revolution as a whole, and its burgeoning sugar sector in particular.82 Sugar production in the Arab world benefited from land accumulated by powerful farmers. Precisely the opposite conditions were in play in the sugar belts of Bengal and Punjab, where inherited land had to be divided among sons, leading to the substantial division of plots. This was highly detrimental to attempts to industrialize sugar production. In Bengal, cane was planted in small gardens just to provide for the making of gur, and not even the powerful zamindars (aristocratic and hereditary landholders) could forge larger blocks of land where sugar could be grown for processing by industrial factories. Property relations are a crucial factor here. New Institutional Economic History has promoted the study of property relations, and property rights in particular, as an endogenous economic variable, a notion already prefigured in the economic thinking of early nineteenth-century colonial experts, who considered changes in property relations as key to the economic development of the newly acquired Asian colonial territories.83 Viewed from this economic historical angle, colonial reforms aimed at defining individual property rights, and bringing these rights into the hands of the productive classes can be seen as attempts to set in place the necessary institutional framework.84 It has been noted that colonial governments were inclined to exaggerate the fragility of the precolonial property rights of farmers vis-à-vis political authorities, as well as the positive effects of their legislation securing the individual property rights of farmers.85 Economic historians have pointed out that deficient capital markets marked by high interest rates

Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry, p. 27. Subrahmanyam, “Institutions,” p. 15. 84 Hatton et al., “Introduction,” p. 1. 85 Roy, Company of Kinsmen, p. 41. 82 83

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and the lack of sufficient staples were at least as important in respect of discouraging farmers from engaging in commodity production.86 Moreover, whatever policies colonial governments chose with regard to property rights, they could do little to change the fact that these remained solidly enmeshed in economic inequalities within the peasants’ communities. As Neil Charlesworth puts it for the Bombay Presidency: “even if the peasant agriculturalist remained the owner of his traditional holding, traders and moneylenders, through the operation of the credit and marketing systems, were, perhaps, able to secure growing proportions of the output.”87 If indebtedness did not lead to land transactions, it was usually because moneylenders, often the richer farmers within a community, could lay their hands on the proceeds from the land by making the debtors work for them. All this is familiar from Robert Brenner’s widely quoted and much debated article in Past and Present (1976), suggesting that class structures tend to be highly resilient to the impact of economic forces. In his own words: “It would be my argument then that different class structures, specifically ‘property relations’ or ‘surplus extraction relations,’ once established, tend to impose rather strict limits and possibilities, indeed rather specific long-term patterns on a society’s development.”88 This resilience is an important point when we focus on the introduction of sugar production for the world market, as well as when we try to assess the aftermath of colonial production systems. Resilience is not the same as being immutable, or immune to colonial intervention, however. Interventions by colonial administrators to involve local peasantries in commodity production for the world market could be highly successful. In this respect, I tend to agree with Mridula Mukherjee when she criticizes those historians (she mentions the Cambridge School in particular) who underplay the role of colonialism.89 It takes time for colonizers to make their presence felt in the social fabric of the hinterlands, but in the long run they will. It was of crucial importance that the Dutch were already firmly established in Java in the mid-eighteenth century, at a time when the position of the British in Bengal was still fragile. This will be elaborated on in Chapter 2. Nevertheless, in Java the traditional systems of taxation and corvée were also resilient. The Cultivation System introduced by Johannes van den Bosch in 1830 was a conscious and daring attempt to reshape the existing structures of Van Zanden and Marks, An Economic History, p. 57. Charlesworth, Peasants and Imperial Rule, p. 115. 88 Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure,” p. 31. 89 Mukherjee, Colonializing Agriculture, p. xxv. 86 87

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“surplus extraction” to make them work for colonial cash crop production. However, this change did not take place overnight. Well into the nineteenth century, the cultivation conscription imposed by the Dutch colonial civil servants and the customary corvée for local Javanese dignitaries were competing forces. Colonial governments are inclined to construct fiscal regimes based on existing taxation systems and underlying property rights. It was therefore important in precolonial times whether the land was owned by powerful landlords or individual cultivators, or was the communal property of a village. Nonetheless, colonial governments manipulated tax regimes for their own purposes, and often changed existing methods of tax farming. For example, after the British had taken over the reign of the nawab (king) of Bengal, they began to redefine the role of the zamindars as landlords who had to share part of their revenues with the EIC.90 Time and time again, the zamindars were considered obstacles to increasing agricultural productivity, as this class allegedly suffocated any economic progress by the peasants on their lands. The EIC itself played a significant role in maintaining these deplorable conditions. In addition to the fact that the zamindari tax system was not imposed on the whole of India, the position of the local aristocracies and their rights over land differed considerably across the Indian subcontinent. Some local magnates were in the position to lease out lands to Europeans, enabling the latter to establish plantations. In northern Bihar, Europeans established themselves in the positions of tenants or apanage holders acting for the local rulers, appropriating the right to assign fields and peasant labor to the production of particular cash crops. Conversely, a local zamindar in Bengal or a raja in the Bombay Deccan, for example, might own a sugar factory without being able to enforce deliveries of cane.91 The cultivators in his domain could still sell their gur to other purchasers. The revenue system was nevertheless important. Sugar production for the world market had better opportunities to succeed in parts of India such as Madras and the Bombay Deccan (where systems of tax collection were based on individual property), if for no other reason than that it brought the colonial administration into direct contact with the rural population.92 In contrast to Bengal where the British did not dare to

Through the “Permanent Settlement of Bengal of 1793” by Lord Cornwallis, the zamindari rights over land were confirmed. 91 Attwood, Raising Cane, p. 114. 92 Mukherjee and Frykenberg, “The Ryotwari System,” pp. 220–221. 90

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interact directly with the villagers, in Madras, and later in the Bombay Presidency, the British placed their colonial edifice directly on the shoulders of the ryots (rural, peasant cultivators). Here the ryotwari tax system was put in place, which means taxes were directly collected from the rural population by the British collector and his Indian assistants. Of particular importance is that a variant of this system was introduced in Java by Thomas Stamford Raffles, lieutenant governor-general of the island during the British interregnum (1811–1816). He gave the villages the basis to arrive at a ryotwari system of land rent following the example of the Madras Presidency, but also inspired by the ideas for a “post-feudal and liberal Java” of the former governor of Java’s North Coast, D. van Hogendorp.93 By doing so, Raffles placed an unprecedented level of power in the hands of the village headmen, the lurahs, by making them tax collectors. This elevated them from their previously unimportant position under the rulers of the Javanese empire of Mataram and occurred at the expense of the Javanese bupati, the regional lords of the waning empire. These bupati became subsumed into the colonial civil service as regenten, the most important indigenous functionaries.94 Later, Johannes van den Bosch, governor-general from 1830 to 1834, further strengthened the position of the village headman, the lurah, at the expense of the position of the village elites. Though still formally elected by the landowning villagers, the lurah became a pawn in the (forced) Cultivation System and the emerging plantation economy.95 We can conclude that the binary zamindari-ryotwari system had historical foundations and had its own impact on the divergent trajectories of sugar production. However, much of it was transformed to fit the colonial visions of the appropriate revenue system, and in the process, local power relations and even property relations were changed. The distinction between zamindari and

Breman, “The Village on Java,” pp. 197–198. For details of how Raffles introduced the ryotwari system on Java, what his considerations were, and how he skirted between the village system and the individual system of taxation, see Bastin, Raffles’ Ideas. For Van Hogendorp’s advocacy of relieving the “Regenten” from their role and creating a “post-feudal and liberal” society along the principles of property of land, freedom of trade, abolition of corvée and personal services, as well as an independent administration of justice, see Van Hogendorp, Bericht, p. 14. 94 Bastin, The Native Policies, p. 39. 95 In the seventeenth century, the village head, according to Hoadley, was a relatively unimportant figure, Towards a Feudal Mode, p. 76. With regard to the reduced position of the desa democracy under the Cultivation System, see: HTK (1877–1878), Koloniaal Verslag van 1877 [Nederl. (Oost–) Indie Bijlage N], “Historische Nota over de dessabesturen op Java.” 93

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ryotwari is therefore important, but should not be overstated and should be viewed in relation to the role colonial governments attributed to peasant elites in collecting rents and mobilizing labor for global commodity production.96

Financial Circuits Shahid Amin spells out how in late nineteenth-century Gorakhpur, the existing networks of zamindars and moneylenders of the gur-processing factories impeded the arrival of industrial sugar factories.97 Moreover, there were clearly limits to commercialization, and the persistence of the gur sector is a case in point.98 To explain this, we have to look into the role of gur making in the rural economy and rural life in general. In this environment, gur was a currency produced by peasants. They used labor from their own families and dependents that was not needed for food production to create room for luxuries. Hardly any cultivators in Bihar had the three acres of cane that would have made it worthwhile to own a mill exclusively for their use. Therefore mills were often cooperatively owned, while the milling itself was done on the basis of mutual assistance. Five or ten neighbors could bring together sufficient quantities of cane, cattle, and labor to make the purchase of a mill profitable (Illustration 1.1).99 All kinds of services within the village were paid for by bartering gur, such as the barber, the priest, the bard, the carpenter, and the blacksmith. Further, part of the work involved, including stripping the leaves from the stalks, was paid for with gur. The workers were allowed to drink the juice ­during the harvest and all in all almost a quarter of the gur produced was consumed within the village, having been used as payment by the cultivator.100 In contrast to opium and indigo (but similar to tobacco), gur was an item that could be produced by cultivators themselves and that could be sold when and to whom they chose.101 Indigo leaves had no value to a ryot, who simply had to accept the price offered to him by the planter.102 Conversely, as long as peasants could mill their own cane and boil its syrup, they kept sufficient control over their means of production, even Roy, “Factor Markets,” pp. 142–143. Amin, Sugarcane and Sugar in Gorakhpur, p. 102. 98 Robb, “Peasants’ Choices,” p. 97. 99 Sinha, From Decline to Destruction, p. 137. 100 Hadi, The Indian Sugar Industry, p. 46. 101 Sinha, From Decline to Destruction, p. 138. 102 Mishra, Agrarian Problems, p. 249. 96 97

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Illustration 1.1.  Pestle and mortar sugar cane press, ca. 1905, University of Houston Digital Library. http://digital.lib.uh.edu/u?/p15195coll29,12, taken from India Illustrated.

if they were subject to all kinds of pressures from their landlords and moneylenders. Making gur was partly so attractive because the immense amount of work involved in cutting and stripping the cane of its leaves and the extensive need for bullocks for grinding fell precisely in the slack season when cultivators needed work for themselves, their families, and their animals. The opportunity costs of the labor involved in making gur were low, economists would say. Gur making fit excellently into the agricultural rhythm because the crushing season of cane in North India in the winter is between November and April, right after the paddy harvest. There is a further reason producing gur was more attractive than delivering cane to a factory. Usually, cane for gur was grown on very small plots, but to produce it on a commercial basis it had to be planted in larger fields. Accordingly, fences had to be built and the cane had to be guarded as soon as it was ripe.103 The additional expense may not have been worth the potential rewards. 103

Hadi, The Indian Sugar Industry, p. 50.

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Rural families in India have long used their spare time to produce gur, thereby transforming this spare time into a valuable commodity that could be used to pay bills within the village and to settle debts with moneylenders.104 Cane was planted in North India to obtain cash income, described by Buchanan in the early years of the nineteenth century: The farmers who want advances, in the end of June or beginning of July, apply to a manufacturer, who sends a person to inspect the cane. The terms having been then settled, the kundokhalasi or release is procured from the landlord, who accepts the manufacturer’s security for the rent, in place of his hypothee on the crop, and the manufacturer becomes bound to pay the whole money, that is to be advanced by four installments, into the hands of the landlord.105

In practice, the manufacturer benefited from about 17 to 20 percent interest, but both the peasants and the landlords were keen to enter into such contracts, according to Buchanan.106 This mechanism was not always to the advantage of the cultivators, as it could result in a situation of severe indebtedness. Even if cultivators preferred to grow rice, they might be compelled to plant cane to settle debts with moneylenders. Further, their condition was often one of perpetual indebtedness: the cane cuttings had to be bought in advance and paid for before the crop was harvested, which meant cultivators were always at the mercy of their moneylenders.107 The moneylender was part of the indigenous financial circuits that Kanta Ray termed the “bazaar.” He argued that the colonial sector could not reshape local rural conditions into plantations, simply because it did not control the economy of the middlemen. It had to leave a substantial part of the economy to the bazaar: “Only the bazaar could ‘deliver’ the goods from the bottom to the top by virtue of complex financial arrangements that interlocked its own numerous successive layers.”108 Indeed, as a financial system, Indian indigenous banking fell largely, if not almost completely, outside the purview of the central banking system in India until the very end of colonial rule.109 It has also been noted that the profit margins at the base of Indian society were too small for the British firms, which were compelled to operate via Indian financial middlemen. Conversely, the Cultivation System operating in Java not only abolished a lot of the privileges of the village elites, but also curtailed the role of Amin, “Peasants and Capitalists,” p. 313. Buchanan, Geographical Description of Dinajpur, p. 307. 106 Ibidem. 107 Cotton, “Aska Sugar Factory,” p. 279; Sarada, Economic Conditions, p. 141. 108 Kanta Ray, “The Bazaar,” p. 271. See also Kanta Ray, “Asian Capital.” 109 Gubbay, Indigenous Indian Banking, p. 17. 104 105

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Chinese intermediaries and began to rely on the aristocracy and village heads who shared in the profits of cash crop production. In the course of the nineteenth century, the Java sugar industry strengthened its position with the cultivators by providing advances at cheaper rates than Javanese and Chinese moneylenders. Finally, the sugar industry could also rely upon the banking infrastructure that emerged in Java’s coastal and commercial cities: Batavia, Semarang, and Surabaya. This continuous financial circuit from local peasantry to metropolitan banking turned out to be a crucial link in sustaining cash crop production for the world market. Conversely, the existence of an Indian banking system that involved the khandsaris and that controlled an uninterrupted circuit for South and Central Asia for most of the nineteenth century is part of the explanation for why industrial sugar production barely took root in India.

Imperial Ambitions The third point that needs to be made about the divergent histories of India and Java as sugar producers concerns imperial ambitions. How much importance did the British and Dutch governments attach to industrial sugar production in British India and Java respectively? The answer is that their perspectives were almost diametrically opposed. The Dutch had already encouraged the preindustrial complexes of Chinese sugar millers in Java, while for the British, sugar (or gur) was above all a pivotal part of Indian agriculture. While the Dutch perceived sugar in Java as an industry, the British considered the production of sugar, the bulk of which was gur, an agricultural activity. British government officials were also more reluctant than the Dutch to become involved in indigenous agrarian production, unless it was on wasteland or plantation islands such as Mauritius or Ceylon. In contrast to the Dutch, the British also had more options within their empire. In Asia alone, this included Mauritius, Ceylon, and Penang. For the Dutch colonizers, Java was the heart of their colonial empire and of crucial economic importance to the Netherlands. Finally, the British wanted to break away from old mercantilism, whereas after a short liberal economic interlude in the early years of the nineteenth century, colonial authorities in Java expanded their systems of forced cultivation to hold their own against British economic dominance. Great Britain was the dominant economic power in the world, while the Netherlands was an empire in decline. From this overview of how the different conditions in India and the Dutch East Indies may have affected the divergent trajectories of sugar

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production, one aspect appears to stand out: the extent to which colonial powers were willing and able to reshape traditional circuits of money lending and indebtedness or create new ones. The willingness to engage in such a reshaping of local class and property relations in a colonial hinterland would expectedly be lesser if the colonial power was still in possession of one or more plantation islands, since such actions also entailed considerable risk. To reduce risks of rebellion, tax systems were usually based on local traditions, or the colonial perceptions of these traditions. The zamindari and ryotwari tax systems undoubtedly have some precolonial basis, but are at the same time very much colonial constructs. The Javanese village was also substantially transformed under colonialism, though it was never an egalitarian society and the “traditional” Javanese village never existed. It is important to bear this in mind when Clifford Geertz writes about the desas (villages) within the sugar factories’ circles as being post-traditional.110 By doing so, he presupposes there was a traditional village system existing beyond the colonial order. Much of this perception of the traditional Javanese village is derived from the image of egalitarian communities who “shared their poverty,” an image that gained academic credibility following the late colonial time.111 In that respect, Geertz’s view did not differ much from that of Van den Bosch and his contemporaries, who held a basically Brennerian perspective of traditional agrarian societies as communalist and impervious to demographic pressures and economic incentives. However, historians of Indonesia have been adamant that the villages in Java were markedly socially stratified.112 Since the seventeenth century, Java had been more thoroughly colonized than India. This also explains why only in the course of the nineteenth century did the colonial government of India become more deeply involved in agriculture, and why European trading houses only then attained a strong position in the subcontinent. Even in those times, the government of India did not follow the example of the Java sugar industry. This was because of the fundamental difference between British and Dutch colonial Geertz, Agricultural Involution, pp. 89–90. The idea of a traditional Javanese village received academic credibility thanks to world-famous colonial scholars such as Van Vollenhoven (indigenous law), and Boeke (tropical economics), who belonged to the progressive wing of the Ethical Policies (the Dutch variant of the colonial mission civilisatrice). They were deeply concerned about the destructive impact of colonial rule and enterprise on Javanese villages and may have idealized the desa. Breman, “The Village on Java,” pp. 193–194. See also, for example, Van Vollenhoven, Het adatrecht i, p. 511. 112 For an early and thorough critique, see White, ‘“Agricultural Involution’ and its Critics.” See also strata Carey, “Waiting for the ‘Just King,’” p. 81. 110 111

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governments with regard to their perceptions of the role of sugar in their colonies. For the British, the additional income provided to the rural population by the production of gur was pivotal to the proper functioning of Indian rural life, whereas for the Dutch colonial government, the exports of sugar were crucial in maintaining the entire colonial edifice. This is detailed in Chapters 4 and 5 of this book. Later, from the 1930s onward, the position of the Indian National Congress (INC) was influenced by a Nehruvian love for smoking chimneys, but at the same time the national and provincial congressional leaders could not turn a blind eye to the exploitation of the peasantry. The interests of cultivators also became part of the sugar policies of the government of India. This became particularly the case when universal suffrage was granted in 1950. Since there are so many factors involved in determining the success of the transfer of methods of sugar production, it is hardly surprising that the West Indies plantation model, which developed over 800 years in its particular insular environment, could not simply be transplanted to India and Java. What happened instead was that in Java the plantation system was taken apart when the Cultivation System was introduced by Johannes van den Bosch in 1830 and reestablished in the following decades. This Asian-style model of the sugar plantation was transferred to India in the early 1930s. Control over the local networks of advance payments to cultivators proved a necessary condition to create a centralized method of production. If planters succeeded in this regard, they were often welcomed by the local peasantry. Backed by powerful (usually metropolitan) banking institutions, planters could provide advances on more favorable terms than those offered by local moneylenders, and thus bring more and cheaper capital into agrarian societies. However, as we will see, continuously falling sugar prices on the world market and the quest for efficiency translated into increasing pressures on rural societies. The demand from the world market for ever larger quantities of sugar at lower prices exerted strong pressure on the Global South toward the integration of field and factory, and toward full control over fieldwork and botany: in sum, toward the plantation model. In Java, this was accomplished in the late nineteenth century; in West India it was achieved from the 1950s onward through cooperative sugar factories. In both cases, the whole system hinged on a situation in which the village elites were stakeholders in the sugar factories.

2 East Indian Sugar versus Slave Sugar

It is quite remarkable that the relatively small island of Java was a major exporter of sugar to India in the early decades of the twentieth century, whereas India  – in spite of its size and its abundance of labor, capital, land, and water – had lost most of its export markets and had become a net sugar importer. The only part of India where a viable industrial sugar sector emerged in the nineteenth century was along the Coromandel Coast (Madras and Orissa). The factories there owed their survival to the fact that they could draw on locally produced palm gur. The limited success of relocating sugar production within the British Empire to Asia contrasts sharply with the many options the British had in this respect: North India, the east coast (Coromandel), the west coast near Bombay, and Ceylon. Furthermore, the British had acquired the important sugar plantation island of Mauritius. Of all the options open to the British to obtain sugar from their Asian possessions, only Mauritius became a success. This is all the more remarkable in view of the promises the abolition of slavery entailed for Indian sugar exports to the United Kingdom. Indian sugar was the first ever item that might have been labeled “fair trade,” as the relocation of sugar production from the West Indies to East India was a stated objective of the abolitionist movement. In this way, sugar cultivation in India, in particular its sugar exports to Britain, became part of a forty-year struggle over abolition – first of the slave trade and later of the institution of slavery itself. Nevertheless, the incorporation of East India sugar into the cause of abolition did not help the producers in India to gain access to the British market. While abolitionists presented East India sugar as an alternative to slave sugar, the West Indies interests lobbied 44

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successfully for higher import duties on sugar from India. At that time, some attempts were made to introduce West Indies methods of sugar production into India. However, as detailed in this chapter, the British rulers of India were inclined to resume sugar purchases from local producers, rather than to encourage European sugar manufacturers, since West Indies methods had not demonstrated their superiority in these years. Renewed efforts at introducing European methods of sugar production in India were under way in the 1830s. In the wake of the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies, the duties on East India sugar were equalized, the industrialization of sugar production had just begun, and India was still able to catch up. However, the sugar factories met with stiff competition from the traditional Indian khandsari sugar producers, who had been mobilized by EIC civil servants in Bengal to produce for the British market in the final years of the eighteenth century. After the burgeoning 1840s, in which the future of industrial sugar in India looked bright (perhaps even more promising than in Java), the vacuum pan would disappear almost as quickly as it had arrived on the scene. Industrial sugar production only survived along the Coromandel Coast in South India, after it shifted to the processing of palm gur. Traditional Indian refined sugars, the khandsaris, continued to fill the shelves of British groceries until the early 1860s, and industrial sugars from the Madras Presidency were shipped to Great Britain as late as the 1880s.

Plantation Experiments in Late Eighteenth-century India It appeared that the Dutch already had a firm hold over large parts of Java by the early eighteenth century and had encouraged the Chinese sugar millers there to supply the VOC trading network in Asia. The Dutch were able to control sugar production in Java. In contrast, the British extended their power into mainland India only after the battle of Plassey in 1757.1 When the East India Company assumed formal responsibility for the government of Bengal in 1772, European commercial presence was still minimal and the existing Indian trading and financial infrastructure continued to be of crucial importance to British operations in South Asia.2 Indian traders dominated over land and rivers, whereas the British controlled the overseas trade between Bengal and Bombay. 1 2

Marshall, East India Fortunes, pp. 57–58. Ibidem, p. 116.

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The British could not reverse the declining position of Bengal sugar on the important Bombay market, from where considerable amounts of sugar in the western part of the Indian Ocean region were traded.3 The Bengal sugar sector at the time had lost much of its position in the Gulf and Western India to Batavia and other sugar producers, and the situation would not improve. In 1783, a severe famine with grave demographic consequences struck the northern part of Bengal and further up the Ganges. The agricultural crisis also may have been exacerbated by the decay of the irrigation works originally undertaken and maintained by the Mughal emperors. The East India Company sought to revive Bengal sugar production for the intra-Asian trade and also for the European markets. As early as the 1770s, it was suggested that East India muscovado sugar could be brought into England at a lower cost than sugar from the West Indies.4 One of the most vocal advocates encouraging sugar and indigo imports from India was John Prinsep, who himself had accumulated his fortune thanks to an indigo concession granted him by Governor-General Warren Hastings, who held the position from 1773 to 1785.5 Meanwhile, attempts were made to establish plantations using West Indies equipment in Bengal on land granted by the EIC. These projects took place in an unhealthy and uncertain environment.6 Though mortality in the West Indies was as high as in India, the British presence had been much stronger there and the supporting infrastructure much better developed. Sugar pioneers in Bengal were also in a disadvantaged position compared to indigo planters, as they faced existing, well-developed sugar cultivation and markets. Abundant quantities of sugar were already being made using simple and probably more cost-effective devices than the West Indies plantation equipment, which was considered superior by European planters and therefore tried in Bengal. A telling story about the dominance of the Caribbean plantation model is that of the Bengal Commercial Society, which had secured a large plot of land from the EIC. It wanted permission to import, along By the end of the eighteenth century, most of the sugar in Bombay came from Batavia (44 percent) and China (32 percent). Only 15 percent came from Bengal. Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” p. 33. 4 Bengal Sugar, p. 27. 5 For details of Prinsep’s advocacy of importing East India sugar and the equalization of West Indies and East India sugar duties, see Strictures &c., chapters i and ii. In this publication, Prinsep proposed the abolition of the additional land tax on sugar cultivation in India. Prinsep, Strictures & c., p. 24. 6 Marshall, “The Bengal Commercial Society,” pp. 185–186. 3

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with West Indies equipment, twenty African slaves as sugar makers – a request that was refused.7 In the early 1780s, a place for Indian sugar on the European markets still seemed a theoretical option. In spite of centuries of sugar growing in the Mediterranean and Atlantic regions, Europe still fell behind Asia as a sugar consumer. Its demand could easily be satisfied by the Caribbean sugar plantations, which were supplied with more slaves than ever.8 British industrial and mercantile interests that wanted their products to conquer the Indian markets in exchange for agricultural commodities had not yet made themselves heard.9 At best, Indian sugar performed a variety of functions within the East India Company’s trade network. As the Dutch East India Company had done before, sugar was taken on board mainly as ballast in the EIC ships used for intra-Asian trade. Europe continued to be a marginal market for Asian sugar. Indian sugar nonetheless began to emerge as a publicly discussed option in the course of intense campaigns by the abolitionist movements that appeared in Britain in the course of the 1780s. Quakers and other concerned Christians published books and pamphlets advocating abolition.10 One of these was the “Address to the People of Great-Britain on the Utility of Refraining from the Use of West-India Sugar and Rum,” issued by the Quaker Society in 1792. Some of these publications reached ten or more reprints. During debates on the abolition of the slave trade, sugar from Asia was presented as a cheaper alternative to slave sugar. A key testimony in this respect was made during the British parliamentary hearings on the abolition of slavery in 1789. The testimony was presented by Henry Botham, a successful sugar plantation entrepreneur and employer of Chinese labor gangs in Benkulen (Sumatra). An experienced West Indies planter, he had decided to leave for the East Indies in 1776 when the American Declaration of Independence dealt a severe blow to the West Indies economy.11 Botham Bringing African plantation labor into British colonies was not unusual in Asia, as the British pepper colony in Benkulen (Sumatra) was populated with African slaves. The plantation itself did not become a success and was converted into an indigo plantation in 1780. Marshall, “The Bengal Commercial Society,” pp. 181–183; Logan, “The British East India Company,” pp. 340, 345. Later, in 1784, another mill was established by Crofts & Lennox, who owned a plantation at Sukhsagar and who obtained a contract to supply rum to the EIC’s marines. Naquvi, Some other Industries in Urban Centres, p. 137, cited in Pruthi, History of Sugar Industry, p. 39. Finally, at Bettiah, West Champaran in Bihar, a Dutchman established the Motipore sugar factory in 1789. See Wilson, History of Behar, p. 35. 8 See Eltis, “Free and Coerced Transatlantic Migrations.” 9 Marshall, “Debate,” p. 167. 10 Jennings, The Business of Abolishing, p. 69. 11 See Carrington, The Sugar Industry. 7

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not only provided information concerning his own estate, but also explained to the Parliamentary Committee how the Chinese around Batavia divided work among labor gangs. He emphasized that the enormous advantage of Chinese labor gangs over slave labor was that they did not need extensive supervision.12 The idea of importing Chinese sugar makers into India was not considered a feasible option, but Botham’s testimony would have found a receptive audience among abolitionists who wanted to substantiate their claim that free labor was cheaper than slavery, which was indeed an idea contested at the time. In fact, the claim that slave plantations were more expensive to run than those operated using free labor seems to be corroborated by my own findings presented in Appendix II. In the middle of the debates on abolition, in 1790, the first East India sugar, shipped in the vessel The Houghton, made its appearance on London markets. It fetched a high price, in spite of the fact that its texture was rather course and not as granular as West Indies sugar. When production from the French sugar colonies came to a halt in the wake of the French Revolution and the revolution in Saint Domingue, sugar prices soared and turned sugar exports from India to Europe into an even more realistic prospect. However, before India could gain access to this market there were a few obstacles to overcome, the most important being differential import duties. The West Indies slaveholding interests were entrenched firmly enough in British politics both to withstand the barrage of abolitionist petitions to parliament and to maintain the discriminatory duties on East India sugar.13 The EIC Court of Proprietor’s 1792 appeals to the British ministers and parliament to lower the duties on East India sugar were in vain. This was partly because, contrary to the claims of the advocates of East India sugar that these duties only served the interests of the West Indies estate owners, who were “a few moneyed men in England,” the West Indies plantations and their labor force constituted an important source of revenue for British industry.14 Even if the duties on East India sugar had been reduced, this would not have led to a full replacement of West Indies sugar. Moreover, India’s capacity for making sugar had seriously declined after wars and famines Abridged from the minutes of the Committee of the Whole House on the Slave Trade, 1789, “Witness examined – Henry Botham,” p. 134. The British must have been aware of the skills of the Chinese sugar millers – after they had taken possession of Penang in 1786, they invited them to set up plantations on their new acquisition. Regarding sugar manufacturing in Penang, see Low, Dissertation on the Soil and Agriculture, pp. 49–58. 13 Halbersleben, Women’s Participation, p. 12; Turley, The Culture of English Antislavery, p. 64. 14 East India Sugar, p. vi; Bengal Sugar, p. 62. 12

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had ravaged Bengal. Therefore, in 1792, the Residents in India (senior EIC administrators) were commissioned to investigate how sugar production in their districts could be promoted.15 Also participating in these deliberations on how to revive Bengal sugar production was a new trickle of West Indies planters, who arrived in India seeking fresh avenues in which to apply their skills. One of them was William Fitzmaurice, who in 1793 presented a memorandum to the Court of Directors of the East India Company, in which he introduced himself as having been a manager of sugar estates in Jamaica for sixteen years and who was acquainted with every aspect of cane cultivation and sugar manufacturing. Fitzmaurice had no difficulty in finding out why Bengal was a waning sugar exporter. He observed, for example, that the Indian mode of grinding sugar was so slow that “the juice acquires a degree of acidity that destroys not only a considerable portion of the saccharine particles, but contaminates the whole body that remains, and which afterwards cannot be corrected; indeed the cane-juice is in forward state of fermentation before the process of boiling is commenced.”16 Fitzmaurice offered to add to the EIC’s wealth by “encouraging the sugar manufactories in Bengal to be carried out by the process practiced in the West Indies” and “at present unknown to the natives of India.”17 The directors of the EIC in London, particularly its Board of Trade in Calcutta, took with a pinch of salt the way West Indies planters promoted themselves as the right men for the job of modernizing the Indian sugar industry. However, based on information put together locally by the Residents of the EIC, the Board of Trade concluded in 1792 that “the cultivation of the sugar-cane is in a highly improved state, and that the husbandmen are skilful.”18 The East India Company therefore expected a great deal from the dissemination of improved cane varieties, which partly explains their initiative in establishing botanical gardens in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. The famous economic botanist, Dr. William Roxburgh, went from Madras to Calcutta, where he started experiments with foreign, mainly Chinese, cane varieties during the 1790s.19 As far as the processing of cane was concerned, the Board of See East India Sugar, 1st Appendix. Ibidem, p. 211. 17 Ibidem, pp. 210–211. 18 Ibidem, p. 97. 19 He conducted these experiments with planters William Pope and Richard Cardin. BoT (Commercial), September 22, 1797, letter from W. Roxburgh to W. A. Edmonstone, Secretary of the BoT, September 4, 1797. See Wray, The Practical Sugar Planter, pp. 10–11 and Deerr, The History of Sugar i, p. 23. 15 16

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Trade felt that, although an experiment should be undertaken by people trained in the West Indies, its scale had to be modest so that no substantial amount of money could be lost. It decided that: “Fair experiment is the only mode to determine whether the methods of this country or those of the West-Indies be preferable.”20 The EIC authorities were clearly not convinced of the superiority of the Caribbean methods. Like the abolitionists, the Board of Trade of the East India Company in Bengal suspected that India could produce sugar at lower cost than the West Indies. The board had noted the advantages of the cheap and simple implements used by the locals over the expensive equipment of the West Indies. According to the newly appointed sugar inspector, F. Horsby, in his correspondence with the Board of Trade, some types of locally refined Indian sugars were perfectly suited for immediate consumption in Europe, but British import duties worked prohibitively against the import of refined sugars from its colonies. These import duties had been imposed to protect the refiners based in England. Therefore, it was suggested that sugar should be obtained in India just sufficiently refined to endure a sea voyage to Britain. To that end, the Board of Trade wanted samples of khaur (gur with part of the molasses drained off, thus a kind of muscovado) tested. After a positive assessment by the sugar inspector, it was decided to obtain khaurs in Bengal that were close to muscovado from Barbados. To enable standards to be set, samples of muscovados were brought in from the West Indies.21 In the course of 1792, the Residents finished their investigation into the causes for the decline of sugar production in Bengal. Part of their diagnosis was that the gur purchasers sent by the makers of khandsaris did not make monetary advances before September or October, leaving the risks from failed harvests mainly to the cultivators. This led to the proposal by the Board of Trade to the governor-general to let the EIC step in, as it had the money and the resources to make advances more cheaply and more sustainably than private European “speculators” and sugar boilers. As a result, the board advised the implementation of a system of advances to the cultivators in the provinces of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa.22 This advice actually conformed with existing EIC practices, as the company was actively engaged in providing advances to poppy growers in north Bengal, but of course opium was considered a highly strategic commodity East India Sugar, 1st Appendix, pp. 101–102 (Bengal BoT, Consultations, September 4, 1792). 21 BoT (Commercial), January 30, 1794, “Extending & Improving the Trade in Sugar.” 22 East India Sugar, 1st Appendix, pp. 97, 119–123. 20

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and essential to the China trade. In the case of indigo, advancing money was a private business that often encountered great problems. In those years, European indigo manufacturers numbered around forty, and often made heavy losses on advances to Bengali cultivators who they tried to encourage to plant indigo.23 The fact that sugar was not a strategic commodity like opium may explain why Governor-General Charles Cornwallis (who held the post from 1786 to 1794) backtracked after problematic initial experiments: “it appears to us that it will be in every point of view more advisable to contract or engage with the boilers of sugar and native dealers, than to make advances to the ryotts and cultivators of cane as proposed by you.”24 The reason for this change of mind was that the whole system of providing advances had to be conducted by native civil servants, who allegedly perpetrated all kinds of abuses against the cultivators.25 The consequence of Cornwallis’s decision was that the position of moneylenders and sugar manufacturers in the cities was strengthened, but to the detriment of any future attempts to start industrial sugar production. Meanwhile, the EIC officials had to compete with other traders in sugar on the local markets, which often drove up the prices. By making advances to the khandsari makers, the company tried to shore up its position.26 At around the same time, a dozen or so West Indies planters tried their luck in Bengal, particularly in Bihar (Champaran), around Patna, and in Rungpore.27 Among them were John Petterson and Richard Cardin, who had been in Jamaica for twelve years and began to manufacture sugar in Bengal in the early 1790s using West Indies methods and Chinese cane varieties.28 In those times, West Indies equipment was imported by Lambert, Ross & Company, an important East Indian merchant house. However, the problem with North Bihar was that the position of the BoT (Commercial), October 28, 1796, Proceedings on preferential treatment of Bengal and Benares planters. 24 East India Sugar, 1st Appendix, p. 130. 25 Ibidem, p. 133. 26 BoT (Commercial) Index 1801–1805, Benares Resident, March 15, March 23, 1804; This was experienced in Soonamooky, about which the acting Resident of Radnagore reported to the BoT. BoT (Commercial) Index 1801–1805, Soonamooky, March 23, 1804. 27 Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” p. 134. 28 BoT (Commercial Index) 1801, Mirzapore Distillery  – Assistant Santipore, March 2, March 10, 1801. With regard to the factory of Richard Cardin at Santipore and the Chinese cane plants he received from the botanical garden in Calcutta, see BoT (Commercial) 1798, Letter by Richard Cardin to Resident Edward Fletcher Esq. Enclosure in letter by E. Fletcher to Peter Speke Esq. Resident & Members of the BoT Fort William, May 18, 1798. 23

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planters vis-à-vis the local rulers was still very weak around 1800. This is illustrated by the story of John Paterson (not to be confused with the aforementioned John Petterson). Paterson was recommended to the Court of Directors of the EIC in 1792 as “being well skilled in the cultivation and manufacture of sugar, according to the most approved methods in use in the West Indies.” Even under the mighty protection of the Court of Directors, which had dispatched a message to Bengal that Paterson should be given every assistance, he found himself in trouble with local rulers.29 In 1794, Paterson tried to lease 1,500 hectares of land from Rajah Birkeshwar Sing, one of the three powerful zamindars who together held almost three quarters of Champaran.30 However, despite having already made an advance payment of 3,000 rupees, the lease did not materialize. Paterson’s high level of protection proved of little value. The EIC Board of Trade to which the desperate Paterson turned for help replied that he should seek remedy in one of the courts of justice of the country.31 The fact that planters received almost no backing when they encountered powerful local obstacles explains why Dr. Roxburgh made an urgent plea to the Board of Trade to extend the protection of the local judge and collector to William Pope, a sugar planter with whom he was conducting experiments using Chinese cane.32 As regards Paterson, he did not get his land from the raja. He was given another advance of 25,000 rupees free of interest from the EIC thanks to the personal intervention of the governor-general, but his untimely death in 1794 put an end to the venture.33

Ryotwari Taxes and Sugar Experiments in South India As discussed in Chapter 1, local property relations were a crucial factor in the success or failure of the introduction of sugar production using West Indies methods. As the registration of individual landholdings hardly existed in Asia, the tax system was a way to both define and manipulate property relations. In the late 1790s, Captain Alexander Read (the collector for Salem and Baramahal, southwest of Madras city) and his East India Sugar, 2nd Appendix, p. 7. Pouchepadass, Champaran and Gandhi, p. 115; Mishra, Agrarian Problems, p. 11. 31 BoT, April 10, 1794, John Paterson (Contractor for Sugar) to the BoT, March 31, 1794. 32 BoT (Commercial), September 22, 1797, Doctor Roxburgh to W. A. Edmonstone, Secretary of the BoT, September 4, 1797. 33 BoT, October 28, 1794, C. Shakespeare Sub-Secretary, Council Chamber, October 24 to Mr. Paterson. 29 30

East Indian Sugar versus Slave Sugar

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assistants, Thomas Munro and William MacLeod, experimented with an alternative to the tax system that had been imposed in Bengal, where the zamindars had been reinforced in the role of tax collectors. In Salem and Baramahal, a tax system was developed that was imposed on individual ryots and known as the “ryotwari system.”34 Twenty years later, Thomas Munro became the governor of Madras and implemented the ryotwari land rent system in the entire presidency, a model followed in Java and the Bombay Presidency. Although best known for his fatherhood of a taxation system, Munro also had a personal interest in sugar cultivation, which in fact was directly linked to his ideas about the best way of collecting land rent. A few years prior to the first ryotwari experiments in Salem and Baramahal, Munro and his colleague Mcleod had tried in vain to start a sugar plantation in Madras. They had had reason to expect the application to be granted, because the Court of Directors of the EIC had been generally accommodating toward British who wanted to develop sugar plantations in the southern part of India. However, they were too late; Governor-General Cornwallis had just expressed his profound opinion “that it will be of essential importance to the interest of Britain, that Europeans should be discouraged and prevented, as much as possible, from colonising and settling in our possessions in India.”35 Following that decision, the Revenue Board of Madras rejected their application to start a cotton, sugar, and indigo plantation, arguing that “the natives” should be induced to “undertake the culture of those articles under every reasonable degree of encouragement.”36 Munro and his colleagues then came up with the idea of supplying the ryots with cane cuttings to foster cash crop production, which would help the cultivators to pay their land rent.37 Salem and Baramahal were dress rehearsals for Thomas Munro, who a few years later introduced the ryotwari system in his capacity as the collector for the newly acquired Ceded Districts, which he began to purge of the unruly poligars (chieftains) who would have been the likely Sarada, Economic Conditions, pp. 16–28; Rickards, India, pp. 504–525. Lord Cornwallis cited in Statement of the Claims, p. 36. The exceptions to the rule were three British granted land in 1792 to introduce the cultivation of sugar and indigo on the island of Salsette, where Bombay was located, and Robert Crawfurd, who in 1795 was given a grant for wasteland at the Malabar Coast for as long as the Charter of the EIC was in force, up to a maximum of two thousand acres. East India Sugar, 2nd Appendix, pp. 26–27. 36 East India Sugar, 2nd Appendix, p. 203. 37 Mukherjee, The Ryotwari System, p. 261. 34 35

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candidates to act as zamindars.38 He did this inspired by the ideal of the homo economicus, whose property rights would be respected and, after paying a moderate monetized tax, would be allowed to enjoy most of the fruits of his work. This would also serve imperial interests, since the most likely way for a ryot to obtain cash to pay the collector was by producing for the world market. This principle was also embraced for the larger part of the Bombay Presidency, but it is even more interesting that it was implemented in Java by Thomas Stamford Raffles, the acting lieutenant governor-general of the occupied Dutch possessions in the Indonesian archipelago between 1811 and 1816. Raffles introduced this system in Java as the taxation model of the day, since Munro had won approval for his principles by the 1812 Parliamentary Select Committee on Indian affairs during his time in England.39 Raffles also decided consciously in favor of the ryotwari system because he believed, as Munro did, that this would best fit the objectives of the colonial government to enhance the Javanese peasants’ sense of property and thus make them productive subjects.40 To return to Madras, along the banks of the Elyseram River and the delta of the Godavari, sugar was grown in relatively large quantities by Indian cultivators, who bestowed great care on the cane, by wrapping the leaves around the stalks to prevent these from cracking or branching out, for example.41 Late eighteenth-century British observers in the Madras Presidency noted that cultivators there had nothing to learn from Europe. Agricultural practice was of a very high level, particularly with regard to irrigation. As the option of establishing sugar plantations had been blocked, the government of Madras tried to encourage sugar cultivation among the local population of Salem and Baramahal, and it considered the construction of sugar mills.42 Because of its climate and its social structures, the Madras Presidency seemed the most likely candidate in India for the introduction of large-scale sugar production for Stein, Thomas Munro, pp. 89–90. Ibidem, p. 169; Mukherjee, The Ryotwari System, pp. 91–92. 40 See Bastin, Raffles’s Ideas; Bastin, The Native Policies, pp. 22–23. 41 Roxburgh, An Account of the Hindoo Method, p. 2. 42 Government of Madras, Board of Revenue 1798, Date of Consultation and Back Nos. January 29, 42, 43, Page of Volume 641 and Date of Consultation and Back Nos. February 1, 8, Page of Volume 759. Meanwhile, for tribal lands in high-lying areas, the colonial government apparently applied different rules. In the hills of Tripatoor, 120 miles southwest of Madras, the first coffee plantation was developed in 1795 by Captain Alexander Read, the collector for Salem and Baramahal. East India Sugar, 2nd Appendix, p. 24; Hamilton, Geographical, Statistical, and Historical Description of Hindostan and the Adjacent Countries, p. 397; Saravanan, “Commercialisation,” pp. 141, 146. 38 39

East Indian Sugar versus Slave Sugar

55

the English market. In many parts of Madras, village structures had communal arrangements for guarding the fields, the administration of justice, and last but not least, regular repairs to irrigation systems. Maintenance of the irrigation systems had institutionalized cooperation at the village level, and it fostered a social texture that showed important parallels with the desa communities in Java. Communal structures enabled the factories to engage entire villages under collective cultivation contracts, which stabilized the supply of cane. Another favorable condition for the introduction of West Indies methods of sugar production was that British business was far more deeply rooted in Madras than in North India. European families had resided in Madras for generations and had established close relations with the court of the nawab of Carnatic. One member of such a family was Thomas Parry, who had been active in a shipping business, which he combined with his service as the treasurer for the nawab. His firm would develop into an important sugar producer in South India that still exists today.43 He may have felt endorsed by the conclusions of horticulturalist Dr. William Roxburgh, who had lived in Madras for more than a decade. Roxburgh wrote in glowing terms in the early 1790s about the possibilities for growing sugarcane in this part of India. He even went as far as to state that the cane in Madras yielded twice as much sugar as the cane in the Caribbean. Based on Roxburgh’s expert advice, the Board of Revenue of Madras wrote to the Court of Directors of the EIC in London in 1793: The price of labour here is much lower, and the cane is not so liable to accidents as in Jamaica. The great sugar crop also happens at a season of the year unfit for the cultivation of grain and the only desideratum appears to be an improvement in the manufacture by the introduction of the sugar-works, used in the West-Indies.44

In 1799, Parry made his first investments in using the West Indies method of sugar production in the Madras Presidency. He engaged Edward Campbell, who had come to India earlier that year, with specific permission from the Court of Directors in London.45 Parry provided Campbell Thomas Parry was not born in Madras, but was the brother-in-law of Gilbert Ross, who was a member of a family that had been established in Madras for many years. See Hodgson, Thomas Parry, pp. 54, 63, and Brown, Parry’s of Madras, p. 9. 44 East India Sugar, 2nd Appendix, p. 45. 45 Ibidem, pp. 23–24. There is mention of a Robert Campbell who had proposed to the Board of Revenue at Fort St. George (Madras) to make sugar from jaggery. See East India Sugar, 1st Appendix, p. 249. 43

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with considerable advances to develop the cultivation of ­sugarcane by leasing land from nineteen villages in the Chidambaram area of South Arcot in 1803. After a few years, Campbell’s relationship with the local peasantry and the collectors suddenly deteriorated, which forced him in 1808 to return his ten-year lease to the government.46 Political tribulations and social unrest might have been the cause, but a change to the taxation system may have also played a role, as critics of the ryotwari system had grabbed their chance to impose an alternative after Munro’s departure to England in 1807.47 Its replacement by the mouzawar system (a collective tax for entire villages) was tried throughout the presidency, though within a few years the communal taxation principle proved economically disastrous, not least because it engendered rapacious behavior by village heads and elites.48 The change to the system of taxation might have been ruinous for Campbell’s enterprise. Yet we do not know this for sure, not least because it is not certain that Munro’s ryotwari system had been more beneficial than the mouzawar system to enterprises like Campbell’s. Rather paradoxically, but not unusually, the improved security of property rights for individual ryots that was part of Munro’s ryotwari system may have increased borrowing capacity, thereby engendering indebtedness. This became apparent when Madras reverted to the ryotwari land rent system after the mouzawar intermezzo. First as judicial commissioner (1814– 1819) and then as governor of Madras (1820–1827), Munro firmly reestablished his own land rent system. There are indications that his land rent policies increased indebtedness and strengthened the position of moneylenders, while at the same time, the communal structures that sustained the irrigation works may have deteriorated and the position of the village head may have been undermined. These effects were somewhat detrimental to the fulfillment of Munro’s own expectations of the Coromandel Coast becoming a major cane sugar exporter.49 In addition to the possible disadvantages of Munro’s land rent system, pioneer sugar manufacturers faced relatively high labor costs in this part of India. This is something the optimistic Roxburgh had completely glossed over. High labor costs were a recurring issue for A. D. J. Colley, another sugar producer and a member of a settled Anglo-Indian family. In 1800, he was awarded a contract by the Board of Revenue of Brown, The Parry’s of Madras, pp. 38–39; Sarada, Economic Conditions, p. 85. Mukherjee, The Ryotwari System, pp. 77–78. 48 Sarada, Economic Conditions, p. 46. 49 Ibidem, pp. 86, 137; Mukherjee, The Ryotwari System, pp. 332–333. 46 47

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Madras to produce sugar from cane grown by local peasants in Ganjam (Orissa), mainly a paddy-growing region. Colley obtained an advance to pay sugar cultivators for their next harvest50 and established a mill and distillery at Mansurkota (near Gopalpur-on-Sea) to produce sugar and rum. He tried to convince the local peasantry to implement labor-saving practices such as ratooning to bring down the price of cane. Yet, in spite of government assistance and the favorable ecological conditions in Ganjam, Colley’s contract with the EIC was discontinued in 1805. His sugar was too expensive and not dry enough to be shipped to Britain without considerable losses. The situation was not to improve in the next decades, as is clearly illustrated by a second attempt of the EIC to export Colley’s sugar to England in 1820. Within one or two seasons, the Court of Directors concluded once again that his product was too expensive and not good enough.51 Industrial technology had not yet decisively advanced nor had slavery been defeated by the abolitionists, allowing the West Indies interests to keep East India sugar in an unfavorable position on the British market. The Madras government and the commercial interests of the city would not give up, however. In the early 1840s, after the abolition of slavery, they would engage in another attempt, this time with more success.

East Indian Interests and Non-Slave Sugar Practically all the attempts around 1800 to introduce West Indies methods of sugar production into India had failed. In Bengal proper, the government preferred to work with local sugar manufacturers, Bihar was located too far in the periphery to build a sustainable sugar plantation sector, and the standard of living in Madras was too high to allow sugar production to be competitive. As long as demand for East India sugar was modest and Britain maintained the import duties on it, Bengal sugar taken as ballast could easily meet the demand from the British market. Sugar inspector Horsby, meanwhile, had been very successfully overseeing the purchase of semi-refined sugars. He was satisfied with his own Government of Madras, Date of Consultation and Back nos. February 13, 1800, 3, Page of Volume 1256–1260, February 13, 4, Page of Volume 1261, April 14, 22, Page of Volume 3197–3200, June 23, 31, 32, Page of Volume 5703–5712, July 31, 14, 15, Page of Volume 6732–6776, August 8, 13, Page of Volume 6808–6810. 51 The situation in West India was no better, as the EIC reached the same conclusion for the sugar produced by Dr. Helenus Scott on Salsette Island north of Bombay. East India Sugar, 1st Appendix, pp. 259, 261, 268, 2nd Appendix, pp. 25, 26, 48, 50, 53. 50

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work and felt entitled to a substantial salary increase in 1798, which was granted without any fuss.52 It was mainly thanks to the purchases monitored by Horsby that in the 1790s British sugar imports from India had rapidly increased to 11,300 metric tons in 1802, a level that would be maintained over the following decades with the exception of the final years of Napoleonic rule when European demand for sugar from India dwindled.53 The end of the Napoleonic era in 1813 coincided with the termination of the East India Company’s monopoly, except for tea and the trade with China. Moreover, the British government was by then convinced that furthering free trade with India would provide Britain with ample and cheap commodities, including sugar.54 Private traders from Great Britain entered the scene and one of these was John Gladstone, whose first ship to India sailed in 1813 from Liverpool. In the following years, together with various business partners, he maintained six ships in the East India trade. Meanwhile, the West Indies were far from abandoned, and in 1813, the import duties on East India sugar had been raised to a level 25 percent higher than those on West Indies sugar. Not surprisingly, Gladstone concluded in 1821 that “not one importation of sugar from Bengal in the last two years has paid the freight charges.”55 Although he took an interest in the East Indies, with regard to sugar he had put his cards on Demerara, where he owned several plantations. In the early nineteenth century, this part of the empire was more familiar than India to British businesspeople. At that time, the West Indies islands were still the most frequent colonial destination for British subjects and were still ranked as British settler colonies.56 By the 1820s, sugar from India had become part of the partisanship and conflicts of interest that belonged to the abolition debate and that would postpone rather than facilitate its access to the British market. All the bickering, the debates about East India sugar, and the dozens of publications on the issue only provide a testimony of precocious debate on a fair global order of commodity production and consumption. West Indies sugar still dominated the British market in those years. One of the reasons for this was that, contrary to what Wilberforce (the prominent British Letter by Francis Horsby, January 11, 1794 to BoT, BoT 1794, Calcutta, February 14, 1794. 53 East India Sugar, 4th Appendix, p. 4. 54 Webster, “The Political Economy,” p. 410. 55 Checkland, “John Gladstone,” p. 221. See also Checkland, The Gladstones, p. 122. 56 Checkland, “John Gladstone,” p. 216; Statement of the Claims, p. 6. 52

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abolitionist and Member of Parliament) had expected around 1814, slavery did not disappear in the West Indies. Neither did productivity decline, because, as B. W. Higman demonstrated in his meticulously researched Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, slave labor was allocated to places where it was most productive, and only in the 1820s did lucrative plantations begin to run short of slave labor. Precisely at that time, sugar prices began to fall, resulting in additional pressure to raise productivity from an already diminishing slave population, in turn leading to increased hardship.57 The East India sugar connection was unmistakably present in the second round of the abolitionist movement of the 1820s. One of its key figures and a cofounder of the Anti-Slavery Society was James Cropper, a farmer’s son and Quaker who had become a wealthy Liverpudlian merchant.58 Having read Adam Smith in his formative years, Cropper felt vindicated that being engaged in trade was a way to participate in human progress, and therefore a moral cause.59 Shifting the discourse from trade to the institution of slavery itself, Cropper gave a central place to the economic aspect of the struggle against slavery and directly appealed to consumers to use East India sugar, of which he himself was an importer. In 1821, he wrote a famous letter to William Wilberforce in which he stated that he was “recommending the encouragement of the cultivation of sugar in our dominions of the East Indies,” further making the point that slave production was far more expensive than free labor.60 Whether by coincidence or not, three weeks after Cropper’s letter to Wilberforce, the latter embarked on a campaign for the gradual emancipation of slaves. However, shifting the battle for abolition to the realm of economics would not bring about a quick victory, but instead another twelve years of struggle that became rather vicious at times. In 1823, Cropper entered into a widely read polemic with his friend John Gladstone, with whom he had been working on a philanthropic project since 1818. This rapidly derailed into bickering that would put an end to their friendship.61 Cropper’s fervor in discarding arguments that the conditions of slaves might often be Higman, Slave Population, pp. 225, 231. Ross, “James Cropper,” p. 150. Eric Williams mentions Cropper as the greatest importer of East India sugar into Liverpool and observes that his “dual position of humanitarian and economist forced him into inconsistencies.” See Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, pp. 186–187. 59 Davis, “James Cropper,” pp. 241–244. 60 Cropper, Letters Addressed to William Wilberforce, p. v. 61 Checkland, The Gladstones, pp. 126–127, 191; See also Correspondence. 57 58

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better than the lives of the people of India also discredited Gladstone’s contention that humane slaveholders did exist, including himself. Cropper did not waver in his position that slavery was a ­murderous system, for which he felt supported by the fact that mortality widely exceeded birth rates among slave populations. Under these circumstances, sugar continued to be expensive, a situation that could only be maintained by protective measures against East India sugar. Cropper contended that if the situation were reversed, and the duties on East India sugar were removed or at least drastically lowered and a serious amelioration of the conditions of the slaves in the West Indies accomplished, consumption would drastically increase and tax revenues would grow.62 Referring to Ricardo and Say, he argued that the exclusion of East India sugar had created a monopoly for West Indies sugar, shoring up prices and keeping British consumption at a low level. Sugar consumption in Great Britain apparently dropped in the early decades of the nineteenth century.63 Cropper maintained that the solution was to lower the prices, stating: “it is clear that the great bulk of the poor do obtain it [sugar] in but very limited quantity … Indians better produce sugar and British cloth and both more cheaply.”64 Cropper and his associates involved British consumers in the struggle and with them, women. The Quakers played a pivotal role, but the female wing of the abolitionist movement deserves particular mention in this regard.65 In the late eighteenth century, women were not allowed to sign the anti-slavery petitions and their commitment was mainly seen as an untainted force, silently supporting the struggle against slavery. However, in the early nineteenth century, they became increasingly vocal and apparently more radical than their husbands (Illustration 2.1).66 Influential abolitionist Elizabeth Heyrick became so irritated by the trepidation of Wilberforce and his associates when faced with the arrogance of the slave owners that she reacted, stating in 1824, because of “too much politeness” on the side of the abolitionists the “interests and prejudice of the West Indian planters have occupied much too prominent a place in the discussion.”67 In her famous pamphlet Immediate, Cropper, “Impolicy of Slavery,” in Correspondence etc., pp. 13–14. Burnett, Plenty and Want, p. 15. 64 Cropper, Relief for West-Indian Distress, p. 27. 65 The Peckham Ladies’ African and Anti-Slavery Association, for example, published a pamphlet in 1828 under the unequivocal title “Reasons for Using East India Sugar.” 66 Midgley, Women against Slavery, p. 23. 67 Heyrick, Immediate, not Gradual Abolition, p. 14. 62 63

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Illustration 2.1.  One of the sugar bowls that became part of the abolition campaign, crafted about 1820. ©The Trustees of the British Museum.

not Gradual Abolition she made a passionate appeal for abstinence from slave sugar: Abstinence from one single article of luxury would annihilate the West Indian slavery!! But abstinence it cannot be called; – we only need substitute East India, for West India sugar, – and the British atmosphere would be purified at once, from the poisonous infection of slavery. The antidote of this deadly bane, for which we have been so many years in laborious but unsuccessful search, is most simple and obvious, – too simple and obvious, it would seem, to have been regarded.68 Ibidem, p. 24.

68

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The abolitionists stepped up their efforts, leading to a spate of new i­nitiatives. The Oriental Herald reported in March 1825 that a Free Sugar Company had been established by “a few benevolent individuals.”69 The initiators had pinned their hopes on the East India Company and its servants making advances to the cultivators. Almost simultaneously, the Bengal Sugar Company was established with the aim of providing monetary advances to the Indian peasantry for buying better equipment to grow and process cane, at interest rates far below those of Indian moneylenders.70 As expected, neither of these initiatives materialized, but it is interesting to note that business circles were aware that providing advances directly to the cultivators was crucial in redirecting cash crop production toward the world market. This is what the EIC had accomplished in North India for its opium trade and what individual indigo entrepreneurs had been doing, but with regard to sugar production in Bengal it had been tried only once and quickly abandoned. Meanwhile, slaveholders in the West Indies still held the higher political ground. They had successfully resisted a lowering of the duties on East India sugar, insisting they would be ruined if this sugar was admitted to the British market. Their complaints that they were in distress resonated with the British government, which in 1822 allowed them to export directly to the European continental markets and to the United States.71 Their position was fortified in 1825, when the duties levied on sugar from Mauritius (indeed still slave sugar) were reduced to the same rate as those for sugar from the West Indies. The plantation interests in the West Indies in fact used the same argument as the abolitionists, namely that slave labor in the Caribbean was already more expensive than free labor in the East Indies.72 However, they gave a different twist to this, of course, pointing out that the economic interests of Great Britain in the West Indies were considerable. Therefore, West Indies sugar needed to be protected or these Caribbean societies would be reduced to the same misery as Haiti.73 “New associations – free sugar company – and Bengal Sugar Company,” Supplement to the Oriental Herald, 4(15), 1825, p. 454. 70 Ibidem, pp. 454–456. 71 Davis, “James Cropper,” pp. 246–247. 72 Considerations Submitted in Defence, p. 117. The Times analyzed in 1849 that the annual cost of a slave exceeded the cost of free labor by more than 20 percent, but the West Indies, Brazilian, and Cuban plantations were able to work far more efficiently. The Times quoted by Sykes, “Contributions to the Statistics of Sugar,” pp. 23–24. 73 Macqueen, The Colonial Controversy, pp. 163–165. 69

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The Rise of the East India Sugar Industry In spite of the investigation conducted by the EIC in 1822 into how to encourage sugar imports from India to England, together with the efforts of the abolitionist movement in this respect, imports of slave sugar increased rather than diminished. Shipping sugar to England from Calcutta was hardly a profitable business, taking into consideration the low sugar prices in Europe and high duties on East India sugar.74 Duties on slave sugar from Mauritius had been reduced to the same level as West Indies imports in 1825, but those for India remained high. Presenting East India sugar as a serious alternative to the West Indies supplies had clearly only hardened the opposition to equal access for sugar from all the British colonies. Despite their differences, the defenders of the West Indies plantations and the advocates of East India sugar gladly agreed with the assumption that Caribbean plantations, even though they were run using slave labor, could never compete with India, where wages were a pittance. It is not entirely uncontested that this was the case, however, as the Great Divergence debate shows.75 Yet, from a comparison between all the costs of sugar production in Bengal, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean, the labor costs for Bengal emerge as by far the lowest. Both wages and taxes in South India may have been higher than in Bengal, however, which explains why the gur prices cited by Buchanan for southern India exceeded those of Bengal by at least 20 percent.76 Cane sugar from South India was not competitive on the world market, even though for local palm sugar the situation was different. In Bengal, the costs of labor and fixed capital were relatively low, but land rent was a considerable item, and interest on capital at various stages of production in particular amounted to a substantial proportion of the production cost: much more than in the West Indies or Southeast Asia. Conversely, plantation owners in the West Indies BoT (Commercial), September 14, 1830, Commercial Department, No. 10 of 1830, Our Governor General in Council at Fort William, in Bengal. 75 Parthasarathi has argued that mid-eighteenth-century real wages in South India compared well with those of Britain (Parthasarathi, “Rethinking Wages,” p. 80), but Broadberry and Gupta contend that whereas Indian per capita GDP had amounted to 61.5 percent of that of Great Britain in 1600, the figure sank to a mere 27.7 percent in 1801. Broadberry and Gupta, “India and the Great Divergence,” p. 30, table 12. Robert Allen points out that Parthasarathi may have a point with regard to wages in South India for the early eighteenth century, but that for the latter part of the century, wages fell to the Bengal level. Allen, “India in the Great Divergence,” p. 17. 76 See Appendix II. 74

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Table 2.1.  Comparison of local prices at the port of departure and freight, insurance, and wastage per 250 tons Local price at the port (£) Bahia (1827) Pernambuco (1827) Calcutta (1830) Havana (1827) Batavia (1827) Paramaribo (1827) Kingston (1832)

7,688 8,917 5,380 7,579 6,225 8,333 7,280

Freight, wastage, and insurance (£) 2,248 2,797 2,340 1,260 4,500–6,500 2,435 2,500

Total (£) 9,936 11,714 7,720 8,839 10,725–12,725 10,768 9,780

Note: Import duties not included. Source: For Bahia, Batavia, Pernambuco and Bahia, see Van den Bosch, “Nota van den gewezen Kommissaris-Generaal,” pp. 275–276, 283–288. For the market prices of gur on the spot in Bengal, see Appendix II. For the price of EIC sugar in Calcutta of about 8 Rs. per maund, see “Trade between Great Britain and India,” The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, vol. 6 (New Series), 1831, p. 219. For freight from Calcutta at £6 per metric ton, see BoT, September 14, 1830, Commercial Department No. 10, London May 12, 1830, Letter by W. Astell et al. to the Governor General in Council at Fort William, in Bengal. For Jamaica in 1832, see Higman, “Slave Population,” p. 307.

were content with rather narrow margins for returns, which might have been well below prevailing interest rates (see Table AII.1, Appendix II). This explains why Indian sugar, in spite of the relative cheapness of labor in South Asia, had difficulty overcoming the additional import duties that amounted to £2,500 per 250 metric tons for East India sugar more than for West Indies sugar (Table 2.1).77 As late as 1830 there had been a further threat of widening the differential between the duties for East India and those for West India and Mauritius sugar, but by that time other interests began to figure on the British political agenda. The majority of MPs were distinctly aware sugar had lost its status as a luxury and was on its way to becoming a necessity.78 Moreover, by the early 1830s, the abolitionist movement had gained momentum and the British Parliament was bombarded by thousands of petitions. More than a million British signed these, of whom probably almost a third were women.79 That the abolitionist movement came closer than ever to accomplishing its objectives was thanks to low sugar prices that brought the Jamaican “Debate at the E.I.H., June 23 – East-India Sugar Duties,” Asiatic Journal N.S., 2(7), July 1830, pp. 177–178. 78 Ibidem. 79 Midgley, Women against Slavery, pp. 62, 67. 77

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plantation economy to a state of crisis. As Higman has argued, the necessity of squeezing the maximum amount of labor out of the declining slave population brought tensions at the plantations to the boiling point. In earlier times, there had been ways out for the Creole slaves, but now their lives became increasingly restricted to the plantations, which contributed to an atmosphere of resistance.80 In the early 1830s, the British colonial authorities became convinced that the situation in the plantations was out of control. The 1832 slave rebellion in Jamaica, which could only be suppressed by killing 200 slaves and executing a further 500, had been a clear sign, and a sign that was well read in London. On August 1, 1834, slavery ceased to exist throughout the British Empire, albeit only after a transitional period, the so-called apprenticeship, of six years. Twenty million pounds were to be paid as compensation to the West Indian slaveholders, not to the slaves. Meanwhile, an alliance of Manchester, Glasgow, and Liverpudlian industrialists with Indian agency houses had stepped up its lobbying for the lowering of duties on East India sugar. Metropolitan commercial concerns were now giving greater weight to Indian interests, which had everything to do with the increasing importance they attached to India as a market for British textiles.81 As a result, the growing interests of the British cotton industry in the Indian markets kept abreast with the increasingly vocal advocacy of India as a sugar producer for an expanding English market. Together with the fact that in the early 1830s the emancipation of the slaves in the British dominions and colonies was imminent, this paved the way for imposing the same duties on imports of sugar from India as from the West Indies and Mauritius.82 This equalization took place in 1835, after more than forty years of political wrangling about abolition. Abolition combined with the equalization of import duties almost instantaneously resulted in a drastic decline of Caribbean sugar imports into the United Kingdom and a rapidly rising share of East India sugar on the British market.83 Of crucial importance was the role of the immense Higman, Slave Population, p. 232. Webster, “The Political Economy,” p. 417. 82 Curtin, “The British Sugar Duties,” p. 159. 83 East India sugar imports into Great Britain rose from 7,000 metric tons in 1835 to about 60,000 metric tons in roughly five years, with a peak of 85,000 metric tons in 1846. See The Sugar Question, p. 14. Ratledge provides a lower figure of 72,000 metric tons for 1846. Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” p. 356. It should be noted that not all sugar exports from former slave-based islands stagnated or declined after abolition. Mauritius was a notable exception. See Leidelmeijer, Van suikermolen tot grootbedrijf, pp. 324–325. 80 81

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East India Company warehouses in London, where sugar, tea, or any other items could be stored until prices in Great Britain were favorable. This storage, of course, could only be used for relatively high-quality sugar, which the Bengal khandsari sugars apparently were.84 Meanwhile, the prospects for developing industrial sugar production in India had also improved considerably because indigo had lost its attraction to planters as its price in London had fallen by almost 100 percent in the late 1820s.85 For new ventures in sugar, fresh capital came from Great Britain after the indigo slump resulted in a chain of bankruptcies among its producers and left trading houses and banks in India short of capital.86 The Liverpudlian houses connected to the cotton industry stepped in as investors, as when exporting cotton to India, their empty ships could take sugar back to England. One of these entrepreneurs was Gladstone, who had deflected away from Indian sugar following his painful controversy with Cropper. Gladstone began to realize that Bengal might offer new options, in view of the rising labor costs after the abolition of slavery in the West Indies. Moreover, he was sitting on money paid to him by the British government as compensation for the emancipation of the slaves on his West Indies estates.87 However, he did not put all his eggs in one basket. In 1837, he persuaded the secretary for the colonies to allow the migration of Indian indentured laborers to the West Indies, but he soon discovered this would not be sufficient to compete with the cheap sugar from India. In 1840, Gladstone sold most of his Demerara plantations, keeping only two, and began to look for buyers for his Jamaica estates. At the same time, he transferred many of his staff from his West Indies estates to Bengal. In the first decade after abolition, Indian sugar exports benefited greatly from the decline of production in the West Indies, and also from the equalization of import duties and decreasing freight costs. A new trickle of British planters left the Caribbean region to try their luck in India. The return to power of Sir Robert Peel as leader of the British Tory government in 1841 further enhanced confidence in Indian investments, as he was generally considered a protector of colonial interests.88 The Peel government did indeed maintain the protection of West Indies, Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” pp. 108–109. Chaudhuri, “India’s Foreign Trade,” p. 353 and Singh, European Agency Houses in Bengal, p. 27. 86 Webster, The Richest East India Merchant, pp. 3, 59, 130–131. 87 Checkland, The Gladstones, pp. 316–317. 88 Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” pp. 182–183. 84 85

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Mauritius, and East Indies sugar, being adamantly against the importation of slave sugar. Free of competition from sugar from Cuba or Brazil entering Great Britain, the number of European sugar factories in India rose to seventy-eight in the course of the 1840s. By 1847, already one-third of the 60,000 metric tons of Indian sugar exported to Great Britain was produced by using vacuum pans, which was by and large comparable to Java and Mauritius. In fact, use of the vacuum pan had spread much faster in Asia than in Cuba, which was known for its technologically advanced state and high-quality sugars. By around 1860, only 8.3 percent of Cuban sugar was produced using vacuum pans.89 In the decade between 1836 and 1846, the tall chimneys of sugar factories became part of the landscape north of Calcutta, in Tirhut (North Bihar), Gorakhpur (North United Provinces), and along the Coromandel Coast. In Tirhut, quite a few indigo planters were drawn into sugar production.90 In Bihar, Bengal (proper), and Bombay, experiments were undertaken to produce sugar from cane rather than by purchasing gur.91 Others, like Liverpudlian merchant Arthur Crooke, who at that time had established a plantation at Jummoah in Tirhut, predominantly used their equipment to refine gur and also entered the khandsari trade. Logistically, North Bihar was not the best place to build steam-run factories. Though practically all the necessary machinery including the vacuum pans could be constructed in Calcutta, the transportation of equipment some 1,200 miles to Tirhut was quite a tall order without railways.92 Although it was hoped that trains would soon connect the sugar districts to the sea port of Calcutta, the planning for this connection was in its early stages.93 At that time in India, fourteen of these factories were equipped with a vacuum pan against twelve in Java, which, like Mauritius, went through a rapid conversion from open pans to vacuum pans in the late 1840s and 1850s. In Mauritius, the first vacuum pan was installed in 1844. In Java, twelve of the ninety-five factories were equipped with a vacuum pan by 1847, a figure that rose to twenty-four in 1852. See Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” pp. 194–196, Appendix 4. Table 1, pp. 378–379; Leidelmeijer, Van suikermolen tot grootbedrijf, p. 138; North-Coombes, A History of Sugar, pp. 109–110; Fraginals, The Sugarmill, p. 113; Currey-Machado, Cuban Sugar Industry, p. 29. 90 Of the 150 steam engines in use in Bengal in 1846, twenty-nine were used in sugar factories. Allen’s Indian Mail, 4, January–December 1846, p. 34. 91 In 1838, Dr. Alexander Gibson of the Bombay Medical Establishment started experiments to make sugar this way. Bombay Times cited in Allen’s Indian Mail, 4, January– December 1846, p. 438. 92 Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” p. 184. 93 Railways in India, p. 15. 89

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The landlocked location was a problem, but the social conditions in Tirhut were highly attractive to planters. At the time of the British arrival, the social stratification of the overwhelmingly rural northern Bihar was marked by deep inequality. The scene was dominated by a few very powerful zamindars; the descendants of the princely entourage of the Mughals and their families who had ruled from the sixteenth century onward. After failed arrangements in the late eighteenth century, these magnates increasingly began to lease out large tracts of their land to thikedars (rent farmers), who in the case of Tirhut could be European sugar or indigo manufacturers.94 After the late eighteenth century, British rule had become more consolidated and the planters found themselves more welcome in North Bihar. Their business was now appreciated by the zamindars for the regular revenue they could count on, whereas the peasantry found their European landlords less abusive and able to offer better conditions for advances than the local moneylenders.95 The planters who leased the thikedar rights became local lords and were supposed to live as Indian noblemen. In many ways, this type of landholding was similar to that of Java’s Principalities, where European planters took the place of the apanage holders of the sultans. In both cases, we see in the words of Pouchepadass in his well-known book on Champaran, the “assimilation of the planter into the model of the traditional landlord.”96 In addition, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, and Saran, neighboring districts of Champaran and all part of Tirhut, saw a frantic industrialization of sugar production in the 1840s.97 Within a few years, nineteen steam engines had been installed in Tirhut sugar factories. Optimists, such as a writer for the Friend of India newspaper, claimed that this would seal the fate of the West Indies colonies: “The system of raising tropical produce in any colony by a constant supply of imported labour is most unnatural and preposterous, and must long since have proved destructive to those who embarked in it, but for the exclusive privileges which the colonies enjoyed.”98 However, this was excessively optimistic. The planters in Tirhut complained about the salinity of the soil, adverse weather conditions, and the tendency of the ryots to neglect their work if not constantly supervised by Europeans.99 Henningham, Peasant Movements, p. 6. Pouchepadass, Champaran and Gandhi, pp. 16–17. 96 Ibidem, p. 18. 97 Singh, Sugar Industry, p. 84. 98 Cited in Allen’s Indian Mail, 4, January–December 1846, p. 427. 99 Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” pp. 219–220. 94 95

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In terms of climate and soil conditions, the southern parts of Bengal were better suited than North Bihar to cane growing, but here the problems with growing cane for industrial manufacturing seemed insurmountable, regardless whether one was a European investor or a prominent zamindar. The scientific approach to industrial sugar production also proved insufficient to tackle the many problems encountered. This was the lesson that could be learned from the involvement in industrial sugar production of Dwarkanath Tagore, the grandfather of the famous poet and Nobel Prize winner. Tagore was a prominent merchant from Calcutta, but also a landowner and large-scale indigo producer when he attempted to diversify into sugar. One of his factories was located in Barripore in the south of Bengal, where a horizontal sugar crusher driven by a steam engine was set up. Softer canes were preferred for iron crushers, but in India, the harder cane varieties dominated because these resisted vermin better.100 Tagore was a member of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India that had great expectations for the use of the softer Otaheite cane. Though part of its cuttings were devoured by white ants straightaway, others survived and experiments by the society continued in an optimistic mood.101 From its own nursery, the society distributed Otaheite to planters and their cultivators, who reportedly were able to obtain dramatically improved yields.102 Tagore himself sent his manager, T. F. Henley, to Mauritius to bring in a local variant of this cane.103 He tried the Otaheite at two of his own plantations, and though it was a failure at one it developed well in the other and would have given a great yield had it not been ruined by hogs.104 Henley, trained in the West Indies, did not mince his words about the absurdity of emulating the West Indies methods and making enormous Ibidem, pp. 199–201. G. H. Smith, “XXVI – Cotton grown at Delhi, from American Seed, and the Otaheite Sugar-cane, introduced in the Dhoon,” Transactions of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India, 5, 1838, p. 65; J. B. Jones, “XXVII – Otaheite Sugar-cane in the district of Azimghur. Extract of a letter from J. B. Jones, Esq. of Jounpore, to the Secretary, dated August 11, 1837, Transactions of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India, 5, 1838, p. 66. 102 “XLVIII. – Otaheite Cane. Proposal to send a small vessel to the Island of Otaheite for a supply of cane,” Transactions of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India, 5, 1838, pp. 204–210; Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal vii, pp. 391–393. 103 Otaheite cane had also been brought by Captain Sleeman to the botanical gardens at Calcutta in 1827. Pruthi, History of the Sugar Industry in India, p. 45; Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” p. 201. 104 “XLVIII – Otaheite Cane. Proposal to send a small vessel to the Island of Otaheite for a supply of cane,” Transactions of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India, 5, 1838, pp. 207–210. 100 101

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outlays, as the majority of the factories were just reboiling the local ­jaggeries.105 He would soon find out how right he had been with his insistence on simplicity. Henley was given the daunting task of improving the way the cane was tended by local cultivators and ensuring that it reached the mill within forty-eight hours of the harvest. Henley was neither the first nor the last to discover that the biggest problem was that the sugar cultivators were dispersed over the area, which made it impossible to supply sufficient fresh cane to make production economically viable using West Indies equipment. Tagore set up two other factories, one of them together with an experienced West Indian planter. However, after three seasons, the experiment with cane processing was stopped and the factories resorted to processing gur.106 Whereas the problems with the soft Otaheite canes and the mechanical vulnerability of the iron cane crushers could be solved, entrepreneurs in Bengal were unable to overcome the fragmentation of the land. Whether the producers were European or Indian was irrelevant in this regard. The zamindar could certainly exact the payments due from the cultivators under the bhaoli system, which was a rent payment in kind, but managing agriculture was a different matter. It entailed, as David Ludden has correctly stated, the difference between the legal right to collect rent and the actual control of local resources.107 We have seen, and it has been pointed out by other authors as well, that even the factories of a zamindar as powerful as Tagore struggled to obtain sufficient cane. To combine small plots into larger fields, the sugar factories had to rely on relationships with the village elites, who controlled key resources such as land, credit water, implements, and animals.108 The entrepreneurs who contented themselves with buying gur or jaggery for their refineries were in no better position, as they suffered competition from local buyers of the khandsaris, in fact from the configuration known as the “bazaar.” These local buyers were linked to wider networks serving the Indian market, but also the markets of West India, Persia, and Afghanistan. Yet factories that processed gur, and palm gur in particular, had better prospects for survival than the plants milling cane. In the 1840s, He did this in a paper submitted to the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of Bengal. See “East India Indigo and Sugar,” Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, 1 (New Series), 1830, pp. 201–204. 106 Kling, Partner in Empire, pp. 87–88; Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” p. 217. 107 Ludden, “Productive Power,” pp. 64–65. 108 Roy, “Factor Markets,” p. 143; McLane, “Revenue Farming and the Zamindari System,” p. 33. 105

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the Dhobah Sugar Company in Burdwan and Jessore invested in equipment to convert raw sugar into quality export sugar. The Rosa factory at Shahjahanpur in the North Western Provinces was also an important gur refinery and distillery. Another new refinery equipped with the latest technology was the Gladstone Wylie plant in Ghowgutcha (Chaugáchhá) in Jessore. This plant got its raw sugar from wild palms, and had the largest vacuum pan in Bengal with a capacity of thirty-two metric tons of sugar a day. In fact, the engineers who operated this equipment had come from Gladstone’s Demerara estate, where the first vacuum pan in the West Indies had been installed.109 Factories processing dates had a better chance of survival, as date gur was cheaper to produce than cane gur, and therefore in southern Bengal (and in the Madras Presidency) this was an attractive alternative for sugar factories. The date trees mostly stood on the boundaries of fields and yards, as opposed to cane, and they were not taxed according to the highest land rent tariff, nor did they need weeding or irrigation. It only required a waiting period of seven years until the trees yielded fruit. In the 1870s, the only exporter of industrial sugar in Bengal was the Cossipore factory, which was in the vicinity of Calcutta and processed date gur.110

Plantations in South Asia? In Chapter 1, the plantation was defined as a unit in which the management is in firm control of every aspect of the work process, as well as the choice of applied technologies (including horticultural). Bearing in mind this definition, it is not difficult to see why islands long seemed to be the natural habitat for plantations, as islands are separate and enclosed units relatively easy to control militarily and where colonizers did not have to bother about property rights for land. This was as true in Asian waters as in the Caribbean.111 Conversely, the shattered plots in many parts of mainland India proved to be the least conducive to plantation-style sugar production. In particular, the story of the failed sugar industry in Bengal proper seems to underwrite the Brenner thesis, or might be considered a colonial version of it. Brenner’s argument was Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” pp. 240, 246; Deerr, The History of Sugar ii, p. 561. 110 Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal ii, pp. 280–298; Annet, “The Date Sugar Industry in Bengal,” p. 292. 111 For a sociological account of the insular locations of plantations, see Stinchcombe, Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment. 109

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that the shattered plots in France in contrast to the concentration of land in Britain explains the divergent development trajectories of these two countries in the late Middle Ages and early modern times.112 At least this might be concluded from the apparent failure of the prominent zamindar Tagore to unite plots to facilitate sugar production in the West Indies manner. The opposite position applied to Madras and Java, where communal landholding made it possible to forge manageable cane fields. In addition, while North Bihar offered better prospects for industrial sugar manufacture in terms of social conditions, the problem there was that the climate and the distance to harbors were less conducive to sugar planting. It should be noted that the cultivation of sugar has specific requirements that made it a competitor to the growing of rice in many regions of Asia. Sugar cultivation needed political patronage, the support of village elites, and preferably larger plots of land. One way or the other, private entrepreneurs had to use local rights to wield power over village elites, to make them grow the desired crops, and to ensure the advances they made were not lost. This explains why northern India, rather than the central and southern parts of Bengal, became the site for industrial sugar production in the early nineteenth century. As far as climate was concerned, the tropical parts of India around Madras and Mysore were well suited to growing sugar for export, but in these locations European entrepreneurs were barely able to compete with Bengal. Burdensome and inconsistent land revenue policies together with relative high labor costs appear to have favored the production of date sugar.113 While Bengal’s agrarian conditions might have been inhospitable to industrial sugar production, Bengal could provide the skilled labor needed in traditional plantation islands. From the 1830s onward, indentured laborers left for Mauritius and the West Indies, after Gladstone had lobbied for that possibility. He had shrewdly observed that agricultural laborers in Bengal, who were familiar with cane growing, could be a valuable asset to the West Indies. The first experiments with keeping plantations alive by hiring Indian agricultural laborers and bringing them overseas were, however, carried out in Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean. In 1715, the French had taken over Mauritius from the Dutch and turned it into a modest plantation island that in a very curious way sailed unharmed through all the storms of the French Revolution and the See Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure.” See Appendix II for indications of the price of gur in South India.

112 113

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abolition of the slave trade. Even after the British took over in 1810, tens of thousands of slaves were illegally brought to Mauritius and nearby Réunion from Madagascar.114 While sugar production on Mauritius was negligible in 1789, forty years later the island had widely surpassed Java as a sugar producer.115 When abolition took place throughout the British Empire in 1835, the slave owners in Mauritius were compensated and a six-year transitional period began. Indian laborers there, who came under indenture, helped the planters on Mauritius to adapt to the new situation.116 In the three decades after 1834, about 365,000 indentured laborers arrived in the Mauritian plantations.117 An important collateral effect of indentureship on Mauritius was that it showed how recruitment of the labor force for Caribbean plantations could be made on a new basis. This in turn had far-reaching implications for the way sugar interests became organized in the post-abolition British Empire. Through the mechanism of indentured labor, the British Empire could prolong the existence of the plantation in its insular environment. One might still wonder, however, why planters went to the trouble of taking their labor forces to the distant island of Mauritius, instead of transferring their sugar plantations to Ceylon just off the coast of India. Ceylon, which was taken over by the British from the Dutch in 1796, in fact seems to have had some potential for becoming a sugar exporter. The Dutch introduced plantation agriculture in the eighteenth century, and after British colonial authorities lifted the ban on the purchase of land by Europeans in 1810, Ceylon’s role as a plantation island seemed firmly secured. Furthermore, the governor of Ceylon from 1824 to 1831, Edward Baines, waived the land tax on export crops for twelve years and attempted to free labor from traditional corvée (rajakariya) to “free the peasantry up for labour on the plantations.” The years between 1823 and 1839 were a period of experimentation with different cash crops, such as The slave population of Réunion in the nineteenth century until 1848 comprised 60,000 to 70,000 people, almost half of whom came from Madagascar. See Fuma, L’esclavagisme à la Réunion, pp. 30, 37, 46. 115 The area of Mauritius under sugarcane rose from 400 hectares in 1789 to 7,600 hectares (26,000 arpents) in 1830. North-Coombes, A History of Sugar Production, p. 145; Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island, pp. 257, 261–262. For the illegal slave trade and imports, see Allen, “Licentious and Unbridled Proceedings,” pp. 100, 111, 115. 116 Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island, p. 264. 117 The total number of Indian indentured laborers who went to Mauritius is based on the following sources: Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island, p. 264; The Sugar Question, p. 39. 114

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indigo, cotton, and sugar, until coffee emerged after 1840 as the ­dominant one.118 There are a number of possible reasons sugar did not become part of Ceylon’s plantation complex, but want of labor was not among them, as indentured laborers were shipped to Mauritius and could have been transferred to Ceylon at a lower cost. In the case of Ceylon, it was more a matter of ecological and social conditions. Although the southern part of the island near Galle was suitable for sugarcane, land there was used by the Ceylonese people to grow paddy. The people were, according to a contemporary observer, “most unwilling to part with their patrimonial estates.”119 In the interior, there was an ample supply of water power, but the soil was often too wet and transport was a problem. The only sugar plantations that survived in the 1850s were near the south coast of the island.120 Rather disappointing, Ceylon had just become self-reliant with respect to sugar in the 1850s, but ten years later, all expectations of a sugar-producing future for Ceylon had gone. British commercial interests in the 1850s still apparently preferred islands as the locations for sugar production, as is illustrated by the case of the Philippine island of Negros. When the Spanish authorities opened up the port city of Iloilo for foreign trade in 1855, the British established a vice consulate directed by Nicholas Loney. He embarked on an aggressive policy for developing sugar production on Negros, which British commercial interests perceived as a profitable return cargo for ships taking cotton to the Philippines. In collaboration with the Recollects (the French and Spanish branch of the Franciscans), Loney provided advances at moderate rates of interest, together with long-term, interest-free loans for tools used in production. This was the basis for the ascendency of the sparsely populated Negros to a burgeoning plantation island.121 Overall, it is not surprising that Asian sugar plantations remained concentrated on relatively small and thinly populated islands well into the nineteenth century. Java was an exception to the rule. However, islands were not the only locations where plantations were established, as Bihar has demonstrated. In frontier regions where sufficiently large landholdings could be rented or even confiscated, plantations were also established. In the early nineteenth century, British collectors developed coffee plantations in the Shervaroy hills, in Tamil Nadu 120 miles southwest of Jayawardena, Nobodies, p. 73. Pridham, An Historical, Political and Statistical Account, p. 375. 120 Tennent, Ceylon, pp. 206–207. 121 Lopez-Gonzaga, “The Roots of Agrarian Unrest,” p. 162; See also A Britisher in the Philippines. 118 119

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Madras. Their example was followed in the 1840s by another small group of European colonists. Large tracts of forest were cleared for coffee cultivation, and land was forcibly expropriated from the “tribals.”122 There were similar schemes to establish sugar plantations in Madras around this time, but as we will see, these did not materialize. Frontier regions that could support cane growing would be opened up through large irrigation works in the course of the nineteenth century. In this respect, sugar differs from coffee, tobacco, and tea, but shares an important characteristic with indigo. It has to be grown on comparatively wet land, which was usually already inhabited in early nineteenth-century South Asia, or had to be created through irrigation, which required huge investments.

The Downfall of Industrial Cane Sugar in North India In the 1850s, it became clear that attempts by European planters to transfer Caribbean methods of sugar production to North India were faltering. For an explanation, we should look not only at the changes to sugar prices in London, but also in India. In the 1840s, sugar prices were rising in India, which suggests domestic demand was growing compared to production. Nineteenth-century data on sugar production in India is notoriously unreliable, but some may provide us with insight, in particular, the data collected by W. H. Sykes, a well-known statistician of the Indian government and the unique source of information on mid-nineteenth-century sugar production in India. According to his figures, about 880,000 acres of the British India Presidencies were planted with sugarcane in 1848, from which an estimated 750,000 metric tons of gur were produced.123 About a third of this gur may have undergone refining into khandsaris, and assuming that India produced 100,000 metric tons of such sugars by the late 1840s, at least 40 percent of it must have gone to the United Kingdom.124 This was quite a substantial amount and must have exerted some upward pressure on sugar prices for the Indian home market. Since industrial sugar was not in demand locally, the newly established factories were squeezed between declining prices on the world market and fierce competition for cane from the Indian khandsari producers. Saravanan, “Commercialisation,” pp. 141–146. Extrapolation from Sykes’s assumption that one metric ton of sugar is equivalent to three metric tons of gur. Sykes, “Contributions to the Statistics,” pp. 6, 15. 124 Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” p. 293. 122 123

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Sugar exports from India to the United Kingdom had only partly compensated for the declining sugar imports from the West Indies, which in the seven years after 1834 had almost halved to slightly more than 100,000 metric tons. As a consequence, sugar prices in Britain rose considerably over the same period. In fact, it was suggested that the people of England were paying for the emancipation of the slaves, which belied the expectations so loudly and clearly expressed in numerous abolitionist pamphlets that “free sugar” was also cheaper sugar.125 However, after 1840 sugar prices did fall (Figure 2.1). One of the causes was the emerging beet sugar industry in continental Europe. France had some 400 beet sugar factories in operation by 1835, producing 36,000 metric tons of sugar, which was enough to satisfy a third of French demand. The output would also grow considerably in the years to follow.126 A second cause was, somewhat paradoxically, that the high sugar prices of the late 1830s had driven away consumers and the consequent slackening of demand might have contributed to a fall in prices.127 Overall, it was the combination of declining world market prices and rising gur prices in India that decimated industrial sugar production there in the early 1840s. This double menace from both the internal and the world markets has been a recurrent theme in the history of industrial sugar production in India until recent times. The demand by the Indian home market and the existence of a powerful Khandsari sector challenges the conventional historical wisdom that the change to the system of duties on sugar imports in Britain that began in 1846 and was fully implemented in 1853 caused the downfall of the sugar industry in North India. Although relevant, it was only an additional factor. The change to the duty system was a concomitant of rising food prices in England. In the early 1840s, this led to popular unrest that gave the free trade movement, operating under the banner of Cobdenism, great momentum. Under these pressures, Peel abandoned his position of standing firmly for the West Indies planters’ interests when he pushed through Parliament a reduction to the duty on non-slave sugar from outside the British colonies in 1844. As this did not pose much of a threat to sugar producers within the empire, it was hardly a controversial decision. During the first ten years following the emancipation of slaves within the British Empire, the gates of the British market were firmly closed to Brazilian and Cuban slave sugar. However, things changed when the Whig Macgregor, Effect of an Alteration in the Sugar Duties, pp. 3–4, 17. Stein, The French Sugar Business, p. 167. 127 Porter, Progress of the Nation, p. 543. 125 126

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British Pounds

3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 1780

1800

1820

1840

1860

1880

Year Sugar Prices from British Colonies

Figure 2.1.  Average prices of muscovados, yellow and brown sugars of British colonies in British pounds per cwt. Source: Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” pp. 350–352. From 1793 to 1843 based upon West Indian prices, from 1843 to 1866 on the average of West Indies, East Indies, and Mauritian prices.

government of John Russell came to power on the wave of popular unrest caused by rising grain prices. The free trade movement won an astounding victory when it succeeded in getting the Corn Law repealed in 1846 and (which has received less attention in history books) reducing the duties on slave sugar. In the first years after 1846, the abolitionist movement tried to preserve the “monopoly” of free sugar, a struggle it finally lost in 1853 under Chancellor William Ewart Gladstone. His father, John Gladstone, would sell his Indian sugar interests in the same year.128 The opening up of the British market to slave sugar may have played some role in Gladstone’s decision. However, this was no more than the final blow to his shattered ambitions in India, as the profits from his factory there had been falling since the early 1840s. Gladstone had tried to sell his factory in Chowgutcha to his Dhobah competitors in 1845, but as they were in difficulties themselves, they were not interested. He therefore saw no option other than to keep his factory intermittently in 128

Rice, “Humanity Sold for Sugar,” p. 408.

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operation, a situation that lasted for another eight years.129 Gladstone’s Dhobah Company was said to be the largest sugar factory in the world at the time, with a production of 7,000 metric tons per year. One of the company’s directors, Kemshead, indicated that the losses had begun in 1844, after sugar prices on the London market had fallen rapidly. The company subsequently stopped production. Meanwhile, sugar prices in India were expected to increase further because of a growing demand particularly in and around Bombay, while prices in London were falling. Therefore, overshadowed perhaps by the heated debates on the detrimental effects of the equalization of duties on sugar produced within the British Empire, the role of declining prices and competition from the bazaar that diverted gur to the production of khandsaris may have been glossed over until recently.130 In the 1830s, British sugar manufacturers had been confident that, in the long term, industrial sugar could be produced more cheaply in India than locally manufactured sugar, and that wage levels in India were competitive enough to allow production for the European markets.131 The Ganges delta could have been expected to increase its supplies of sugar for the European markets, if the land tax were reduced and water works, railroads, and canals were constructed.132 However, this could not all happen overnight and time was rapidly running out for the factories after years of declining sugar prices. In the course of the 1840s, capital also became a problem. In 1848, a financial crisis hit the agency houses in Calcutta particularly hard. It spelled the end of the largest bank in Calcutta, the Union Bank, in which both European and Indian businesspeople like Tagore were involved, and which held much of its mortgages in sugar or indigo.133 The consequences were disastrous for those Bihar sugar planters closely associated with the Union Bank. In this crucial period of falling prices they were deprived of capital. This drove them back to indigo, which required less investment than industrial sugar ­production. The return was made smoother by the fact that indigo prices Checkland, “John Gladstone,” pp. 227–228; Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” p. 291. 130 Recently Webster has pointed to the consequences of the low sugar prices, which even led to the bankruptcies of London trading houses involved in the import of sugar from Mauritius. Webster, The Twilight, p. 133. Ratledge makes an important point by including competition from gur and khandsari manufacturing as one of the causes of the downfall of the sugar industry in North India. Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” pp. 315–316. 131 Report from the Select Committee on Sugar and Coffee Planting, Supplement 1847– 1858, Part IV, Supplement No. 1, pp. 4–6. 132 Martin, The Sugar Question, p. 11. 133 For the story of the demise of the Union Bank, see Kling, Partner in Empire, pp. 212–229. 129

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had recovered from the slump of the late 1820s and that this item did very well on the international market in the 1840s.134 Within less than a decade after the industrialization of sugar production in the Ganges delta had begun, it was doomed to fail. When in 1901 a committee of the government of Bengal investigated the possibilities of promoting a sugar industry in North Bihar, it recalled how a mania had taken possession of the Bihar planters in the 1840s: Much of the machinery ordered out in haste was found unsuitable; the persons who were to work with it did not know their business; there were no means of repairing broken machines; some parts of the machinery were lost in the long and laborious transit up the river which then formed practically the only means of communication; the sugar made was of a class for which at the time there was no demand in the country and all of it was sent down in boats to Calcutta, suffering heavily from wastage by theft and leakage in ill-found boats, while there was not infrequently complete loss of boat and cargo.135

Evidently, the railways arrived too late to rescue the Bihar sugar industry. The end of this decade of North Indian industrial sugar production saw a conversion to indigo and was marked by an exodus of the sugar planters who had come from Jamaica to Tirhut or Gorakhpur and who now moved on to Penang or Natal.136 One of them was Leonard Wray, who had gone to Penang. He testified to the Select Committee of British Parliament in 1848 that no labor force was as efficient as the Chinese and that his plantation close to the sea did not have the transportation costs up the Ganges delta.137 Thirty years later when government surveyor W. W. Hunter and his team came to Tirhut to carry out statistical investigations, they found disused sugar factories in many locations, or the remains of compounds often adjacent to the site of a working indigo factory.138

Surviving Sugar Manufacturers In North India, industrial sugar production perished, squeezed as it was between low prices on the world market and competition from the khandsaris. The discriminatory duties on industrial sugars imposed by Great Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” p. 261. Government of India, Revenue & Agricultural Department (Agriculture), June 1901, No. 5. Report of the Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Prospects of the Cultivation of Sugar by Indigo Planters in Bihar, pp. 315–316. 136 Amin, Sugarcane and Sugar in Gorakphur, p. 28. 137 Report from the Select Committee on Sugar and Coffee Planting 1847–1848, part IV, Supplement No. 1, p. 9. 138 Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal xiii, pp. 54, 58, 62. 134 135

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Britain also played their part, but it should be kept in mind that the surviving sugar factories in Madras were equally affected by the determination of the British refiners to keep out the better-quality industrial sugars. Yet the chances for European entrepreneurs in Madras had looked rather bright, as from the late 1830s onward its government made consistent efforts to encourage sugar cultivation. Sugar exports increased rapidly from then, and by around 1850 six or seven sugar factories were run by the Madras-based trading houses of Parry & Co., the Binny family, and Arbuthnot & Co. These factories became the most prominent exceptions to the rule that Indian sugar industrialists had to give up their businesses.139 Three factors played a crucial role: first, as well as cane gur, the Madras factories were able to purchase date or palm gur; second, production and sales of arrack (a distilled, alcoholic drink) helped greatly to keep these factories viable; and third, they had good contacts with local power brokers. However, sugar production also met its limits here, as the same moneylenders were an impediment to the further expansion of cane growing for sugar factories. Sales of arrack were important as a source of income, but for industrial sugar producers in India, arrack was also the only way to make money out of the extensive quantities of molasses that came out of their factories. Most sugar factories in India did not have a network to get rid of this by-product, which handicapped them in their competition with the local khandsari makers able to sell molasses for local consumption; for example, to sweeten tobacco or for cattle fodder. The Parry factories in Madras belonged to the privileged group of European sugar factories in India that could retail their arrack through local networks. The Aska factory of the Binny family, established near Gopalpur-on-Sea in Ganjam, Orissa, was in the same fortunate position.140 Brown, Parry’s of Madras, pp. 83–86; The House of Binny, pp. 6, 52–54. After 1846, the Parry sugar factories in South Arcot, the Binny’s in Aska (Aska Sugar Company) in Ganjam, and the factories of Arbuthnot & Co. in Bimlipatam and Rajamundry managed to carry on. Report from the Select Committee on Sugar Duties, p. 93. The old eighteenth-century Cossipore factory (processing date sugar) near Calcutta, the Atchipore factories in the Twenty-Four Parganas, and the Rosa factory in Shahjahanpur in the United Provinces were the other exceptions. Cossipore sugar was in high demand by sugar retailers in England. See Report from the Select Committee on Sugar Duties 1862, pp. 112–113. There is mention of another sugar factory at Rajamundry (East Godavari), established by Mr. Rundall in 1856, but no further details have been found regarding this. See Government of Madras, Board of Revenue 1856, Date of Consultation and Back Nos. May 8, 275, 276, Page of Volume, 7655–7656. 140 The House of Binny, 52; Government of India, Financial Department, March 1884, Agriculture – Head Produce and Cultivation, File. No. 1, Coll./No. 10, Serial No. 9–21, dated Cattuck, February 22, 1883, No. 252. 139

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Investments in sugar manufacturing by the trading houses in Madras came in the early 1840s, and were not prompted by the equalization of duties on East India sugar in 1835, as had been the case in North India. What mattered to the Madras trading houses was that in 1839 the government of India had halted the shipment of indentured laborers to Mauritius. Conditions on board, and apparently in the plantations too, were such that it decided to discontinue these arrangements.141 In 1841, this measure was extended to a ban, although temporary, on the shipment of indentured laborers to the West Indies by Secretary for the Colonies John Russell, who did not want to be associated with “disguised slavery.”142 The ban on the shipment of indentured laborers was greatly welcomed by the government of Madras, which had already started to encourage cane cultivation. It had initiated the import of cane stalks from Mauritius and in 1837 lowered or at least standardized the land rent on tracts planted with cane.143 It also issued a prohibition on the import of all foreign sugars (from outside the British Empire) into Madras.144 Having thus prepared the ground for developing sugar production on a grand scale, in 1840, 24,500 cane cuttings were transferred from Mauritius to the nursery garden of the Madras Horticultural Society. Further distribution and cultivation of Mauritian cane was supervised by the government of Madras.145 Madras trading houses had probably been involved in the shipment of indentured laborers to Mauritius and were certainly importing Chinese sugar, which was no longer permitted after 1839. Therefore, they were effectively forced by the government of Madras to divert their engagement Anderson, Outlines of a Plan, p. 11; Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island, p. 264. Deerr, The History of Sugar ii, p. 390. 143 Government of Madras, Board of Revenue 1837, November 13, 1, Page of Volume 14669–14670. 144 Government of Madras, Board of Revenue (Sea Customs), October 8, 1840, Certain consignment to Messrs Arbutnoth and Company from China – Permission to transship granted. Date of Consultation and Back Nos. October 8, 1840, 4, 5 (G.O. 83) Page of Volume, 1139–1140; Government of Madras, Board of Revenue (Sea Customs), Date of Consultation and Back Nos. August 8, 1839, 3, 4 (G.O. 80) August 15, 1839, 1 (G.O. 80) September 26, 1839, 1–3 (G.O. 80) Page of Volume, 483, 495–496, 553–596. 145 Government of Madras, Board of Revenue 1840, April 24, 1840, 5, 54, Page of Volume 5427–5430; Government of Madras, Board of Revenue, Date of Consultation and Back Nos. February 25, 1841, 59, 60 (G.O. 1744), Page of Volume 2820; Sarada, Economic Conditions, pp. 86–87; Government of Madras, Board of Revenue 1845, Date of Consultation and Back Nos. June 12, 91 (G.O. 94), Page of Volumes 7323–7336 and August 11, 9, 10 (G.O. 94), Page of Volume 9603–9605. 141 142

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in trading sugar and labor toward developing sugar production in the region. Although some important hindrances that had previously stopped these trading houses from investing in sugar production in their own hinterland were removed, many others remained. In 1844, Parry & Co. made a request to rent about 1,000 hectares of wasteland, most of which was covered by jungle, near Portonovo (Port of Cuddalore) to grow Mauritian and Java sugarcane. The plans accompanying the firm’s request give a good insight into the enormous investments involved. Irrigation works needed to be constructed, extensive equipment had to be bought, and the small quantities of cane from the horticultural gardens needed to be multiplied before any serious revenues could come in. Labor was perhaps an even more nagging problem, as workers needed to come from farther away since “no dependence can be placed on obtaining the number that would be constantly wanted from the few villages in the neighbourhood as they are only third and fourth rate ones.”146 There is little or nothing on record to trace the success or failure of this venture, but we do know cane would not become central to the Madras sugar factories. In fact, the collectors regularly reported to the government of Madras in the 1840s that the cultivators were not well disposed toward the cultivation of Mauritian sugarcane, in spite of the consistent efforts by the Madras government and Parry & Co. to change their attitude. In 1845, a memorandum by Benjamin Thomas Norfor, manager of the Parry factories, on how to grow Mauritian cane was circulated to all collectors.147 Furthermore, nursery gardens for Mauritius cane were established in various districts of Madras in the course of the 1840s.148 However, again all this met with little success. Since procuring sufficient cane continued to be a problem, Parry & Co. employed agents to buy palm jaggery for the four factories of the Government of Madras, Date of Consultation and Back Nos. October 10, 1844, 51, 525 (G.O. 1932), Page of Volume 13168–13170, December 12, 1844, 44 (G.O. 1946), Page of Volume 17379–17382, D. Pugh to the Collector of the Southern Division of Arcot Cuddalore, Cuddalore September 4, 1844 and W. D. Davis (Collector Cuthcherry) to E. C. Lovell Esq., Cuddalore September 9, 1844. 147 Government of Madras, Board of Revenue 1845, Date of Consultation and Back Nos. September 1, 38, 39, Page of Volume 10716, Letter from the Collector of Guntur stating that the ryots do not appear disposed to attempt the cultivation recorded, and Date of Consultation and Back Nos. June 19, 60, Page of Volume 7688–7689, and Date of Consultation and Back Nos. September 8, 39, 40, Page of Volume 10986–10987. 148 Government of Madras, Board of Revenue 1847, Date of Consultation and Back Nos. January 14, 3, 4, Page of Volume 1866–1868, July 8, 61, 62 Page of Volume 9251–9252, July, 19, 47, 48 Page of Volume 9690–9692, August 9, 27, 30, Page of Volume 10546– 10553 and August 12, 38, 39 Page Volume 10652–10653. 146

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company established in the 1840s and 1850s. Parry’s factories owed their good fortune to the fact that palm gur was cheaper than cane because it did not involve any maintenance of the fields and the trees were not usually subject to taxation.149 Also to be mentioned is the Aska factory established by John Binny, a member of the Binny family who had lived in Madras since 1682. He opened a jaggery mill under the name The Aska Sugar Works and Distillery Ltd in the early 1840s, producing refined sugar for the home market and raw sugar for British refiners.150 Thirty years later, Frederick James Vivian Minchin, of Irish descent, married a lower-caste Oryia woman,151 and one of the shareholders of Binny brought in German equipment, making his factory a showcase for industrial sugar production in India. Aska had a practical monopoly for providing the government with alcohol, and in 1876 gained a firm hold over the market of Orissa at the expense of the local country spirit.152 The Aska sugar works maintained good relations with the wealthier landholders, according to Keshabananda Das, who conducted field research in 1970 among the growers who supplied cane to the factory: The precise elements of the nexus between them are not so evident, but from people in the locality it was gathered that the big growers were instrumental in persuading their tenants and/or poor peasants, to whom they gave loans on various occasions, to supply cane to the factory. This in turn secured the wealthy landowners’ ability to get things done, whenever needed at the government level through Minchin, who “supported” their cause.153

If the sugar factories did not succeed in making the more powerful peasants stakeholders in their fortunes, however, these local powerbrokers could disrupt the cane supplies to the factory. The poor peasants, who did not have oxen, benefited little from growing cane and had to share a huge part of their crop with their moneylenders, which made The Bandepollium factory was founded in 1842 and granted its distillery license in 1843, another factory in Kallakurichi was founded in 1843 and got a license for a distillery in 1849, and the Nellikuppam factory founded in 1845–1846 got a license in 1848. Benjamin Thomas Norfor became the manager of the Bandepollium and Nellikuppam factories and held a quarter of the shares, the other three-quarters were held by Parry & Company. Norfor also had a sugar factory in Pattamabakam. Brown, Parry’s of Madras, pp. 84–86, 98. 150 The House of Binny, pp. 6, 52–54. 151 Das, Peasant Economy, p. 30. 152 Government of India, Financial Department (Separate Revenue) Proceedings, September 1876, Nos. 24–32. Proposal for raising a uniform rate of duty on country spirits, and condition for the admission of Aska spirits into Orissa. 153 Das, Peasant Economy, p. 30. 149

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them often fall short in their contracts to deliver to the factory.154 This was one of the reasons, in spite of its good relations with the local cultivators, the state-of-the-art Aska factory still had difficulty in obtaining sufficient cane and gur.155 Similar to Bengal and elsewhere in North India, the moneylenders were powerful and the taxation system of the Madras Presidency further strengthened their position. Collecting the revenues after the harvest, instead of just before, which was customary (and when peasants were short of means), would have helped “to relieve the ryots from the thralldom in which they are held by the capitalists” according to one observer. However, the moneylenders were too powerful a group to allow the government of Madras to make such a change.156 Such mechanisms and power relations may explain why Arbuthnot & Co. gave up its attempts to encourage the planting of “superior cane under European superintendence.” According to Allen’s Indian Mail in 1849: “It would thence appear, after the experience of nearly sixty years in various parts in India, that the cultivation of the sugarcane by Europeans is altogether a hopeless undertaking.”157 In contrast to that, the prospects for sugar manufactured from gur or palm jaggery seemed quite good at the time. In total, the Port of Madras exported more than 11,000 metric tons of sugar in 1851, and as an anonymous reporter cited by Allen’s Indian Mail wrote: “It is our firm belief, that southern India will, with fair play, become the greatest sugar producing country in the world. No labour can compete with that at the disposal of the Indian planter, and if the Company were selfishly wise, the slave owners would soon give up the traffic in human flesh.”158 The reporter was referring to Brazil and the Spanish Caribbean islands, which still smuggled in slaves from Africa. Although the Madras sugar factories had survived the slump in sugar prices in the 1840s, they felt seriously hampered in their further development by British refiners, a complaint shared by the sugar producers in Mauritius and the West Indies, as a matter of fact. The import duties on refined sugar in place to protect the refiners in England made investing in new equipment less profitable. Large amounts had been spent on equipment in Mauritius, where in 1860 more than a third of its total production was manufactured using vacuum pans. At that time, the Mauritius Ibidem, p. 31. Cotton, “Aska Sugar Factory,” pp. 276–277. 156 Ibidem, p. 280. 157 Allen’s Indian Mail, vol. 7 (1849), p. 557. 158 Ibidem, vol. 9 (1851), p. 705. 154 155

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sugar industry was the most efficient in Asia, producing better sugar than Java, for example.159 To gain access to the British market, producers throughout the empire had to provide inferior sugars to what they technically could manufacture so as to evade higher duties. The houses of Parry, Binny, and Arbuthnot tried to impress on the authorities in Madras and London that this might force them to give up their sugar production, which they expected would have notable consequences for the Madras economy.160 Although their threat did not receive a forthcoming response, the industrial sugar sector in Madras survived. It could do so first because it made most of its sugar by processing palm gur, and second because it managed to manufacture a brown, strongly crystallized muscovado to avoid the higher duties. The downfall of industrial cane sugar production in North India and the difficult trajectory of sugar production in the Coromandel Coast region left the door open for the khandsari manufacturers to supply the European market with Indian sugar. This had partly been the upshot of the EIC policies to purchase sugar on the North Indian bazaar. Also favoring the khandsaris were the lobbies by the English refineries who petitioned with the Parliamentary Select Committee on sugar duties in 1862 and who accused the Madras and Mauritian producers, stating they: protect their own products at the expense of the large bulk of growers of native sugars in the East Indies, and the planters and producers of raw sugar generally; who are not able to purchase expensive machinery, can send this country abundant quantities of sugar fitted both for consumption and manufacturing purposes.161

The khandsaris were not only favored by British refiners, but could also rely on a well-established market and distribution system in South Asia. Sugar traders had been going in and out of Bengal at the northern borders for centuries. The East India Company and its successor, the government of India, never controlled the trade of sugar within South Asia. Indian traders retained control of the export of sugar from Bengal and In 1860, some 50,000 metric tons of Mauritian sugar were produced by vacuum pans out of a total production of 135,000 metric tons. However, most of the other 85,000 metric tons were produced by Wetzell evaporators. Report from the Select Committee on Sugar Duties 1862, p. 53. Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” p. 228; Tichelaar, “De exploitatie eener suikerfabriek,” p. 269. 160 Report from the Select Committee on Sugar Duties, p. 94. 161 “Memorial of the Sugar Refiners of London, dated 26 March 1862,” Appendix to the Report from the Select Committee on Sugar Duties 1862, pp. 316–317. 159

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Bihar, via either Calcutta or the caravan trade over the Hindu Kush to Central Asia.162 If indeed about 60,000 metric tons of sugar left India via Calcutta in the 1840s, there might have been another 40,000 metric tons leaving the country via customs at the land borders. Prior to the 1850s, industrial sugar producers in India were barely able to compete with the khandsari sugars from Bengal. In many cases, sugar manufactured by European producers was of lower quality and more expensive than the khandsari sugar, and because of its poor quality it was prone to decay on ships. However, attempts to improve the quality of the sugar by industrial means were discouraged by the differential duties for better-refined sugars, kept in place by the interests of the London refiners who were perfectly happy with the khandsaris.163 Up to the early 1860s, these sugars passed through the grocery shops of Britain and onto breakfast tables.164 In this way, khandsari sugars had established a niche in the British market. The best quality was white to pale yellow, with a small crystalline structure, and so fine grained that it dissolved readily in a hot cup of tea and became the sugar of the British lower middle classes.165 Thanks to being embedded in the bazaar, the khandsaris survived and outlived the early British sugar industries in Bengal. In 1850 and 1851, the value of sugar exports accounted for 10 percent of the total exports from India, equaling indigo exports, while only opium exports were substantially higher. However, in the following decade exports from Calcutta to Great Britain declined.166 Indian sugars had to compete with Mauritian sugar and beet sugars in Europe, and the production costs of the latter decreased by the year. Patna (Bihar) as a sugar trading center declined and Jessore (in present-day southwest Bangladesh), where Gladstone’s factory was based, also became less important in the 1860s. Yet diminishing exports from Bengal via the port of Calcutta may have been compensated for by a growing demand inside South Asia for the fine khandsari sugar. We return to this in Chapter 4. Most of the internal South Asian sugar trade was not over sea, but by river, road, and, increasingly, railway. Last but not least, Davies, Report on the Trade, p. 9. The differential duties for vacuum pan or white clayed sugar were sixteen shillings and four pennies per hundredweight, and fourteen shillings per hundredweight for muscovados. See Deerr, The History of Sugar ii, p. 468. For an overview of the differential duties, see Deerr, The History of Sugar ii, p. 442. 164 Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” pp. 23, 116, 118, 149. 165 Ibidem, p. 271. 166 Chaudhuri, The Economic Development of India, p. 26. 162 163

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while sugar exports via Calcutta dwindled, Madras continued to be a significant exporter of semi-refined sugar: in 1885–1886, it exported some 56,000 metric tons, of which about three-quarters went to Great Britain. Only in the course of the 1880s, under the impact of sharp competition from the beet industry, did Indian sugar exports to Europe fall into rapid decline.167

167

For data on exports via Calcutta in the late nineteenth century, see Government of Bengal, Report on the River-Borne Traffic, 1884–1901. For data on Madras exports, see Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, (Agriculture), July 1888, No. 968 Agri, dated Calcutta, May 14, 1888.

3 Java: From Cultivation System to Plantation Conglomerate

The basic argument presented in the previous and current chapters is that the ability of colonial powers to manipulate local property relations by tax systems, and to replace local financial circuits with money advances, determined their success in introducing plantation-type cash crop production in Asia. Obviously, colonial powers might still have had their reasons for not encouraging cash crop production in particular regions. Particularly within the large British Empire, commercial interests were manifold and often conflicting. The East India Company was keen to export sugar from India and was aware of the importance of taxes and advances as instruments to encourage cane growing for industrial purposes. However, West Indies interests were capable of seriously impeding the access of Indian sugar to the British market up to 1835. The EIC also learned that property relations and markets could not be attuned to the needs of industrial sugar production overnight. In Bengal, thoroughly fragmented land tenure proved an insurmountable obstacle to the organization of industrial sugar production. Tagore’s failed factories are an example. Khandsari sugar production, moreover, offered an attractive alternative when experiments by the East India Company to provide advances to cane cultivators failed to produce the desired results. In Madras, where trading houses were well established and where the ryotwari system for land rent had been developed, the prospects looked much better, but the same taxation system also turned out to be counterproductive as it engendered indebtedness. This gave local moneylenders a hold over the produce from the land, to the detriment of the factories. Prior to 1830, Dutch agricultural policies for Java built on the principles laid down by Thomas Stamford Raffles, which were the same as those 88

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developed by Thomas Munro for Madras. The Cultivation System, operating from 1830 to 1870, undoubtedly entailed a radical departure from these principles, as well as from the plantation model employed in the case of sugar production in West Java. However, the Cultivation System was only introduced after attempts with the West Indies plantation model using free labor in Java encountered serious problems. That the plantation was the model for cash crops like sugar was beyond doubt during the first fifteen years after 1816, the year in which the Dutch resumed their rule over Java. The Dutch colonial constitution of 1818 stipulated that the government of the Netherlands Indies should encourage agriculture by granting wasteland to European agricultural entrepreneurs.1 This was further developed and put into practice by Viscount Leonard du Bus de Gisignies, governor-general from 1826 to 1830. He believed renting out wasteland to European plantation holders would drastically enhance agricultural productivity and advance a wage labor economy in rural Java. During the 1820s, freedom of enterprise was the policy pursued in Java, at least for products such as sugar and indigo. Coffee had been a government monopoly since 1723, and in the early nineteenth century, no colonial advisor to the king would have dared to suggest a transfer to private entrepreneurs of this source of income. For everything else, economic freedom was generally accepted as a starting point by the colonial administration of Java. Even Count Johannes van den Bosch, who would go down in history as the architect of the Cultivation System, subscribed to this principle in the early years of the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, British entrepreneurs in Java were making a fresh start using Caribbean methods for producing sugar. After the departure of Raffles in 1816, a number of important British merchant houses with backups in Calcutta and London had continued their operations in Java. These houses began to invest in steam-powered equipment on private land they had bought in West Java. At Bekasi, a complete sugar factory in the West Indies style including a steam-driven mill was built in 1820 by the Danish-British house Jessen & Trail. No fewer than eight British technicians sailed to Java to operate and maintain the machine.2 This inspired a government-commissioned report in 1827 on the future of sugar production in Java that recommended the use of the Jamaica train and iron mills. The latter were much more easily pulled by bullocks and buffalo than the stone Chinese ones. The use of the Otaheite cane was a 1 2

Article 106 Regeerings-Reglement voor Nederlandsch-Indië 1818. Bosma, “Het cultuurstelsel,” p. 24.

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logical concomitant to the introduction of iron crushers. This softer and thicker cane was widely used in the Caribbean and Mauritius because it was better suited to iron mills, and therefore had also been introduced in Bengal as detailed in Chapter 2.3 However, introducing West Indies methods and converting to other cane varieties required massive investments, which would only make sense if land and labor were available in sufficient quantities. In this regard, though Europeans owned large tracts of land in West Java, labor was scarcely available. Every year hundreds of young men were hired from as far as Cirebon, about 125 miles away, to work at the sugar mills near Batavia.4 The introduction of the Cultivation System paved the way for the expansion of industrial sugar production by solving the problem of labor shortages. At first sight, it completely broke away from the plantation model by radically separating the agricultural part of cane growing (which was brought under government supervision) from the cane processing (which was commissioned to private manufacturers). It was, however, not a departure from the plantation model on grounds of principle, but for practical reasons, and also conceived as a temporary measure. Against the backdrop of the disappointing attempts at introducing plantation-style sugar production into India and the obstacles blocking the further expansion of sugar production in West Java, the Cultivation System stands out as taking a step backward to make a big jump forward. Instead of leaving speculators on their own, as the government of India had done in the case of sugar, in Java the conditions were created to make private plantations work. Van den Bosch was determined to use the heavy hand of the colonial government to accomplish this goal, but it was not just about coercion; the Cultivation System also supplied capital. It was precisely this combination that marked the difference between Java and India. In the 1840s, sugar exports from India to Europe were more or less the same volume as those from Java.5 During that decade sugar prices on the world market fell by almost 60 percent, however, which was a serious setback for the British sugar industry in India, as well as for sugar producers in Jamaica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique.6 Compulsory cane deliveries were pivotal to the Cultivation System, but equally important was the purchase Leidelmeijer, Van suikermolen tot grootbedrijf, p. 91. NA, Coll. Schneither, inv. no. 88, Cheribon, p. 2. 5 Leidelmeijer, Van suikermolen tot grootbedrijf, pp. 324–325; Deerr, The History of Sugar i, p. 60. 6 For production figures for Jamaica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique, see Deerr, The History of Sugar i, pp. 198, 235–236. 3 4

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of sugar at fixed prices by the colonial government. Thanks to this, the industrialists in Java could produce and sell above market prices without losing their purchasers in Europe, although at considerable cost to both the Javanese population and the Dutch exchequer, which lost eight million guilders on sugar transactions between 1840 and 1844.7

Van den Bosch and his Cultivation System The forced Cultivation System was the brainchild of Johannes van den Bosch, combining his personal expertise in colonial affairs with more theoretical insights into labor ethics and agricultural economics that he was familiar with in a European context. His ideas about colonial administration and how to make Java’s commodity production competitive on the world market have become known through his major work about the Dutch colonies, which he published in 1818 and dedicated to the king of the Netherlands. At the time, Van den Bosch had just returned from his assignment as commissioner general to reform the institutions of the Dutch West Indies. He was the king’s most trusted advisor on colonial affairs, but was also actively engaged in issues of poverty and rural development in the Netherlands. In 1818, he put his stamp on Dutch agricultural economics by establishing the first beggar colony in the north of the Netherlands, on wasteland covered with peat. Van den Bosch was pessimistic about the capacity for “communalist traditional” agrarian societies to transform into agrarian capitalist systems. His ideas about agricultural economics were very much Brennerian in the sense that he believed communal landholdings led to a lack of responsiveness to external stimuli. In his view, which was also held by many of his contemporaries, these societies were marked by shared poverty.8 However, his perception of the situation in Java was flawed and influenced by his knowledge of the conditions in the northern part of the Netherlands, where the Dutch government had tried for decades to break up communal landholdings to intensify agriculture and encourage cash G. Roger Knight points to this crucial phase in the emergence of the Java sugar industry in a global context. Knight, “The Sugar Industry,” p. 225. For details of the losses, see Fasseur, The Politics of Colonial Exploitation, pp. 86–91. 8 Van Niel, Java’s Northeast Coast 1740–1840, p. 37. In this respect, Albert Schrauwers in his article comparing Van den Bosch’s involvement in beggar colonies in the Netherlands and in the Cultivation System remarks: “Viewed in this light, Van den Bosch’s colonial regime established an alternate trajectory toward the creation of a free labor market than that documented by the English poor law and anti-slavery agitation.” Schrauwers, “The ‘Benevolent’ Colonies,” p. 299. 7

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crop production.9 Van den Bosch had rushed into an analogy between peasant communities living in the northern Netherlands encircled by peat and the Javanese desa communities surrounded by wasteland. Though both left large tracts of land uncultivated, in the case of Java at least the area under cultivation increased continuously. Van den Bosch was on more solid ground when he criticized Raffles for his “ruinous economic policies” and his land rent system for being more burdensome than the customary feudal corvée.10 In Java, the monetization of the tax regime – which had actually begun long before Raffles – had the serious downside that it increased the indebtedness of the less powerful peasantry without giving any encouragement to work harder than was necessary for subsistence. In fact, the same complaints had been voiced in Madras, where Munro had set the example for Raffles. Land rent siphoned off money from the cultivators, rather than strengthening agricultural capitalism in which cultivators could function as homines economici. Van den Bosch saw it as a key challenge to induce these peasants to grow products for the world market. If they got more for the export cash crops than for locally marketable crops, all would gain, including Dutch industries. The textile industries in particular (and in this regard there is a parallel with Britain) would find a growing market in Java. Van den Bosch’s ambition amounted to nothing less than to unleash an “industrious revolution” within Java’s rural society. He was convinced that Javanese peasants rarely needed a full day’s work to make a living and pay land rent. While rejecting slavery as a system, he did not mind using forced labor. He even wrote about the desirability of such a system in his 1818 book on the Dutch colonies, using the phrases “forced labor” and “forced cultivation” for Java.11 Based on his Dutch rather than his Indonesian experiences, Van den Bosch considered the massive use of forced labor under wage conditions was the only way to push peasant economies through the boundaries of communal landholding. Yet with respect to sugar production in Java, Van den Bosch did not initially see the need for an industrious revolution. He was not at all convinced Chinese sugar manufacturers should make room for Europeans to introduce Caribbean methods of production. By around 1820, he still believed the abolition of the slave trade would put in place the conditions Schrauwers, “The ‘Benevolent’ Colonies,” p. 312. Carey, “Waiting for the ‘Just King,’” pp. 120–124. 11 In Dutch the words geforceerde cultuur and dwangarbeid were used. Van den Bosch, Nederlandsche bezittingen i, p. 222. 9

10

Java

93

for restoring profitability to Java’s sugar industry, which he argued was being managed competently by the Chinese millers. In the early nineteenth century, the problem with exporting sugar from Java to Britain was still that its transport was relatively expensive – adding an additional 150 percent to the production costs  – because a proportion of the cargo was lost through decay during its long trip to Europe (Appendix II details the labor, capital, and freight costs involved in selling sugar from the Chinese mills around Batavia on the European markets).12 Given these high shipping costs, Van den Bosch considered Javanese wages simply too high to allow successful competition with West Indies slave sugar.13 He was nonetheless confident that in the near future, the abolition of the slave trade would lead to a drastic decline of production in the West. Like James Cropper, he was well aware of the appalling mortality rates under slavery. As plantation owners would be expected to treat their slaves more humanely, their productivity would likely be reduced.14 By the late 1820s, after years of low commodity prices caused by the economic slump in Europe, Van den Bosch had become pessimistic about Java’s future as a producer of tropical commodities, sugar in particular. In the 1820s, two-thirds of the Chinese sugar mills ceased operation, and the attempts by British trading houses to establish plantations in West Java on large estates where they held feudal rights also failed.15 In the same way as the abolitionists in Great Britain, Van den Bosch realized slave-based plantations were proving more resilient than initially expected. He foresaw that the Caribbean region, Brazil, and the United States would be perfectly capable of meeting European demand for tropical products for the foreseeable future. Although Van den Bosch miscalculated the immense demand for coffee, tea, and sugar that would unfold in the nineteenth century, he was right in that prices of tropical commodities were moving along a downward slope. In 1828 he advised the king in favor of Du Bus’s policies of encouraging European capital to establish plantations on wasteland and to work with free labor, but this advice must have gone against his own convictions. A few months later, just after being assigned to the post of governor-general, Van den Bosch changed course. He wrote to the king, stating that, although he believed in free labor as a principle, he did not Ibidem, p. 175. Ibidem, pp. 220–222. 14 Van den Bosch, Nederlandsche bezittingen ii, pp. 242–244. 15 Knight, “From Plantation to Padi-Field,” pp. 181, 186–187. 12 13

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The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia

see how without using forced labor Java could compete with Brazil, Cuba, and the southern part of the United States, where slavery was anything but declining.16 He expected that even in the British colonies, where the abolition of the slave trade would be more strictly observed than anywhere else, the slave population could be kept stable by improved health care. The accumulating debts of the Indies government, which had been crippled by the devastating Java War (1825–1830), together with the deplorable state of the Dutch exchequer, made sweeping measures to raise Java’s agricultural output unavoidable. Accordingly, Van den Bosch came up with a bold proposal for a “temporarily” imposed system of forced production of cash crops to strengthen the position of European entrepreneurs vis-à-vis the Javanese peasantry. He anticipated this would enable Java to compete with Brazil, the fertile island of Cuba, and the southern states of the United States.17 Of course, the implementation of a system of forced labor would be against the existing communis opinio in the Netherlands, Van den Bosch wrote to the king, but for most Dutch proletarians living under constant fear of starvation, the whole concept of free labor did not mean anything.18 As governor-general from 1830 to 1834, Van den Bosch had the Dutch king’s approval to implement his system of forced cultivation. In 1830, a wide variety of crops was tried using forced cultivation, varying from sugar, indigo, tobacco, and tea, to pepper and cinnamon. Coffee had been a forced crop since 1723, but its production was increased considerably and it became Java’s prime export commodity for most of the nineteenth century. The Cultivation System knew many failures and few successes. Indigo proved too burdensome, even after its production had been thoroughly decentralized (to reduce the immense issue of transporting the leaves) in the course of the 1830s, and was gradually abandoned in the late 1840s. Though remaining important for home consumption, Java tobacco almost disappeared as an export crop at a very early stage of the Cultivation System, only to become viable on the global market later, after the American Civil War destroyed the slave-based Virginia tobacco plantations.19 This path of trial and error with different cash crops in Java strikingly resembles that followed in Ceylon. However, in [Van den Bosch], “Nota van den gewezen kommissaris–generaal,” p. 275 and [Van den Bosch], “Advies van den Luitenant-generaal,” pp. 294–328. See also Reitsma, Het verval van het cultuurstelsel, p. 20. 17 Pierson, Het kultuurstelsel, pp. 109–111. 18 [Van den Bosch] “Advies van den Luitenant-generaal van den Bosch over het stelsel van kolonisatie,” pp. 316–317. 19 Boomgaard, Children of the Colonial State, pp. 94–95. 16

Java

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the case of Java it was not sugar but other crops that proved unsuccessful. It could even be said that if sugar had failed, the memory of the Cultivation System would have shrunk to a footnote in the history of cash crop production and surplus extraction. It is therefore not an exaggeration to state that the only true success of the Cultivation System was the emerging sugar industry, and this at a high cost to the people of Java and initially to the Dutch exchequer as well. This leads us to the question of whether the compulsion inherent in the Cultivation System was a necessary factor at all, or whether the sugar industry could have developed on its own, based on the colonial government offering the same guaranteed prices as it actually had done under the Cultivation System. This point has been made by contemporaries, and later historians, thereby contradicting Van den Bosch’s observation that Java sugar could not compete with the West Indies without coercive labor. The argument made by historians is that although Chinese sugar manufacturing near Batavia had gone into decline and the results of British experiments had been rather disappointing, East Java (the Residency of Pasuruan in particular) became more or less a spontaneous new area for sugar production: a true “sugar frontier” (Maps 3.1a and 3.1b).20 The area had been devastated and depopulated during wars with the emperor of Mataram in the mid-eighteenth century. However, following that period, the region experienced a massive influx of immigrants from the neighboring island of Madura.21 There was apparently fierce competition among the sugar millers, as according to one source, Javanese farmers received huge revenues from planting sugarcane. This amounted to some 600 to 700 guilders per bau (one bau being equal to 0.71 hectares).22 Robert Elson portrayed this in an almost literary style: “Peasants, therefore, usually found themselves the masters of their own fate and the makers of their own future. Free from the cloying grip of superiors, they rolled back the frontier with a relentless display of vigour and gusto.”23 That this entire frontier story took place on communal landholdings might serve as yet another indication that Van den Bosch’s perception of Java’s “communalist stagnation” was flawed.24 Although sugar production around Batavia was in decline around 1800, it was still far more important than production in the Eastern Salient, where, according to a report by the Dutch administration, only one sugar mill was located at that time. “Verslag van W. H. van IJsseldijk.” 21 Elson, Javanese Peasants, p. 4. 22 De Vries, Landbouw en welvaart, pp. 70–71. 23 Elson, Javanese Peasants, p. 31. 24 Ibidem, p. 13. 20

96

Banten

Buitenzorg

Batavia

I

Priangan

Krawang

Cirebon

Banyumas

Tegal

Bagelen

II

Madiun

Rembang

Pacitan

III

Surakarta

Semarang

Yogyakarta

Kedu

Pekalongan

Jepara

Karlmon Jawa

Kediri Pasuruan

Surabaya

Bawean

IV Banyuwangi

Besuki

Probolinggo

Map 3.1.  (a) Administrative divisions (Residencies) of Java; (b) Java’s sugar-producing regions, 1920.

I: Western Java or Pasundan II: North-Central Java or Pasisir III: South-Central Java or Kejawen IV: Eastern Java or Oosthoek

Lampung

Bali

97

1 :8.7 50 .0 0 0

Land in sugar production

Jakarta

Bandung

Yogyakarta

Magelang

Semarang

Map 3.1.  Continued

Cirebon

Kediri

Surakarta

Malang

Pasuruan

Surabaya

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The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia

The collaboration between Chinese millers and sugar boilers; British, Dutch, and Chinese capital; and last but not least the willingness of Javanese sugar cultivators to take on this new crop were all crucial elements present in East Java in the 1820s. Moreover, at that time and place, growing export crops was three times more profitable than growing rice.25 There was enough interest among the Javanese to become part of this venture, particularly among the bupati (the Regents), who were keen to collaborate with the Chinese millers. However, these overtures were effectively suppressed by the colonial authorities.26 After the elimination of competition by the bupati, nothing seemed to stand in the way of the emergence of a sugar industry with state-of-the-art equipment. What then was the rationale for making Pasuruan one of the prime target areas for the Cultivation System, as Van den Bosch did? According to one of his liberal critics, J. H. van Soest, there was none. In his 1869 book on the history of the Cultivation System, Van Soest filed a long and bitter complaint against its exploitative character. He also argued that Van den Bosch’s predecessor, Governor-General Du Bus de Gisignies, had already done a lot to develop export agriculture.27 The same point was made in a slightly different setting by W. G. Clarence-Smith in his review of Fasseur’s The Politics of Colonial Exploitation, pointing out that “Dutch profits might have been even greater if the government had left the peasants free to respond to the market pressures.”28 It should be noted that the coercive mechanisms and administration of the Cultivation System were relatively costly, and that, despite the low plant wages, the Dutch exchequer took considerable losses on sugar until the 1840s. While all these factors are relevant, the answer to the question of whether compulsion was a necessity may be found in Madras. There, the ecological conditions were excellent and the farmers skillful, but the standard of living was too high to allow this part of India to compete with Bengal as a sugar producer for the British market. From the case of Madras, it becomes apparent that economic incentives alone were not enough to build a viable cane sugar industry. Van den Bosch was keenly aware of the fact that as long as manufacturers could only contract on Boomgaard, Children of the Colonial State, p. 101. Knight, “From Plantation to Padi-Field,” p. 200. 27 Van Soest, Geschiedenis van het Kultuurstelsel ii, p. 134. 28 Clarence-Smith, “Review [untitled],” p. 413; Kumar, Java and Modern Europe, pp. 250– 251. Jan Luiten van Zanden and Daan Marks posed the same question from the angle of institutional economic history, and they point to the weakness of Java’s market system, which led to food insecurity. Van Zanden and Marks, An Economic History, pp. 57–59. 25 26

Java

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a year-by-year basis with the village heads of desas owning sawah land, there would be no incentive to import expensive equipment to grind cane.29 In essence, Van den Bosch strengthened the position of both the sugar manufacturers and the colonial government at the expense of the sugar planting peasantry. The rigorous division of the management of the field and the factory was a break from the plantation model in West Java, as so aptly described by Roger Knight.30 In 1840, about 65 percent of sugar production under the Cultivation System was carried out in the Residencies of Surabaya, Besuki, and Pasuruan, belonging to the Eastern Salient of Java. The Cultivation System was expensive to administer, and private planters could have provided the same incentives to peasants to grow cash crops, as the success of the tobacco plantations showed from the 1850s onward. However, supporting the position of the sugar factories was crucial.31 There was an alternative to the Cultivation System, which Clarence-Smith points out; namely Java’s Principalities, where a considerable sugar industry developed in the later part of the nineteenth century. However, the position of the European planters there had been strengthened by their close alliances with the courts of the sultans. The situation there was rather similar to Champaran (in North Bihar), where the colonial government did not need to intervene on behalf of the planters, but in the early twentieth century had to act on behalf of the intensively exploited peasant population. If offering advances alone would not have been enough to industrialize Java’s sugar manufacturing, neither would the introduction of forced labor. The Cultivation System was pivotal both to organizing and to financing the industrialization of the Java sugar industry. It subsumed the existing Chinese sugar millers into its contracting system and gradually replaced them by investing massively in the factories of European contractors to bring these up to date with state-of-the-art sugar technology. Every factory was provided its own circle of desas (villages), from each of which, part of the sawahs (irrigated lands) were assigned to cane growing. Shipping to the European markets was put in the hands of the semi-governmental Dutch Trading Society (the Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij, or NHM). Whereas the EIC only [Van den Bosch] “Nota van den gewezen kommissaris-generaal,” p. 275 and [Van den Bosch] “Advies van den Luitenant-generaal van den Bosch,” pp. 294–328. See also Reitsma, Het verval van het cultuurstelsel, p. 20. 30 See Knight, “From Plantation to Padi-Field.” 31 Clarence-Smith, “Review [untitled],” p. 413. 29

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The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia

financed sugar production through its purchases via the bazaar, the government of the Netherlands Indies supplied European contracting manufacturers with the necessary funds to advance money to the Javanese cultivators.32 Key to the philosophy of the Cultivation System was breaking the circle of moneylenders and local production by forging an “imperial circuit.” In the new system, crop payments were made to planters, funded by the sales of tropical products in the Netherlands. From these crop payments, the cultivators had to pay taxes and ideally also buy calicoes imported from the Netherlands. The NHM would both provide the liquidity and take care of the shipment and sale of commodities. The Cultivation System was part and parcel of Dutch colonial policies to reshape the circuits of labor, finance, and consumption. Not for nothing was its introduction accompanied by an enormous influx of small copper coins in the Javanese economy in the early 1830s, engineered by the colonial government.33 Against the backdrop of Chapter 2, regarding the mostly failed attempts to introduce industrial cane sugar production in India, the significance of the Cultivation System stands out for breaking through existing circuits of indebtedness and bondedness and replacing them with an imperial economic circuit.

The Cultivation System and the Advance of Wage Labor It might appear ironic, but free labor had always been a lingering thought during the forty years of sugar production under the Cultivation System. Johannes van den Bosch himself declared in 1830 that forced cultivation should not last longer than a decade or so, to allow room for “free labor,” which was actually still the rule in the sugar industry around Batavia. Over time, labor relations under the Cultivation System did change from conscription to wage, as Elson details.34 This, however, could only happen after the colonial government of Java had successfully wrestled ­corvée labor from the local elites who felt entitled to it. The pivotal figure in this process was the village head, the lurah, whose position vis-à-vis the other villagers had already been strengthened under Raffles and further For the way the Cultivation System was financed by the colonial government, the NHM, and private banks, see Fasseur, Het Kultuurstelsel, pp. 68–70. 33 Feenstra, “Kisten met Koper,” pp. 121, 126; Van Zanden, “Linking Two Debates,” pp. 181–182. 34 Vitalis, Opmerking omtrent den loop, pp. 62–63; Elson, Village Java, pp. 179–226. 32

Java

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reinforced by Van den Bosch.35 Any village heads who did not conform to their new role might be subject to very rough treatment from their Javanese superiors, who also reaped part of the benefits of the Cultivation System. Although evasion was widespread, the colonial state was more effective at exploitation than the former Javanese rulers had been, and did not spare the village elites. This created much antagonism among the elites until they learned how to reap the profits and shift the burden of conscription labor onto less powerful peasants.36 The Cultivation System was built on existing inequalities within Java’s society. Under the VOC regime, both the dignitaries of the patrimonial and disintegrating Javanese empire and the European civil servants used a variety of means to extract crops or money from the peasantry. This process was not abolished by the Cultivation System, but instead was regulated. The indigenous bupatis (regents), mantri (civil servants), and lurahs (village heads) and the European civil servants received their shares; the “cultivation percentages” of the yields from the Cultivation System in their realm or village. The indigenous officials, together with their counterparts and superiors from the European branch of the colonial administrative corps (Binnenlands Bestuur), supervised and enforced the cultivation of cash crops for the European markets.37 This was usually done by organizing land and labor on a village basis, which in the case of the production of sugarcane (and indigo as a matter of fact), led to an increasing communalization of irrigated village lands, the sawahs.38 In the mid-nineteenth century, this enforced collectivization was condemned by Dutch liberal commentators as utterly anti-modern and in violation of the principle of individual property at the base of any healthy economy. Yet the Cultivation System was a necessary step toward private entrepreneurship and the emergence of “free labor” or better wage labor. Breman, “The Village on Java,” pp. 193–194; Van Vollenhoven, Het adatrecht i, p. 511. According to Sollewijn Gelpke, it was the desa heads, the lurah, who lost much of their power over the village land and the way it was allocated to the villagers after the introduction of the Cultivation System. However, this does not take away that the lurah, supported by the colonial apparatus, gained more leverage over other villagers. Sollewijn Gelpke, Naar aanleiding van staatsblad, 1878 No. 110, p. 12. 36 About the tensions that attended the incorporation of the lower Javanese aristocracy and village elites, see, for example, Breman, Control of Land, p. 17. 37 The issue of the relationship between land rent and the Cultivation System has been extensively dealt with in literature. See, for example, Fasseur, Kultuurstelsel in translation: The Politics of Colonial Exploitation. Here it should suffice to mention that land rent and cultuurdiensten (cultivation conscription) were established separately, but that in many cases the land rent was deducted from crop payments. 38 Boomgaard, Children of the Colonial State, p. 200. 35

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The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia

Although in the early stages “plant wages” were simply payments for the mandatory delivery of crops, within a few decades a true wage economy was born. The Javanese peasantry around the sugar factories increasingly came onto the factory’s payroll, while the sums the factories paid to sawah holders for plant wages declined. From the 1860s onward, the colonial government began to withdraw from the process of cane growing, leaving the field open to the increasingly powerful sugar factories. As is detailed at the end of this chapter, when this process was completed in the 1890s, the colonial civil servants became alarmed about the power the sugar factories wielded over the villages. By the late nineteenth century, each factory had more or less transformed the villages within its area into a workplace, commanding the cooperation of village communities in the same way as if they had simply been on the factory’s payroll. In his work, Agricultural Involution, Clifford Geertz highlights the pressure the sugar factories exerted to keep increasing numbers of people (Java experienced massive population growth in the nineteenth century) within the narrow confines of the Javanese sawah-based economy. However, at best this is only half of the picture: the part dealing with cultivation conscription (cultuurdiensten) and other corvée imposed upon those who had a share in the village sawah lands. Until these services were completely abolished in the early twentieth century, they put a premium on offering landless peasants a share in village sawah land, which in turn fostered the communal ownership of such land.39 Although it illustrates this part of the story, Geertz’s concept of “involution” glosses over the process of the increasing monetization of the desa economy as a whole. Radin Fernando argues that rather than involution, a process of proletarianization commenced as early as the mid-nineteenth century.40 The growth of wage labor, the tendency toward communalization of sawah land, and the concentration of land in the hands of the desa elites were not mutually exclusive, but were all part of the same process. In sum, the Cultivation System enforced collective arrangements for renting land, but at the same time transformed the relationship between factories and workers into wage-labor relations. This process started as early as the 1830s. The initial steps toward wage labor were taken in response to intense resistance against forced sugar cultivation by the local population in East Java. Among the grievances, complaints about the work involved in cutting and transporting cane were particularly widespread. Bergsma, Eindresumé i, p. 63, ii, pp. 25, 247, and Bijlage N. 58. T. See Fernando, “Changing Character of Work-Force,” and Fernando, “Growth of Non-agricultural Economic Activities.”

39 40

Java

103

The yield of cane per bau was often deliberately underestimated by the colonial civil servants, who worked together with the sugar factories to give the peasants lower crop payments than they deserved on the basis of the actual work involved in cutting and transporting cane. The disgruntled peasants put up massive resistance in Pasuruan in 1833. In the first days of August that year, thousands of sawah-holding peasants marched to the district capital to make their grievances known to the Resident, who felt compelled to reduce the amount of mandatory cane planting.41 In Probolinggo, the population set fire to cane, and from elsewhere reports came in that peasants were abandoning their fields to escape the burdensome cane cultivation and transport.42 These protests continued. In 1842, about 600 peasants involved in planting sugar amassed in front of the house of the Resident of Pekalongan to protest the insufficient remuneration for forced labor in the cane fields.43 The colonial government in Batavia understood measures needed to be taken to address the grievances. A start was made in Besuki, where gross abuses of peasant labor by sugar factory administrators had been discovered.44 To diminish the amount of forced labor, the Besuki factories had to arrange the transport of cane themselves. Soon it became a general rule in Java, at least for all new contracts, that the factories had to take care of transport and had to hire the workers engaged in processing cane at their compounds.45 Transport had become such a bone of contention partly because under the Cultivation System water mills replaced portable crushers, so the average distance involved in transporting cane consequently increased. Whereas for indigo cultivation the problem of transport was addressed by building more and smaller factories, this was not an option for the sugar industry. It was preferable for sugar manufacturers to use water mills, iron crushers, and fixed furnaces. As the burden of transport was a consequence of economies of scale, from which the sugar contractors benefited, the colonial government had good reason to shift the costs of transport to the factories. It set an important precedent: the more the sugar manufacturers gained ground, the less generously they were treated by Batavia. Step by step, manufacturers were obliged to hire a greater share of the labor they needed: for transport in the 1830s and for work in the factories as well as for cane cutting in the 1850s. One important Van Deventer, Bijdragen tot de kennis ii, pp. 582–585. Elson, Javanese Peasants, pp. 55, 59; Knight, “Sugar and Servility,” p. 74. 43 Knight, “Sugar and Servility,” p. 74. 44 See GB September 19, 1833, no. 27. 45 “Cultuur-maatschappij Wonolongan,” p. 323. 41 42

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The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia

result of these decisions was that the degree of control held by the factories increased, and therefore the outline of a plantation-type production system began to appear. The government was always available to facilitate the recruiting process for haulage and factory workers, but the sugar contractors had to pay. From 1836 onward, sugar manufacturers made advance payments to peasants enabling them to obtain carts. In some cases this went very well, but in other villages it did not work and factories began to rely on a more or less professional guild of cart drivers.46 For example, the sugar factory of Wonolongan in East Java provided tjikars (carts with spoked wheels) to seventeen cart drivers, who each had to repay the sixty-five-guilder cost of their cart. This took twelve of them three years to pay back. In addition, thirty cart drivers came from the neighboring Pasuruan Residency just before the sugar campaign (the milling season), built temporary homes near the factory, and returned home afterward. Each of these cart drivers received a fifty-guilder advance payment at the beginning of every sugar season. Apparently, this advance was not just for the carts, but also to pay the cane cutters who the drivers hired.47 According to I. D. Fransen van de Putte (a sugar factory administrator who would become an important liberal minister of the colonies), in the early 1860s and 1870s, cart drivers became a separate and relatively prosperous guild. They held a strategic position, knowing that cane had to be processed within two days of harvesting. For example, in the Residency of Surabaya there was heavy competition for cart drivers. To overcome the mounting problems of transport, sugar estates began to build rail tracks from the cane fields to the factories in the 1870s.48

The Growth of Wage Labor Attending the Advance of Technology While the first steps toward wage labor were the upshot of social conflict, further down the road the expansion of wage labor in sugar production was a concomitant of the technological advance of the factories. This in The factories Boedoean and De Maas (at Besuki) and Phaiton (at Probolinggo), for instance, had arrangements with cart drivers from Pasuruan. See Umbgrove Report, inv. nos. 11, 12, and 68. 47 Finally, and in addition to these forty-seven tjikar drivers, about 100 drivers of carts with saratans (disc wheels) came from the districts with cane they had cut themselves. “Cultuur-maatschappij Wonolongan,” pp. 311–313. 48 Tichelaar, “De exploitatie eener suikerfabriek,” pp. 249–250. 46

105

Java 80 70

British Shilling

60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1750

1800

1850

1900

1950

Year Middle price (1768–1838) and average price (1839–1939)

Figure 3.1.  World market sugar prices set by the London market in current shillings per cwt. Source: Deerr, The History of Sugar ii, p. 531.

turn was part of the response by the colonial government to the drastic fall of sugar prices on the world market in the 1840s. It was the same worldwide fall in prices that practically brought an end to industrial sugar production in North India. In the Caribbean region, some areas of production could no longer cope with the consistently declining prices and withdrew from the world market. The future for the Java sugar industry did not look too bright either. In the mid-1840s, experts raised the question of whether the Cultivation System had already stretched sugar production to its limits. In addition, sugar had not yet contributed anything toward relieving the burden of the huge national debt. On the contrary, the production of sugar had cost the Dutch exchequer millions of guilders in the early 1840s. Sugar prices were declining so rapidly that the Netherlands Indies government continued to make losses on its contracts, particularly on the comparatively long-term contracts in Pasuruan that continued to generate profits for the contractors. On top of this, beet sugar was emerging as a serious competitor to colonial-produced cane sugars on the European market.49 All of these factors explain the reluctance of the colonial government to issue new contracts, and why between Van Vloten, De mededinging, pp. 9–10.

49

106

The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia

1843 and 1848 the area of Java planted with sugarcane remained more or less stable (Figure 3.1).50 What may have helped the cause of sugar is that by the mid-1840s the entire Cultivation System was in crisis because the burdens it had imposed on Java’s population began to jeopardize food production. From 1845 onward, rice prices had been rising sharply, particularly in Surabaya.51 News about famines in Java reached Dutch newspapers in 1847 and did much to discredit the Cultivation System. Governor-General J. J. Rochussen, regarded as a cautious conservative, took a number of steps to reduce the burden imposed on the local population, among which was the phasing out of indigo, the growing of which was particularly onerous. The implication of this decision was that other crops, such as coffee and sugar, would become increasingly important to the colonial government. Declining sugar prices and the general crisis in the Cultivation System might have caused stagnation in the Java sugar sector similar to that in India. However, this did not happen because the colonial government structurally enhanced the efficiency of the factories. In doing so, it laid the foundations for the plantation conglomerate that would emerge in the course of the nineteenth century. The vast majority of manufacturers in Java were subject to government contracts. Under the terms of these contracts, they were obliged to keep their factories at a technologically acceptable level, in return for which they were allowed to sell an increasing percentage of their sugar to their own benefit. After 1847, the government no longer provided interest-free loans to its sugar contractors for investments in equipment and they had to take care of their own advance payments to the cultivators. The NHM withdrew from this field. Somewhat paradoxically, over time this withdrawal benefited the sugar factories as it forced them to engage with the emerging private banking system, which actually included major British trade houses in Java.52 Although the financial system that supported the sugar industry from the mid-nineteenth century onward went through major crises in 1884 and 1885, overall it was quite capable of providing sufficient capital to the rapidly expanding sugar sector. During the first ten years of the Cultivation System, the Java sugar industry had already raised the production of sugar per hectare, both through improving the processes in the factories and by introducing new cane varieties in the fields. It was believed that Java sugar could compete Fasseur, Kultuurstelsel, p. 67. Van Zanden, “On the Efficiency of Markets,” p. 1036. 52 Fasseur, Kultuurstelsel, pp. 68–69. 50 51

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with European beet sugar only by pressing more sugar out of the cane.53 In contrast to the West Indies and some parts of India, ratooning (using the same cane plant for more than one harvest) was not a viable option in Java for reducing the burden on the peasantry. Although ratooning could have saved half the labor involved in producing cane, the consequential drop in returns per hectare would have been too severe in view of the scarcity of available sawah land.54 Further advances in productivity required new technology. The efficiency of crushing had reached its limits because the squeezed cane (ampas) had to be used for fuel, as coal was not then available in large quantities in Java. However, considerable improvements could be made to the boiling process through using the vacuum pan, making boiling syrup below 100 degrees centigrade possible and thereby reducing losses from scorching. The first factory in Java equipped with a vacuum pan was Charles Etty’s Wonolongan factory in Probolinggo (Besuki) in 1835, whereas the first sugar contracts stipulating the use of the well-known Derosne & Cail vacuum pans were signed in 1842.55 Experiments were conducted at different locations on the north coast of the island, with the support of or even initiated by the Directorate of Cultivations (Directie Cultures). The colonial government also took measures against the poor-quality sugar from Pasuruan. In 1842, it conducted systematic testing of the new boiling process at fourteen of the eighteen sugar factories in the Residency.56 Directly and indirectly, the expanding sugar economy boosted the wage economy of East Java. Existing workshops flourished and new ones were established on the island, particularly in East Java where Surabaya became the hub of the Cultivation System. In 1832, the city of Surabaya was the most important harbor town after Batavia, and a European settlement with a garrison, technical infrastructures, and forges. Its exports of commodities were matched by imports of opium, textiles, copper, iron, machinery, and European luxury goods.57 Although Java did not have a factory that could produce vacuum pans, in contrast to India, the need for spare parts kept a forge in Surabaya working with 750 men by around 1860, making it a true industrial plant by the standards of the time.58 Ibidem, pp. 63–69. Van Vloten, De mededinging, pp. 50–53. 55 NA, Coll. De Vriese, inv. no. 245 anonymous, p. 57. See also Leidelmeijer, Van suikermolen tot grootbedrijf, p. 150. 56 NA, Coll. De Vriese, inv. no. 245, anonymous, p. 78–80; See De Vogel, “Iets over suiker.” 57 NA, MvK I, inv. no. 3058. 58 Von Faber, Oud Soerabaia, p. 172. 53 54

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By the end of the 1840s, half a dozen factories in the whole of Java were equipped with vacuum pans, some of these the famous ones from Derosne & Cail, which in fact comprised a complete factory installation. Ten years later, more than half of the sugar factories in Java were equipped with vacuum pans, and as a consequence Chinese sugar kettles disappeared from the scene.59 In 1853, the first centrifuges were installed in Java sugar factories. All these factors resulted in the sugar mills becoming increasingly capitalized. In the 1850s, the estimated cost of building a state-of-the-art factory was close to 110,000 Dutch guilders, whereas in the 1830s, the cost of a sugar mill, including the animals, boiling equipment, and warehouse had been approximately 1,750 guilders.60 With the arrival of steam power, fuel became a very expensive item, and accordingly the use of the ampas became mandatory after 1860 according to contracts with the sugar manufacturers. Upgrading the efficiency of factories resulted in a reduction of the amount of land required for cane and helped “to bring the production in line with what the local population could sustain.”61 By keeping the number of sugar factories in check and raising their efficiency through massive investment in equipment, the acreage of cane under cultivation in some sugar districts could decrease; and with that the burden on the rural population. Meanwhile, inside the factories, corvée labor was on its way out, although the government continued to provide workers on request until 1870 (coolies was the word used in official documents). In fact, the administrators had become increasingly wary of using coerced labor in their factories, as they found it completely unreliable. A sugar factory was a highly disciplined undertaking.62 In Java, wage labor became the norm for most of the work in and around the factories, including the manufacture of all kinds of essentials such as bamboo hampers, firewood, lumber, bricks, sugar pots, and lime.63 Further, as the implementation of the Cultivation System had resulted in labor shortages in the eastern part of Java, this must have meant a real improvement to household income in the sugar Leidelmeijer, Van suikermolen tot grootbedrijf, p. 138. Tichelaar, “De exploitatie eener suikerfabriek,” pp. 257–259. 61 NA Coll. De Vriese, inv. no. 245, anonymous, p. 96. 62 This problem was, however, typical of Java’s system of labor recruitment, not for the system of “unfree labor” as such. Cuban factories had no problem with their slaves operating machinery, including the vacuum pans. Bosma and Knight, Global Factory and Local Field, p. 7. See also Curry-Machado, Cuban Sugar Industry, p. 119. 63 Cultuur-maatschappij Wonolongan, pp. 311, 313; Elson, Village Java, p. 209. With regard to actual wages, see Tichelaar, “De exploitatie eener suikerfabriek,” pp. 266–267. 59 60

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districts.64 However, this was an improvement far from evenly distributed among the different social layers in the villages. This was particularly true after 1838, when the colonial government decreed that European agricultural and other enterprises were allowed to negotiate contracts with the “most senior and prominent” member of a desa regarding the supply of labor. This was a fundamental departure from the earlier colonial regulation of 1819, which stipulated individual labor contracting.65 The new system obviously gave the village elites more leverage over their fellow men and women. The government established the wages for the laborers it recruited on behalf of the sugar factories, but this did not guarantee these workers were actually paid their fair share. Not all the workers in the sugar factories came from the surrounding villages. According to factory managers in the 1850s and 1860s, all kinds of people were employed at the factories, including “vagabonds and itinerants,” who were sometimes provided with drinking and gambling opportunities that kept them (deliberately) in debt. Seasonal laborers might come from squalid kampungs (urban neighborhoods) of the district capitals. Employers gradually tried to stabilize their workforces by providing housing inside the factory compounds. In the 1860s, such settlements accommodated between 1,000 and 2,000 people who might be provided with small gardens. The factory managers often relied on their mandurs (foremen) for recruiting.66 In this phase of the emerging sugar industry, when wage labor was still scarce, wages were relatively high. In the 1850s, the wages in the sugar industry amounted to 0.25 guilders per day, which could rise to forty to fifty cents for arduous or skilled work, although we need to take into account that these figures for wages were not always adhered to.67

Marginal Peasants and Sharecroppers Providing the Labor By the 1850s, forced labor was on the decline, not only in the factories and the carts, but also in cane cutting. In 1847, the colonial government decided to replace forced labor by free labor for cane cutting. The first contract Van Niel, “Measurement of Change,” pp. 104–105; Van Zanden, “Linking Two Debates,” p. 174. 65 Van Geuns, De suikeronderneming Djatiroto, p. 28. This meant a radical departure from the principle of individual labor contracting as stipulated in Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië, January 5, 1819, no. 10. 66 Elson, “Sugar Factory Workers,” pp. 148–151. 67 “Cultuur-maatschappij Wonolongan,” p. 325. 64

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drafted in this regard was offered to the powerful Rotterdam-based company Van Hoboken, followed by four others in the Eastern Salient. Van Hoboken accepted the contract after long negotiations, but with the condition that the government would help if sufficient labor was not available. The conversion to free labor was easier to accomplish in this part of the process than with regard to cane growing as the latter was very much connected to land ownership, nevertheless labor relations changed here as well. Although cultivation conscription services were formally put into the hands of the landholders (gogol), holders of sawah land in particular, at most they only did part of the work. For example, cane cutting was not done by the landowners, but by paraons (sharecroppers) and kendos (non-agriculturalists). The vast majority of the village families shared in all the other labor services. Moreover, landowners could rely in varying degrees on dependents to do at least part of the work. The richer gogol increasingly hired replacement labor. The whole system of recruitment was based on the skewed land ownership of the rural population of Java, as Roger Knight has pointed out. A growing number of paraons carried out the work, for half of the crop payment.68 A considerable proportion of the people did not own land, or were smallholders right from the beginning of the Cultivation System, as has been argued by Fernando.69 Certainly, sharecropping and landlessness did not simply emerge under the spell of the Cultivation System and the rapid demographic growth in the nineteenth century. Data for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though sparse, indicates that only a part (perhaps half) of the peasantry consisted of independent farmers.70 As in the sugar-producing regions of India (Bihar or the Bombay Deccan), part of the rural population was landless long before the advance of colonial cash crop production. However, what did change was the degree of social mobility. In the early nineteenth century, Java’s countryside was dominated by relatively wealthy farmers surrounded by dependent laborers, quite a few of whom still had a fair chance of becoming landowning farmers themselves, particularly since land was not yet scarce in most regions. In the course of the nineteenth century, however, opportunities for upward mobility seem to have been strongly reduced by the double pressures of colonial cash crop production and rapid demographic growth.71 Knight, “Sugar and Servility,” p. 71. Fernando, “Changing Character of Workforce in Colonial Java 1820–1930,” p. 8. 70 See Bosma, “Labour Relations in Java.” 71 Carey, The Power of Prophecy, pp. 31, 34. 68 69

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As there is insufficient data on the distribution of land ownership in early nineteenth-century Java, it is difficult to identify processes of partial proletarianization within villages. Nevertheless, from 1853 to 1857, an extensive survey was carried out by the government-appointed Umbgrove Commission. From this, we can obtain a fairly accurate picture of the division of land within those villages assigned to deliver cane to the sugar factories in the mid-nineteenth century. With regard to the ninety-four sugar factories under government contract, it appears that 65 percent of the households within the zones of these factories (239,308 out of 366,447) and assigned to the sugar factories were gogol – in other words, entitled to their share of, or probably owning, land. The remaining 35 percent had no land.72 However, between the gogol and the landless there was a “grey zone” of peasants who held less than one bau, which was not enough to feed a family.73 From the Umbgrove Commission report, we can deduce that in the 1850s, almost 56 percent of the agricultural workers around the sugar factories must have had secondary employment (almost exactly the same percentage Fernando found for all of Java around 1900).74 Among them was a sizeable group of sharecroppers working for half the plant wage. Outright landlessness had barely risen, comparing the Umbgrove Commission figures to those in the tables of the Colonial Report (Koloniaal Verslag) of 1905, which indicate that about 35 percent of Java’s male population working in agriculture was considered landless (against 76 percent of the women working in agriculture).75 As long as statutory labor (corvée) and cultivation conscription had to be carried out, the village elites benefited from keeping the number of NA, Commissie-Umbgrove, inv. nos. 10–103. This group consisted of gogol who had become partly wage workers (which strictly speaking implied a loss of their independent gogol status) as well as tenants who were given a share in sawah agriculture. For the status of the gogol, see Sollewijn Gelpke, Naar aanleiding van Staatsblad, 1878 No. 110, p. 55. 74 Bosma, “The discourse on free labour,” p. 408. This secondary employment can also be found in the Umbgrove report, which gives a total figure of 56,192 temporary laborers in the fields and 12,280 employed in the sugar factories. NA, Commissie-Umbgrove, inv. nos. 10–103. See also Fernando, “Changing Character of Workforce in Colonial Java 1820–1930,” pp. 8–9; Hasselman, Algemeen Overzicht Bijlage E. 75 See Hasselman, Algemeen Overzicht. The figures of the Colonial Report apply to all desas of Java and not just to sugar producing areas, which obviously complicates the comparison with the Umbgrove report. There is one sugar factory in Java that lends itself to a comparison between the years 1850 and 1900, and that is the Comal factory (Tjomal) in Pekalongan, where the share of landless seems to have risen from 27 percent in the 1850s to 34.4 percent in 1905. NA, Commissie–Umgrove, inv. no. 103 and Van Moll, De desa–volkshuishouding in cijfers, p. 22. For a comparison with Cirebon see Breman, Control of land, p. 27. 72 73

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sawah-holding peasants stable. An observer in the late nineteenth century mentions that sugar-planting desas were quite willing to accept additional villagers becoming sawah landholders, but only after they had first worked in the village cane fields.76 Neither individual property ownership nor landlessness increased considerably in the later part of the nineteenth century, in spite of the fact that ending communal landholding and fostering wage labor relations had been central to the liberal colonial program. These had formed the cornerstone of the program devised by prominent liberal I. D. Fransen van de Putte, who was minister for the colonies from 1863 to 1866, and from 1872 to 1874.77 However, as long as corvée was based on landholding and not an individual service, a premium existed for sharing land. Moreover, as a rule sawah sharing included the rotation of the land among villagers, carried out to compensate for variations in the quality of the soil and for the sometimes substantial deviation in the amount of irrigation water that reached the different plots. Many villagers who had a share in the sawahs were not in favor of a conversion to individual property rights on specific plots of sawah land, neither were the village heads who could rely on fixed amounts of male labor because of conscription services attached to sawah ownership.78 However, these conscription services would be completely abolished in 1916. Even workers who had found employment outside agriculture might still keep their small plot of sawah land. The very fact that they had secondary employment enabled them to do so. This might explain why particularly in those Residencies where considerable extra-agricultural employment had emerged, the proportion of communal land remained high well into the twentieth century.79 Communalism should not be conflated with egalitarianism. Within the context of communal land ownership, the burden of leasing land at uneconomical prices could be shifted onto the poorer sawah shareholders. While there is abundant evidence of the tendency for elites to accumulate the actual control over land, in the sugar-growing districts the proportion of peasant households with very small plots probably remained relatively stable in the final decades of the nineteenth century. They could maintain their position as smallholders in the villages by finding additional employment, either in the plantation economy or with wealthier farmers. See Sollewijn Gelpke, Naar aanleiding van Staatsblad, 1878 No. 110, p. 33. HTK 1880–1881, Koloniaal Verslag van 1880 [Nederl. (Oost) Indie] Bijlage LLL, “Conversie van communaal in erfelijk individueel bezit.” 78 Sollewijn Gelpke, Naar aanleiding van Staatsblad, pp. 24–26. 79 Kielstra, De suikerindustrie, pp. 124–125. 76 77

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Thereby, the advance of wage labor allowed peasants to retain a plot of land, which also made them less vulnerable to the price fluctuations of crops on the world market.80

Tied to the Sawah In the 1830s and 1840s, Dutch colonial authorities continuously ­pursued the aim of reducing the burdens of forced labor and land use for sugar cultivation. They had been compelled to follow this course as a result of the protests of the 1830s and the famines of the 1840s. In the late 1840s, many parts of Java in all likelihood experienced demographic decline, which made it hard to deny that the Cultivation System imposed an excessive burden on Java’s population.81 In the early 1850s, they became increasingly aware that cultivation of cane on sawah holdings deeply encroached on the rights of peasants to use their own land, and that the measures taken by the government to diminish labor input had been insufficient. In 1853, former governor-general and former minister of the colonies J. C. Baud, a close associate of Johannes van den Bosch, wrote an extensive memorandum in which he argued for a comprehensive survey into the burdens the sugar industry placed on the shoulders of the Javanese peasantry. In contrast to what had been assumed in 1830, argued Baud, sugar cultivation was unpopular among the Javanese. He recommended that a detailed investigation should be carried out for each of the ninety-six factories under contract to ascertain how the cultivation of sugar could be made less burdensome and more in line with the existing adat (common law) in the villages. This memorandum led to the previously mentioned Umbgrove Commission investigation.82 Before moving on to the question of how to lessen the burden of sugar cultivation on Java’s rural population, the Umbgrove Commission report presented precise data on what the introduction of forced sugar cultivation meant to the villages around the sugar factories in terms of the demand for labor. According to the figures, a total of 160,000 households were involved in planting and tending cane. This was precisely in accordance with the rules laid down by Van den Bosch – that four households should be assigned to spend ninety working days each on the cultivation Elson, Javanese Peasants, pp. 94–95, 97. For a detailed discussion of the demographic consequences of famines and cholera epidemics, see Bleeker, “Nieuwe bijdragen”; Breman, “Java: bevolkingsgroei,” p. 271; Boomgaard, Children of the Colonial State, p. 189. 82 Fasseur, Kultuurstelsel en koloniale baten, pp. 100–101. 80 81

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of one bau (0.71 hectares) of cane.83 In addition, the cutting of the cane, haulage, and so forth were services carried out to a degree in those days through the part-paid labor of villagers. At the time the Umbgrove Commission report was drawn up, a further 56,192 temporary laborers worked in the fields, probably half of whom were engaged in cane cutting and haulage, and an additional 12,280 were employed in the sugar factories. According to a contemporary sugar contractor, the amount of work involved in growing the cane equaled that of cutting, hauling, and processing it; which would indeed have led to some 320,000 workers involved in sugar production in Java in the mid-nineteenth century. These workers toiled on 30,000 hectares, providing a yield of slightly over three metric tons of sugar per hectare.84 This massive labor input sharply contrasted with the situation in the other large sugar producer, Cuba, where the factories were by and large at the same technological level as Java. The Cuban plantations employed a total of 219,715 workers and had 277,715 hectares under cane producing 515,000 metric tons of sugar, equating to 1.85 metric tons per hectare. The labor force worked throughout the year to plant cane, maintain the buildings and equipment, and then cut the cane. According to Manuel Fraginals, the agricultural part of the process was grossly neglected. Taking three harvests from one cane planting was considered the optimum, but usually more ratoons were taken.85 As a result, Cuba’s sugar output per unit of labor was two and a half times higher than that of Java, while its yield per hectare was just over half of Java’s.86 Even if we take into account that Cuban plantation owners squeezed the maximum amount of labor from their slaves, the differences in output per unit of labor and productivity per hectare reveal that on Java, the substitution of labor for land was advancing by the mid-nineteenth century. The use of sawah land was an immense burden for the population. At the start, the layout of the paddy fields had to be completely Morbotter, De regeling der governments suiker-cultuur, p. 21. See also Fasseur, The Politics of Colonial Exploitation, p. 246. 84 See NA, Coll. Umbgrove; Leidelmeijer, Van suikermolen tot grootbedrijf, p. 329. 85 Fraginals, “Plantation Economics,” pp. 189–190. According to the Cuban census report of 1899, the number of ratoons varied from five to fifteen. See Sanger et al., Report on the Census of Cuba, p. 524. 86 The figure of two and a half is based on an average plantation laborer in Cuba working three times as many days as a worker in Java, in which case the labor input of Java and Cuba would be respectively 32,000,000 and 66,000,000 days of work, producing respectively 100,000 and 515,000 metric tons of sugar. Fraginals, The Sugarmill, p. 175; Fraginals, “Plantation Economics,” pp. 188–189. For the accepted practice of ratooning in Cuba, see Reynoso, Verhandeling over de rietcultuur, p. 259. 83

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destroyed. For sugar growing, the sawahs had to be flattened, the irrigation system adapted, a pagger (fence) put up to protect the young plants against wild animals, and bridges and roads built or completely reconstructed after every sugar season, as they were ruined by the heavy carts filled with cane.87 It is no surprise that one of the central concerns of the Umbgrove Commission investigation was whether the system of alternating the cultivation of cane and paddy should be abandoned, as some experts suggested.88 Another question the Umbgrove Commission had to ponder concerned the available options for the government to withdraw from intervening in cane growing without jeopardizing the supplies in terms of quantity and quality. Throughout the era of the Cultivation System, sugar factories had worked without interference from the colonial administration. In the mid-nineteenth century, when the sugar factories in Java’s Principalities were still in their infancy, most of these private plantations were on dry land in West Java. They were owned and managed by Chinese millers around Batavia, who saved labor by planting the sugarcane in rows, separated widely enough to allow the use of plows instead of weeding by hand. Some planters even applied the system of ratooning. There was a huge variation in the ways cane was grown in Java in the mid-nineteenth century, but none of this dry land produced more than 1.3 to 1.6 metric tons of sugar per hectare; less than half of the average yield of 3.4 to 4.2 metric tons under the Cultivation System at the time.89 However, to accomplish such increasing yields (which would continue to rise throughout the nineteenth century), a system of crop rotation had to be used. Ecologically, the combination with rice cultivation was ideal because the semi-aquatic paddy could grow on poor soils. While cane exhausted the soil, paddy contributed to its regeneration. The only way for factories to escape the rotation system was by copiously applying fertilizer. The return to dry land was also considered on several occasions during colonial times, but only became a serious option in the postcolonial 1970s, when a high-yielding variety of cane was developed that could be grown on dry soil. The Umbgrove Commission did not advise abandoning crop rotation, though this would have been the most effective way to reduce the burden NA, Coll. De Vriese, inv. no. 245, anonymous, p. 25. Ibidem, pp. 143, 146. 89 NA, Commissie-Umbgrove, inv. no. 213, “Aantoning betreffende de in de verschillende residentiën en afdeelingen op Java bestaande ondernemingen voor de bereiding van suiker, waarbij de grondstof zonder bemoeijenis van het gouvernment wordt geteeld.” 87 88

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the Cultivation System imposed upon Java’s rural population. It could not advise otherwise, because tied to the limited acreage of sawah land, the Java sugar industry had no other option than to continue its quest for better yields from the field.90 For Pasuruan (and probably for the entire Eastern Salient) the yield that had been between 1.3 and 1.7 metric tons per hectare in the early 1830s amounted to 3.4 and 4.2 metric tons in the 1850s and would further increase to 5 to 6 metric tons around 1870. Sugar production was tied to the high-yielding sawahs, resulting in a “centaur-like” combination of highly capital-intensive and technologically state-of-the-art sugar factories on one hand, and a complex system of sawah sharing among villagers and between villages and sugar factories on the other. When the sugar industry became Java’s dominant agricultural industry in the early decades of the twentieth century, in some Residencies more than half of the sawah land within three miles of a factory was occupied by cane.91 In the sawah-based plantation system that emerged in Java, the factories did not own the land and therefore needed the unstinting support of the more powerful villagers. This support was given, as long as those villagers could shift the burden of sugar cultivation onto dependent laborers and sharecroppers supplemented by immigrant labor from outside the factories’ circles. The Umbgrove Commission report made abundantly clear that the village elites had become stakeholders in the emerging plantation complex. The question still to be addressed was whether the civil service could withdraw from cane cultivation, a possibility about which the Umbgrove Commission report was quite pessimistic and with good reason, as we shall see.

Limitations of Colonial Liberalism The fact that sugar cultivation was firmly tied to sawah agriculture seriously limited the options for further reforms by the liberal ministers for the colonies, who took office from the 1860s onward and denounced the Cultivation System as utterly illiberal. “Free labor” and “free cultivation” became the banner under which these ministers and their fellow liberals combated the Cultivation System. What they intended came close to what Raffles and Munro had envisioned, namely giving legal status to individual landholding and individual labor contracting. The idea See Bosma and Knight, “Global Factory and Local Field.” Van Schaik, “Bitter and Sweet,” pp. 56–57, 64.

90 91

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was that if individuals could reap the fruits of their work, they would become more aspirational and work harder, which in turn would lead to economic growth and eventually higher revenues for the colonial state. The Dutch liberals denounced the Cultivation System as economically unsound because it had fostered communal landholdings and with that “shared poverty.” Ironically, they repeated Van den Bosch’s prejudices about Java’s agrarian economy, but now used this argument to criticize his own system. Profits for the Netherlands’ exchequer were considerable, they admitted, but could be much higher if individual rights to land were safe and labor was free, and European investors were allowed to cultivate wasteland. Java’s peasants would no longer huddle together on 8 percent of the land, but would swarm out over the island.92 The Dutch liberals depicted the Cultivation System in a perfect Brennerian style: existing property relations prevented agricultural expansion in spite of rapid demographic growth and diverted Dutch capital to other places than its own colonies. The liberals had their way, and in 1870 the Agrarian Law was adopted, allowing long-term leases for wasteland. Since the plantations were often close to desas, in practice these worked as a type of enclosure system. Clearly, the liberals favored plantations run by wage laborers on wasteland, but they also had to grapple with the realities of sawah-based sugar production that could only exist thanks to a fundamental disrespect for individual property. Under the Cultivation System, the villages were really not free to rent out their land, but simply had to accept that part of their land was assigned to sugar factories. However, what made things even more difficult for liberals like Fransen van de Putte was that withdrawing government intervention in planting and tending cane would not be the same as introducing “free cultivation,” as the Umbgrove Commission had already warned. Fransen van de Putte, a former sugar contractor and a champion of private plantation agriculture in Java, could not agree more. Around 1860 he argued that free cultivation would require a thorough transformation of rural society. In fact, it would require the introduction of a completely different institutional setting from that which had emerged following the introduction of the Cultivation System and which had made the lurah such a dominating figure in the village economy.93 This point was excellently expressed by P. J. Veth, one of the leading liberal ideologues on Dutch colonial affairs. See Veth, “De cultuur-wet.” 93 NA, Commissie-Umbgrove, inv. no. 1, “Rapport der Kommissie ingesteld bij besluit van den 8en December 1853, no. 10”; Vitalis, Opmerking omtrent den loop, p. 51; Fransen van de Putte, De regeling en uitbesteding, pp. 30–31. 92

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Fransen van de Putte was correct in that the lasting effects of the Cultivation System made a rapid transfer to a “liberal economy” somewhat inconceivable. The villages and local Javanese elites had developed various mechanisms to extract their shares from the cash crop economy that they would not give up lightly. Javanese civil servants, village heads, and a kind of landed gentry quite frequently received their shares of crop payments without having to perform any labor in return.94 Some Javanese civil servants gained hundreds of guilders each. Pretending that they were entitled to these sums according to customary law, they had the money delivered to their homes.95 Although the colonial government was intent on curbing local claims on tributary labor, the village elites could rarely be circumvented and continued to be a powerful economic force into postcolonial times. Under these circumstances, “free cultivation” could only mean that the sugar factories dealt directly with the Javanese village elites to arrange the growing of cane outside the control of the European civil service. In fact, in the mid-nineteenth century, examples could already be found where such free cultivation worked, but these cases also illustrated vexing conditions for the local population. What it meant to be at the mercy of a coalition of planters and local aristocracy was demonstrated in central Java, in the case of the semi-independent Principalities. From the 1860s onward, planters in these Residencies had begun to invest in sugar with the profits they had made from tobacco, coffee, and indigo. In the early 1880s, the twenty-seven factories in Java’s Principalities together produced about 17 percent of Java sugar. They had enough leverage over the peasantry to work outside the coerced conditions of the Cultivation System. This was because they leased their land from the apanage holders of the sultans, and used the rights of the latter to 40 percent of the cultivators’ proceeds and to order the bekels (village notables and tax collectors) to take care of planting whatever crop they wanted to grow.96 In the course of the nineteenth century, the European land leasers behaved as if the village heads were their foremen and the villagers their laborers.97 They quite frequently reacted to resistance from the local population by taking justice into their own “Cultuur-maatschappij Wonolongan,” Indië, p. 311. Ibidem, pp. 315, 320. 96 For an account of the conditions of the peasantry under the Yogyakarta sugar industry, see Selosoemardjan, Social Changes, pp. 271–284. 97 For an account of the relationship between land leasers and villagers in Yogyakarta, see Sri Margana, “Hybridity, Colonial Capitalism and Indigenous Resistance.” 94 95

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hands.98 The Principalities would become notorious for the way local aristocracies and European planters forged close alliances to exploit the rural population. The oppressive conditions in the Principalities had a direct relationship to the issue of land ownership, as Fransen van de Putte noted. Similar to the situation in Champaran (North Bihar), for example, the peasants in the Principalities did not own the land, but only had the right to use it. It was not inconsequential that individual property rights on land and the fight against communal landholding became a cornerstone of liberal colonial politics in the 1860s.99 Without legal recognition of individual land rights, “free cultivation,” in the view of a liberal colonial statesman like Fransen van de Putte, just meant the colonial administration stepped away, leaving cultivators at the mercy of the factories, village elites, and perhaps local aristocrats. If the lurahs became the contracting partners for factories and were representatives of villages where land was in communal ownership, this meant a small part of the village elite would reap most if not all the benefits of cash crop production.100 Precisely for this reason, when Fransen van de Putte became minister of the colonies in 1863, he postponed legislation on free contracting between the sugar factories and the peasantry living in the sugar districts. It took Fransen van de Putte three years before he was ready to submit what was termed the Cultivation Law, which would provide the opportunity for private enterprises both to rent wasteland from the colonial government and to lease cultivated land from Javanese peasants. Recognition of the property rights of peasants was the cornerstone of his proposal. He knew in advance that he had no majority support for a law that gave individual property rights to every farmer who worked the land. He therefore opted for a milder version that did not grant individual property rights if it could lead to the breakup of communal landholdings. When Fransen van de Putte saw his law nevertheless defeated by the Dutch parliament in 1866, he ordered the governor-general to issue a decree to give at least a legal basis to either individual or communal property rights for Javanese landholders. He also asked for precise mapping of landholdings, both communal and private, in each desa of Java. An experimental Bosma and Raben, Being “Dutch,” pp. 135–136. Van der Velde, A Lifelong Passion, p. 174. 100 Fransen van de Putte, De regeling en uitbesteding, pp. 31–32. Although there was private contracting in the 1860s, it concerned only twenty-five firms that rented a total area of 1,735 hectares; less than 6 percent of the total area under cane. Tichelaar, “De exploitatie eener suikerfabriek,” p. 210. 98 99

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registration of land ownership was conducted for sixty-three districts in five Residencies, though it was discontinued after a few years. How land rights were defined according to customary law in various parts of Java would be part of an extensive government investigation, but Fransen van de Putte did not want to wait for the outcome of these surveys, which could take years.101 He was right. In 1867, an investigation into the matter of land ownership was set in motion, the final report published nine years later. Interesting, it concluded that individual landholding was far more widespread in Java than the colonial government had acknowledged. In fact, most of West and East Java (with the notable exceptions of most of Pasuruan and Surabaya) acknowledged hereditary individual ownership of sawah land.102 However, it is questionable whether the distinction between individual and communal sawah ownership was still that important after forty years of the Cultivation System had given village heads and elites so much leverage over the other villagers. This became clear once the government withdrew from assigning land for cane production. In 1870, a liberal successor of Fransen van de Putte managed to move ahead with legislation on colonial agriculture. That year the Sugar Law was adopted by the Dutch parliament, marking the gradual disengagement of the Indies government from organizing the planting and tending of sugarcane, as well as from the purchasing of sugar to be shipped to the Netherlands. The role of the mantri (Javanese civil servants) in assigning the fields for sugar cultivation was phased out. In addition, cultivation bonuses (cultuurprocenten) for the European civil servants, the indigenous civil servants, and the lurahs were abolished or reduced to practically zero.103 Yet the lurahs continued to receive their share (Illustration 3.1). Liberal colonial statesmen like Fransen van de Putte who were working hard to abolish the Cultivation System were misguided in their belief that giving individual property rights for land could protect the cultivators. It actually had surprisingly little effect. An increasing alienation of land could have been expected, as indebted peasants now had property to sell, but landlessness did not rise sharply in Java in the latter part of See Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië 1866, no. 80, Ordonanncie 23 Julij 1866. See also HTK 1870–1871, “Model-Dessa Register voor de bijhouding der statistieke opneming bij gouvernementsbesluit van 27 Junij 1866, no. 11 en gewijzigd bij dat van 8 December 1869, no. 23.” 102 Bergsma, Eindresumé i, p. 17. 103 See GB January 20, 1866, No. 22. 101

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Illustration 3.1.  Festive meal in the hall of the sugar factory celebrating the beginning of the sugar campaign. The guests are village heads and other Javanese local officials. Source: De Suikerfabrieken Watoetoelis en Poppoh in beeld.

the nineteenth century. The explanation is that the value of sawah land around factories was kept down by the power of the factories to lease this land at low rates. As the circle or areaal from where each factory could exclusively draw its cane was maintained after the Cultivation System was phased out, there was no competition between factories for land leases. Above a government-established minimum the factories could set their own prices, which increased in the prosperous years up to 1880, but stagnated afterward.104 In other words, ownership of sawah land in each sugar factory’s circle or areaal was a mixed blessing and made the desa elites interested in keeping the dependent labor in their villages marginal Between 1836 and 1856, the plant wages rose from 9.52 to 22.89 guilders and between 1856 and the early 1880s, land rents (including plant wages) almost doubled. However, over time a proportion of these rises was offset by increasing rice prices and by the hikes in the land rent the cultivators paid to the government. Baardewijk, The Cultivation System, p. 19; Van Zanden, “Linking Two Debates,” p. 174; Dros, Changing Economy in Indonesia, p. 14. An important hike in plant wages took place in 1875. MvK, inv. no 6362, Mailrapport no. 723, p. 14. For compensation in the early 1880s, particularly private planting contracts, see Tichelaar, “De exploitatie eener suikerfabriek,” pp. 260–262.

104

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peasants, rather than letting them slide into a rural proletariat. This is also part of the explanation for the conversion from communal to private ownership having progressed little, in spite of the fact that Fransen van de Putte and his liberal successors had declared this the cornerstone of their colonial policies. That liberal colonial policies were deflected by the power of the village elites became alarmingly clear within a few years of the introduction of the Sugar Law in 1870. The law was a centerpiece of liberal colonial legislation and enabled factories to lease land from villages through direct contracting, as long as this was for a limited period and registered with the European civil service. Reports soon came out concerning the pace at which factories were augmenting their power over their environment, and a colonial government investigation detailed in unequivocal terms that the mandatory requirement for registration of lease contracts by a European civil servant was seldom respected.105 Although village heads were not allowed any involvement in contracts, as Knight has argued, in practice the lurah’s role was crucial in “securing the mass of petty landholders in the industry’s rental of their land at ‘non-economic’ rates.’”106 The same point had been raised in a government investigation of 1894, which discovered that farmers rarely leased out land to the sugar factories because they expected to gain from it. It was under pressure from debts, the village head, or both that they rented land to the factories.107 To address these problems, in 1894 the colonial government decreed that each sugar estate was allotted a maximum acreage for which it could negotiate planting contracts with villages. As the liberal colonial agenda had not been able to push through the principle of individual land ownership, the possibility of renting land from the village as a whole continued to exist. To give at least some protection to those farmers who did not belong to village elites, the colonial government ruled in 1900 that two thirds of the communal sawah landholders should consent to leasing out NA, MvK, inv. nos. 6376–6381, fiche 9, Mail report 1877, no. 370. In fact, free contracting with the local population was an option already offered in 1838 (Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië 1838, no. 50). The Colonial Report of 1893 declared that the colonial civil service was not always capable of bringing an end to undue pressure exercised on the cultivators. HTK (1893–1894), Koloniaal Verslag van 1893 [Nederl. (Oost) Indië], p. 26. In addition, see Elson, Javanese Peasants, p. 161. 106 NA, MvK, inv. no. 6508, fiche 26, Mail report 1894, no. 297 and MvK, inv. no. 6507, fiche 26, Mail report 1894, no. 76. See alo MvK, inv. no. 6511, fiche 9, Mail report 1894, no. 880; Knight, “The Java Sugar Industry,” p. 71. 107 NA, MvK, inv. no. 6510, fiche no. 26, Mail report 1894, no. 746. Also see Huender, Overzicht van den economischen toestand, pp. 90–92. 105

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their land to the sugar factories. However, the premiums to village heads for their help in renting sawah lands were still being paid by around 1920 and usually varied from two to five guilders per bau.108 In other arrangements with the sugar factories, the village heads also received a share, for example, when plowing teams were hired, the lurah received “witness money” (getuigengeld) of twenty-five cents. The sugar crisis and the political power of the sugar entrepreneurs that stretched to the highest levels of the Dutch government were responsible for keeping a practice in place that forced less powerful peasants to vacate their land in return for low prices. Further, the sugar factories were clever enough to provide advances to the Javanese peasantry at lower interest rates than the indigenous moneylenders. The sugar factories were relatively safe creditors, because as nonindigenous agencies they had no legal right to disown a cultivator who failed to deliver cane.109 The factory provided advances, which the gogol used to settle debts, pay land rent, and procure basic necessities. However, the price a tani (peasant) could ask for land was lower at the time of puasa (the end of Ramadan) or when the land rent was due. This gave the factories the enormous advantage of negotiating with people who were in dire need of money. The practice of early advances was outlawed as late as 1918, but even then it did not disappear.110 In addition, the expected advances encouraged moneylenders to help the peasantry get into debt. These moneylenders were not just the Chinese and Arabs, as was the popular belief aired in European colonial newspapers. In fact, the stereotype of the Chinese middleman has obfuscated the role of the more powerful peasant landholders, who quite often acted as “absentees” using the advance payments from the sugar industry to rent land out to debt-ridden, marginal cultivators, thereby becoming the major creditors in the villages. In this respect, the report of the “sugar enquiry committee” in 1920 spoke of the native capitalist (inlandsche kapitalist).111 The indebtedness of Javanese villagers was widespread, and Huender, Overzicht van den economischen toestand, pp. 93–96, 98. Attempts to liberalize the system of pawnshops from the 1870s onward did not lead to lower interest rates. The credit system introduced by the colonial state (Volkscredietbanken) in the early twentieth century did something to bring interest rates down at the village level. See Van Zanden, “Credit and the Colonial State,” pp. 164–167. 110 Kohlbrugge, Is grondverhuur aan suikerfabrieken een zegen of een vloek?, p. 64; Verslag van de suiker-enquête commissie, pp. 147–148. 111 Verslag van de suiker-enquête commissie (1921), p. 172; See also Knight, “The Java Sugar Industry,” p. 76. 108 109

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resulted in a considerable share of their income ending up in the hands of, mostly Javanese, middlemen.112 In the decades around 1900, the number of marginal cultivators must have grown considerably, if for no other reason than the general demographic pressure on land. Again, landlessness barely increased. The depressed value of sawah land around sugar factories meant marginal peasants would not have gained much from selling their land, although many of the landless might have left the countryside or at least found employment outside agriculture.113

Free Labor? According to our definition, a sugar plantation is a construct in which the management has complete control over all the processes in the factory and the field. In the 1870s, not all the conditions had been fulfilled to be able to speak of a sugar plantation conglomerate in Java. The sugar factories were nevertheless on the way to creating plantation-like conditions in terms of labor relations. The increasing demands of the growing sugar industry and the existing marginal land ownership and outright landlessness converged into an expanding wage-labor market. Not all wage labor is “free labor,” however, and this was definitely the case in Java’s sugar districts, where dependents often had to hand over part of their earnings to the village elites. In his own days as an administrator of a sugar factory, Fransen van de Putte (who would later become minister of the colonies) had given the payments to laborers directly, rather than leaving this to village officials.114 It is no coincidence therefore that it was this minister who repealed the colonial government’s regulation of 1838, which had allowed European employers to enter into collective contracts with the village elites for the supply of labor. He replaced it in 1863 by another regulation stipulating that labor contracts needed to be with individual laborers.115 Under Fransen van de Putte’s tenure it was also decreed that all cane cutting, transport, and labor at the factories had to be free labor.116 Van Zanden, “On the Efficiency of Markets,” pp. 1044–1045, 1049. Elson, Javanese Peasants, pp. 135–136; See Boomgaard, Children of the Colonial State. See also Fernando, “Growth of Non-agricultural Economic Activities.” 114 Huender, Overzicht van den economischen toestand, p. 103. 115 GB November 7, 1863, no. 152. 116 Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië, Bijblad 1519 (1864) article 17 stipulated that cutting, transport, and labor at the factory had to be free for all new contracts. Old contracts could still rely on requisitioned labor, but that was deliberately made very expensive. Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, p. 86. 112 113

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In fact, measures such as this did not bring coerced labor relations to an end, particularly since there was not enough free labor for the sugar factories in the 1860s. In the course of that decade, it became impossible to get sufficient forced labor, because planting, preparation of fields for new cane, and the grinding season often coincided. Faced with labor shortages, the factories did not hesitate to call on the collaboration of the Indonesian civil servants to get the conscripted labor required to cut the cane and transport it. This only diminished after 1870, when the involvement of the colonial civil service was drastically reduced and cultivation conscription diminished, to be finally abolished in the early 1880s.117 The declining number of forced laborers provided by the government and the gradual abolition of cultivation conscription did not lead to more severe shortages of labor, which was due to a number of circumstances. First, rapid demographic growth led to an increase in the supply of labor. Second, the village heads continued to receive a premium from the sugar factories for recruiting dependent labor from the villages. Third, over time the rights of Java’s aristocracy to corvée labor were reduced in accordance with new government regulations for the Netherlands Indies in 1854. This placated the factories, which had complained about local chiefs whose claims reduced the availability of labor. The government itself downsized its own requirements for forced labor by gradually converting corvée into taxes; however, this process would only be completed by 1916. As a final helpful measure, in the early 1860s the government decreed that anyone who performed labor services for the factories was eligible for remission from corvée. The wealthier gogol did not do this work at the factories themselves, of course, but pressured the landless into replacing them.118 At the village level, dependent peasants were forced into field and factory work. This was the preferred way because if the factories’ mandurs had to recruit labor they needed to advance considerable sums, and it was not always easy to make laborers honor their commitment.119 The 1860s saw a tightening labor market (also leading to higher wages), and in the Eastern Salient in particular, factories were confronted with acute labor With regard to the reduction in the number of laborers supplied to the sugar industry by the colonial government, see Elson, “Sugar Factory Workers,” pp. 157–158; Elson, Village Java, p. 215. 118 Regeerings-Reglement van Nederlandsch-Indië 1854, art. 57. See also Elson, “Sugar Factory Workers,” p. 153. 119 Elson, “Sugar Factory Workers,” pp. 166–167. 117

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shortages.120 These shortages occurred at specific times of the year, which eventually made sugar factories increasingly reliant on migrant labor.121 To address the problem of laborers quitting their jobs, a Dutch colonial version of the “masters and servants act” was extended to the Javanese laborers employed by the sugar factories.122 In 1864, it was determined the civil service could intervene if a “free laborer” ran away with his or her advance payment without performing the work. Such laborers could be punished by having to carry out forced labor at construction works or road maintenance, or could even face corporal punishment. This was given a wider legal basis in 1872 by inserting legal sanctions in the penal code covering the event of any servant or worker refusing to work for an employer or leaving service. The Dutch parliament, however, did not accept this ad hoc colonial lawmaking in the form of attaching penal sanctions to labor contracts, which belonged to the realm of private law and not to the penal code, and demanded that the Ministry of the Colonies repeal this legislation. In the 1880s, it became less common to provide advances, and the number of legal cases regarding laborers running away with advances drastically declined.123 The coffee blight of 1881 that led to a less tight labor market may well have played a role in this decline. Nevertheless, employers in the sugar industry continued to look enviously at the situation in East Sumatra. A worker ordinance had been in place there from 1868, to protect foreign orientals from slavery and deception. In 1872, this was extended to native Indonesians, particularly targeting labor conditions in Sumatra. In practice, these ordinances were a step backward from fighting slavery, to a way to legalize indenture by stipulating penal sanctions against leaving a plantation within the fixed term of employment of three years.124 In 1892, Governor-General G. Pijnacker Hordijk, a champion of the sugar factories, ordered an inquiry among sugar manufacturers to assess whether they were in need of an The 1860s and 1870s also saw a substantial increase in the gross domestic product, even though this should not be taken as an outright indication of improved living conditions for the ordinary Javanese. For precise figures, see Elson, Javanese Peasants, p. 135. See also De Vries, Landbouw en welvaart, pp. 92–93; Van Zanden and Marks, An Economic History, p. 52. Van Baardewijk concludes that prices were relatively stable from 1844 to 1860, but rose fairly sharply between 1861 and 1865. See Van Baardewijk, The Cultivation System, p. 19. 121 Knight, “Peasant Labour and Capitalist Production,” p. 257; Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, pp. 87–88. 122 Bosma, “Dutch Imperial Anxieties,” pp. 77–78. 123 Kalma, Het arbeidscontract met den inlander, pp. 11–12, 73. 124 Koelie-ordonnantie van 13 juli 1880, Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië 1880, no. 113. See also Bosma, Karel Zaalberg, p. 100, n. 3. 120

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ordinance similar to the Sumatran example. Those in favor took that position because they wanted the ability to impose sanctions if workers just walked away. However, others objected, aware that the downside of the ordinance was the introduction of labor inspection for their estates.125 In sum, indentureship for sugar workers was only blocked thanks to the intervention of the Dutch parliament in the 1870s. It was seriously contemplated again in the 1890s, but by then the sugar factories could dispense with it. They were in a position to dictate labor conditions, as the early 1880s had heralded four decades of declining or stagnating wages. Moreover, the recruitment of most labor was firmly entrenched within the villages.126 Meanwhile, the 1880s and 1890s marked a new round of attempts to increase the productivity of the sugar factories. The installation of new equipment was again the order of the day, and a dense web of narrow-gauge railways began to connect the fields and factories. The concentration of power on the side of the sugar industry was attended by a further weakening of the positions of land and labor. At the same time, in the cane fields the transformation toward wage relations continued. In 1886, the Java sugar industry paid 669,370 guilders in total for land leases and 1,949,134 guilders in wages. The proportion of wage payments would grow during the following decades.127 The sugar industry now relied on a growing contingent of (migrant) laborers, who likely carried out most of the cutting, haulage from the field, and labor in the sugar factories. An important share of the work in the fields, the planting and tending of the cane, was done by female laborers, most of whom came from smallholder or landless households. In the early twentieth century, probably more than half of all cane planters were landless peasants (including women) employed by the powerful peasants who held an increasing share in the “communal” sawahs or increased their individually owned sawahs.128 In the early nineteenth century, the colonial administrations of India and the Netherlands Indies believed both plantation and peasant production could be encouraged by introducing liberal economic principles. Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, p. 144. Van der Eng observes a very modest growth of GDP per capita between 1900 and 1929, with the figure virtually stagnant until 1910. Van der Eng, “Indonesia’s Growth,” pp. 158, 166. 127 Suermondt and Van den Berg, Nota over de suikerindustrie, p. 11. 128 Knight, Colonial Production, pp. 22, 33–34; Breman, Control of Land, p. 33; Breman cites examples from Cirebon where the village elites held no less than three-quarters of the sawah fields. Breman, Control of Land, p. 27. 125 126

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In this spirit, the ryotwari land rent system became the model for both Madras and Java. At that time, the plantation was the business model of the day, but difficult to implement in Asia beyond the confines of a handful of islands and European-owned land near Batavia. Peasant sugar production was thriving in Bengal and East Java, but although the EIC did not feel any urge to make the sugar plantation model work, Dutch colonial authorities were desperate to raise Java’s commodity exports. The introduction of the Cultivation System was a bold intervention to rescue cash crop production for the world market, which was of crucial importance in saving the Netherlands as a colonial power. While sugar became an increasingly important commodity for the Netherlands Indies in the course of the nineteenth century, the role of the Dutch Trading Society (the NHM) in providing funds and buying products (giving a junior position to the Chinese and other capitalists) stands out. The other crucial factor was the financial stamina of the colonial government in covering the losses it incurred as a result of guaranteeing a fixed price to the sugar contractors. In addition, substantial amounts of copper money were introduced into the Javanese rural economy. The way the Dutch managed to attune money circulation to cash crop production made them unique as colonizers. Van den Bosch, whose views were basically Brennerian, perceived his Cultivation System as a lever to transform an agrarian economy. He introduced it swiftly and with downright disregard for the fragile land rights of the Javanese peasantry. Completely against the grain of the principles of land rent as designed by Munro, and against Van den Bosch’s own ideas of correct agrarian economic policies, the Cultivation System strengthened communal land ownership. The colonial government also relied heavily on the Javanese aristocracy to assign land for cash crops. Java offered the rare opportunity to mobilize the structures of the precolonial, patrimonial state for colonial export production. This was an opportunity that barely existed in India and did not exist at all in the Philippines.129 However, at the same time corvées and tributes stood in the way of making labor available for the plantation, a situation quite similar to that in Ceylon. These rights were abolished gradually and the demand by local aristocrats for tribute labor was curbed. Meanwhile, the role of the aristocracy in colonial cash crop production was phased out, its economic power curtailed, and its members fully absorbed into Filomeno Aguilar makes this point for the Philippines, explicitly referring to the Cultivation System. Aguilar, Clash of Spirits, p. 83.

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the colonial professional bureaucracy. The sugar complex that emerged out of the Cultivation System became highly reliant on the cooperation of the village elites and the availability of a growing army of dependent rural laborers. The project by colonial politicians such as Fransen van de Putte to return to the liberal principles of Raffles and Munro, and make individual land ownership the cornerstone of colonial economic policies, fizzled out against opposition from the coalition of village elites and sugar factories. The coalition between desa elites (the village heads in particular) and factories enabled the periodical restructuring of sawahs into large cane fields. The “communalization” under the Cultivation System was a concomitant of the objective to form blocks of land for cane growing and to bind labor to land and, in spite of the attempts by Fransen van de Putte at reform, would continue to exist throughout colonial times. The colonial government tried to protect the rights of individual peasants, but in practice, its rulings concerning consent and registration were almost a dead letter. Wage labor became the norm, but coercion was never far away and was effectively embedded in village hierarchies. Apart from a relaxing labor market after the 1880s, this was an important reason why the idea of bringing Java sugar industry labor contracts under the penal code was eventually dropped. However, the fact that it was actually contemplated signaled that the sugar sector on this island had become a true plantation conglomerate.

4 Sugar, Science, and Technology: Java and India in the Late Nineteenth Century

In the 1870s, the Java sugar industry was firmly on its way to obtaining full control over labor and land. Its factories did not have to use the new opportunity offered by the Agrarian Law of 1870 to occupy large tracts of “waste” land under long-term leases. Neither were they interested in owning cultivated land, as long as the village elites whom they had made stakeholders in their operations were in control. After all, the introduction of sugarcane growing in the sawahs had enabled the astonishingly high yields per hectare in Java. Within a few decades, industrialization and wage labor had advanced sufficiently for the penal sanctions originally designed for the plantation belt in East Sumatra to be considered a serious option for the Java sugar industry. In terms of control over labor and technology, in both the factories and the fields, the Java sugar industry was on its way to becoming a plantation conglomerate, notwithstanding the half-hearted measures by Batavia and The Hague to protect the villages from increasing pressures by the sugar factories. These pressures were a concomitant of the gradual withdrawal of the colonial government from cane cultivation after 1870, which brought the manufacturers into direct contact with the field. Their involvement in agronomy and botany would intensify in the next decade, when what was termed sereh disease annihilated large tracts of cane and almost destroyed the Java sugar industry. In this chapter, the trajectories of Java and India are compared, in respect of land usage, technology, and labor. In both Java and India, the sugar factories of the early nineteenth century were familiar with the latest developments in cane processing and sugar boiling. British finance and hegemony stretched from North India to Java, bringing new technologies 130

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and engineers to these parts of the world. No knowledgeable person in the 1840s could have expected the sugar-producing trajectories of India and Java to diverge significantly within twenty years. However, this did happen. Java sugar kept its orientation toward European, and later United States markets, whereas Indian sugar stopped being sold in Great Britain and increasingly served growing internal and Central Asian markets. The output per hectare in Java had increased steadily following the introduction of the Cultivation System, whereas in India it more or less stagnated. Yet even if the yield per hectare stayed at roughly the same level up to the early twentieth century, the total gur or khandsari output of India must have doubled or perhaps even tripled between 1848 and 1884. The expansion of the area under irrigation was the main factor in this growth. Technological innovations in the crushing process contributed to diminishing the loss of sucrose, but they were even more important as a way to save work. If these labor-saving technologies had not been applied on a large scale in India by the late nineteenth century, the amount of labor required could have reached unsustainable levels. Accounts by contemporary planters and observers suggest that in the mid-nineteenth century, between two and a half and three million Indian households were involved in sugar production, a figure that increased to about six million in the early 1930s. Over the same period, the amount of gur and sugar produced increased from 0.75 to 3.2 million metric tons (the latter consisting of 2,750,000 metric tons of gur and 450,000 metric tons of industrial and khandsari sugar). This means an increase in the output per unit of labor of almost 100 percent. These figures, although tentative, suggest the successful implementation of labor-saving technologies.1 Like the Indian sugar sector, the Java sugar industry searched for labor-saving devices. We have already seen that labor shortages became a real problem in East Java in the 1860s and 1870s. This reduced during the agricultural depression that struck Java in the mid-1880s, but resurfaced after the First World War. Possibilities for the mechanization of heavy fieldwork were seriously explored and even put into practice in the course of the 1920s. In contrast to Java, where the colonial government invested heavily in sugar production by contracting manufacturers, industrial sugar production in India stagnated from the 1850s onward. By around 1860, the European-style factories had almost disappeared from South Asia, including Ceylon, with the exception of a handful around Calcutta and 1

See Appendix I.

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along the Coromandel Coast. The factories there owed their survival to sales of arrack and to their relationship with local village elites, which ensured them adequate supplies of palm and cane gur. Although sugar from India completely disappeared from the European market in the 1880s, India’s classical khandsari sugars did find new markets in South and Central Asia. Low cane yields per hectare continued to be the general pattern in North India. New technologies could barely have changed this, because the meager harvests were mainly the consequence of adverse ecological conditions. Improved cane varieties suited to shorter growing seasons would only be planted in India in the early twentieth century. The Indian government did not find itself alone in its preference for applied technology, as private entrepreneurs were also rather pessimistic about the future prospects for industrial sugar production. This does not take away from the fact that in India, modernity and science began to reshape the landscape of sugar production almost simultaneously with Java, although in a different manner. The 1860s and 1870s saw the beginnings of applied agricultural science spreading across India and Java. In Java, private planters, conferences, and newspapers started to popularize a scientific approach to sugar cultivation. The planters’ clan of Java’s Principalities founded the Indisch Landbouwgenootschap (Agricultural Society of the Indies) in 1870, a society that numbered 669 members throughout Java just four years later. The first agricultural congresses were held in 1873 and 1875 in Surakarta and Yogyakarta respectively. These conferences were the forerunners of the “Java experimental sugar stations,” the first of which was realized in 1885.2 The Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India conducted experiments with growing Otaheite cane in the 1830s. Similar societies and their activities proliferated by the mid-nineteenth century, as they emerged as a concomitant of the bhadralok (the Anglicized higher and middle classes) renaissance. New agricultural equipment and methods were disseminated through numerous agricultural exhibitions all over India. Thousands and sometimes even tens of thousands of visitors were attracted to these events.3 From the 1860s onward, demand for sugar in the cities of India rose, and consumers had a particular taste for white sugar. This was most notably the case in Bombay, where sugar from Mauritius came in directly or via Calcutta. By around 1880, Bombay still acted as an entrepot for Bosma and Raben, Being “Dutch,” p. 134. See Prakash, Another Reason, pp. 17–48.

2 3

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sugar and gur coming from North India and Mauritius and exported to Persia, Asia Minor, Arabia, Zanzibar, Mozambique, Ceylon, and Aden. The annual amounts ranged from 2,500 to 5,000 metric tons at the time.4 In 1882, the government of India noticed with concern that sugar was still imported from Mauritius to the Bombay Presidency in large quantities, in spite of the fact that sugar production in Bengal was rising and that the railway connection between Calcutta and Bombay had been in operation for two decades. The government of Bengal suspected transport costs across the Indian subcontinent significantly exceeded those of transport by sea from Mauritius or even China. To whatever extent this was true, it was irrelevant as long as Bengal produced barely any excess available for export. Moreover, the urban population of Bombay simply preferred the refined Mauritius sugar to the muscovados from India.5 The Mauritian sugar was a plantation white refined using sulfur instead of taboo-charged bone charcoal. In the early 1880s, reports surfaced that Mauritian sugar was used in almost every section of the Bombay community: “It is preferred for the purpose of making sweetmeats, being found when boiled down to be more free from foreign substances than Indian sugar.”6 Chinese sugars were also fairly popular, though slightly more expensive than the Mauritian because of the higher freight costs. They were more powder-like and less crystalline, but still whiter and sweeter than the Indian sugars.7 Meanwhile, the government of India was confident the imports would be replaced by Indian sugars once the supply of gur exceeded demand. This was expected to happen relatively quickly, as the area under cane in the Bombay Presidency was increasing.8 At that time, construction of irrigation works had started in the Bombay Deccan. This would give rise to a new sugar-producing area. In 1883, the Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, Agriculture January 1883, Proceedings No. 52, Report by C. B. Pritchard, Esq. Commissioner of Customs, Opium and Abkari, Bombay, No. 5419, dated Poona, August 30, 1882. 5 Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, Agriculture, January 1883, Proceedings No. 55, File No. 4. 6 Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, Agriculture, January 1883, Proceedings No. 52, Report by – C. B. Pritchard, Esq. Commissioner of Customs, Opium and Abkari, Bombay, No. 5419, dated Poona, August 30, 1882. 7 Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, Agriculture, January 1883, Proceedings 54, File No. 42, Serial No. 29, Dated Bombay, November 16, 1882, From – D. Watson, Esq., Acting Secretary of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce, To  – The Officiating Under Secretary to the Government of India. 8 Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, Agriculture, January 1883, Proceedings No. 55, File No. 4, Circular No. 3 A., Extract from the Proceedings of the Government of India, in the Revenue and Agricultural Department, January 23, 1883. 4

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first sugar refinery was established in the Bombay region: the Pune Sugar Works. However, this refinery was entirely reliant on alcohol sales.9 The true industrialization of the sugar sector in the Bombay Presidency would not happen for another fifty years. The industrial sugar interests in India were too small to change imperial and colonial policies, but were sufficient to keep the cause of industrial sugar production afloat. In 1862, the British sugar producers in India and their business partners in London lost their struggle with the metropolitan refiners over the differential import duties on higher-quality sugars, but they would continue to lobby the government of India to encourage industrial sugar production. Frederick Minchin, the owner of the Aska sugar factory in Orissa, was among them and was the most active protagonist of industrial sugar in India in the late nineteenth century. He sent sugar samples to the Paris world exhibition of 1878.10 A few years later he made a journey to Mauritius, which probably inspired him to use lime in the refinery process to replace bone charcoal. Minchin also endeavored with experiments to extract sugar from sorghum. Though he succeeded in boiling gur from this grass, the proceeds of which he exported to Melbourne breweries, his expectations of sorghum for common sugar production would never come true.11 Many other attempts were made to extract sugar from the fast-growing (three months) sorghum, but it proved impossible to obtain any crystals from its juice. It was only useful for alcohol and animal feed. Another advocate of industrializing sugar production in India was Joseph Travers & Sons, a London-based firm trading in sugar, coffee, tea, and spices. This merchant house had also subscribed to the petition of 1862 to remove the additional import duties on better-refined sugars from India and Mauritius.12 Travers & Sons believed the problem was the high price of cane, caused mainly by the small Bengal plots: “In Bengal sugar-cane is often in half acre plots, it does not pay the cultivator to Government of India, Finance Department (Separate Revenue–A) Proceedings, June 1907, Nos. 203–206, Memorial from Mr. K. A. Ghaswalla, Proprietor of the Poona Sugar Works, regarding the decline of the sugar industry in Bombay Presidency. 10 Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department (Agriculture) Proceedings, September 1882, Nos. 98–101, Part. B, Samples of articles manufactured at the Aska Sugar Works in the Ganjam District and application for a site for a working water-powered sugar mill in the Bombay Presidency. 11 Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, January 1883, Agriculture, Proceedings  – Nos. 41 to 55, File Nos. 42 of 1882 and 4 of 1883, Note by Finance Minister E. C. B., January 5, 1883. 12 Select Committee on Sugar Duties 1862, Appendix No. 2, “Memorial of Planters, Merchants, and others, interested in the Trade in Sugar,” pp. 313–314. 9

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watch so small a piece, therefore every boy, every gharry wallah who passes takes a few canes, and every elephant takes many. These small plots are very frequently thus half destroyed before cut.”13 However, the agricultural experts of the Indian civil service asked to comment on the papers submitted by Travers & Sons listed good reasons for not implementing industrial sugar production. They clung to the view that sugar production was part of rural life, and that the gradual improvement of the ryots’ agricultural methods was the proper approach in this respect. The London entrepreneurs replied: “The average production of India is given as a ton of sugar per hectare and the produce (with the exception of the three modern mills in Madras) is of a most wretched character.”14 Moreover, the competition from Mauritian sugar led to the closing of refineries in Bengal, according to Travers & Sons. The firm believed that the whole art of reworking gur into sugar was bound to disappear and that sugar should be made by modern processes, the way Minchin had shown possible at the Aska factory in Madras, “and it is simply absurd that India should have to first export the labour to Mauritius, and then to re-import sugar from that distant island, which could as well be made, and certainly cheaper, at home.”15 The agricultural specialists from the provincial government of the North West Provinces and Oudh commented that such a view completely ignored the crucial role of gur in the rural economy of India and glossed over the fact that it held a solid place in the Indian menu: The memorandum [Travers & Sons] refers in contemptuous terms to the quality of the common sugar consumed by the Indian public. But they have an almost unlimited and active market, which is at present closed to machine-made sugar; and even if superstitious prejudices could be overcome, there would still remain the question of national taste. The compost known as gur has a peculiar flavour which is absent from machine-made sugars, and the tastes of a most conservative people will require to be changed before the local markets of India really open to the European sugar manufacture.16

In sum, while gur kept its central place in India, its output increased considerably during the second half of the nineteenth century. Unlike the position in Java, this was not accomplished by raising the yield per hectare, but mainly through a doubling of the total acreage under cane and the use of labor-saving implements. Sugar production in India was “Indian Sugar CXL,” p. 72. Ibidem, p. 75. 15 Ibidem. 16 Ibidem, p. 77. 13 14

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augmented thanks to irrigation and railway construction, as well as the wide dissemination of new mills and other implements. Only from the 1920s onward would the development and implementation of new cane varieties lead to substantially higher yields per hectare. The final factor in the increasing sugar output was rural credit, which would be foundational for the ascendency of a new area for large-scale sugar cultivation – the Bombay Deccan, today located in the state of Maharashtra.

The Role of Irrigation British colonial irrigation schemes began with the restoration of the Mughal water works in North India early in the nineteenth century. In fact, the inspiration for the canal works came from newly discovered manuscripts, which were described in articles appearing in publications such as the Asiatic Society Journal.17 Irrigation works had been carried out from the twelfth century onward, but particular mention should be made of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mughal canal works, which stretched from the river Jumma as far as Delhi, but had ceased to flow after the mid-eighteenth century. In 1817, the British began their efforts to bring irrigation back to Delhi, which succeeded a few years later.18 The engineers gradually extended their efforts to entirely new works, of which the Ganges Canal (1847), the Cauvery (1834) and the Godavari (1844) in Madras are some of the most renowned. Irrigation projects in Punjab started in the 1850s, whereas the construction of the irrigation works in Bengal (the Orissa canals) began in the 1860s and were expedited after the famine of 1866. The irrigation projects in the Bombay Deccan started in the 1870s laid the early foundations for the postcolonial sugar boom in this part of the country. Finally, from 1876 onward, the Sone Canal complex irrigated the southern Gangetic plains of Bihar. Irrigation was the prime force behind the expansion of sugar production in India for most of the nineteenth century. Initially, to recover the expenditures on irrigation, the Indian government promoted cash crops such as sugar that had high added value and thus yielded higher tax incomes. The total area suitable for sugarcane increased, but irrigation also saved considerable Major Colvin, Engineers, “On the Restoration of the Ancient Canals in the Delhi Territory,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol. II (1833) pp. 105–127; Lieutenant Yule, Engineers, “A Canal Act of the Emperor Akbar, with some Notes and Remarks on the History of the Western Jumna Canals,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol. XV (1846) pp. 213–223. 18 Buckley, The Irrigation Works of India, p. 135. 17

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human and animal labor.19 Bullocks could be freed from working at wells, and all cultivators benefited from the faster dispersal of water over the fields. In addition, work could be more evenly spread over the year and more labor could be applied to the land.20 Thanks to irrigation, sugarcane growing expanded rapidly, for example, in the United Provinces, although labor scarcity and shortages of bullocks continued to cause serious bottlenecks during harvesting seasons. In the early 1860s, so much cane was reportedly grown in this district there were barely enough hands to process it.21 Irrigation opened up large tracts of land for sugar production in India, of which the two most important were located in Punjab and the Bombay Deccan. In the latter region in particular, irrigation brought about a buoyant dynamism. By the end of the nineteenth century, productivity in the Bombay Deccan may have reached 5 to 7.5 metric tons of gur per hectare, about three times as much as in the north of India.22 Turning to Punjab, this provides a clear example of the benefits, but also of the limitations of irrigation as far as the increase in yield per hectare is concerned. The region was already an important sugar producer at the time it was annexed to India in 1849, after which a start was made to the restoration of the old canal system, most of which ran through natural beddings. This reconstruction project extended into the 1880s.23 Irrigation did much to take Punjab to its position as a major sugar producer in India; the province became the second Indian province in terms of acreage under cane with about 168,000 hectares in 1918. This was almost the size of the entire Java sugar sector, and half of it was irrigated by government canals.24 Yet in spite of all the investment in irrigation, the average output of gur must still have ranged between 1.8 and 2.7 metric tons per hectare in early twentieth-century Punjab, which was not significantly higher than for Bengal or the United Provinces.25 Government of India, Financial Department, March 1884, Agriculture – Head Produce and Cultivation, File No. 1, Coll./ No. 10, Serial No. 9–21, dated Bankipore, March 10, 1883, No. 175G. 20 Stone, Canal Irrigation in British India, p. 295. 21 Ibidem, p. 296. 22 Guha, The Agrarian Economy, p. 101. 23 Buckley, The Irrigation Works of India, pp. 137, 150. 24 Report of the Indian Sugar Committee 1920, p. 82. 25 According to the Indian Sugar Committee, the yield was less than two metric tons per hectare. Report of the Indian Sugar Committee 1920, p. 82. H. Baden Powell’s estimate was slightly more favorable and came to 2.7 metric tons per hectare. Powell, Hand-book of the Economic Products, p. 217. According to another mid-nineteenth-century source, the yield was between 1.5 and 2 metric tons per hectare. See Select Papers of the Agri-horticultural Society, p. 239. 19

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The benefits of irrigation were apparently offset by the less conducive ­climate and by the fact that Punjab employed the same agricultural implements, such as pestle-and-mortar mills, as elsewhere in North India.26 Last but not least, like Bengal Punjab suffered from extreme fragmentation of landholdings, to such an extent that it proved an impediment to the introduction of the new devices that spread elsewhere in India. For example, in the Punjab district of Jullundur, 5,120 hectares were divided into 63,000 fields.27

New Mills and Other New Devices The second half of the nineteenth century saw important technological innovations in the processing of cane in India, which demonstrates the susceptibility of the peasantry to new methods and equipment, as long as these suited their risk management. Transfers of technology and plant varieties had taken place over the ages. After the botanical experiments conducted around 1800 by William Roxburgh, this type of research became practically extinct in India, but knowledge of new equipment became increasingly popularized in the course of the nineteenth century. The agricultural exhibitions held at different locations in India in the 1860s marked the beginning of a new round of innovations in sugar manufacturing throughout the subcontinent.28 In India, as well as in Java, as a matter of fact, private sugar manufacturers developed or imported new devices. Apart from Minchin’s Aska sugar factory in Orissa, the estate-owning company of Thomson and Mylne in Shahabad (North Bihar) deserves mention here.29 This concern was not involved in processing cane, but in reworking gur and jaggery. The firm was interested in getting more raw sugar and became a famed advocate, both in theory and practice, of the gradual improvement of the ryots’ methods of cultivation, crushing the cane, and boiling the juice. The devices developed by Thomson and Mylne were popularized through Report of the Indian Sugar Committee 1920, pp. 84, 90, 98–99. In some districts of Punjab, the geared horizontal roller mill was used instead of the pestle-and-mortar mill. Sangwan, “Level of Agricultural Technology,” pp. 90. Powell, Hand-book of the Economic Products, pp. 304–305; Select Papers of the Agri-horticultural Society, p. 238. 27 Darling, The Punjab Peasant, p. 148. 28 Powell, Hand-book of the Economic Products, p. ii. 29 Government of India, Financial Department, March 1884, Agriculture – Head Produce and Cultivation, File No. 1, Coll./No. 10, Serial No. 9–21, dated Cattuck February 22, 1883, No. 252. 26

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exhibitions across India,30 but above all, its successful innovations were in line with the ongoing developments in the Indian sugar sector. One of the most apparent bottlenecks in Indian sugar production was the mill. The West Indies iron mills were not the solution, however, as these were too expensive for most cultivators who already shared the use of much cheaper traditional mills. The most common type was the pestle-and-mortar mill, which was probably brought from Central Asia by the Mughals in the fourteenth century. Similar to the Mediterranean-Atlantic world prior to the arrival of the roller mill, the cane had to be chopped into pieces before grinding. The best mortars were made of stone, but these were usually too expensive and hollowed wood or an old tree trunk was used instead. This type of mill had spread throughout the Gangetic plains, except in part of deltaic Bengal where sometimes the khai was in use. This implement worked like a cottonseed mill, which might have been the model for it, and was equipped with three cylinders.31 The pestle-and-mortar mills were already on the decline throughout India in the nineteenth century. Roller mills had been used for centuries in the southern zone extending from Gujarat and Maharashtra to coastal Andhra and Chhattisgarh, and now began to appear in North India. Thousands of roller mills were made annually by Indian artisans in regions where the pestle-and-mortar mill had previously dominated. Though the wooden roller mills were hard to work with and were ineffective at pressing (the cane had to be passed through the rollers repeatedly, sometimes as often as eight times), their big advantage was that they could be made locally and that the cane stalks did not have to be chopped into short pieces. Chopping led to additional fermentation of the stalks and loss of sugar content. A final disadvantage was that the roller mills often broke down and had to be replaced every five years.32 To some extent, the wooden roller mills eased the path for the introduction of the iron Beheea sugar mill. This mill derived its name from the location of the Thomson and Mylne estate: Beheea in Shahabad (southern Bihar). One of the Beheea mill’s many benefits was that it was transportable, like some of the traditional pestle-and-mortar and roller mills, but it halved “Indian Sugar CXL,” p. 75; Government of Bengal, Department Agriculture and Revenue Branch, Trials of Thomson and Mylne’s – at the Calcutta Exhibition, Br. Mus. & Exbn., March 1884, Pros. No. 1–14, File No. 3C Part. B. 31 Sangwan, “Level of Agricultural Technology,” p. 90; Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” p. 373; Mazumdar, Sugar and Society, p. 149. 32 Sangwan, “Level of Agricultural Technology,” p. 96. 30

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the work input from people and bullocks and considerably reduced the time needed to process the cane. An additional benefit of using this mill was that it enabled the production of 14 percent more crystallizable sugar per hectare. This equipment spread by the thousands in only a few years, and it has been stated that between 1874 and 1891 about 250,000 of these mills were constructed.33 In the United Provinces, the kolhas (pestle-and-mortar mills) rapidly disappeared. In Bengal, not all cultivators were immediately convinced of the advantages of the Beheea mill. However, particularly in districts where the acreage planted with sugarcane rapidly increased, the dissemination of these mills progressed remarkably quickly in the early 1880s.34 Quite often, moneylenders (who could be zamindars) advanced funds to cane cultivators to obtain such mills, but in other cases they operated Beheea mills themselves or rented them out.35 The Beheea mill was efficient enough, but the rate of extraction usually still left a lot to be desired, as cattle were often too weak to turn the mill properly. It therefore had to be adjusted to a lighter crushing pressure, resulting in squeezing less juice. As a consequence, almost half the juice was left in the cane, whereas industrial sugar milling had reached extraction rates of 86 percent in the 1890s.36 Nevertheless, firmly on the credit side of using the Beheea mill was the improved quality of the gur, thanks to the fact that less fermentation occurred because the stalks no longer had to be chopped. Between 1880 and 1900, the two-roller Beheea mill was further improved by adding an additional smaller roller. Now, the cane was bruised between one pair of rollers and crushed by the other.37 Even the merchants from Bombay, who had turned away from Bengal sugar and preferred Mauritian imports, became interested in Indian sugar again. Another crucial innovation put into practice by Thomson and Mylne was that the company introduced the ryots around its factory to the use of shallow, tin vessels instead of the earthenware pots that could never According to Thomson and Mylne in its report to the Revenue Department, the gain depended upon the thickness of the sugarcane stalks. The thicker the stalks, the more juice could be pressed in comparison to the customary Indian mills. See government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, Pro. No 12–13, No. 1062 M dated Beheea, July 3, 1882, To – Under Secretary to the Government of India. 34 Government of India, Financial Department, March 1884, Agriculture – Head Produce and Cultivation, File No. 1, Coll./No. 10, Serial No. 9–21, dated Darjeeling, July 6, 1883. 35 Ibidem, No. 149. 36 Report of the Indian Sugar Committee 1920, pp. 261–262. 37 Government of Bengal, Revenue Department  – Agriculture, On Sugar, Dated Beheea, February 28, 1880, From Messrs. Burrows, Thomson and Mylne to the Collector of Shahabad; Hadi, The Sugar Industry, pp. 60–61. 33

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be cleaned entirely, which led to the immediate acidifying of the fresh sugar. Furthermore, Thomson and Mylne introduced the “centrifugal drier,” which drained away the molasses and left dry crystals.38 This was a simplified version of the one developed in Europe after 1837 and that came in use from the 1870s onward. This technology was probably first adopted by Chinese sugar colonists in Penang and the Straits, and in India became the dominant method of cleaning sugar crystals within a few decades.39 By the end of the 1930s, the kanchi method (waterweed) had died out. Since cleaner jaggery was a prerequisite for the successful use of a centrifuge, the khandsari factories began to place overseers in the fields to ensure sugar was not inverted or caramelized, which would reduce the recovery rate of sugar. The khandsari factories’ involvement in the fields encouraged the use of batteries of iron pans, termed the Rohilkand bel.40 Milling was still done on the spot because the bullocks were there. However, this was not a disadvantage but a major advantage over industrial sugar production, as it saved the considerable costs of transporting the cane over many miles to a factory. In view of the extraordinary merits in the field of sugar manufacture shown by Thomson and Mylne, one might wonder why they never tried to industrialize cane sugar production in their own district. In fact, they did carry out an experiment in the late nineteenth century, only to discover that the ryots were not interested in growing cane for a factory.41 Cane was generally grown on small plots by cultivators who preferred to make their own gur, partly for personal consumption as well as for the village priest and village artisans, who according to custom were entitled to a share in return for their services. Moreover, Thomson and Mylne estimated that the price of the cane asked for by cultivators would be too high for industrial processing and added that gur was attuned to the taste of the people and that there was not a sufficient market for industrial sugar.42 A final factor not mentioned, but relatively important, was Voelcker, Report on the Improvement of Indian Agriculture, p. 251. Birch, On the Production and Manufacture of Sugar, p. 111. 40 Government of Bengal, Department of Land Records and Agriculture, Bengal, Pro No. B 45, B. C. Basu, Assistant to Director of Land Record and Agriculture, “Note on an improved process of manufacturing sugar tried in Jessore in the cold weather of 1893–1894,” Calcutta, June 26, 1894. Kiyokawa and Ohno, “Technology and Labour Absorption,” p. 336. 41 Government of India, Revenue & Agricultural Department (Agriculture), July 1892, Proceedings Nos. 9 top 11 [Appendix No. 3], Memorandum by Mr. Ernest Mylne, of Beheea, on Sugar Cultivation in Shahabad, pp. 334–335. 42 Thomson and Mylne, cited by B. C. Basu in Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department (Agriculture), July 1892, Proceedings – Nos. 9 to 11, p. 3. 38 39

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that, thanks to the Rohilkand bel and the hand centrifuge, the quality of khandsari sugar had come closer to that of industrial sugar without incurring the considerable expenses involved in transporting cane over many miles to factories.

Statistics and Botany In the 1870s, the cultivation of sugarcane in Bengal and Bihar was expensive, though lucrative for those who could invest money in the initial outlay.43 Therefore, it is hardly surprising that cultivators were susceptible to innovations, as the introduction of the Beheea mill has already illustrated. However, the situation was quite different with regard to advances in the botanical realm. The attempts made around 1840 by active members of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India to disseminate Otaheite and Bourbon cane varieties in Bengal had not been followed up. By the late 1850s, most of these canes had simply disappeared or fallen prey to disease. In locations with abundant water and skillful peasants, the exotic varieties had been preserved and gave higher yields.44 However, in general the Indian cane fields comprised a motley collection of sugarcanes; some of the imported varieties from Mauritius had been given other names and were hardly recognizable as imports. To complicate matters further, sorgho imphee obtained from the Cape of Good Hope spread all over India in the 1850s as cattle fodder as an alternative to the Indian jowar plant, and sometimes became mingled with sugarcanes in the fields.45 Agricultural experts such as A. O. Hume, the former secretary of the department of Revenue, Agriculture and Commerce (and later the father of the Indian National Congress), observed in 1879, however, that while science had not yet made itself felt in Indian agriculture, the ryots’ knowledge based on 3,000 years of accumulated experience was Government of India, Financial Department, March 1884, Agriculture  – No. 1145, Calcutta Dated March 3, Colman Macaulay, Secy. to the Government of Bengal; Thomson and Mylne estimated for Shahabad that on an outlay of thirty-two to thirty-eight rupees per acre, the return was the equivalent of 128 to 150 rupees. Birch, On the Production and Manufacture of Sugar, p. 11. 44 Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal vii, p. 392. 45 Government of India, Financial Department, July 1877 Memorandum on Sorgho (Sorghum Saccharatum), by Colonel E. Boddam, dated May 22, 1871, and revised in July 1872, and Certain papers containing reports on the experimental cultivation of Sorgho in India. A Note by Mr. F. G. Wigely of the Department of Revenue, Agriculture and Commerce, dated May 1, 1877. 43

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e­ xtensive.46 These millennia of hard lessons about ecological hazards made Indian cultivators rather skeptical of scientific agricultural advice from Europeans. As a result, Thomson and Mylne rarely succeeded in disseminating their method of planting cane cuttings. The practice of planting in ridges with the stalks vertical, which was so successful in Mauritius and Java, for example, had more than one problem once applied in India. The director of Land Records and Agriculture of the Central Provinces, J. P. Goodridge, wrote about this to the government of India: Some years ago I introduced in the Sambalpur district the West Indian method of planting the cane tops . . . instead of sowing pieces of mature cane horizontal on the level ground. This resulted in more vigorous canes and in large clusters, but the system had one drawback compared to the native method. If the ants came, nothing was left; whereas in the native method about a third survived.47

Nonetheless, in the 1880s experts like Hume increasingly argued that the Indian government had long neglected the importance of agriculture, which led not only to the dire results of famines, but also to diminishing revenues, as the budget of the government was overwhelmingly dependent on land rents. The revenue and agricultural department extensively investigated how the quality of cane and sugar in Bengal could be improved. It was felt that the people ought to use better kinds of cane and improve tillage, and that the government had a role to play in this respect by establishing fields for experiments and systems of agricultural extension.48 Moreover, particularly in Bengal, concerns were raised about minute plots, about the cultivators’ dependence on the moneylenders, and about their weak position vis-à-vis the zamindars that allegedly nipped any innovation in the bud. It was part of a general critique on the fragile rights of the cultivators on their land, which was believed by liberal colonial experts since the days of Munro and Raffles to be highly detrimental to agricultural output. By around 1880, the national and provincial governments of India, that of Bengal in particular, had abandoned their rather detached attitude Hume, Agricultural Reform in India, pp. 7–8. J. P. Goodridge, Officiating Director Department of Land Records and Agriculture, Central Provinces to the Secretariat to the Government of India cited in: “Indian Sugar CXL,” Kew Bulletin, 40 (April 1890), p. 79. 48 Government of India, Financial Department, March 1884, Agriculture – Head Produce and Cultivation, File No. 1, Coll./No. 10, Serial No. 21, Agriculture No. 1145, Colman Macaulay, Secretary to the Government of Bengal to The Secretary to the Government of India, dated March 3, 1883. 46 47

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toward the social and ecological fabric of rural areas. For most of the nineteenth century, colonial authorities had assembled hardly any data on the Indian rural economy, which was actually quite different from the way Java was administered. However, this changed after 1880, when the government began to gather statistical data on an annual basis, driven by concerns about falling land revenues and the occurrence of famines.49 The Report of the Indian Famine Commission of that year acted as the starting point for this statistical pursuit, although this should not be confused with reliable data, since colonial statistics continued to be notoriously unreliable. The situation was not much better in Java, as a matter of fact. Grappling with inconsistent data and erratic estimates on the acreage of cane in Bengal, the government tried to reconstruct actual production by following the trade in sugar and by making educated guesses about consumption. From the first systematically surveyed government statistics, it appears that from 1891 to 1908 the acreage of cane for all of Bengal, including Bihar, fell from 1,159,900 to 553,000 acres.50 As figures about the acreage under cane and yield per hectare were still guesswork at the time, this dramatic decline may be somewhat exaggerated, and was probably colored by the gloomy port statistics from Calcutta.51 Nevertheless, there are still grounds, on the basis of the emergence of jute as the new commercial crop, to assume a substantial decline in the acreage under cane in Bengal in the final years of the nineteenth century. The global wheat trade led to unstinted growth in the demand for jute bags, and from the last quarter of the nineteenth century jute cultivation in Bengal increased to an absolute peak of 3.88 million acres in 1907. A small army of intermediaries swarmed out from the jute factories of Calcutta over Bengal, making advances at the precise time the cultivators had run out of their stocks of rice.52 Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, p. 7. For the acreage under cane in Bengal, see, for example, Government of India, Finance and Commerce Department (Statistics and Commerce–A) Proceedings, July 1902, Nos. 202–222. Representation from the local Chambers of Commerce and certain firms, regarding the critical condition of the sugar industry in India, No. 219, pp. 41–42. For the 1908 acreage in Bengal, see, for example, Report of the Indian Tariff Board, p. 11. 51 These figures showed a decline of Indian raw and refined sugar exports from almost 8,000 metric tons in 1878 to a mere 3,000 metric tons around 1900, whereas imports soared over the same period of time from less than one to 70,000 metric tons. Government of Bengal, Report on the Administration of Bengal During 1901–1902 Para 58, p. 25. 52 Bose, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital, p. 53; Rai, “Organization of Jute Cultivation,” pp. 69–70. 49 50

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In all likelihood, the decline in the acreage of cane in Bengal took place as late as the 1890s, in which case the concerns about diminishing sugar production in Bengal in the previous decade become rather intriguing. However, these concerns did not stem from any reliable insights into production, but from the fact that in 1884, in the wake of the global sugar crisis, the exports of sugar from Calcutta to foreign ports fell by more than 90 percent.53 Imports did not rise significantly, and most came from Mauritius. The few thousand metric tons of sugar from Java, Britain, and Austria constituted a trickle that did not pose a threat to sugar manufacturing in Bengal whatsoever.54 Secretary of the Government of Bengal Colman Macaulay had, therefore, good reasons to go against the grain and openly question the perceived decline in exports from Bengal. They might have shifted from sea to river and rail and diverted from Bombay to Assam, for example.55 Moreover, date sugar production in Jessore recovered rapidly in the 1860s and went from strength to strength in the 1870s. The total production of South Bengal must have reached a figure of 80,000 metric tons for palm gur in 1876.56 The absence of any reports of a sharp fall in consumption also makes a substantial decline of sugar production in Bengal prior to the 1890s seem quite unlikely. With almost negligible sugar imports from abroad and no significant increase of sugar production in other provinces, any sharp decline of sugar production in Bengal would have caused soaring sugar prices. This did not happen. The concerns about declining sugar production in Bengal emerged somewhat paradoxically at the same time important innovations in its sugar sector were beginning to pay off, but this can partly be explained by the fact that it also coincided with the first sugar imports into Calcutta. The first ship carrying “German Granulated” (made directly from beet) left from Hamburg for India in 1890, an event that made quite an impression. Competition from an almost unlimited supply of industrial sugars flooding the Indian market became a real prospect, although in the early 1890s it was still only a trickle of sugar from Mauritius, China (including Hong Kong), and Java.57 The mere fact that India turned into a sugar Government of Bengal, Report on the River-Borne Traffic, 1884–1885, pp. 88–89. Government of Bengal, Report on the River-Borne Traffic, 1885–1886, p. 88. 55 Government of Bengal, Revenue Department  – Agriculture, No. 968, dated Calcutta, May 14, 1888, From E. W. Collin, Esq., C. S. Officiating Director of the Department of Land Records & Agriculture Bengal to the Secretary of the Govt. of Bengal. 56 With South Bengal is mentioned in this context the districts of Jessore, Nudea, and the 24-Pargannas. See also Annet, “The Date Sugar Industry in Bengal,” p. 288. 57 “Indian Sugar CXL,” pp. 84–85. For the figures on sugar imports, see Government of Bengal, Report on the River-Borne Traffic of the Lower Bengal, 1893–1894, p. 54. 53 54

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importer was nonetheless reason for a concerned editorial in the bulletin from Kew Gardens, the Kew Bulletin, in 1890: It can hardly be doubted that if natural conditions alone operated, sugar production would be confined to tropical countries. It is in point of fact so closely proportioned to available solar energy, that extra-tropical countries, on equal terms otherwise, would not have a chance. Under the existing circumstances it is interesting to observe from the concluding letter of the correspondence that European sugar is now invading India, which can hardly be regarded as otherwise as a purely artificial result.58

Agricultural experts eagerly tapped into the anxiety about sugar imports to drive home their point that the government of India should do more for the country’s agriculture. According to agronomist John August Voelcker, who compiled a thorough report on how to improve India’s agricultural conditions in 1890, India should have been an exporter rather than an importer of sugar because of its favorable climate and soil conditions.59 The fact that Voelcker was commissioned to carry out such an investigation was not only a recognition by the government of India that it had to engage in raising agricultural output, but was also a sign of a consciously more proactive role in agricultural and botanical improvement. Although the most successful innovations were still in the realm of processing cane rather than innovations in planting, plowing, or the application of fertilizer, a start was at least made to improve cane growing itself. To enhance knowledge of how water, soil, manure, and cane varieties influence the yield, model sugar farms appeared all over India. Thicker cane varieties, for which the Beheea mill was perfectly suited, spread rapidly. Farmers experimented with high-yielding varieties, and where this was done on a more systematic basis (such as in the United Provinces) the output could easily increase from 2.5 to 5 metric tons of gur per hectare, depending on the cane variety used.60 India had the advantage of being part of the British Empire, which partly compensated for the fact that it lagged behind Java in respect of a research infrastructure to breed new cane varieties. By the late 1890s, sugarcane diseases in Madras and Bengal had attracted concerned interest at the highest levels of the government of India and the Ministry for the Colonies in London. As a result, the remedies developed by the Kew Bulletin 1890, CXL, p. 71. Voelcker, Report on the Improvement, p. 247. 60 Robb, “Bihar, the Colonial State,” p. 223; Voelcker, Report on the Improvement, pp. 248–251; Hadi, The Sugar Industry, pp. 30, 104–105. 58 59

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authorities at the Kew botanical gardens to address the same pest that had inflicted havoc in Barbados were brought to the attention of the government of Bengal.61 Knowledge traveled through the empire, even if did not always travel fast. While the art of cane breeding had been discovered by Bovell and Harrison in Barbados in the late 1880s, and simultaneously by F. Soltwedel in Java, it did not begin before 1912 in India, at the experimental station in Coimbatore. However, within a decade, substantial progress was made. For example, a number of agricultural stations in India bred a Mauritian cane variety in 1920, which did not yield the highest sucrose content but was reasonably resistant to local diseases.62

The Bombay Deccan: The Double Frontier The growing interest in agriculture by the government of India was accompanied by interest in the risks of indebtedness and its detrimental effects on agricultural output. Although indebtedness might not have been a cause of declining sugar production in Bengal, it had definitely been a limiting factor in Madras and had caused upheaval in the hinterland of Bombay. Cooperative credit would therefore become the fourth focus of attention next to irrigation, technology, and botany. Experiments into cooperative credit were undertaken in Madras, in the North Western Provinces, and a little later in Bengal and Bombay. In 1904, the government of India issued the Cooperative Credit Act. The Bombay Deccan is exemplary for what cooperative credit could contribute with regard to raising the output of cane, particularly when combined with irrigation and agricultural innovation. Irrigation in the dry hinterland of Bombay, combined with skillful cultivators and credit facilities, opened up an entirely new chapter in the history of Indian sugar production. However, things first had to become worse before they became better. Indebtedness in the Bombay Deccan in the late nineteenth century was not excessive compared to European preindustrial societies, Punjab, or Java for that matter,63 but the conditions were different. Similar to Madras and Java, the Bombay government had encouraged ryotwari arrangements for land rent, rather than the zamindari system, to foster healthy agricultural conditions. Government of Bengal, Revenue Department – Agriculture August 1899, File No. 17S/3, Sugar-cane disease. 62 Report of the Indian Sugar Committee 1920, pp. 111–113. 63 Charlesworth, Peasants and Imperial Rule, pp. 83–84. 61

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The ryots in the Bombay Presidency were allowed to sell their lands to ­encourage investors into agriculture.64 Moreover, the Bombay Deccan, the higher-altitude hinterland, was an important site for cotton cultivation to supply the global market. A steep decline in cotton prices immediately after the end of the American Civil War in 1866 caused a severe debt crisis among farmers.65 This brought to light the downside of the ryotwari system, as under the legal conditions of individual alienable property of land, debts led to sales of land and the flow of some of the rural proletariat toward the cities. The situation was exacerbated further a few years later by a terrible famine, which followed a severe drought in the Bombay Deccan. The government of Bombay responded to these disasters with a two-pronged approach of loan systems and irrigation.66 It implemented a tagai (intermittent loan) system for advance crop payments in the 1870s, which became the basis for a cooperative banking system introduced around 1900.67 Sugar emerged as the new cash crop of the Bombay Deccan around 1870. In the “irrigation frontier,” as Attwood termed it, even farmers without much capital but with sufficient entrepreneurial spirit, agricultural skills, and good contacts could emerge as planters of 150 hectares of land. This was comparable in size to the smaller holdings of the Creole sugar bourgeoisie in Java, or the hacienda owners in Cuba, for that matter.68 Similar to Java’s Pasuruan eighty years previously, cane growing in the Bombay Deccan was developed by immigrants, the Saswad Malis, who had fled from dryer parts of the country. These cultivators had been growing cane on small garden plots near wells for centuries.69 The extensive irrigation works to the Murtha and Nira canals in the Bombay In the Bombay Presidency around 1880, about two-thirds of occupied land was under ryotwari and a third under different systems of overlordship. In the Deccan and southern Maharatha country sugar belts, the ryotwari system was most widespread. Charlesworth, Peasants and Imperial Rule, p. 67. 65 Keatinge, Rural Economy, pp. 85, 91; Charlesworth, Peasants and Imperial Rule, p. 94. 66 It should be noted that Charlesworth argues at length that the extent of dispossession of debtors by their moneylenders in the 1870s has been exaggerated by colonial officials. Charlesworth, Peasants and Imperial Rule, pp. 103, 123–124. According to I. J. Catanach, however, the moneylenders kept an eye on their debtors’ land; Catanach, Rural Credit, pp. 24–26; In addition, Ignatius Chithelen, referring to Harold Mann (see Mann, The Social Framework, p. 329), emphasizes that small peasants were losing their land to the large farmers who acted as moneylenders. The practice of the latter continued after the introduction of cooperative credit, as has been pointed out by Catanach. Chithelen, “Origins,” p. 605; Catanach, Rural Credit, pp. 225–235. 67 Attwood, Raising Cane, pp. 105–106. 68 Ibidem, pp. 86, 116. 69 Keatinge, Rural Economy, pp. 38–41. 64

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Deccan, which began in the 1860s, allowed them to employ their skills on a larger (though still modest) scale. Nevertheless, from just 17,000 hectares of the Nira left-bank canal system planted with cane in 1899, an output of seven metric tons of sugar per hectare was achieved: more than three times as high as in North India.70 Despite their humble position as tenants when they came to the Nira canal district, the Saswad Malis were in no way subservient within the local hierarchies. They were empowered through their knowledge of how to make cane growing profitable under the relatively expensive conditions of the irrigation scheme. They brought their skills, cattle, and seed and had a reputation as innovative sugar growers who knew precisely when and how to plant and which cane varieties to use. One of the first important innovations they adopted in the 1880s was the iron plow. The indigenous wooden plows only dug the ground near the surface. This worked well for dry soils, which would severely dehydrate if thoroughly inverted,71 but irrigated land allowed for the use of the deeper cutting iron plows that worked three times faster than the wooden ones. The only disadvantage was that more teams of bullocks were required to draw the iron devices.72 Moreover, as the Chinese had already done around Batavia, the Saswad Malis planted the cane in rows distant enough from each other to allow weeding and banking up of young cane with a plow and thus by bullock power. This method of cane planting (the manjiri system) saved labor, water, and manure.73 The Saswad Malis were able to attract and put to profitable use the new agricultural credit facilities developed by the Bombay government. After the severe famine of 1899 to 1900, during which Bombay city was flooded by refugees from the countryside (an exodus that coincided with a plague epidemic), the Bombay government began to promote the spread of village-level cooperative societies.74 From 1911 onward, this system became further backed up by private capital from Bombay businessmen, who saw the Nira canal scheme as an important area for operations.75 As a result, interests on mortgages reduced from 25 to 9 percent in the early twentieth century, which was low in comparison to the 20 to 30 percent Ibidem, p. 184; Attwood, Rising Cane, p. 51. Royal Commission on Agriculture in India, Report, p. 110. 72 Attwood, “Capital and Transformation,” p. 27. 73 Report of the Indian Sugar Committee 1920, pp. 170–171. 74 Chithelen, “Origins,” p. 605; See Charlesworth, “The Myth of the Deccan Riots”; Catanach, Rural Credit, pp. 42–45. 75 Chithelen, “Origins,” p. 605; Catanach, Rural Credit, p. 89. 70 71

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rates charged by moneylenders all over Asia.76 In these same years, the Saswad Malis began to improve the furnaces for sugar boiling, helped by the department of agriculture of the Bombay government, which was quite active in improving the design. The bullock-driven iron crusher became common in 1906, and a few years later, dozens of oil-driven crushers appeared on the scene. These were profitable for cultivators with more than twenty acres of land. Migratory contract teams, consisting of cultivators with their bullock carts, from the dry villages outside the canal tracts did most of the harvesting and gur making.77 What makes the situation in the Bombay Deccan singular in the context of India is the combination of the ryotwari land rent system, the construction of irrigation tracts, rapidly increasing cane yields per acre, the arrival of credit facilities, and a growing interest by Bombay capitalists in the sugar belt that emerged in their Deccan hinterland. In fact, all the conditions for the development of industrial sugar would have been met, if cheap imported refined sugars had not been abundantly available, and if a thriving gur market had not existed with consumers prepared to pay almost as much for high-quality gur as for refined sugars.78 However, this changed radically when the government of India decided to establish a tariff wall in 1932, enabling industrial sugar production to develop rapidly. The Deccan factories would evolve into a true plantation conglomerate in the course of the twentieth century. From the available evidence, we can conclude that Indian sugar cultivation and manufacturing was far from stagnant. Yet from the 1880s onward, the government of India became increasingly concerned about the state of this sector. This was against a backdrop of famines, the realization that the zamindari land rent system might be an obstacle to raising agricultural productivity, and a trickle of sugar imports from beet sugar producers looking for overseas markets. Meanwhile, with respect to cane milling, immense improvement had been achieved with fairly modest capital investment. Irrigation, the Beheea mills, improved cane varieties, and the development of a credit infrastructure were basic factors in the increasing sugar output of India. In that respect, the administrators of the government of India were right in rejecting the critique of British business Keatinge, Rural Economy, p. 89. For late nineteenth-century rates in Bengal, see Financial Department, March 1884, Agriculture – Head Produce and Cultivation, File No. 1, Coll./ No. 10, Serial No. 9–21, dated Chinsunah, May 9, 1883, No. 10. See also Roy, “Factor Markets,” p. 158. 77 Attwood, “Capital and Transformation,” p. 28; Attwood, “Raising Cane,” p. 79. 78 Keatinge, Rural Economy, pp. 185–186. 76

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circles in India that their government was neglecting the technological development of sugar production. The trajectory of the Java sugar industry was totally different. To survive in a globally competitive market, it had to resort to high capital and labor intensity. Confined to the symbiosis with the rice sawah, it was forced to substitute land for labor to such an extent that it engendered labor shortages, and options for the mechanization of haulage and heavy field labor had to be explored. However, the increasing involvement of the factories in the agricultural side only brought more labor into the fields, in contrast to India where the sugar sector was able to economize on labor by introducing a range of labor-saving devices.

Java: Labor and Technology In the 1860s, sugar yields in Java were almost four metric tons per hectare, twice the amount achieved in 1840 and more than twice the average yield in India. At the time, it was expected that yields in Java could easily be doubled, which would indeed happen in the course of the 1890s.79 This helped reduce the factories’ hunger for sawah land. Although the total acreage under cane on Java continued to expand into the twentieth century, the colonial government kept its growth in check to avoid open conflict with the village elites and to ensure sufficient land was available for food production. After the withdrawal of the colonial government from the cultivation of cane in the 1870s, the factories became increasingly involved in the agricultural side of sugar production. This process was accelerated in the wake of a twofold crisis that struck the Java sugar industry with unexpected severity. A sharp drop in sugar prices on the world market in 1883 was immediately followed by the ecological disaster caused by the sereh disease, which ruined large tracts of cane standing in the field. The entire Java sugar industry was in grave danger. The banking system that provided the factories with capital to make annual advances to the cane cultivators (land rents) practically collapsed. Under great time pressure, it had to be put back on its feet by a consortium of the NHM and Dutch metropolitan banks. Nevertheless, most of the better-managed sugar factories survived the combined ecological and financial crisis. The crisis definitively did not spell the end of the established Java sugar plantocracy, but intensified cooperation among sugar Douglas, “De Java-Rietcultuur,” p. 555.

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factories, professionalized their management, and tightened supervision by the banking institutions that had rescued the financial system underpinning the sugar sector. However, these financial institutions would not have stepped in had they not been convinced the sugar factories as such represented a solid investment. Prior to 1884, most of the attempts to improve efficiency in the fields were more or less confined to the mechanical aspects of the process. The search for mechanization was driven by labor shortages that became serious particularly in East Java in the 1860s and 1870s. Haulage was one of the areas of the production process where labor shortages manifested themselves. The relationship between sugar manufacturers and cart ­drivers was often problematic, and some manufacturers tried to tie the drivers to unfair and onerous contracts.80 One of the ways to diminish or even break the power of the cart drivers was to build an extensive system of light railways (narrow gauge) that connected the fields to the factories, and of course from the factories to the railway stations and in some cases to a harbor or roadstead. By the early twentieth century, practically all the sugar factories maintained a dense web of narrow-gauge tracks connected to the Javanese railway network.81 As in India, advances in the production chain started at the cane processing side, and in Java the agronomic innovations only gained momentum when the Cultivation System was being phased out. As long as factories under government contract were not involved in growing cane, they had no real interest in improving the output per hectare. Exceptions to the rule were the semi-governmental NHM, which had its own “model factories.”82 The application of manure was widely practiced in Mauritius in the 1850s, but occurred only infrequently in Java, which also explains why the laboratory for agricultural chemistry established in 1848 in Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, p. 151. In 1881, steam railways were constructed for Kadhipatten and Djatiwangi (Cirebon), Langsee, and Tandjong Modjo (Japara); in 1882 for Pangka (Tegal); in 1883 for Surakarta, and in the same year plans were made for an extensive railway system in Yogyakarta. See NA, MvK I, inv. nos. 6401–6416, fiche 13, Mail report 1881, nos. 82, 178+, 453+, and 463+; NA, MvK I, inv. nos. 6417–6429, fiche 14, Mail report 1882, nos. 560+ and 939+; NA, MvK I, inv. nos. 6430–6440, fiche 15, Mail report 1883, no. 1164+. In 1887, sugar factories in the Surabaya Residency were connected to the eastern lines of the Staats Spoorwegen a.o. through the construction of a steam tramway; see NA, MvK, inv. nos. 6457–6463, fiche 19, Mail report 1887, no. 123+. In 1892, sugar factories in Japara were connected to steam tramways; see NA, MvK I, inv. nos. 6518–6519, fiche 29, Mail report 1892, no. 935+. 82 With regard to the NHM model factory Wonopringgo and its English administrator, Thomas Jeoffries Edwards, see Knight, “Technology, Technicians,” 40–45. 80 81

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Buitenzorg (Bogor) was discontinued in 1860.83 The use of fertilizer was not further pursued at the time, and there was less need to do so as long as cane was rotated with paddy. As the Umbgrove Commission had produced convincing arguments that the sawah system, with its rotation of crops, was still the best option for the Java sugar industry, the issue of fertilizer was effectively abandoned. In contrast to this, in Mauritius six to seven ratoons were common practice in the mid-nineteenth century, which placed the question of using fertilizer firmly on the agenda of Mauritian planters.84 Experiments to improve the yield of cane per hectare were undertaken by the civil service in the 1850s and 1860s, however, and the semi-governmental NHM also conducted experiments at some of its factories. Mention has already been made of the Reynoso system. This system of digging trenches and gullies was adopted from the 1860s onward. Cane stalks were planted in the gullies and after four months of growing, the ridges were shifted into the gullies, making the cane root deeply in the soil.85 The first experiments with the Reynoso system were conducted in the Residency of Japara in 1863, followed later in Semarang and Pekalongan. Two years later, a Dutch translation of an article by Reynoso appeared and civil servants were informed about the assumed advantages of the system. It was expected that this system would involve less work for the Javanese peasantry, but the first experiments proved quite disappointing in that regard.86 The Reynoso system had such a high requirement for labor in terms of groundwork that specific limits had to be set for its implementation. In 1878, the government stipulated that no more than 26,000 cubic meters of soil per bau were to be replaced (Illustration 4.1).87 Given the shortage of forced labor in the 1860s, it is hardly surprising that the first experiments with European iron plows (which required fewer rounds of plowing) were carried out in this decade. At that time, cane gardens were plowed by Javanese plows pulled by two buffalo. Sometimes children or stones were placed on the plows to push them deeper into the soil. In the 1860s, the Dutch firm Enklaar, Riphagen & Co. sent plows to Java with one of its representatives, F. A. Enklaar van North-Coombes, A History of Sugar Production, pp. 66–67, 76–77, 143. Ibidem, p. 67. 85 Sibinga Mulder, De rietsuikerindustrie op Java, p. 39. 86 Douglas, “De Java-Rietcultuur,” pp. 559–562; NA, MvK, inv. no. 6354, Mail report 1872, no. 308+; NA, MvK, inv. no. 6355, Mail report 1872, no. 450. 87 Douglas, “De Java–Rietcultuur,” pp. 562–563; Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, pp. 101–102. 83 84

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Illustration 4.1.  Field with Reynoso trenches in East Java. Source: De Suikerfabrieken Watoetoelis en Poppoh in beeld.

Guericke.88 The problem with these devices was that it sometimes required eight to ten buffalo to pull them, because these animals were usually not well fed and the soil was extremely heavy to turn. Enklaar’s business was not particularly successful, and he found other avenues for his agronomic interests. The urge to mechanize diminished in the 1880s, when the coffee blight and the sugar crisis led to a declining labor demand from the Java plantation sector. Once the labor shortages returned in the early twentieth century, experiments with mechanization resumed, this time using tractors and caterpillars, in spite of the fact that at that time the price of such machinery was probably thousands of guilders against thirty cents for a day’s work by a laborer. In areas with acute labor shortages, the Reynoso method was abandoned. At the Boedoean factory in East Java, for example, this happened after strong resistance from the local population, and when serious labor shortages occurred in the plains of Besuki. Meanwhile, experiments with mechanical groundwork were conducted by various factories. The fact that experiments were conducted with tractors that were more Tichelaar, “De exploitatie eener suikerfabriek,” p. 215.

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Illustration 4.2.  Caterpillars plowing the field at Sugar Factory Boedoean. Courtesy of personal collection of Mr. Tom Etty.

expensive to run than manual labor shows that labor was expected to become a scarce commodity in East Java.89 In the 1920s, labor scarcity would indeed become endemic in East Java. The sugar factory Wringin Anom in Besuki, for example, was competing with other sugar factories for field labor for planting. One of these factories was Boedoean. The unfortunate administrator of Boedoean lost his workforce to at least three adjacent factories: the cane cutters preferred Wringin Anom, the diggers Tangerang, and the De Maas sugar factory was popular among diggers, cutters, and children. Further, these were not the only conflicts between sugar factories in the late 1920s.90 There was a great deal of family migration from Boedoean to the Djatiroto factory, the largest sugar factory in Java. To attract laborers to Boedoean, they were granted sawah lands and the prospect of better wages.91 In 1913, for example, a steam plow pulled by a steel cable was used at Kalimati to plow 120 bau. It took 120 days, which was four times longer and thus far more expensive than expected, and a lot of additional manual work was still needed. Schippers, “Mechanische grondbewerking,” pp. 1170–1171. 90 NA, Archive Wonolongan, inv. no. 41, Dossier Aanplant no. 18, 28 mei 1926. Ibidem. 91 Van Schilfgaarde, “Boedoean,” p. 423. 89

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Mechanical plowing was also introduced in the 1920s at Boedoean, after new, successful experiments in East Java (Illustration 4.2). At first, mechanical plowing was only applied to lighter soils (in the Residencies of Kediri, Probolinggo, and Besuki). For example, at the Wringin Anom factory in East Java, mechanized plowing was carried out in the alang-alang (sharp grass) and paddy fields.92 In addition, experiments were conducted to dig Reynoso trenches mechanically. It took some time to develop the right type of plow, with wheels that did not sink into the heavy, wet soil. Caterpillars were the answer, and were found, for example, at Boedoean. These machines not only plowed, but also dug the Reynoso trenches mechanically, as can be seen from the photographs included in the 1923 annual report from this sugar factory.93 Labor shortages forced sugar factories to purchase this expensive equipment. Mechanical plowing cost at least fifty guilders per bau, against thirty-five guilders when done by man and buffalo power. Moreover, the mechanical plow was not always easy to use. The cane gardens were often spread out and littered with all kinds of obstacles (including graveyards in the middle of the fields). Nonetheless, by 1928 (and after sixty years of experimentation), an economically viable alternative was available to replace manual work if necessary. However, that year the economic depression set in, and the need for mechanization of fieldwork vanished.94

Journalism, Business, and Botany Under the Cultivation System, the Dutch colonial government had consistently enhanced the technological level of the Java sugar industry. From the 1870s onward, private banks, planters, and journalists began to take over, in the same way private entrepreneurs such as Thomson and Mylne or Minchin were at the vanguard of the dissemination of agricultural knowledge. For Java, technician, journalist, and planter Enklaar van Guericke, who had accompanied the first European plows to the island, has to be mentioned in particular. Since the plows did not become a success, he devoted his energy to instilling scientific interest into the planters. Enklaar van Guericke became a prominent journalist and acted as the organizer of the first and second agricultural conferences in Yogyakarta NA, Archive Wonolongan, inv. no. 41, Dossier Aanplant no. 13, 16 mei 1926. See the annual report from Boedoean, Pers. coll. Etty. 94 “Diverse mededeelingen,” pp. 879–881; NA, Archive Wonolongan, inv. no. 42, Brief administrateur van Soekodono aan administrateur van Wringin Anom, 14 maart 1930. 92 93

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and Surakarta in 1873 and 1875.95 These were held by the Indisch Landbouwgenootschap (Indies Agricultural Society), which was established in 1870 and issued its own journal, also under the editorship of Enklaar van Guericke. Another initiative in those years was the systematic study of cane varieties started by planter J. A. Krajenbrink, who raised cane on the estate he owned in Krawang, West Java. He personally wrote to sixty colleagues to collect cane from all over the archipelago.96 The 1884 world sugar crisis, which in Java coincided with the sereh disease, accelerated and professionalized agricultural research. The joint sugar factories in Central, East, and West Java each established experimental sugar stations in the mid-1880s. The station in Semarang, for example, was the result of a collaborative effort by thirty-three sugar factories. As for the sereh disease itself, although more than ten years after the initial outbreak of this pest a definitive cure was still not available, substantial progress had been made in the field of improving cane.97 In 1887, botanist F. Soltwedel (the first director of the Central Java experimental sugar station located in Semarang) found a remedy by laying out the cuttings at higher altitudes (known as mountain bibit).98 This made the cane resistant to the sereh disease for a while. In the same year, Soltwedel discovered how to grow cane from seed, inaugurating the quest for higher yielding and more pest-resistant cane varieties. New cane varieties were also brought to Java from India, and though low yielding, these varieties proved very resistant and were therefore crossed with Javanese varieties.99 Consistent experiments with new cane varieties meant hundreds of thousands of seedlings had to be raised and studied, which led in 1921 to a sereh-resistant variety that made the use of cuttings from the mountains unnecessary. Over time, the Java clones were introduced into many other sugar-producing countries.100 One famous series of Java clones went to Coimbatore (current-day Tamil Nadu), for example, where wild and resistant canes were crossed with cultivated ones. In fact, sugar manufacturing in India also benefited from this systematic cane improvement, as it was done in such a way that the cane was able to give higher yields under the rigorous conditions in North India.101 Bosma and Raben, Being “Dutch,” p. 134. Cramer, “Sugar-Cane Breeding,” p. 148. 97 See Van Lookeren Campagne, “De tegenwoordige stand.” 98 Van der Schoor, “Pure Science and Colonial Agriculture,” p. 14. 99 Cramer, “Sugar-Cane Breeding in Java,” pp. 144–145. 100 See Galloway, “The Modernization.” 101 Cramer, “Sugar-Cane Breeding in Java,” p. 150. 95 96

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In Java, the entire traumatic episode of the sereh disease intensified collaboration among factories and led to increasing attention being paid to the process in the fields. This development was also attended by a vertical concentration of the sugar sector. What were termed the “cultivation banks,” with bases in Amsterdam or Rotterdam, had financed the sugar estates and had taken the lead in combating the disease. In 1886, the Indische government issued a ruling that strengthened the position of the cultivation banks, enabling them to exert direct supervision over the sugar factories to which they issued advances.102 The professionalization of factory management led to the establishment of the Java Sugar Syndicate (Algemeen Syndicaat van Suikerfabrikanten in Nederlandsch-Indië) in 1893. The membership of the syndicate consisted of the factories, represented by their administrators (estate managers). The syndicate had its own journal, The Archief, which started in 1893 with an issue of 450 copies, to eventually reach a readership of 1,450 in 1918.103 Field, factory, trade, and finance became increasingly concentrated within a managerial system that included practically all of the 180 sugar factories on the island. The Java Sugar Syndicate manifested itself as a powerful representative of the sugar factories from its very beginning. In the first year of its existence, it requested that the colonial government impose a penal sanction against breaches of contract by Javanese laborers, a request considered seriously.104 However, the syndicate’s greatest success in its early years was obtaining the suspension of the duties levied by The Hague on sugar leaving Java. These duties were later entirely abolished in 1897. The argument of the syndicate’s lobbyists had been that low sugar prices had caused the closure of twelve sugar factories, and that eliminating the duties would help the exports by the Java sugar industry.105 However, the alarmist tone of their appeal concealed the fact that the rapidly increasing milling capacity of factories simply made the smaller ones obsolete. A process of mergers and the concentration of management was under way, facilitated by the intertwining of family ownership. This restructuring led to the conversion of private ownerships into PLCs, but these were still dominated by the Creole sons and grandsons of the first generation Koninklijk Besluit, January 24, 1886. The most important of these cultivation banks (Cultuurbanken) were the NHM, the NILM (Netherlands Indische Agricultural Society), and Internatio Rotterdam. 103 Archief voor de suikerindustrie, Jubileumnummer, p. 12. 104 NA, MvK, inv. nos. 6512–6515, fiche 27, Mail report 1895, No. 327. 105 Idema, Parlementaire Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch-Indië, pp. 33, 109–110. 102

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of sugar contractors. In some cases, the interweaving and concentration of ownership led to a unique situation for Java in which factories and cane planting estates could become disconnected in terms of management. In the 1920s, for example, trains carried huge amounts of cane from the northern to the southern part of Yogyakarta.106 A final sign of power of the sugar syndicate was that it convinced the government that its own “European” statistics for the Java sugar sector were more reliable than the official colonial reports presented to the Dutch Parliament, since the latter inevitably had to rely on the information provided by the village heads, the lurahs.107

Ever More Hands are Needed In Java, the pursuit of higher yields would continue unstintingly and would bring about intense interference in the field as well as tight supervision involving one overseer for every thirty workers. Whether physical force was used in the cane fields on a daily basis is not clear; however, the use of rough language by European staff was universal. The situation was probably not as inhumane as in East Sumatra, where even in the second decade of the twentieth century 8 percent of the labor force every year was incarcerated for some period of time. Yet planters in Java sometimes took justice into their own hands and put unwilling persons “in the block.” This happened at least in the Principalities.108 By the mid-nineteenth century, the Java sugar industry was already strikingly more labor intensive than in Cuba, and this discrepancy only increased further. In 1925, the Java sugar factories had about 180,000 hectares under cane with an average yield of thirteen metric tons per hectare. This production was realized by about one million cultivators, 250,000 cane cutters, and 150,000 workers in the factories, leading to a total number of 1.4 million workers. That these figures mean a massive substitution of land for labor can be illustrated by a comparison with Cuba and India. Cuba was able to produce five million metric tons of sugar in 1925, with probably about 315,000 cane cutters to clear 747,780 hectares of cane, producing 6.7 metric tons of sugar per hectare.109 De Vakbeweging. Vakblad ter propageering van de eenheidsgedachte in de Indische vakbeweging, 1, 27 (1926) p. 210; Bosma, “Sugar and Dynasty,” pp. 87–88. 107 Van Hinloopen Labberton, Invloed van de suikerfabriek op hare omgeving, pp. 11–12. 108 Bosma and Raben, Being “Dutch,” p. 136; Houben, Kraton and Kumpenie, p. 277; Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, p. 178. 109 Prinsen Geerligs, Handboek ten dienste van de suikerriet-cultuur iv, p. 217. 106

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The planting was carried out by about 50,000 to 75,000 workers, a ­fraction of the number of cultivators employed in the cane fields of Java.110 India had 1.16 million hectares under cane in 1924, approximately 2.9 million workers involved in the growing of the crops, and a further 1.8 million involved in processing it into gur, khandsari, or industrial sugar. This gave a total output of 3.2 million metric tons, or 2.8 metric tons per hectare.111 Meanwhile, the number of workers per hectare was less than 0.5 in Cuba against 4 in India, and Java topped the list with 7.7. The number of workers per ton of cane was 0.074 for Cuba, 0.59 for Java, and 1.42 for India. It is clear the Java sugar industry had absorbed immense amounts of labor in fieldwork, in comparison not only to Cuba but also to India. Although its wage level was low, there was a limit to the number of workers that could be mobilized in Java. Heavy work could be done by machines, with the exception of cane cutting, but much of the work done by women was difficult to mechanize. For light fieldwork, women were hired by preference, but they were quite often already involved in paddy harvesting and therefore not available for work in the cane fields. Men had to be hired instead and further, a recruiting system was put in place. For example, at the Wonolongan factory in East Java, this was done by engaging recruiters in Sumenep (Madura) to contract labor from there and adjacent islands. It was expected that people would go to the Wonolongan factory as soon as they learned there was sufficient work and they would be treated well.112 In 1927, the management of the factory decided to build a large shed to house the Madurese migrant laborers. Moreover, it was decided to provide female and child laborers with a breakfast of rice on an experimental basis. Finally, land was also bought to allow families to settle down on a quarter of a bau while financial assistance was extended to them. It is clear the sugar factory wanted a stabilized labor force in its compound.113 Hygiene, applied science, and rationality became the hallmarks of the twentieth-century Java sugar industry. Cane was grown in the bibit (infant plants) gardens, from which cuttings were cut to be planted. During the Data presented by César Ayala suggest at least one laborer was needed to grow one cabbalería (13.42 hectare) of cane, which would amount to a figure of over 55,000 but probably not more than 75,000 workers. Ayala, American Sugar Kingdom, pp. 125–126. 111 See Appendix I. 112 NA, Archive Wonolongan, inv. no. 41, Dossier Aanplant no. 13, 16 mei 1926. 113 NA, Archive Wonolongan, inv. no. 41, De superintendent Cultuurmaatschappij “Wonolongan” aan de administrateur van “Wringin Anom,” 21 Juni 1927. 110

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planting season (June, July, and August), women and children worked in the bibit sheds from early morning until late evening by artificial light to clean and select plants. These were long hours, but the work was relatively well paid. A child could earn thirty to forty cents and an adult woman one to one and a half guilders per day. This was quite an amount compared to the twenty-five to forty cents for a full day toiling the land an average laborer received.114 Carefully constructed buildings, bridges, and dams, hospitals for staff and labor, schools to train staff, experimental stations, and laboratories: all these were portrayed in beautiful coffee table books produced to impress upon the readers back home in the Netherlands the well-organized character of the industry and its benign effects on the welfare of Java and its people. These books, usually published to mark the anniversary of a sugar factory, wanted to convey not only the sophistication of European plantation agriculture, but also its harmonious relationship with its environment and its workers in particular. The incorporation of Javanese and Madurese local and religious rituals into the calendar of the company should be considered in that light. Every year in April, the sugar campaign started with a meal feast, a slametan, in the presence of a priest and with prayers. In East Java these were often followed by Madurese festivities, such as fighting between two bulls and udjong, two men trying to whip each other on the back with a rattan.115 This self-image of the modern sugar factory, its management, and its owning families portrayed an orderly and scientific enterprise; one that was not just taking from the land, but giving something back to it as well. The factory itself was modern and clean and had its own small chemical laboratory, usually staffed by Eurasian and Indonesian chemists. The sugar factories boasted of the welfare they brought to the people and about the small hospitals, roads, bridges, and schools they built. That these benefits were barely a trickle in terms of economic impact will be discussed in Chapter 5.116 Whereas in India the growth of sugar output could be accomplished by extending the total acreage and by introducing labor-saving implements, the Java sugar sector had embarked on an industrial process, which on one hand comprised mechanization, but on the other Van Schilfgaarde, “Boedoean,” p. 433. Ibidem, pp. 491–492; Collection Etty, annual report Boedoean 1927, p. 45. 116 Van Schilfgaarde, “Boedoean,” pp. 554–557. 114 115

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increasingly labor-intensive control over cane cultivation. As early as the 1860s when wages were rising, the sugar factories had looked for ways to reduce their labor costs. Mechanization was therefore seriously considered, particularly with regard to the haulage of cane and the transport of sugar. It was not for nothing that the first railway construction on Java began in 1863. European plows were tried from the 1860s onward, although they were not used on an operational scale before the First World War. In the 1920s, mechanical plowing was usually confined to the rough work of preparing the paddy fields or turning over waste ground, although caterpillars were used to dig Reynoso trenches at some factories. The option of growing cane for three or four consecutive years on the same field was also scientifically investigated in the early years of the twentieth century at the East Java experimental station. There, cane varieties were developed that could be raised without alternating with paddy. The trials were promising and would save a lot of groundwork.117 While the heavy (male) groundwork became subject to mechanization experiments and agronomists looked for alternative, less laborious ways of handling the fieldwork, the amount of female and child labor increased and in some cases was even better paid than heavy, male labor. This reflected the determination of the sugar factories to control the entire cycle of cane growing to prevent the sereh disease or similarly disastrous plagues from striking again. While the Java sugar sector was firmly on its way toward a fully integrated plantation complex, in India sugar cultivators began to improve their agricultural practices and methods for producing gur. In their own ways, both production systems were inscribed by the advance of modernity. They featured important similarities in this respect, such as the role of exhibitions, the role of science, and the increasing control of colonial government and enterprise over rural life. However, in terms of the share of GDP, the sugar sector became much more important for the national economy of Java than for that of India. In Java, the share of the sugar sector in the island’s GDP rose from 4 percent in 1850 to over 10 percent in 1925, in spite of consistently declining sugar prices. However, this is not surprising in view of Java’s status as the second largest cane sugar exporter in the world by 1925. The same decline in sugar prices may explain why in India, the sugar sector’s share of the GDP or national income showed a fairly modest increase from about See Kobus, “Cultuur van suikerriet.”

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1.7 percent in 1850 to 3.4 percent in 1940, in spite of an almost sevenfold growth in sugar output.118 In Chapter 5, the tensions brought about by the Java sugar industry, the largest employer outside the colonial government, receive prominent attention. Whereas in India, for most of the latter part of the nineteenth century the agricultural approach toward sugar had dominated and the voices that propagated the industrialization of sugar production had been relatively weak, this began to change around 1900. While in the 1880s the only advocates of sugar industrialization had been the London import houses and the sugar factories of Madras, they were joined around 1900 by the Begg Sutherland company, which was on its way to establishing a number of sugar factories. Its first factory in Cawnpore just made sugar from gur, but from 1900 it built factories and established cane farms in North Bihar to replace the waning indigo estates. Yet, in spite of a growing industrial interest in sugar production, the rural approach perceiving sugar as a “peasant crop” would continue to dominate the considerations of the government of India throughout the first three decades of the twentieth century. 118

Export agriculture contributed approximately 10 percent of Java’s GDP in 1850 and 25 percent in 1925 (Van Zanden, “Economic Growth,” p. 24). The share of sugar in Java’s exports in terms of value was 40 percent in 1850 and 45 percent in 1925 (Mansvelt, Handelsstatistiek Java, tables 10 and 11; Gebhardt, Die Zukunftsentwicklung, p. 24). For India in 1850, the value of the total output of 500,000 tons of gur consumed without further refinement was 20,175,000 Rs. (1.5 Rs. per maund). In addition, the total value of the exported 100,000 metric tons of khandsari and factory sugar by the late 1840s was 22,300,100 Rs. (8.29 Rs. per maund), to which 6,052,500 Rs. should be added for the revenue of 300,000 metric tons of molasses (0.75 Rs. per maund). For the estimate of India’s GDP in 1850 of 2,869,000,000 Rs., see Broadberry and Gupta, “India and the Great Divergence,” p. 20 and tables 1, 8, 12, 14. For 1939–1940, Sivasubramonian provides the figure of 108,000,000 Rs. as the net added value of industrial and khandsari sugar production in India (Sivasubramonian, The National Income, p. 236). The cost of the cane needed to produce one maund of industrial sugar ranges between 4.4 and 5.6 Rs. at the factory gate (Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, p. vi). The market value of gur consumption varied greatly in the 1920s and 1930s, but was seldom beyond 6–7 Rs per maund. Yet we may take a full rupee per maund as net added value, because the opportunity costs of using bullocks and equipment were negligible and farmers would have saved the time needed to take cane to the factories. For the total Indian production of four million metric tons of gur (Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, p. xii), the net added value would therefore be 107,600,000 Rs. To the figures for industrial sugar, khandsari, and gur we still have to add the production of fifty million metric tons of cane with a total value of 672,500,000 Rs., based upon an average price of 5 Rs. per ten maunds of cane. For an estimate of the net added value we have to deduct 12 percent for seed, manure, and wear and tear. All in all, the net added value of gur, khandsari, and industrial sugar production together amounts to 891,800,000 Rs. For the estimated Indian National Income of 26,551,000,000 Rs. in 1939–1940, see Sivasubramonian, The National Income, p. 367, table 6.1.

5 The Era of the Global Sugar Market, 1890–1929

With its first sales on the London sugar market in the 1860s, beet sugar began its career as a global commodity. Bolstered by subsidies and protection, the sugar from continental Europe applied fierce downward pressure on sugar prices. In Germany, a strong beet sugar industry emerged that was well supplied with capital, fostered by state-of-the-art chemical research, and sustained by cheap labor from Poland.1 Cane sugar exporters had a hard time maintaining their position against the dumping and protectionist practices of the beet sugar industries. The latter also had an advantage, as they could more easily adapt to price fluctuations, thanks to their shorter growing cycle. The beet cultivation cycle takes less than a year in contrast to cane, which needs up to one and a half years between planting and harvesting.2 The United Kingdom was not a beet sugar producer itself, but an exporter of refined sugar, and it had a keen interest in combating protectionist tendencies in continental Europe. In 1864, it brought the three largest European sugar producers (France, Belgium, and the Netherlands) around the table in Paris. This conference resulted in ceilings on the import tariffs established by these countries to protect their sugar manufacturers. The truce did not last long. In 1883, the European continent was self-sufficient in sugar and the problem of overproduction would only grow in the following years.3 Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Before the First World War, about 400,000 Polish seasonal laborers came to work in the German beet sugar industry. Poggi, “The German Sugar Beet Industry,” p. 89. 2 Suermondt and Van den Berg, Nota over de suikerindustrie, p. 7. 3 Millard, Riet–en beetsuiker, p. 5. 1

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would enter the scene as major producing countries that heavily ­promoted their sugar exports through subsidies. They did this to support the conversion of large segments of their wheat agriculture to beet, since European wheat was outcompeted by imports from the New World. Indirectly, the agricultural crisis of the 1870s led to the sugar crisis of 1883 and a further deterioration of sugar prices in the subsequent years. The capacity to absorb this rapid growth of sugar output was limited. By around 1900, sugar was consumed in substantial quantities only in the richer industrialized and urbanized nations. Even in wealthy countries such as Germany, France, and the Netherlands, the annual per capita demand amounted to less than half of the forty kilograms consumed by Britain, the most sugar-craving nation in the world.4 Meanwhile, all attempts to regulate the global sugar market were obstructed in the 1890s by German and Austrian-Hungarian export-promoting policies. In 1901, 57 percent of German, 63 percent of Austro-Hungarian, and 67 percent of French sugar production was for export.5 The geopolitics of sugar engaged all the great powers – Britain, Russia, Germany, and France – and involved markets all over the world in the early years of the twentieth century.6 Cheap beet sugar could reach the harbors of India and China, thanks to the Suez Canal and the steel-built ships that brought about a considerable reduction in the freight costs between Europe and Asia. The Indian and Chinese markets were opened up to competition from European beet sugar producers. In general, the global history of sugar of the final decade of the nineteenth century was marked by falling prices and sharp competition among the sugar cartels battling to conquer the expanding new markets.7 Industrial sugars reached parts of the world that had never shown interest in cane or beet sugar. For example, in Bukhara (Uzbekistan), sugar from cane was barely consumed, as similar to southern France the juice from grapes had long In Germany, France, and the Netherlands, consumption was about fifteen to sixteen kilograms. Italy and Serbia were at the bottom of the list with 2.7 and 2.4 kilograms respectively, less than half the per capita consumption in Japan and also less than the urban centers of India. Mazumdar, Sugar and Society, p. 375; Van Lookeren Campagne, “De suikerconventie,” p. 481. 5 Russia, which only became a co-signatory of the Brussels Convention in 1907, exported 187,226 metric tons (11,430,174 poods) of sugar in 1904. Since its total production was 836,984 metric tons (51,091,840 poods), 78 percent of Russian beet sugar stayed within Russia’s empire. Raffalovich, Russia and Its Trade, p. 75. 6 Pigman, “Hegemony and Trade Liberalization,” p. 202. 7 For a brief overview of the battle among the cartels, see Prinsen Geerligs, Handboek iv, pp. 30–38. 4

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satisfied the demand for sweetness. From the mid-nineteenth century onward, however, Russian beet sugar followed the country’s relentless expansion into Central Asia and Siberia.8 The British colonies were the most seriously affected by the expansion of beet sugar that also flooded the United Kingdom. While the British refineries perished, sugar imports from the Caribbean and Mauritius declined from about 250,000 metric tons in the 1870s to less than 50,000 in the first years of the twentieth century.9 Sugar from Mauritius was at that time directed to the Indian market. For India, it has been argued that a distinct relationship existed between the decline of its total acreage under cane (from 3.1 million acres in 1891–1892 to 2.65 million acres in 1896–1897) and its growing imports.10 There is some basis for this assumption, but only in respect of the early years of the twentieth century, when cheap sugars from various countries flooded the Indian markets. Particularly threatening were the shipments of white sugar that came from Trieste and Hamburg. Germany and Austria were able to charter ships cheaply, ships that would otherwise have left empty for Asia to load tropical cash crops. However, sugar from refineries in Hong Kong, Japan, and Australia as well as raw sugar from factories in Mauritius, Java, and the Straits were also arriving in India. Yet the decline of almost one third of the area under cane in India between 1890 and 1907 was the consequence of the rapidly expanding jute industry in Bengal rather than of imports. Moreover, a slight increase in production per hectare may also have created a diminishing demand for land on which to grow cane. In this regard, experiments with improved cane varieties commenced in these very years. Lord Elgin, the acting viceroy of India, at least remained impassive about the figures concerning the declining acreage submitted to him by India’s emerging industrial sugar interests. However, while he considered their worries exaggerated, he did not see harm in granting the request made by Begg Sutherland & Co. and the Madras Chamber of Commerce to send an Indian representative to the Brussels conference on sugar Davies, Report on the Trade, pp. clx–clxi. Chalmin, The Making of a Sugar Giant, p. 31. 10 Government of India, Finance and Commerce Department (Statistics and Commerce-A) Proceedings, July 1902, Nos. 202–222. Representation from the local Chambers of Commerce and certain firms, regarding the critical condition of the sugar industry in India, No. 219, Letter from Begg, Dunlop & Co.; Geo. Henderson & Co.; Turner Morrison & Co.; Lyall, Marshall & Co.; and Octavius, Steel & Co., Calcutta to The Secretary, Bengal Chamber of Commerce. 8 9

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bounties (subsidies) scheduled for June 1898.11 The British government, with the notable exception of famous Secretary to the Colonies Joseph Chamberlain, was not yet ready to embrace countervailing import duties, but things changed after the conference in Brussels failed to produce agreement. The sugar industrialists in India and the Mauritian planters, who already had the support of Chamberlain, found no difficulty in convincing the new viceroy, Lord Curzon, to impose countervailing duties against the bounty-fed sugar entering India.12 Curzon did not see an immediate threat to the gur sector (the main concern to the government of India), but he rightly observed that this might alter within a few years. In early 1899, he hammered the countervailing duty through the legislative council of India. Via this route, Chamberlain, the champion of imperial interests, handsomely outflanked the Cobdenist majority in the government of which he was part.13 In the years after 1899, new rounds of bounties by Germany and Austria-Hungary were answered by British duties. This eventually led to a new attempt to negotiate a convention. In early 1902, just before this Brussels conference, various participants involved in industrial sugar production in India, most notably the chamber of commerce in Madras and the firm Begg Sutherland & Co. (which had just planned to start industrial sugar production in North India), petitioned the government of India to impress upon it the critical condition of the country’s sugar industry. They claimed the countervailing duties were not achieving the desired effect because sugar from the Austro-Hungarian Empire was carried to India almost freight free, the Austrian-German cartel system was still in place, much of the beet sugar arrived under the guise of confectionaries, and finally, beet sugar reached India via the United Kingdom; a route not affected by the countervailing duties.14 The proceedings of the Brussels conference were anxiously followed by the chambers of commerce, particularly the one in Madras, and by Ganong, France, Great Britain, p. 255. The government of India, taking the position that the sugar bounties needed to be suppressed, sent its own representative to the bounty conference held in Brussels on June 7, 1898, but at that time was not prepared to propose countervailing duties as suggested by Begg, Dunlop & Co., Turner, Morrison & Co., and Lyall, Marshall & Co. See Government of India, Finance and Commerce Department (Statistics & Commerce-A), Proceedings, June 1898, No. 494. 13 Ganong, France, Great Britain, pp. 253, 260. 14 Government of India, Finance and Commerce Department (Statistics and Commerce-A), Proceedings, July 1902, Nos. 202, From the Government of Madras, No. 564, dated February 25, 1902. 11 12

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Begg Sutherland & Co. They pointed out to the government of India that it should take immediate steps to prevent continental producers from building up stocks in India and using other methods to circumvent the Brussels Convention in the making. They further urged the government to impose additional duties.15 The Deccan Sugar and Abkhari Sugar Company, only recently established by the Madras house of Binny, had already been brought to the brink of collapse because of Austro-Hungarian sugar dumping, and it closed its mills in March 1902.16 The indigo planters in Bihar, who were considering the options of a transition to sugar, informed the government of India of their fears that ongoing attempts to put together the necessary capital in England would be jeopardized. Sugar factories and chambers of commerce in India also warned that the Brussels conference might allow dumping to continue until 1903, which could inflict irreparable damage on the nascent Indian sugar industry. They demanded immediate action, but received the obvious reply that the viceroy wanted to await the results of the Brussels conference before taking any further steps.17 The Brussels Convention of 1902 substantially diminished the dumping practices, and for the time being reversed the increasing share of beet sugar in world sugar production. This share was reduced considerably, from 62 percent in 1897 to 45.6 percent on the eve of the First World War.18 However, the clock could not be turned back. From the 1880s, increasing efficiency in industrial sugar manufacturing brought the prices of European and Java sugar to below those of India and China. Permanently falling sugar prices, the fact that white refined sugar could

Government of India, Finance and Commerce Department (Statistics and Commerce-A), Proceedings, July 1902, Nos. 202, Letter from A. J. Yorke, Chairman, Madras Chamber of Commerce, Dated March 10, 1902. 16 Government of India, Finance and Commerce Department (Statistics and Commerce-A), Proceedings, July 1902, Nos. 208, Letter from the Managing Agents, Deccan Sugar and Abkari Company, Madras, to the Secretary to the Government of Madras, Dated March 17, 1902. In March 1902, the managing agents of the Deccan Sugar and Abkari Company Limited informed the government of Madras that it had refused to buy any more cane from the ryots and that its crushing mills had been closed down. Government of Madras, Revenue Department 1902, Miscellaneous Series G.O., No. 865–866, March 26, 1902. 17 Government of India, Finance and Commerce Department (Statistics and Commerce-A), Proceedings, July 1902, No. 202–219, Government of Madras, Revenue Department 1902, Miscellaneous Series (G.O. 818), March 19, 1902, Finance and Commerce Department, No. 1472-S.R., Calcutta, March 13, 1902, Under Secretary to the Government of India to the Secretary to the Government of Madras. 18 Deerr, The History of Sugar ii, p. 491. 15

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be stored endlessly, and that huge cargos could be shipped by steamships all worked in favor of industrially produced sugar. As a result, in India and in Southeast China, local sugars were outcompeted by industrial sugars on their own markets around 1900, something that had previously been unthinkable.19 Sugar produced in Guangdong had even experienced a short boom in exports to Europe as late as the 1870s. Refineries were established by Jardine & Matheson in Huangpu (1869), Hong Kong (1876), and in Shantou or Swatow (1878). These refineries began to produce white sugar, not of very good quality, but more refined than the traditional Chinese products.20 Shantou sugar exports reached a peak in 1884 and remained at that level until 1899, after which they declined. Following the sugar crisis of 1884, increasing quantities of European beet sugar entered the Chinese and Indian markets. Traditional Chinese sugars fell further out of grace with refiners because of their high molasses content compared to the industrial sugars.21 Java sugar began to flow into the Chinese market via Hong Kong, thanks to an alliance of its producers with Butterfield & Swire Taikoo, which had opened a refinery in the city in 1881 to break the monopoly of Jardine & Matheson.22 Swire had its own shipping capacity to import Java sugar, but in the course of the 1890s, sugar exports to China and Japan became so substantial that a consortium of Dutch shipping companies sponsored by the government of the Netherlands Indies opened a direct shipping line, the Royal Interocean Lines, to carry sugar for the Chinese and Japanese markets.23 The abundant supplies of industrial sugar from Java induced Jardine to discontinue its purchases from Guangdong and to switch to supplies from Java in 1907.24 Meanwhile, sugar producers in Java realized that the survival of their industry hinged on access to the rapidly growing Asian urban markets. Whereas in 1870, 82 percent of Java sugar was still exported to the Netherlands, the picture had dramatically changed by around 1900. The general trend for Java sugar was that of a shift from the West to the Asian markets; only interrupted by massive sugar exports to the United Mazumdar, Sugar and Society, p. 383. Ibidem, pp. 351, 356–357; Prinsen Geerligs, “Invoer en fabrikatie,” pp. 1322–1323. 21 Needham et al., Science and Civilisation in China vi, 3, p. 128. 22 Corsten, “Verslag omtrent den suikerhandel,” pp. 312–313. 23 Ibidem, pp. 394, 399. This happened only after the Java Sugar Syndicate had impressed upon the government of the Netherlands Indies that the opening of such a steam line was long overdue; NA, MvK, fiche 36, 1902, Mail report no. 375. 24 Marks, Rural Revolution, p. 107. 19 20

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States during the 1890s, when supplies from Cuba dwindled because of the ravages of the civil war that raged on that island.25 The sugar markets of Germany, Austria, Russia, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands were more or less closed to cane sugar. The Java sugar industry started shipping sugar directly to Calcutta just before 1900, and thanks to the Brussels Convention would raise its share in the total sugar cargo unloaded at this harbor to 58 percent in 1904.26 However, this position came under threat later that year, when the countervailing Indian duties were lifted on European continental beet sugar as part of the same Brussels Convention. German and Austro-Hungarian sugar made a comeback in the Indian harbors, but the sugar producers in Java were fortunate enough to see the duties on beet sugar reimposed in 1905 by the Indian government, after it had observed that there were still disguised bounties in violation of the Brussels Convention. It used a clause in the convention text that gave its signatories the right to retaliate against dumping.27 By 1908, exports from Java had secured a large Indian market for industrial sugar, not least thanks to the fact that it succeeded in rapidly converting to higher quality sugars to serve the Asian markets, where refiners preferred better grades. Whereas superior sugars made up only 0.2 percent of the total output of Java sugar in 1896, the figure had increased to 55 percent by 1924.28 Large quantities of these white sugars were adapted to local tastes by refiners. Meanwhile, in India rumors still existed that Java sugar factories used bone charcoal from cows in their filters, which was actually no longer the case after the late nineteenth century. These allegations sometimes gave Indian sugar manufacturers an advantage, as they could pretend their sugar respected the taboo. However, in general the low price of imported sugar was enough to induce retailers, bakers, and lemonade makers to ignore feelings about impurity and bone charcoal and “cheat” their customers by mixing imported sugar with Indian sugar, as Prinsen Geerligs claims.29 It was actually not necessarily cheating, but rather that the taste of gur remained popular. For example, the Rosa Sugar Works & Distillery, established as Gebhardt, Die Zukunftsentwicklung der Java-Zucker-Industrie, p. 77. Government of Bengal, Report on the Administration of Bengal during 1904–1905, p. 80. 27 Government of Bengal, Report on the Administration of Bengal during 1906–1907, p. 73, and Government of Bengal, Report on the Administration of Bengal during 1909– 1910, p. 79; Deerr, The History of Sugar ii, p. 508. 28 Harreveld, “Voortdurende verschuiving,” p. 1279. 29 Prinsen Geerligs, Handboek iv, pp. 35–36. 25 26

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early as 1804,30 processed sugar from surrounding villages mixed with muscovado from Java in the early years of the twentieth century. The “adulteration” of refined sugars with molasses was the order of the day around 1911. This coincided with a peak in popularity of the Swadeshi (nationalist) movement, which might have strengthened the predilection for the “traditional” taste of sugar. At any rate, the practice of mixing still existed around 1930, when in some places in India artificial gur was made by adding molasses to Java industrial white sugar.31 There were also other ways to create sugars more to local tastes. In China, for example, imported sugar was ground again into a kind of powder. In Karachi, a representative of the United Java Sugar Producers (Vereenigde Java-suiker Producenten) visited a mill where Java sugars were pulverized and washed with gluey water, probably containing a substance based on lime. He was there at the invitation of one of the largest sugar exporters of Java, the Kian Gwan firm, a prominent Chinese trading house that had offices all over Asia, including Karachi and Bombay. Its owner himself had excellent contacts in China and was the president of the Chinese Sugar Traders Association in Singapore. Via its local office in Karachi, this trading house also did its part to combat the prejudices against industrial sugars among more orthodox Hindus.32 Accordingly, The Daily Gazette of Monday, November 11, 1929 published an article entitled “Java Sugar and Caste Prejudice. Some Misconceptions.” The author of the article, quite possibly a representative of Kian Gwan, cleverly linked industrial modernity and hygienic ways of producing food with Hindu conceptions of purity: Notwithstanding the spread of education conservative India is not yet converted to the extent as to intelligently adopt better and purer food products in preference to crude and harmful indigenous supplies . . . The dirty jaggery and edible molasses are preferred to the purer crystalline products for fear of losing caste, and the locally ground Java is consumed with much more eagerness than the crystals from which it originates.33

In the remainder of the article, which described the manufacturing process, the word “pure” appeared many times.

Deerr, The History of Sugar i, p. 57. NA, VJP, inv. no. 191, J. C. F. Schor, Rapport no. 20 “Bezoek aan Sugar Bureau te Pusa,” p. 14. 32 NA, VJP, inv. no. 191, J. C. F. Schor, Rapport no. 12 i/z Karachi Pisa & Ghisa suikers. 33 Ibidem. 30 31

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The crucial connections with retailers usually went through locally e­ stablished trading houses. In India, the Java sugar exporters dealt mostly with Ralli Bros., the trading empire founded by the well-known five Greek Ralli brothers, two of whom had established a firm in Bombay in 1861 during the American Civil War. Cotton was their first objective, but after the resurgence of the United States as a cotton producer in 1866, they diversified and first opened an agency in Cawnpore, where they also became engaged in the gur trade. Another, probably even more important, activity was their involvement in jute exports from Bengal. The entire management of Ralli Bros. was Greek, but it controlled a dense network throughout India, branching out to the village level.34 For the Java sugar industry, the alliance with this agency was exceptionally important. It was the old house of Maclaine, founded in Batavia in the early nineteenth century by Scotsman Gillian Maclaine, which acted as a link between the Java sugar producers and Ralli Bros.35 By 1911, Java had become the prime sugar exporter to the Asian markets. Half of its exports (445,000 metric tons) went to India, another 234,000 metric tons were shipped to China, and 126,000 to Japan.36 The Indian market primarily compensated for the loss of the American market after the United States had taken over the Spanish sugar empire. Cuba became part of America’s informal empire after the Spanish-American War of 1898–1899 and received preferential treatment, whereas the Philippines came under formal American sovereignty and gained duty-free access to the American market.37 The Indian market became particularly important to Java because Japan established its own sugar industry on the island of Taiwan, which it had annexed in 1895. This replaced, or at least marginalized, the existing system of about 1,000 small indigenous sugar factories by establishing forty-eight industrial factories relying on compulsory deliveries from farmers.38 Meanwhile, Japan drew its expertise from Java. The Dai Nihon Company that was active in Formosa was also one of the Japanese owners of sugar factories in Java. This allowed the company to mix Javanese and Taiwanese cane varieties. In total, five factories in Java were in Japanese hands in the 1920s.39 NA, VJP, inv. no. 191, J. C. F. Schor, Rapport no. 16, Notities i/z Cawnpore, December 27–30, 1930; Kanta Ray, “Asian Capital,” pp. 475, 493–494. 35 Tariff Board, Oral Evidence Tariff Board, p. 629. 36 Gebhardt, Die Zukunftsentwicklung der Java-Zucker-Industrie, p. 77. 37 The duty-free quantum for the import of 300,000 metric tons was established in 1909. Larkin, Sugar and the Origins, p. 121; Perk, “De Philippijnse suikerfabrieken,” p. 239. 38 Prinsen Geerligs, Handboek iv, pp. 116–120. 39 Knight, “Exogenous Colonialism,” p. 487; Rosenfeld, “Een en ander omtrent de suiker-industrie in Formosa,” 1028–1029. 34

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Percentage

40 30 20 10 0 1800

1850

1900

1950

Year Cuba %

Java %

Figure 5.1.  Share of Java and Cuba in world cane sugar production. Source: Bosma and Curry-Machado, “Two Islands,” p. 239.

The sugar industries in Java and Cuba benefited hugely from the collapse of the European beet sugar industry in the aftermath of the First World War, when the share of beet in world sugar production dwindled to an all-time low of 21.5 percent (Figure 5.1).40 Java and Cuba, two fertile islands of almost equal size, had become the two most important cane sugar exporters, each of which at the time had its own hemisphere with buoyant markets. While Cuba could rely on eager consumers in the United States, the Java sugar industry steadily increased its sales to India and China. Some clouds appeared on the horizon in the course of the 1920s, when Cuba tried to expand its exports beyond the U.S. market. At the time though, the Cuban threat seemed remote, and since the Java sugar industry had improved the quality of its sugars, it had also less to fear from beet sugar. In India, as well as in Southeast China, traders discovered Java sugar could be stored for up to one or two years in their hot, humid climates, while beet sugar allegedly deteriorated after three or four months. Moreover, in Southeast China the taste of beet sugar was highly disliked. In the course of the 1920s, the position of Java sugar still seemed solid, although the threat of worldwide overproduction was looming as the recovering European beet sugar industry resumed its old position.41 Gebhardt, Die Zukunftsentwicklung der Java-Zucker-Industrie, p. 66. NA, VJP, inv. no. 191, J. C. F. Schor, “Resumeerend Verslag van een studiereis door Britsch-Indië, Ceylon, Burma en Malaya betreffende den suikerhandel en de suikerrietcultuur benevens de suikerindustrie aldaar,” March–April 1931, p. 12; NA, VJP, Report no. 39 by O. Steenstra to Vereenigde Java-Suikerproducenten, Hongkong October 1, 1931; Gebhardt, Die Zukunftsentwicklung der Java-Zucker-Industrie, p. 69.

40 41

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In Java, the acreage under cane doubled to 140,000 hectares between 1900 and 1920, and increased at an accelerated pace to 200,000 hectares in the subsequent decade. The increase would have been even larger if the government had not imposed limits on the amount of land the factories could lease. The claims to land by sugar factories were regulated in the Fabriekenordonnantie (factories ordinance), intended to protect food production in the Javanese villages surrounding the factories.42 Just a handful of new sugar factories were permitted, and requests for expansion were only granted if these did not encroach on the availability of land and water for food crops.43 As a rule, no more than a quarter of the cultivatable land around a factory could be used for cane growing, though in practice this was not sacrosanct. Each application for an extension had to be investigated by a commission of inquiry headed by the assistant Resident. In these years, attempts were made to escape from the sawahs and create a “shortcut to the plantation” by starting sugar production on uncultivated land. This usually concerned swamps, which required extensive drainage. The obstacles sugar companies encountered when they left the familiar surroundings of the desas were enormous and could only be surmounted by lavish inputs of capital. However, confidence had grown so much, thanks to the expanding markets for Java sugar, that such gigantic projects were undertaken. Reasonably well known in this regard was the Djatiroto factory in East Java, established by the Trading Society of Amsterdam (HVA) in 1908. This sugar plantation was unique in the sense that it was based on a long-term lease of almost 10,000 hectares of land in Pasuruan, and was designed to produce two and a half times as much as the largest estate in Java. About 185 miles of railway track was planned to connect the fields to the immense factory. A complete village with barracks and a street with shops emerged in the compound. Millions of bricks had been made to construct houses for the (European) factory employees. This new sugar factory was the result of a clearing effort of a scale previously unknown in Java. The business plan for the Djatiroto factory was also based on an abundance of land and, quite unique for the Java sugar industry, adopted labor-saving processes such as ratooning. The cane was planted with cut down trees still in the fields, a sight one would have expected in Cuba with its perennial labor shortages, but not in Java. Labor had to be recruited from as far as the other end of the island.44 Verslag van de suiker-enquête commissie, pp. 17–18. Ibidem, pp. 19–20. 44 See Van Geuns, De suikeronderneming Djatiroto. 42 43

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In the first years of its existence, the Djatiroto factory went through a very difficult time in a malaria-infested environment where it faced constant labor shortages. The plantation made substantial losses, which could only be sustained because its owner, the Trading Society of Amsterdam, was such a wealthy and prominent colonial enterprise.45 The Java sugar industry was undoubtedly running up against its social and ecological limitations, and this also concerned the ever-growing output of molasses, the by-product of sugar manufacture. In the mid-1920s, the molasses production of the Java sugar industry reached the immense figure of 450,000 metric tons, which it could only dispose of abroad as there was barely any market for it in Java. Finding a commercial outlet for the molasses almost became a matter of survival given the declining profit margins in the sugar industry. Mixing alcohol with petrol, in the same way the Philippine factories did in the 1920s, was not an option, as the powerful oil industry in the Netherlands Indies would never have allowed it. Petrol in the Netherlands Indies cost a pittance anyway. However, the Java sugar industry was helped by the global trade in molasses that emerged in the mid-1920s. A rapidly increasing share of the molasses from Java was bought by the Pure Cane Molasses Company, a subsidiary of the Tate and Lyle Company, the sugar giant that played a central role in the world market for sugar. This company had built a small fleet of molasses tankers, shipping molasses from Java to China, for example.46

Cane Fires, Conflict, and Resistance The sugar industry placed heavy demands, both on the available land and labor in Java, a pressure that was moreover highly unequally divided. From the sugar crisis of 1884 to the Brussels Convention of 1902, the Java sugar industry survived by keeping wages down at their 1870s level and by only raising payments for the use of land in a piecemeal fashion. Including the premiums for the village elites (on average 2.5 guilders per bau), land rents paid by the sugar factories had slowly increased from thirty-five guilders in 1882 to forty-three guilders per bau in 1910.47 In the early years of the twentieth century, critical observers noted that cultivators who leased their sawah land to the factories were considerably worse “Een grootsche onderneming,” Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, October 10, 1922. The Pure Cane Molasses Company itself was a subsidiary of the British Molasses Company. See Perk, “De Philippijnse suikerfabrieken” and Schott and Harreveld, “Het verstoken van Melasse.” 47 Algemeen Syndicaat van suikerfabrikanten, Grondhuurprijzen, pp. 6, 14. 45 46

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off than if they had grown rice.48 In 1910, the minister of the colonies accordingly ordered an inquiry into the stagnating level of land leases paid by the sugar factories. However, it would take another eight years until the colonial government established minimum rates based on two crops of rice; the harvests that were missed during one cycle of cane growing. After a substantial hike in 1918, the conditions for leasing land to the sugar factory did improve, though they may still have been unfavorable.49 Consequently, it was often under the force of indebtedness that peasants leased their land out to the factories. Nevertheless, while it was uneconomical for individual peasants, the work and income provided by the sugar factories to the desa as a whole (and this included the landless or practically landless) involved appreciable extra returns per bau that could amount to 300 guilders in 1900.50 Yet the total additional rural income from sugar was to stagnate or even decline in real terms, amounting to only 400 guilders per bau by 1930. Large segments of the rural population were reliant on additional employment by the sugar factories, which employed 10 percent of the male and just over 3.6 percent of the female population of Java by 1920.51 Impoverished Javanese quite often rented their land at very low rates to rich villagers, who in turn leased it out to sugar factories.52 These wealthy villagers did not only make money by leasing out the land, but also by having the work carried out by

Kohlbrugge, Is grondverhuur aan suikerfabrieken een zegen, pp. 8, 13–14, 29. As a basis, Kohlbrugge used figures from the “Mindere Welvaartsonderzoek,” which were, however, criticized by some as too pessimistic. See Van Hinloopen Labberton, Invloed van de suikerfabriek, p. 33. 49 Even though Verslag van de suiker-enquête commissie, page 126, concluded conditions were no longer unfavorable after 1918, cultivators who had to rent out their land were still disadvantaged because they were forced to plant fast-growing and lower-yielding rice varieties to harvest two crops within the time allotted to them. 50 This has been argued by Van Hinloopen Labberton, based on the “Mindere Welvaartsonderzoek.” See Van Hinloopen Labberton, Invloed van de suikerfabriek, p. 43. 51 The figure of 400 guilders as an additional income per bau is from Gonggrijp, Over de invloed van het westers grootbedrijf, pp. 13–14. According to Levert, about 55 percent of the labor force employed in the sugar sector was male, 32 percent female, and the remaining 14 percent young adults of both sexes. Dividing the latter 14 percent equally between male and female leads to figures of 610,000 male and 390,000 female workers employed for 100 days per year doing fieldwork, plus 400,000 males working as cane cutters and employed in the factories. See also Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, p. 126. According to the census of 1920, there were 9,435,919 men aged fifteen and above, and 10,876,338 women of the same age range in Java in that year. Nederlandsch-Indië Volkstelling 1920 vol. ii, p. 152. 52 Verslag van de suiker-enquête commissie, p. 167; Huender, Overzicht van den economischen toestand, p. 91. 48

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­ ependents or sharecroppers, keeping for themselves a considerable share d of the wages paid by the sugar factories. Concerns about indebtedness and the increasing power of the sugar factories over local populations were among the reasons the Ministry of Colonies began its “Declining Welfare” investigation in Java in the early years of the twentieth century.53 The tenor of the multivolume report that resulted was that these fears were justified and that there were also other compelling issues. Peasants often got their land back too late and were caught up in endemic struggles over the division of the water supplies between cane and paddy. Since the days of the Cultivation System, water had been used for cane in the daytime and at night for rice, but the distribution of water at night was often irregular and not in favor of the poorer members of village communities. Moreover, in times of budding nationalism, this bias toward the sugar factories became an increasingly contentious issue.54 Nationalists resented the fact that sugar factories were the largest beneficiaries of irrigation yet barely contributed to the related expenditures, although individual sugar factories sometimes spent considerable sums on specific works.55 First reports regarding organized resistance against sugar cultivation date from the early years of the Cultivation System, when cane fires were started in the Eastern Salient and thousands of peasants assembled in front of the house of the Resident of Pasuruan. Many incidents throughout Java, including cane fires, were reported subsequently. Although the word “strike” was hardly used in Java before 1918, instances of laborers stopping work in the fields or the factories did occur. As early as 1882, a three-month strike occurred in the Residency of Yogyakarta. This involved 10,000 workers at thirty sugar and indigo estates and was accompanied by extensive cane fires.56 That these were part of the repertoire of the peasants to defend against increasing pressures had already been noted in the early years of the Cultivation System. In the course of the 1880s as well, numerous cane fires occurred in East Java. As Robert Elson has pointed out, these were a result of the agricultural crisis of that This was part of what was termed “Ethical Policies,” a Dutch variant of the British “White Man’s Burden” and the French “Mission Civilisatrice.” Locher Scholten, Ethiek in fragementen, pp. 176–208. 54 Verslag van de suiker-enquête commissie, p. 184. 55 Ibidem, pp. 203–204. 56 Margana, “Hybridity, Colonial Capitalism and Indigenous Resistance,” p. 96. See also NA, MvK I, inv. nos. 6417–6429, fiche 14, Mail reports 1882, nos. 760+, 771+, 812+, 837+, 862+, 888+, and 953a+. 53

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decade, which led to a reduction in payments for land and labor by the sugar factories together with increasing indebtedness and alienation of land by the richer strata of the desa, leading to a growing class of marginalized, disgruntled villagers.57 During the first two decades of the twentieth century, cane fires became widespread throughout Java. Draconic measures were taken that affected entire villages, such as directing cart drivers and entire desa populations to the house of the bupati (regent), who then had to single out the culprits.58 Conservative journalist M. van Geuns, a champion of the Java sugar factories, wrote with barely concealed pleasure about the intimidating effect of having the entire village marched to the bupati’s house.59 From 1904 onward, Residents could order villagers to guard the fields day and night, in fact another punishing measure and actually counterproductive, as most village elites were still supportive of the sugar factories.60 Over time, less draconic and probably more effective measures were taken that did not alienate the desa elites from the cause of cane growing. These included mapping the exact plots where the various cart drivers and loppors (the cane cutters and helpers of cart owners) were working in the cane fields. When a plot was burned, it was accordingly easy to find the cutting and haulage team that might have had a hand in starting the fire. European civil servants, the factories, and like-minded colonial newspapers were well aware that the village elites were usually supportive of the sugar factories. After initially applauding reprisals against entire villages, the colonial press therefore shifted its course and began to portray cane fires as anomalous to the Javanese character. They preferred to attribute these incidents to Madurese migrant workers, the cane cutters, “who hardly respected someone else’s property.”61 Having the leaves burnt off made the cane cutters’ work easier, but cultivators keen to get their land back and plant it with paddy were equally tempted to set the cane alight. Cane that had been burnt could still be milled, but not with any additional delay. Some villagers were luckier than others in getting their fields cleared of cane, and it could be assumed that the lands of the village elites were harvested first. On the other hand, the more wealthy farmers who constituted the village elites had less and less interest in

Elson, “Cane-burning,” pp. 221, 226–227. Van Moll, “Het rietbrandeuvel in de residentie Kediri,” pp. 1016–1017. 59 Van Geuns, Het rietbranden-vraagstuk, p. 48. 60 Huender, Overzicht van den economischen toestand, p. 95. 61 Van Geuns, Het rietbranden-vraagstuk, p. 15. 57 58

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having their land back early, as they had often leased it, thus confining themselves to the role of moneylenders.62 As long as the village elites had a stake in sugar production and were able to exert control over the other villagers and workers in the field, including the cane cutters, they were reliable protectors of the cane fields. Conversely, cane fires might become massive, for example if the great majority of the cane cutters came from outside the Residency and if the village elites loathed leasing out their land to the factories. This was the case in Kediri, a Residency hit particularly hard by cane fires. Kediri was a relatively thinly populated area, a frontier region where most loppors were migrant workers.63 Kediri was also a region where many of the inhabitants had sought refuge after having suffered from vexing conditions in, for example, the Principalities. It was furthermore an area where smallholders planted cane purchased by the factories, a situation quite unique in Java, and which made the farmers wary of leasing out their land against the existing unfavorable returns. Not surprising, some factories in Kediri used bribery and intrigue at the village level to exact the cooperation of wealthy peasants who stood firmly by them. This was in all likelihood the root cause of the extensive cane fires in this particular Residency, but was also behind other incidents. One of these ended in a shooting in Kediri in 1907 in which an Indonesian civil servant was killed and the assistant Resident seriously wounded. In the ensuing gunfight with the local police force, the wealthy notable who had not been accommodating to the sugar factory met his death along with fourteen of his relatives, as Radin Fernando uncovered in his article “In the Eyes of the Beholder.”64 Once again, the colonial newspapers perceived the cane fires as both an aberration of the social order of the desas and a challenge to the colonial order. Initially, they were inclined to attribute the fires to outside influences; however, later, the Dutch colonial press was quick to tie the spread of these incidents across Java (where hardly any Madurese migrant workers were employed) to the emergence of the Indonesian mass movement Sarekat Islam. The truth is that the number of cane fires had been on the rise after the 1880s and reached a peak in 1912–1913. This was in the early days of Sarekat Islam, and incidents of fires decreased at the

Mackie and Malley, “Productivity Decline,” pp. 738–745. See also Hirsch, “Het rietbrandenvraagstuk.” 63 Van Moll, “Het rietbrandeuvel (vervolg),” p. 1051. 64 See Fernando, “In the Eyes of the Beholder.” 62

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same pace as the movement’s rapid demise in the early 1920s.65 The presence of Sarekat Islam might have induced people to respond to what they felt as injustice, rather than just putting up with it. Cane cutters might have viewed with less equanimity how part of the wages they were due ended up in the pockets of their foremen. Ordinary peasants might have been more ready to light fires when they saw that they had to wait longer than the village elites for their fields to be returned to them. However, it is difficult to know. What we do know for certain is that the cane fires elicited vehement reactions from the European colonial press, which took these incidents as proof of the weakness and lack of vigilance of the colonial authorities. The cane fires were detrimental to the prestige of the colonial government, but more so because they affected its standing in European colonial society, rather than among the Indonesians. The problem was taken very seriously, and the government’s Colonial Reports (Koloniale Verslagen), together with the annual reports from the Java Sugar Syndicate, published systematically gathered data for every Residency in the 1920s. Somewhat unexpectedly, this data indicated the majority of fires were not the result of arson. Sparks from the locomotives carrying cane to the factory, or from the trains on the railway lines in Java, were a significant cause. Of the 538 cane fires in 1923, only 208 were found to have been started deliberately. What matters most is the general trend of a decline in the number of such incidents.66 A combination of higher wages, better conditions for land leases, and increased spending on guarding the fields explains this downward trend in the 1920s. These factors in turn were a result of the sugar factories’ policies of strengthening their position in colonial Java.

Multiple Resistance in the Sugar Industry The cane fires were not a new phenomenon, though their number may have multiplied during the first two decades of the twentieth century. As such, they were a symptom of the widening division between the beneficiaries from the cultivation of sugar and those who had to eke out a living by carrying out the arduous work. In the course of the nineteenth century, highly diverse interests formed in the realm of sugar production:

Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, p. 321. From 1913 to 1920, the number of cane fires declined from 2,100 to 747. The area burnt declined by the same percentage. Verslag van de suiker-enquête commissie, pp. 350–351. 66 Tichelaar, “De rietbranden,” pp. 618–622; see also Elson, “Cane-burning,” p. 222. 65

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the factory owners (frequently Creole); the European, Eurasian, Chinese, and Javanese employees; the desa elites; the other sawah-holding peasants excluded from local power; the Indonesian sharecroppers; the local wage earners; and finally, the immigrant workers. Animosities existed among all of these groups, which sometimes ended in violent outbursts, as in Kediri. In the midst of these tensions, mass mobilization in the rural areas by the more radical wings of the Indonesian nationalist movement was taking place.67 Both the colonial government and the sugar industry sought to address these tensions in their own ways – the government by implementing labor policies inspired by the newly established ILO (International Labour Organization), and the factories by shoring up their plantation features. By the end of the First World War, Europe was under the spell of revolutions. News of this traveled fast to the Netherlands Indies, where the germs of revolutions were discovered in some corners. In these unsettling years, Count Johan Paul van Limburg Stirum (the governor-general from 1916 to 1921) took a number of measures considered far too progressive by the sugar factories. When reports of pending food shortages in Java reached the governor-general in 1917, he responded by drafting an order to restrict the total acreage planted with cane in Java, which in turn led to vehement protests by the sugar industry.68 In 1919, Van Limburg Stirum appointed a commission to investigate the possibility of establishing a minimum wage, as unskilled wages for Javanese (the so-called coolie wages) had not been raised during the preceding fifteen years and were completely out of line with prices, which had doubled over the same period of time.69 This problem had become more acute, as the number of households solely dependent on wage labor appears to have increased rather dramatically in these years. Furthermore, in 1920 a sugar inquiry committee was instigated to investigate the causes of strikes in the sugar industry. This committee included leaders of the nationalist movement, one of whom was Cokroaminoto, the leader of Sarekat Islam. However, Cokroaminoto did not become actively engaged in the deliberations of the committee.70 Van Limburg Stirum’s investigations and his measures to improve the conditions for workers in the cane industry brought him into open With regard to these developing splits and tensions in rural areas, see, for example, Oates, “The Afdeeling B.” 68 The restriction was eventually not promulgated, as the rice harvests of 1918 and 1919 were exceptionally good. Locher Scholten, Ethiek in fragmenten, pp. 98–99. 69 Ibidem, pp. 100–101. 70 Verslag van de suiker-enquête commissie, p. 11. 67

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conflict with the powerful united sugar factories. As the largest employer second to the government of the Netherlands, the united sugar factories had direct access to the government in The Hague, where they portrayed the governor-general as too soft on the Indonesian nationalists. Moreover, they organized a vitriolic public campaign against Van Limburg Stirum through the colonial Dutch-language newspapers. Some of the most prominent newspapers were pushed into this stance by the Java Sugar Syndicate in 1921, which also set up its own party in the newly established People’s Council, a representative body for the Dutch East Indies that shared legislative responsibility with the governor-general.71 This party consisted of conservative European civil servants, Chinese and European businessmen, and bupati. These actions did not stem the nationalist tide in the Netherlands Indies, but instead exposed the sugar industry’s reliance on colonial domination and added to the nationalists’ conviction that the industry was in fact draining the Indonesian economy. Indeed, considerable sums of money were remitted to the metropolis every year. Most of the tremendous profits the sugar factories made in 1920 had gone into the pockets of their shareholders. The argument regarding financial drain may be supported by the fact that Java compared unfavorably to other cane sugar-producing regions in the world as far as the share received by cultivators was concerned. Based on figures provided by widely respected sugar specialist Prinsen Geerligs, it can be concluded that the Javanese population received slightly less than half of the cost price of sugar, and that this figure did not change between 1900 and 1930. Sibinga Mulder, a true sugar baron and strong defender of the factories, presents figures for the 1920s that are even more awkward, namely 44 to 45 percent.72 In Java, the cane producers and their workers in all likelihood received less than was customary elsewhere in the world. First, a fifty-fifty division between field and factory is effectively a golden rule in practice as .

Locher Scholten, Ethiek in fragmenten, pp. 106–107; Bosma, Karel Zaalberg, chapter 7. In 1900, the Javanese population received 300 guilders per bau in wages and land rents, which would mean that it got 3.20 guilders per picul of sugar, whereas the production cost was about 6.20 guilders. The calculation is based upon the fact that on average a bau cane could yield ninety-four piculs of sugar. Prinsen Geerligs, Handboek iv, pp. 175, 179. Later calculations based upon Prinsen Geerligs’s system came to 50 percent for 1926 and 1930. These figures estimated the price for growing, cutting, and haulage at 6.17 guilders per quintal compared to the cost price at the Java port of 12.87 (without sales of molasses), which is almost half. Three years later, the Tariff Board calculated respectively 4.85 and 9.45 guilders, which is slightly over 50 percent. Prinsen Geerligs, Handboek iv, p. 180. Report of the Indian Tariff Board, pp. 74–75. For the figures from Sibinga Mulder, see Sibinga Mulder, De suikerindustrie, Bijlage I.

71 72

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well as in theory; in colonial as well as in postcolonial times, and in the cane sugar as well as in the beet sugar industries.73 All over the world, the distribution of the cane or beet growers’ share was skewed, allowing rural elites to accumulate considerable wealth by trampling on dependent workers. However, apart from the slightly unfavorable distribution of the proceeds between factory and growers, what made Java a special case was the extremely labor-intensive character of the fieldwork in the sugar sector. As a corollary of this, people who actually produced the cane probably earned less than in other regions of the world. Coolie wages were minimal and the compensation paid for the use of land by the sugar factories was still inadequate in the Java of the 1920s. In spite of the rather alarming conditions for the coolie workforce, Indonesian nationalist leaders were still primarily concerned about compensation for the use of land rather than about coolie wages. Prominent nationalists Cokroaminoto and Sastrowidjono spoke at length in the sessions of the People’s Council about cane fires to detail the grievances of landowners. They complained rightfully that paddy cultivation was constantly put in second place behind cane.74 They also spoke about colonial drainage, one of the central accusations made against the “sinful capitalism” of the sugar industry. However, all this barely went further than mere rhetoric, being just enough to shore up their nationalist credentials against the communist wing of Sarekat Islam. This increasingly vocal section was led by Samaun, the leader of the Union of Rail and Tramway Workers (VSTP).75 The anti-drainage rhetoric of the Sarekat Islam leadership was intended to keep its left wing on board and could hardly conceal the fact that, apart from the urban entrepreneurs, the more powerful peasants were overrepresented among its membership. The rift between these landowners and the sharecroppers crippled the nationalist movement around 1920, when Sarekat Islam split into Red Sarekat Islam

In Louisiana and Cuba, for example, the cultivators received slightly over half of the price the factory was getting for its sugar. Report of the Sugar Committee 1920, p. 306. Further, to compare with postcolonial times, in the 1980s, farmers in Java received 55 to 65 percent of the price. Soetrisno, Farmers, Millers and Sugar Production in Indonesia, p. 34. In the beet sugar-producing region, Michigan growers also received half of the price of the beet sugar in the early twentieth century. In postcolonial India, the growers’ share could vary from 50 to 70 percent. Mapes, Sweet Tyranny, pp. 111–112. To put the sugarcane pricing on a sound footing, the Indian Bhargava Committee in 1974 suggested, “The extra realisation on the sale of sugar should be divided between the growers and the industry in the ratio of 50:50.” Sinha, Sugar Industry in India, p. 130. 74 Hirsch, “Het rietbrandenvraagstuk,” p. 2101. 75 Tichelman, Socialisme in Indonesië, p. 16. 73

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and a more conservative branch.76 The sugar factories knew full well that the Javanese rural population was socially far from homogeneous, and their agenda was to mobilize the rural elites against nationalist agitation and to stir up anxiety among the European colonial population about the social upheaval the nationalists might cause. The Java Sugar Syndicate went as far in this respect as to sponsor a countermovement under the name Djamiatoellah-Hassanah to rally together the forces in Javanese society that benefited from the sugar economy.77 Meanwhile, the social-political division between Sarekat Islam and communism also divided the Indonesian labor unions. Relations between the two prominent Indonesian unions, the communist-led railway union VSTP and the PFB (Sugar Factory Workers Union), the latter affiliated with Sarekat Islam, were rather chilly in the early 1920s.78 The PFB was established in 1918 and rapidly amassed 30,000 members, uniting both tenured and nontenured Indonesian factory workers, although the former were overrepresented. Its growth was part of the general upsurge of Indonesian nationalism that led to a mass movement, but it was also founded on the basis of economic grievances. Prices had increased by 100 percent after 1905, whereas wages in general had stagnated and in some cases had even gone down.79 Though the PFB’s economic agenda was perfectly reasonable, the sugar syndicate refused to recognize the PFB as a negotiating partner with regard to labor issues. It must be said that the PFB had made its overtures to the employers using highly critical language regarding the authoritarian attitude of sugar factory managers toward their Indonesian workforce. The Java Sugar Syndicate branded the PFB a threat to colonial order, a position eagerly backed by the Dutch-language colonial press. By doing so, it counteracted government pressure on the Java sugar employers to be more progressive toward their Indonesian workers.80 Meanwhile, the sugar factories were not at all impressed by the emergence of the PFB and the widespread labor unrest during the sugar season of 1920. Strikes broke out in about one third of the sugar factories, but no matter how impressive this figure might look, 75 percent of the events lasted less than three days and only 25,000 workers were involved, a minute fraction of the total labor force. Wherever production had been See, for instance, McVey, “The Comintern,” p. 345. Bosma, Karel Zaalberg, pp. 314–315. 78 Ingleson, “Bound Hand and Foot,” p. 80. 79 Verslag van de arbeidscommissie, p. 11. 80 “Het standpunt van het syndicaat,” pp. 787–793. 76 77

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stopped, this was often only partially and rarely lasted longer than three days.81 The great majority of the strikers worked in the fields or in transport, but they constituted only a negligible element among the field workers. It was usually quite easy for the plantation administrators to replace striking workers with others willing to perform the jobs.82 Neighboring factories sometimes helped to break strikes by sending in workers. The situation was slightly different for permanently employed workers, who were also more ready to strike than the cane cutters and field workers in particular. In 1920, about 10 percent (4,684) of the permanently employed went on strike, compared with 3.5 percent (about 8,500) involved in harvesting and milling the cane and less than 1.2 percent (12,000) of the laborers involved in growing cane.83 One would expect that factories easily fired strikers, but they actually acted with restraint in this regard. Although on average two-thirds of the strike leaders were not hired again, most of the rank-and-file workers were taken back. This was actually greatly in the factories’ own interests, because if strikers were fired by one factory, its neighbor might have had no qualms about hiring them, particularly if these workers were skilled to some degree.84 Again, the Java Sugar Syndicate remained impervious and ridiculed the leader of the PFB as the “strike king” and as someone who sympathized with the communist leadership of the railway union VSTP, which was absolutely not the case.85 Moreover, the PFB drew its membership mainly from the elite of workers in the sugar industry and seemed to have had greater representation among permanent staff than seasonal laborers. From a purely unionist perspective, a coalition with the European Sugar Union might have been an option, particularly since many of the members of this union were lower-class, European Creoles (Eurasians).86 Depending on their ownership, the sugar factories were led by metropolitan-educated Europeans or by Chinese. This was the same in Java, where plantations were never led by Javanese.87 However, as was the case everywhere in the middle layers of government and enterprise, That year, a questionnaire from the syndicate was completed by 152 of the 160 sugar factories, and at sixty-five factories there had been a strike. Sixty percent of the strikes took place during the season. Tichelaar, “De werkstakingen 1920,” pp. 225, 227, 232–233. 82 Ibidem, p. 222. 83 Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, p. 322. 84 Ibidem, pp. 318–320. 85 Algemeen Syndicaat van suikerfabrieken in Ned.-Indië, “Eenige opmerkingen,” p. 569. 86 Koch, Europeesche en Inlandsche vakbeweging in Indië, pp. 2–4. 87 The Indonesian-owned factories were those owned by the Mangkunegara in the Principalities of Java. See Wasino, Kapitalisme Bumi Putra. 81

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lower-class Creoles and Indonesians were increasingly appointed to the same jobs. Nonetheless, labor unions that represented both groups were in decline in the 1920s. The VSTP had begun as a European-Indonesian union in 1908, but had become an exclusively Indonesian organization by 1918. The two most powerful European labor unions, namely that of civil servants and the Sugar Union (Suikerbond) consisted almost exclusively of European members.88 The European Sugar Union and the PFB followed different courses, even though quite a few of their respective Eurasian and Indonesian members worked in the same laboratories and in the same administrative departments in the sugar sector. A rapprochement between the European Sugar Union and the Indonesian PFB only occurred once, and resulted in universal condemnation by the European colonial press.89 The sugar factories had little difficulty in keeping European and Indonesian workers apart, but while racialization of labor issues was the most visible element in thwarting collective action, it was not the most important one. To fend off nationalist claims (particularly the economic ones that found sympathy within the colonial government) and to sustain the sugar plantation, the practice of “divide and rule” that dated back as far as the Cultivation System was further refined in the 1920s.

Labor Policies during High Colonialism The Java sugar industry in this period of high colonialism and declining wages embodied almost every evil of colonialism, not least its arrogance. It dared to openly attack the reform-minded Governor-General Van Limburg Stirum. While the sugar industry made extravagant profits in 1920, the ordinary laborers were suffering. They were the largest group of workers in the sugar industry, but barely expressed themselves and were probably a minority within the PFB. By the 1920s, around one third of the rural workforce in the sugar industry was essentially landless. The percentage of Javanese peasants that could live from their land had dramatically declined to a mere 20 percent in the 1920s. Meanwhile, 40 percent of the landowning peasantry had less than three-quarters of a bau each.90 Wage dependency made Javanese rural areas around the sugar factories increasingly

Only the Union of Workers in the trading houses (Handelsbond) comprised Indonesian and European employees. See also Bosma, Karel Zaalberg, p. 322. 89 Koch, Europeesche en Inlandsche vakbeweging, p. 13; Bosma, Karel Zaalberg, p. 324. 90 Verslag van de suiker-enquête commissie, p. 97. 88

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plantation-like, which was further strengthened by the influx of migrant workers. Labor shortages that occurred in the eastern Residencies in the 1920s were addressed by attracting migrant workers from Central and West Java, where coolie wages were considerably lower, and by importing labor from the neighboring island of Madura. Patterns of migration were shaped that would continue into postcolonial days.91 Anyone with a permanent position at the plantations could live reasonably comfortably on their earnings of about 360 guilders a year for low-skilled or unskilled work. Administrative personnel, the staff at chemical laboratories, the Chinese sugar boilers, and senior overseers could earn three times as much: around 1,000 guilders per year.92 However, for most of the sugar workers their job was at best partial employment. As the majority of the factory laborers were not employed throughout the year, they had to combine this work with cultivating their own plots of land. Field workers, usually paid in piece wages, mostly worked no more than two to three hours per day and earned at best an average fifty to sixty guilders per year. Often more than one family member worked at the sugar factory: the men did the digging and cutting of the cane, while planting the bibit, fertilizing, watering, trassen (ripping off the dry leaves), and weeding were the tasks of women and children.93 Nevertheless, 71 percent of the field laborers and 66 percent of the factory laborers owned some land, at least their own gardens and mostly a small share in the sawahs and dry tegalan lands, according to survey data from the 1930s.94 Concerned about the labor conditions of the lowest and most numerous segments of the colonial economy, their health situation, and the potential social danger from deprived masses, Governor-General Van Limburg Stirum decided to establish the Labor Committee (Arbeidscommissie) in 1919 to advise about the desirability of a minimum wage. This committee reported that following 1905, the prices for daily necessities had increased by 100 percent, whereas wages had been kept stagnant or had even declined. The wages for unskilled labor were too low for “hygienic subsistence,” the committee concluded, and it recommended a minimum According to a 1919 government investigation, average coolie wages in 1919 ranged between forty-seven cents per day in Surabaya to twenty-five cents in Madiun. Huender, Overzicht van den eonomischen toestand, p. 101. See also Knight, “Gully Coolies,” pp. 56–57, and Spaan, “Labour Circulation.” 92 [Het aantal en het loon der inlandsche werklieden], table ii. 93 Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, p. 138. 94 Coolie Budget Commission, Living Conditions of Plantation Workers, p. 39. 91

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wage guaranteeing subsistence should be established.95 However, a minority of the committee disagreed with the majority regarding the level at which this minimum should be set. It pointed out that the Javanese population was undernourished, which was also corroborated by medical data. This was particularly the case for the urban working poor and the approximately 30 percent of the workers in the sugar industry who had no land at all on which to grow their own food. The minority accordingly recommended an immediate fixing of minimum wages at fifty cents per day for men and forty cents for women.96 Impressed by the gravity of the committee’s findings, Governor-General Van Limburg Stirum decided a permanent structure should be established to monitor the wages and social conditions of the Indonesian people. In 1920, the Labor Office (Kantoor van Arbeid) was opened, tasked with implementing the obligations the Netherlands had taken on as a member of the League of Nations, which made membership of the ILO mandatory. The idea of the Labour Office was to combine, systematize, and expand existing services. These services included labor inspections at the Sumatra plantations and the unit assigned to the reorganization of the agrarian conditions in the Principalities to cover all labor relations. Such a high-profile office was strongly resented by the sugar employers, who did everything within their considerable power to obstruct the inclusion of their industry within comprehensive labor legislation carrying an ILO stamp.97 Governor-General Dirk Fock (who held the post from 1921 to 1926) immediately shelved these ambitions to develop labor policies. His administration embarked on a repressive policy against labor unionism, which gave sugar factories the upper hand to an even greater extent regarding labor conflicts. As the overall result, by 1924 strikes had practically disappeared.98 In fact, the Indies government took on the leaders of the labor unions directly. Samaun, the leader of the VSTP and a key figure in the PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia), was arrested on May 8, 1923 as a preemptive measure to cripple his organization. It was feared the VSTP might have declared a strike during the sugar season later that year, which would have had disastrous consequences for the sugar industry. If the VSTP and Verslag van de arbeidscommissie, pp. 11, 13. Ibidem, “Nota van de de minderheid der arbeidscommissie omtrent de in te voeren regeling betreffende de minimumloonen der werknemers op Java en Madoera,” pp. 33–34. 97 Tichelen, “Kantoor van Arbeid,” pp. 71–80. 98 In 1924, there were only two strikes involving 131 workers, of whom 78 were tenured. Tichelaar, “De werkstakingen 1924,” pp. 378–379; Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, p. 322. 95 96

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the PFB joined forces (which was not very likely because of the political differences between the PKI and Sarekat Islam), the entire sugar campaign (milling season) could have been derailed. Given the dependence of Java’s economy on the sugar industry, this would have struck right at the heart of colonial rule itself. Unsurprisingly, but shrewdly anticipated by the colonial government, Samaun’s arrest sparked a spontaneous railway strike that involved 10,000 out of the total 50,000 railway workers.99 The strike was suppressed quickly, well before the season, and new legislation was put in place that practically prohibited all strikes of any scale and included a prison sentence of five years for anyone initiating such a strike. The PFB was outlawed in 1923 and the VSTP was practically dismembered. Labor unrest from then onward rapidly declined and new attempts at collective action in the sugar industry were nipped in the bud.100 Governor-General Fock was a hardliner ruler who gave priority to a balanced colonial budget and suppressed any forms of political unrest or collective labor action. However, he also understood that it was of paramount interest to colonial society not to alienate the landowning and stabilizing segments of the rural population. The sugar syndicate nonetheless fiercely resisted the plan of its political ally Fock to introduce profit-sharing funds (winstaandeelkassen) for the desas and workers. The syndicate argued that European staff and indigenous “senior staff” already received bonuses and that it would be highly impractical to include villages, let alone immigrant workers.101 The plantation conglomerate in Java did acknowledge that it was in its own interests to invest in improvements at the desa level, although these remained barely more than cosmetic as long as the sugar factories could count on the collaboration of the village elites.102 Wage increases and improved rates for land leases must nonetheless have led to an increase in welfare, and a class with purchasing power must also have grown. Elson mentions rising consumption and an increase in the pilgrimage to Mecca in the 1920s.103 In other ways, Java did acquire some features of an authoritarian plantation island in the 1920s. The “ideal-typical” plantation was able to tap into the state monopoly of violence to enforce labor discipline as well Ingleson, “Bound Hand and Foot,” p. 74. Bosma, Karel Zaalberg, p. 369. See also Tichelaar, “De werkstakingen 1925–1926,” pp. 361–365. 101 Advice of the board of the sugar syndicate on “winstaandeelkassen” on September 1, 1921 to the governor-general, published in “Winstaandeelkassen,” p. 393. 102 See “Winstaandeelkassen,” pp. 331–347. 103 Elson, The End of Peasantry, pp. 236–238. 99

100

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The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia

as to maintain segmentation of the labor force. This had been the case from the earliest days of the plantation in the Mediterranean right up to the plantations of Sumatra or the more contemporary Dominican sugar plantations, which literally policed their workers. Java took a few steps down this path in the 1920s, when what was termed the “cultivation police,” often consisting of non-Javanese military veterans, was established. In addition, guards were recruited from the desas to protect the cane growing in the fields. The deployment of the cultivation police ate into the profits of the sugar industry, particularly since the ideal arrangement was one policeman for every forty-three hectares and the factories sometimes had to house them in barracks. Overall, the maintenance of two dozen Javanese or Ambonese policemen per factory amounted to 3.6 percent of the total production costs, which was considerable in view of the small margins the sugar factories had to operate with.104 The costs of supervision and guarding were such that, according to calculations done in the late 1920s, it would have been 25 percent cheaper to buy cane grown by local cultivators than to continue with the plantation model. A few years previously, Indonesian members of the People’s Council had urged the colonial government to explore the possibilities of encouraging smallholder sugar production, for example by facilitating the import and distribution of small iron mills. Its socialist member, Charles G. Cramer, pleaded for smallholder cane growing to be carried out in a cooperative fashion. The idea was to prevent growers falling prey to moneylenders, who acted as buyers for the cane to sell it to the factories.105 In fact, in the early years of the twentieth century, experiments were attempted in Kediri, with factories buying cane from smallholders. However, these were not very successful and some sources suggest these experiments may have contributed to the extensive cane fires in this particular Residency.106 The total area of smallholder cane (bevolkingsriet) was less than 7,000 hectares in 1919 (5 percent of Java’s cane fields). The most notable regions were Malang and Toeloengagoeng, where comparatively wealthy farmers were involved in cane growing.107 What matters most is that smallholder cane growing was unacceptable to the sugar syndicate. The sugar factories were not unjustified in being wary of it, as it entailed the risk of the emergence of a class of intermediaries between the

Prinsen Geerligs, Handboek iv, p. 171. Verslag van de suiker-enquête commissie, p. 277. 106 “Van de suikerindustrie,” Algemeen Handelsblad, February 17, 1910. 107 Verslag van de suiker-enquête commissie, p. 281. 104 105

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factories and the cultivators. In fact, this was a major problem for Indian sugar factories at the time. In addition, it might have engendered illicit trade and even the theft of cane. Profits would probably have fallen into the hands of the intermediaries and factories might have needed to employ straw men to circumvent the restrictions on the acreage they could plant with cane.108 Under pressure from the sugar factories, Cramer’s plea for sugar cultivators’ cooperatives was not only discarded, but new smallholder cane growing was actually outlawed in 1923. Plantation-type sugar production was kept firmly in place. The sugar factories responded to the collective actions of labor in the early 1920s by shoring up the loyalty of the cadre (both European and Indonesian), which was assured by employing them throughout the year. In this regard, Java was markedly different from Cuba and later India.109 The Java sugar factories developed a keen interest in the stabilization of a permanent indigenous labor force and were prepared to invest in the loyalty of its permanent staff: about one third of the factory workers and its field mandurs.110 Factory villages (fabriekskampongs) became a common feature in the 1920s. Pension funds were administered for these relatively privileged workers, including the Indonesian chemists in the factory laboratories and the field mandurs.111 In spite of the fact that the employers in the Java sugar factories had rejected the imposition of a minimum wage for field workers, these employers centrally set the norms for the wages of the Indonesian tenured staff in the sugar factories. Even in the difficult years of the Great Depression, permanent members of staff were sometimes retained, even though no immediate employment was available for them. Again, personnel with fixed positions also included the foremen (mandurs) in the field. This was the most sizeable category of tenured workers, comprising 30 percent of the total who were permanently employed. The mandurs were pivotal in controlling field labor, each overseeing thirty workers. They often cooperated with the village heads to recruit workers and were relatively autonomous in spending their budget for labor. In fact, they could simultaneously act as labor broker, moneylender, and foreman.112 “Inlandsche rietcultuur,” Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, January 20, 1925, Ochtend; “Onrust in het Malangsche,” Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, February 2, 1925, Avond; Van der Kolff, Bevolkingsrietcultuur in Nederlandsch-Indië, pp. 233–234. 109 Römer, “De organisatie der werkkrachten,” p. 289. 110 Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, pp. 113–126. 111 Wiseman, Three Crises, p. 417; Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, pp. 257–260. 112 Hartveld, Raising Cane, p. 103. 108

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Temporary laborers were increasingly recruited from beyond the immediate vicinity of the sugar factories. Whereas in the nineteenth century most laborers still came from within the areaal, the zone, the workforce became a great deal more heterogeneous in the twentieth century. In those years, recruiting agencies began to play a prominent role in securing field laborers, as well as workers during the sugar campaign.113 This added to the costs of labor, as the recruiter had to be paid and temporary housing offered. Further, workers also had to be lured from other parts of Java, if necessary by offering higher wages. Incidents were caused by recruiters who withdrew labor from one factory to supply it to another, in which case the association of Java sugar factory employers had to mediate. The sugar factories did not have a clue about the degree of migration across Java heading to the hundreds of plantations. Migratory labor was probably the least monitored aspect of the Java sugar industry. While most sensitive issues were resolved by central coordination among the factories, the possibility of establishing a central labor agency (as the plantations in Sumatra had done, for example) was never seriously investigated. The factories were quite satisfied with their recruiters, who were often also their tenured mandurs.114 The backbone of the Java sugar complex consisted of an extensive layer of Javanese beneficiaries and privileged workers. The margins for a more equitable social order in the rural areas around the sugar industry were narrow, if not absent, particularly because sugar prices resumed their habitual downward trend from 1921 onward. Meanwhile, the Java Sugar Syndicate had become the visible and arrogant embodiment of colonialism in Java. It translated the exigencies and vagaries of the world market into Java’s rural life. It is true that many factories built schools and hospitals and made health care provisions for their workers, but this did not entail any acknowledgment of a structural responsibility to all workers. Even drainage of the factory compounds to combat malaria was not considered if such works appeared too expensive.115 There was some benevolent paternalism, but shrewdly calculated public relations were never far away and the factories were anxious to avoid their generosity turning into entitlements.116 In total, the amount of money spent on facilities for Knight, “The Java Sugar Industry,” pp. 78, 82. See Koolemans Beynen, “Nogmaals volkgebrek.” 115 NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 21, Tiedeman en Van Kerchem aan Directie Wonolongan, Soerbaja June 23, 1928. 116 NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 24, Tiedeman en Van Kerchem aan de administrateur van Wonolongan, Dossier Personeel no. 37, April 29, 1927. 113 114

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local populations, the watered down version of Governor-General Fock’s plan for profit-sharing funds, did not exceed 2 percent on top of the total expenditure of the factories on land leases and wages.117 With this conclusion in mind, we turn to the nascent sugar industry in India. In the 1920s, and particularly in the 1930s, an industrial sugar conglomerate emerged that bore striking similarities to the Java sugar industry. However, contrary to the government of the Netherlands Indies, the government of India was not convinced the interests of the industrialists should take precedence at the expense of the cultivators. The Indian central and provincial governments sought for a balance between the interests of the industry, consumers, and cultivators.

Champaran: From Indigo to Sugar The era of the global sugar market, inaugurated by the Brussels Convention of 1902, further opened up the Asian markets to Java and brought about a fourfold increase in its sugar output during the first three decades of the twentieth century. While India was flooded with Java sugar, some of its commercial circles attempted to resurrect the sugar industry in North India that had disappeared in the 1850s. By the eve of the Brussels Convention, they had successfully invoked the British imperial interests, pioneered by Chamberlain, to blockade the dumping of beet sugar onto the Indian market in an effort to protect the nascent Indian sugar industry. However, the real beneficiary of their intervention was Java sugar that did not fall under the restrictions imposed by the Brussels Convention and that had captured huge parts of the emerging Indian urban markets for white and refined sugars. These imports were in addition mixed with local gurs or other additives to suit Indian tastes. Gur remained undiminished in its popularity, which made it very difficult for the relatively small group of industrial sugar interests in India to make the case for developing industrial sugar manufacturing. After all, there were only seventeen sugar factories in India shortly after 1900, of which eight were in Bihar and six in Madras. In the latter province, industrial sugar production had managed to survive since the mid-nineteenth century (Map 5.1). The Brussels Convention had at least rescued the infant industry in Bihar, but its development was still less rapid than might have been expected. However, the industrialization of Indian sugar manufacturing was placed higher on the agenda during the First World War, when self-reliance with 117

Sibinga Mulder, De Rietsuikerindustrie op Java, annex I.

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regard to food commodities, including sugar, became a stated objective of the Indian government. Whether this self-reliance would entail government support for industrialization was a matter still undecided at the time. The industrialization of sugar production therefore progressed relatively slowly prior to the imposition of the prohibitive tariff on sugar imports in 1932. Almost all the new factories that emerged in the first years of the twentieth century were located in Bihar, mostly in the district of Champaran. In the 1840s, the chimneys of a dozen sugar factories had still been pointing up at the sky there, but after sugar prices stagnated and indigo prices shot up, the industry went into rapid decline. When indigo was under threat of being replaced by a synthetic dye fifty years later, a second attempt at industrializing sugar manufacture in Champaran was made. It is a story that underscores the argument proposed in this book, that the strength of colonial commercial circuits vis-à-vis local moneylenders determines the success or failure of the introduction of cash crop production for the world market. It also makes the point about the strength of alternatives such as gur and tobacco, which gave peasants the option of producing cash crops for local markets. Champaran, as demonstrated here and in Chapter 6, is a case in point with respect to the resilience of the local gur markets. A leading role in the conversion from indigo to sugar in Champaran was played by the large firm Begg Sutherland & Co., which opened the first sugar factories in North Bihar. Based in the United Provinces, the company was already an important indigo producer, as well as being engaged in tobacco. The firm carried the name of its founder, David Begg, a botanist who sailed to India in the 1830s and soon became a main supplier of seeds to the indigo planters in North India. With the capital he accumulated, he bought indigo estates in the 1850s. The concern was further expanded by his nephew, by then trading under the name Begg, Dunlop & Co., later Begg Sutherland & Co.118 This company was a vocal advocate of the infant sugar industry during the Brussels conferences of 1898 and 1902 and stood at the cradle of the early twentieth-century Indian sugar industry. Its technical manager, Noel Deerr, was widely known and respected as a world-famous sugar expert. The company’s headquarters were located in Cawnpore, where it had built its first gur-processing sugar factory in 1894; a conversion from an indigo factory that had gone into decline.119 This town was also the center of operations of the Greek Wilson, History of Behar Indigo Factories, pp. 226–228, 304. Bagchi, Private Investment in India, p. 363; Amin, Sugarcane and Sugar in Gorakhpur, p. 95.

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trading company Ralli Bros., already mentioned as one of the importers of Java sugar, which was able to rely on its extensive retail network in India. This concern took care of the purchase of gur for the refinery of Begg Sutherland & Co.120 While Begg Sutherland successfully shifted from indigo to cane, most indigo planters in Champaran did not. They tried to find alternatives, though, once they understood that, because of the synthetic dye, their best days were over. They solicited financial support from the British under secretary of state for India for the building of combined indigo-sugar plants where both crops could be cultivated and manufactured in an integrated way. However, the viceroy had informed the applicants that the government of India could not become involved in sponsoring individual entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, he had expressed his willingness to investigate a scheme to encourage such industries in Bihar, and in August 1900, a small committee was put together by the vice-governor-general of Bengal to explore the prospects for a cane-processing sugar industry in this province.121 Though this committee was strongly in favor of inducing peasants to grow for factories rather than making gur, it rejected the idea of financial advances, such as the Australian government had provided to put the Queensland sugar industry on its feet. The government was advised to confine itself to agricultural expansion, to which end it was suggested that an experimental sugar station be established at Pusa. This institute would open its doors in 1903 to conduct research into cane varieties on a modest scale. It went on to develop into a solid ally of industrial interests in cash crop production, not only for sugar but also for tobacco. Its sugar expert, Wynn Sayer, would become a staunch opponent of the gur and khandsari sectors.122 Meanwhile, the social and ecological prospects for conversion to sugar production were good in Champaran. It was an area where the soil was moist and it had been the site of plantation-type sugar production before, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.123 Cane cultivation held some attraction for the peasants, as it was less labor-intensive than NA, VJP, inv. no. 191, J. C. F. Schor, rapport no. 18, “Begg Sutherland & Co., Cawnpore.” 121 Government of Bengal, Revenue & Agricultural Department June 1901, No. 5, “Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the Prospects of the cultivation of Sugar by indigo planters in Bihar.” 122 Government of India, Revenue & Agricultural Department (Agriculture), June 1901, No. 5, Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the Prospects of the cultivation of Sugar by indigo planters in Bihar, pp. 314, 317; Report of the Agricultural Research Institute and College, Pusa, for 1907–1909, p. 25. 123 Singh, Sugar Industry, p. 75. 120

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indigo and they could probably get a good price for it.124 After the demise of the sugar factories in the mid-nineteenth century, gur production continued to thrive in this district up to the 1880s.125 In addition to local gur and tobacco, there was also extensive involvement in cash crop production for the global market, which went back to the days when the East India Company had directly contracted with poppy-growing cultivators under the EIC monopoly. Poppy continued to be popular until it drastically diminished in the early years of the twentieth century. In spite of all the tensions and struggles that beset the indigo industry, peasants in Champaran were not averse to growing cash crops for colonial producers.126 Land ownership conditions in Champaran were somewhat akin to those in the Principalities of Java, where the sultans were the only possessors of land, and in particular to those of the Residency of Yogyakarta, for most of the nineteenth century an indigo belt. In Champaran, three-quarters of the land was in the hands of three major zamindars, who were always short of money. In the final years of the nineteenth century, two of the three large zamindari houses were placed under wardship. One of the two, the maharaja of Bettiah (the most important cane-growing area of Champaran around 1900), had been rescued through a large loan from the Guilliland house in 1876, in return for which large tracts of land and villages were given under permanent lease to European tenure holders, thikedars. They provided 85 percent of the income to this maharaja. In general, the mutual dependency between planters and rajas created an atmosphere of camaraderie, again similar to Yogyakarta.127 As thikedars, the planters in Champaran had the right to assign 15 percent of the ryots’ land within their holdings for the cultivation of the crops of their choice, again not entirely unlike Java’s Principalities. Yet another important similarity with Java was that the planters mobilized village heads and other village notables to place the labor of the poorest and landless According to Pouchepadass, sugar required just 80 working days per acre in the late nineteenth century, whereas indigo required 172 days. Pouchepadass, Champaran and Gandhi, p. 124. 125 Government of Bengal, Report on the River-Borne Traffic, 1884–1885, p. 88 and 1890– 1891, p. 110. According to these reports, gur production was flourishing, at least until 1890, whereas Mishra points out that the area under cane dropped in the mid-1880s. Mishra, Agrarian Problems, p. 111. 126 Around 1880, about 25 percent of all peasant households in Champaran were engaged in poppy growing. Mishra, Agrarian Problems, p. 83. 127 Mishra, Agrarian Problems, pp. 56, 242; Basu, “Tensions in Rural Bihar,” p. 19; Houlton, Bihar, p. 116; Bosma and Raben, Being “Dutch,” chapter 4. 124

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peasants at their disposal.128 Finally, the same as their counterparts in Java’s Principalities, European planters in Bihar partly owed their position to the fact that their armed presence in these borderlands was in the interest of colonial rule. Nevertheless, despite the entrenched position of the planters in Champaran and the fact that growing cane was becoming more profitable than growing indigo (particularly as new irrigation systems and canals were dug and rail transport improved in the early twentieth century), the conversion from indigo to cane progressed slowly and only partially. The area planted with indigo expectedly fell sharply from 21,600 hectares in 1895 to 3,240 in 1914, but only a minor part of the gap, 25 percent at most, was filled with cane by 1930.129 Most of the land left by the indigo planters had been transferred to zamindars by that time, though a number of large areas (between 500 and 1,200 hectares) – the tenure of which could only be transferred to other Europeans under local law – were still for sale at the time.130 In the wake of the abandonment of the indigo estates, peasant production took over from plantation production. Apart from an increasing need for land to grow food crops, tobacco cultivation also expanded as a peasant crop. The area under cane may have increased as well, but was possibly systematically undercounted as many small plots might have been overlooked in government surveys. It was after all a region where gur was very much part of the menu, while consumption of refined sugar was negligible and almost the lowest in India.131 Following the opening of a bridge over the river Gandak in the early years of the twentieth century, sugar cultivators from the neighboring sugar-producing district of Gorakhpur (the United Provinces) settled in Champaran. Some would have devoted themselves to gur making, but others might have become involved in growing cane for the factories in Gorakhpur. The harvest from a few thousand hectares of cane was brought to factories in Gorakhpur in the late 1910s.132 Undoubtedly Pouchepadass, Champaran and Gandhi, p. 123. Mishra, Agrarian Problems, pp. 102–103; Houlton, Bihar, p. 120. The area under cane grew from 5,200 hectares in 1901 to 7,520 in 1911 and 9,360 in 1931. See Government of India, Revenue & Agricultural Department (Agriculture), June 1901, No. 5, Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the Prospects of the cultivation of Sugar by indigo planters in Bihar, p. 309. For the figures for 1911 and 1931, see Mishra, Agrarian Problems, p. 115. 130 O’Malley, Champaran, p. 57. With regard to the tenure rights of the European planters, see Mishra, Agrarian Problems, pp. 53–54. 131 Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, p. xi. 132 Government of Bihar and Orissa, Report on the Administration of Bihar and Orissa 1917–1918, p. 55. 128 129

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there was enough room for more sugar factories in Champaran to fill the space left by indigo planters who lacked the capital to convert to sugar. That the planters themselves had run out of funds is quite understandable, because their enterprises had suffered from declining prices and soil depletion since the 1890s. Although quite a few of the indigo plantations in Bihar did maintain ties with Calcutta or metropolitan banks, the fact that they turned to the Ministry for the Colonies and to investors in England suggests they were knocking at the closed doors of India’s commercial circles.133 In spite of the fact that the indigo planters usually had control over both land and labor, they were apparently not considered as promising sugar industrialists by the banks. This was not because industrial sugar manufacture in North Bihar was lacking in profitability (the example of Begg Sutherland & Co. demonstrated otherwise), but because they were not highly rated as entrepreneurs. This poses a striking contrast to the situation in Yogyakarta, where almost the entire planters’ clan gradually converted to sugar in the period from 1870 to 1910, investing their own profits from indigo while attracting additional funding from a powerful expansionist banking system. The planters in the Principalities were admittedly in more than one respect an outstanding community, as they were after all the initiators of the first collaborative efforts at putting the plantation economy of Java on a firm scientific footing. This may precisely illuminate the weakness of the indigo concerns in Champaran, as these were operated by individuals who simply took over an indigo plant from a retiring planter and tried to make the maximum amount of profit within the shortest time before returning to England.134 In fact, there was no such thing as a settled planters’ community in Champaran, which is also apparent from the size of the European settlement in this district compared to the European presence in Java’s Principalities. In the 1870s, the total number of Europeans in Champaran was 85 among almost 1.5 million Asians, against 3,440 Europeans among 1,311,416 Asians in the Principalities.135 Apart from Begg Sutherland & Co., which had the financial resources to establish itself as a major sugar producer in Bihar, the great majority of the indigo estates ceased to exist as plantations. Some European thikedars Bagchi, Private Investment, p. 363, n. 11. A wealth of data on the ownership, management, and ties to banking institutions is provided by Wilson, History of Behar Indigo Factories. 134 Mishra, Agrarian Problems, p. 233. That indigo estates changed hands very frequently has been detailed in Wilson, History of Behar Indigo Factories. 135 Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, xiii, p. 237. 133

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who left the indigo business began to act as subcontractors, forcing their ryots to grow cane for one or other of the Begg Sutherland factories.136 Others continued the cultivation of indigo, benefiting briefly from a recovery in prices during the First World War, or became landlords, making a living by renting out their land. The latter became a lucrative business, since land prices in Bihar in the latter half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries stood at a much higher level than elsewhere in Bengal, which was partly due to high population pressure on the land.137 In the nineteenth century, the area under cultivation in Champaran had increased from a mere 25 to 70 percent. At that point, farming could no longer expand and as a result, land prices soared.138 As a consequence, thikedar rights were diverted to a kind of land rent, and former indigo planters began to exact payments in cash rather than crops. Land no longer occupied by indigo, or poppy for that matter, was in great demand for the production of tobacco or food crops, including gur. Clashes between ryots, usually led by the upper segments of society on one hand and planters and police on the other, were frequent in the first decade of the twentieth century.139 The struggle culminated in the famous and well-recorded visit of Gandhi to Champaran in 1917 and the emergence of the Satyagraha (nonviolent resistance) movement. As a result, the payment of rent to European planters was entirely suspended, indigo factories were burnt down, and a government investigation was conducted.140 As such, the Satyagraha movement found its basis in the waning indigo plantation economy that had not succeeded in converting to sugar, leaving part of the stage to other actors. From available documentation, including the government investigation into this movement, it appears that former indigo factory employees, moneylenders, and others who had been able to purchase or otherwise obtain land from the former indigo estates played a leading role in the movement. They saw their interests threatened by the indigo planters who tried to revive their plantations during the First World War, when indigo was profitable for a short time.141 NA, VJP, inv. no. 191, J. C. F. Schor, rapport no. 21. Das, Agrarian Unrest, pp. 31–32. 138 In Champaran, the market value of land went up by 100 percent between 1892–1899 and 1913–1919. Mishra, Agrarian Problems, pp. 31–33, 171. 139 Basu, “Tensions in Rural Bihar,” pp. 29–31. 140 The investigation led to the abolition of the tinkathia system that had allowed landlords to retain rights on particular plots of their tenants’ land. However, contracts between landlords and tenants for a maximum of three years to grow a particular crop were still permitted. 141 B. B. Misra quoted in Das, Agrarian Unrest, pp. 63–64. 136 137

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One may wonder whether the start of the Satyagraha movement, and the unrest that was endemic in Champaran during the ten years preceding it, might have slowed down the conversion of indigo estates to sugar farms by putting off investors. Government sources reveal that sugar as such was not part of these conflicts, though former indigo planters who acted as tenants for sugar factories had also been targeted.142 The general atmosphere was one of distrust toward planters, which was highly detrimental to any attempts to convince cultivators to quit gur making and take their cane to the factories. That trust was of the essence clearly emerges from an account written in 1908 by the manager of the Pursa factory. He details that he had to proceed with the “greatest caution, as it was an entirely new business and an innovation to the raiyat . . . It is their staple crop and could not be tampered with. Before asking them to execute agreements for cane, I took weighing scales and went round from village to village. I got the raiyats to cut a certain area of cane, had it stripped and weighed carefully in their presence and mine, and measured the area.”143 It could not have been stated more clearly that gur was part of the everyday menu and that cultivators who grew cane for factories could always return to making gur, which put the factories in a weak position. Looking at the Satyagraha from the point of view of resistance against the revival of the plantation economy of Champaran, it is not difficult to detect one of the subthemes, namely, the struggle between on one hand sugar as a peasant crop, enmeshed as it was in the bazaar, and on the other hand, plantation interests weakened both by the demise of indigo and the lack of capital supply. This struggle did slow down the pace of industrialization of sugar that just had gained some momentum. The six sugar factories in operation in Champaran in 1906 were joined by nine others in the subsequent decade, accounting for more than one third of the factories in Bihar at the time. Most of these factories had a permanent tenure on part of their land and leased the additional plots from former indigo Indeed, one sugar factory was also attacked, but this was part of the Pursa concern that was also producing indigo. Government of India, Home Department (Police-A), June 1910, Nos. 129–137, Letter from F. W. Duke, Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal to The Secretary to the Government of India, “Report of the Collector of Champaran upon the report of Mr. Gourlay in connection with the Bettiah disturbances, land upon the reply of the Behar Planters’ Association thereto,” p. 8. Letter from F. W. Gordon Canning to T. R. Filgate, General Secretary, Bihar Planters’ Association, Limited, Pursa May 9, 1909, pp. 4–8. 143 Government of India, Home Department, (Police-A), June 1910, Nos. 129–137, Letter from F. W. Gordon Canning to T. R. Filgate, General Secretary, Bihar Planters’ Association, Limited, Pursa May 9, 1909, p. 5. 142

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planters or from one of the local rajahs. The factories were highly efficient and operated with low costs.144 They obtained yields of up to eighty metric tons of local cane varieties per hectare on their estates, although the quality of the cane was such that the actual sugar output per hectare was still half of that in Java.145 Nevertheless, it was only after the establishment of the tariff wall in 1932, when it became clear to anyone in India that investing in sugar factories was an excellent opportunity, that new investors came, some from as far away as Bombay. As a result, the area under cane in Champaran jumped from 10,000 to 40,000 hectares between 1930 and 1940.146 The old plantocracy became part of a much despised past, and in 1938 an active policy was pursued by the Congress government of Bihar to buy back the European bungalows and thikedar rights. The entire ­tinkathia system would disappear with Indian independence in 1947.147

Agriculture or Industry? The conversion from indigo to sugar in Bihar progressed slowly and only partially. However, as a site for industrial sugar production it did surpass Madras in the early years of the twentieth century, although Madras was the only part of India where industrial sugar production had survived throughout the nineteenth century. One may wonder why beyond these two locations hardly any industrial sugar production emerged in India in the early years of the twentieth century. In a way, the answer to this question has been given in the previous section on Champaran, where cane growing was popular but suspicion of European planters was deep seated. While cultivators in Champaran had been involved in cash crop production for a long time and seemed to have welcomed sugar production as an additional source of income, colonial commodity production Government of Bengal, Report on the Administration of Bengal 1910–1911, p. 75. These factories had accomplished a substantial improvement in their recovery rate, from 6 percent in 1907 to 9.37 percent in 1930. Written Evidence Indian Tariff Board, pp. 115–116; NA, VJP, inv. no. 191, J. C. F. Schor rapport no. 19, “Begg Sutherland & Co. Cawnpore; NA, VJP, inv. no. 191, J. C. F. Schor, rapporten nos. 20, 21 and 23. Bezoek aan Sugar Bureau te Pusa.” 145 Report of the Indian Sugar Committee 1920, pp. 71–72. 146 Government of Bihar and Orissa, Administrative Report on Bihar and Orissa in 1932– 1933, pp. 89–90. In 1936–1937 the area under cane in Bihar amounted to 460,000 out of the total of 4,440,000 acres in India, and about 500,000 metric tons of the total Indian production of about 6,500,000 metric tons of sugar. See Sen Gupta, Bihar Industrial Directory, pp. 32–33. The area under cane in Champaran in 1940 was just over 100,000 acres. See Mishra, Agrarian Problems, p. 115. 147 Mishra, Agrarian Problems, p. 77. 144

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was not their only option. The gur sector fared quite well in Champaran, but also elsewhere in India for that matter, and continued to be a thriving sector with modest but effective innovations. It is a recurrent theme from the late eighteenth century onward that outsiders were astonished to see how gur making was able to resist the advance of industrial modernity. Planters in the West Indies around 1800 had spoken about indigenous sugar making in condescending terms, the London house of Travers & Sons had not used friendlier words around 1880, and in the early twentieth century the same discourse was heard. For example, a Dutch sugar planter who traveled around India in 1912 was quite puzzled by the sight of hand-powered centrifuges and petrol-driven sugar mills. He mulled over the question of why, in contrast to the jute and cotton factories in India, there were no sugar centrals buying cane from the population. He asked British civil servants and businessmen why in India a sugar industry driven by “big capitalists” had not established itself like it had in Java.148 Our Dutch witness’s outlook was thoroughly colonial, assuming that large enterprise could set the rules and that Indian cultivators would be happy to sell their cane to factories rather than making gur themselves. It did not occur to him at all that in contrast to Java, the sugar factories in India had to compete with a large cottage sugar sector enmeshed in the bazaar. In India, industrial sugar would never fully replace gur and khandsari but developed alongside it, while “adulterating” white sugar with molasses to “create” gur was not uncommon. It had never been the intention of the colonial administration of India to replace the traditional sugar sector. When it decided in 1913 to impose protective import duties on sugar by doubling the duty, it was not with the objective of replacing gur and khandsari manufacturing by industrial sugar. The government of India maintained the position that sugar was embedded in Indian rural life, which meant industrialization had to be subservient to agriculture in this particular area. Any other position would not have made much sense. By 1930, 70 percent of the total volume of sugar consumption in India was still gur. In the producing villages, it was a common treat for children, but also quite often the only breakfast for cultivators, particularly in the winter season.149 The Indian Tariff Board concluded in 1931: Meijers, “Eenige aantekeningen,” p. 249. Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, p. 237.

148 149

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Since 1922–23, there has been a continuous and uninterrupted fall in the prices of sugar in India, while the price of gur according to the published prices rose substantially . . . There is a class of consumers who for sentimental reasons will prefer gur to sugar at whatever level prices may stand. This class was much larger than might be supposed . . . The position appears to be that an expansion in the demand is met mainly by imported sugar and that the formation of such habits as tea and coffee drinking and the use of aerated or sweetened waters mainly accounts for the increase.150

In other words, the Tariff Board suggested that expanding urban lifestyles entailing the drinking of coffee, tea, and lemonade were absorbing the imports, whereas traditional patterns of consumption were still reliant on gur. The board’s observation that gur prices rose is not correct, as a matter of fact, even though they did not decline as sharply as sugar prices. In reality, in terms of sucrose content, gur and sugar were almost equally expensive during the second half of the 1920s.151 The resilience of gur also manifested itself in the Bombay Deccan, where the Saswad Malis developed their sugar frontier with a rapidly increasing yield of cane per hectare. Capital was available and attempts at industrialization were made, but they were doomed to fail as long as the government of India did not fence off the Indian sugar market with a tariff wall and as long as gur was so in demand. Two of the three sugar factories established in the Pune area in the 1920s collapsed. These factories did not control the land, which allowed farmers to divert their cane supplies to gur manufacturing. The factories stood no chance against opposition from the gur manufacturers, who rapidly improved their methods and equipment and continued to be a thriving sector during the 1920s. The decline in gur prices that occurred at the end of that decade left no room for viable sugar factories in the Bombay Deccan. The dwindling prices were caused by massive imports of cheap sugar into Bombay, an unknown quantity of which was “adulterated” with gur or other additives before entering the local markets. The only survivor of these three sugar factories was the first large-scale industrial operation, the Belapur Company established in 1924, which obtained 3,000 hectares of land alongside the Pravara Canal in the Deccan through the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 with the help of the Bombay government. However, this estate cost a fortune and only became profitable after the imposition of the tariff wall in 1932.152 Report of the Indian Tariff Board, p. 87. Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, p. 240. 152 NA, VJP, inv. no. 191, J. C. F Schor, “Bezoek aan Belapur Estate,” pp. 2–3. 150 151

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Even more surprising than the thriving gur sector was the resilience of the commercial networks of the khandsari manufacturers. In the early 1920s, the output of the 200 to 250 khandsaris was still around 100,000 metric tons per year, which might have been roughly the same output as in the mid-nineteenth century. However, the figure had reached 250,000 metric tons by around 1930. There is reason to assume that these workplaces more than doubled their capacity thanks to the dissemination of the centrifuge. The fact that khandsaris were integrated in local credit networks, but above all that the taste of this sugar was unstintingly popular, explain why this sector was able to hold on, in spite of the fact that its sugar in 1926 cost 50 percent more than the Java sugar arriving into Indian harbors. Modern khandsari manufacturers now had their own linkages with the field, where they employed or at least supervised thousands of belnas (batteries of boiling pans) making rab or jaggery (massecuite) suited to their centrifuges. The khandsari paid the cultivators in advance and drove a hard bargain knowing the cultivators were usually in need of money.153 These manufacturers also benefited from the Indian tax regime, which applied a more favorable rate to small factories employing less than fifty people than to the large industrial enterprises.154 Though gur and khandsari did well and the output of India’s sugar factories soared, India was importing ever larger quantities of white sugar, to the extent that in 1930 more than 800,000 metric tons of Java sugar reached Indian consumers.155 This was in spite of the fact that during the First World War the government of India had raised import duties on sugar from 5 to 25 percent between 1916 and 1925.156 This gave advocates of the industrialization of sugar production in India, who had united in the Indian Sugar Producer’s Association, more room to press for their cause. This met with success, as the government of India established the Indian Sugar Committee in 1919 to investigate the possibilities of making India self-reliant with regard to sugar. The committee departed Agarwala, Sugar Industry & Labour, pp. 5, 89–90. Khandsaris usually employed twenty to fifty workers. See Agarwala, Sugar Industry & Labour, p. 99. 155 Meanwhile, the production of khandsari sugar that had increased from about 100,000 metric tons in 1924 to about 275,000 metric tons in 1932 declined after that. In 1930– 1931, the division of the consumption over the other types of sugar was 119,857 metric tons of industrial white sugar produced in India, 909,032 metric tons of imported white sugar, and 3,128,000 metric tons of gur. Of the imported white sugar, 817,965 metric tons came from Java. Gebhardt, Die Zukunftsentwicklung der Java-Zucker-Industrie, pp. 81–84. 156 Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, p. 41. 153 154

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for Java in the same year and was warmly welcomed by the Java Sugar Syndicate.157 What the Indian delegation took home was the observation, right or wrong, that renting larger blocks of land was easier in Java, where sugar production was historically rooted in the Cultivation System and in the “communal spirit” that was much stronger than in India. The sugar committee’s findings were published in 1920, and unsurprisingly its main conclusion was that the disappointing output and inefficiency of the Indian sugar factories stemmed from the fact that they were not obtaining adequate supplies of cane. No factory in India operated near its maximum capacity, and in fact 50 percent of the factories crushed only half of the amount their mills could actually process. In the 1920s, sugar factories sometimes had to compete at railway stations to purchase sugarcane.158 The trip by the Indian Sugar Committee to Java had been an eye opener in many respects, but its members were most enthralled by the existence of fixed circles around Java factories from where these could draw cane without competition from other factories. This was to shape future discussions on India’s sugar industry.159 Industrial interests set the tone of the report by the Indian Sugar Committee that appeared in 1920. It deprecated cottage gur as a tremendous waste, because its manufacture recovered only half the sugar from cane in comparison to industrial methods.160 However, it had to accede that it was far from easy to convince cultivators to place their trust in the factories. The conclusion of the Sugar Committee in this respect was that: “no factory depending for its supplies on the purchase of cane in the open market could establish itself with any prospect of success in a tract in which high class gur is manufactured, so long as the pre-war ratio between the price of such gur and of factory sugar is maintained.”161 On the other hand, in Bihar and the United Provinces where the gur was allegedly often of inferior quality, it might have been possible for factories to have offered twice as much as could have been obtained for cane going through to gur manufacture. The Sugar Committee assumed that if the sugar factories were prepared to pay a fair price for cane (the Letter by J. Crosby, H. B. M. Acting Consul General to S. J. Hirsch, President of the “Algemeen Syndicaat van Suikerfabrikanten Soerabaya September 10th 1920,” printed in AVS 28, 2 (1920), pp. 1741–1742. 158 Agarwala, Sugar Industry & Labour, pp. 8, 63. 159 Bagchi, Private Investment, p. 366. 160 While for khandsaris at best 5 percent of the weight of cane could be recovered as sugar, modern factories procure 10 percent, and in Java even 12 percent. Agarwala, Sugar Industry & Labour, pp. 56, 61; Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, p. 129. 161 Report of the Indian Sugar Committee 1920, p. 309. 157

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equivalent of 50 percent of the production costs), then the problems of procuring sufficient cane would vanish.162 This was an assessment, however, that was still too optimistic, as it did not take into account the costs of haulage by the intermediaries who bought the cane for factories and exacted their share of payment from the cultivators. Given these impediments, it is not surprising that the idea of forceful acquisition of land for the Centrals (under the Land Acquisition Act) was tabled by entrepreneurial interests, even though it was immediately rejected by the majority of the Sugar Committee. The Belapur Company in the Bombay Deccan, for which land was acquired through the land Acquisition Act, would remain the absolute exception to the rule, as it was generally felt that this law was intended for public works and not for commercial purposes. The only factories that could rely on a steady supply of cane were the Champaran factories, and last but not least, the Parry factory at Nellikuppam, which leased land from 700 holders but was able to unite their plots into blocks of twenty acres each.163 The majority of the committee members did not dare to go so far as to follow the Java example. Only Wynn Sayer of the Indian Agricultural Service (Pusa), known for his outspoken views, expressed his dissension in a separate note attached to the committee’s report, in which he recommended the enforcement of sugar circles or zones such as existed in Java.164 Another important point made by the Sugar Committee was that the government of India should make an effort to shift production from the subtropical north of India to the south, where the growing season was longer and allowed much higher yields.165 Whereas in North India the output of improved cane could be at best fifty metric tons per hectare, the Belapur estate in the Bombay Deccan, for example, was already obtaining 100 metric tons in the 1930s.166 South Indian sugar factories were nonetheless far from competitive with their counterparts in Java, as they had to cope with relatively high labor costs. In 1930, the cost of cane per maund was the highest in Bombay at 10.4 annas, in Madras and Bengal 7, in Punjab 5.5, and in the United Provinces and Bihar and Orissa only 4.5.167 This explains why the Nellikuppam sugar factory of Parry & Co. in Madras employed motorized plows that were pulled back and forth along a cable to plow Ibidem, p. 310. Ibidem, p. 303. 164 Ibidem, pp. 463–464. 165 Ibidem, p. 277. 166 Report of the Indian Tariff Board, pp. 14–16, 32. 167 Ibidem, pp. 55–59. 162 163

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and dig the Reynoso trenches.168 Given the adverse climatic conditions in the north of India and the standards of living in the south, the existing protective tariffs did not provide enough leeway for a viable Indian sugar industry. Competition from abroad became even fiercer as the prices of sugar from Java and Cuba dropped sharply from 1925 onward and freight charges were brought down. The prices of gur and khandsari also declined, although less rapidly, and the products continued to be popular. Prior to 1930, no serious observer expected Java sugar to be driven from the Indian markets by Indian industrialists in the foreseeable future.169 Yet it would happen and the progress India made in disseminating improved cane varieties played a crucial role in this. The percentage of the area under improved varieties was rising: from a mere 6.5 percent in 1925 to 77 percent in 1940. Since the yield from these canes was 50 percent higher than other varieties, it meant an additional 400,000 metric tons of sugar, an increase of 12 percent for all of India in 1930.170 This development would convince the Indian Tariff Board in 1931 of the desirability of protective tariffs for sugar. The Tariff Board reached this conclusion not because it felt the sugar industry as such was a sector that should be protected, but because it judged that these industrial interests were not that important to India. The Tariff Board’s focus was firmly on peasant production and fully in line with the principles upheld by the British colonial authorities over the previous 150 years. Sugar was a cash crop and its returns on land were greater than for any other crop except jute. About five or six million workers, or, as the Tariff Board argued, fifteen million Indians including the families involved (5.5 percent of the total population), derived part of or all of their income from cane growing.171 The rapid dissemination of higher-yielding cane varieties would soon bring more cane onto the market than the traditional sugar manufacturers and gur markets could absorb. A slump in gur prices would unsettle the agricultural classes, particularly in the United Provinces and Bihar where the costs of labor were already low. To avoid a collapse of the gur market, the Tariff Board concluded the expansion of the number of factories in the United Provinces and Bihar was essential to absorb the additional cane.172 NA, VJP, inv. no. 191, J. C. F. Schor, Rapport no. 37 i/z bezoek suikerfabriek Nellikuppam, 8 februari 1930. 169 Report of the Indian Tariff Board, pp. 74–77; NA, VJP, inv. no. 191, J. C. F. Schor, Rapport No. 27, “Besprekingen met Wynne [sic] Sayer te Pusa 8/12 jan. 1931.” 170 Report of the Indian Tariff Board, p. 45. 171 Ibidem, p. 42. 172 Ibidem, pp. 38, 41, 42, 47, 49–50. 168

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Reasoning from this vantage point and basing its findings on extensive evidence, the Tariff Board did not take the industrialists’ point of view so vocally expressed by Wynn Sayer of Pusa, that gur and khandsari manufacturing were doomed to disappear because of their inefficiency. On the contrary, the board was of the opinion that the khandsari makers – especially those working with centrifuges – could not be overlooked given the rising quantities of gur that would come onto the market. Moreover, it was observed, the amount extracted in terms of edible sugars in the modern khandsari process was only slightly less than in the industrial factories.173 The Tariff Board concluded: “It appears, therefore, that an effort should be made to support the khandsari system both as holding an important position in the agricultural system of the United Provinces and as constituting an outlet for surplus cane which may be produced in the next few years.”174 The board’s observation concerned not just the United Provinces, of course, and would continue to be relevant for much longer than it could surmise.

The Tariff Board made the following comparison: khandsaris with centrifuges extracted from cane 5.25 percent white sugar, 3.58 percent gur, and 2.64 percent molasses (11.47 percent in total), whereas factories extracted in total 13 percent, of which 4 percent was molasses and 9 percent white sugars. See Report of the Indian Tariff Board, p. 51. 174 Ibidem. 173

6 Escaping the Plantation?

In retrospect, the trip by the Indian Sugar Committee to Java in 1919 was the first step toward the transfer of the Java sugar plantation model to India. From then on, the concept of zoning  – giving each factory its own circle from which it could draw cane – would dominate discussions on how to facilitate the Indian sugar industry. Meanwhile, in the 1920s, exports of Java sugar increased unabatedly, having nothing to fear from the haphazard industrialization of the Indian sugar sector. Relatively high labor costs in South India and relatively cold winters in the north allowed Java sugar to expand its share of the Indian home market to such an extent that it threatened the khandsaris and higher-quality sectors of gur production that served the urban markets. At its peak in 1930, some 38 percent of Java sugar exports (800,000 metric tons) went to India, accounting for 20 percent of India’s total sugar consumption (including gur and khandsari). However, the Java sugar industry was on its way to becoming the victim of its own success. Sooner rather than later, India would have to take measures against this influx to protect its own sugar sector, which was an essential part of its rural economy. That moment came in 1931, when dumping practices were creating chaos in the Indian sugar markets. One year later, the government of India established a prohibitive tariff, which dealt such a heavy blow to the Java sugar industry that it would never return to its old position. After a short partial recovery in the late 1930s, more than three years of Japanese occupation followed by four years of colonial war left the Java sugar industry in shambles.1 1

The output of the Java sugar industry declined from 1.3 million metric tons in 1942 to less than half a million metric tons in 1944, and declined even further to 80,000 metric tons in 1945. See Rodenburg, “De suikerindustrie op Java,” p. 31.

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The Dutch and British colonial empires had both been advocates of a global free market for commodities, and in that respect the Brussels Convention of 1902 had been a triumph for imperial interests as it substantially diminished the dumping practices of European continental powers. This hallmark of imperial sugar policies had given new impetus to India’s attempts to industrialize sugar production and strengthened Java’s position as the second largest cane sugar exporter in the world. However, the role of the colonial empires in the global sugar market waned in the 1930s. India embarked on a policy of import substitution, whereas Java lost its position as the vanguard of the world’s sugar exporters. Nonetheless, in the introduction of this book I made the claim that this delinking from the global sugar market would not spell the end of the Asian sugar plantation. As a production system, the plantation preceded European overseas expansion by as much as it was part of its aftermath. In this chapter, we see that new sugar plantation complexes emerged even after independence. Again, my claim is that in Asia the sugar plantation could continue to exist outside the colonial context because of the very fact that it was based on a “factory management-rich peasant alliance.” Moreover, property relations would also prove resilient after colonial times, and the manipulation of peasant property rights and the exploitation of landless or marginalized peasants would continue. All this happened despite the nationalists’ pledge to break with colonial exploitation. During decolonization, the search began for methods of industrial sugar production that did not involve plantations. In Java, colonial regulations underpinning the plantation were abolished in 1950. The Dutch plantation owners were dispossessed and their administrators expelled in 1957. In India, where Indian National Congress (INC) governments were installed in seven out of nine provinces in 1937, an equitable order was sought that would reconcile the interests of the cultivators and the factories.2 In India and Indonesia, the former nationalists were now the new rulers and grappled with the question of how to ensure stable cane supplies without leaving cultivators at the mercy of the factories. In spite of the popularity of cane growers’ cooperatives, a satisfactory answer to this dilemma was not found in either country. In Java and India, the fact that workers in the factories became unionized and also claimed their share made it even more difficult to reach an equitable order in the sugar sector. “Escaping the plantation” but promoting the industry was the ambition The provinces without a congress government were Bengal and Punjab.

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of both newly independent nations, but what eventually emerged, I argue, were only two alternatives. It was either deindustrialization and a return to peasant production, or the continuation of the “Asian plantation,” the model developed in colonial Java. The argument I have made so far is that sugar factories need to control the fields, and the only way to achieve this outside the traditional plantation islands is by making the most powerful local farmers their allies. This happened under the Cultivation System in Java and would also happen in postcolonial Indonesia, in spite of the fact that smallholder cane growing (so fiercely resisted by the sugar factories in the heydays of colonialism) was initially embraced as the ideal model befitting liberation from the colonial yoke. In the Suharto era, it became clear that, to maintain a viable sugar industry, the cultivators simply had to be coerced to supply sufficient quantities of cane. The central role of the village head was reestablished, making postcolonial sugar production in some ways actually resemble the Cultivation System. This chapter records how Java’s rural elites continued to be a crucial factor throughout the decolonization process, eventually in the 1980s under the Suharto regime resuming their role of controlling land and labor on behalf of the sugar factories. In spite of all attempts to escape from the colonial setting by encouraging smallholders to replace the colonial plantation, the sugar industry under Suharto would bear a strong resemblance to colonial days. With regard to India, this chapter looks at two different and almost opposite trajectories. First, the district of Champaran (Bihar) is revisited. Together with adjacent Gorakhpur, this comprised the industrial sugar belt of India up to the 1950s. Sugar factories relied on farmers’ cooperatives for their supplies of cane, but the need for this cooperation between factory and field brought about a trajectory of decline. Gur, meanwhile, continued to be popular and peasant production again began to dominate the sugar sector of Champaran. Some of the surviving factories tried to create their own cane farms to obtain control over cane growing, which would have transformed their concerns into true plantations. In recent years, a drastic reorganization and resuscitation of the Bihar sugar industry has been under way under the aegis of large Indian industrial conglomerates involved in all aspects of the agricultural and chemical businesses, most notably fertilizers and pesticides. Possibly peasant production of gur in North India will dissipate under these concerted strategies for industrialization, but developments are still too fresh to tell. The second trajectory featured factories owned by farmers on a cooperative basis and was developed in the Bombay Deccan; in postcolonial

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India, part of the new state of Maharashtra. In the preceding chapters, the burgeoning gur production in this part of India was discussed as the successful result of a combination of irrigation, rapid implementation of new technologies, and the availability of credit. It has indeed been hailed as an example of healthy peasant capitalism, severing the chains of agricultural involution in spite of some emerging features that might have nevertheless looked like involution. It is precisely these ambivalent and contested assessments of the effects of industrial sugar production on rural social stratifications that signal important similarities with rural Java under the colonial sugar industry. These similarities are not coincidental, but bring West India together with Java solidly in the same rubric of the Asian plantation. What happened in West India and postcolonial Java amounted to nothing less than the “reappearance” of the colonial Java sugar industry, with its close alliance between local rural elites and the factories. This model seemed doomed to disappear in the 1930s, when the international sugar order established by the Brussels Convention collapsed.

The End of a Golden Era The early decades of the twentieth century had been a period of relative peace in the global sugar market, a peace inaugurated by the successful Brussels conference of 1902. It was based on a precarious balance of power, allotting each of the sugar powers a sphere of influence. Yet it was ephemeral, since the Brussels Convention ruled only for a fixed period of time and expired in the course of the First World War. The fact that the beet sugar industry in Europe had been in tatters after the war had camouflaged a structural overcapacity for sugar production at the global level. This overcapacity became manifest in the course of the 1920s. By that time, the large sugar producers had readied themselves for a new round of dumping that would escalate into an outright sugar war between the cane sugar giants of Java and Cuba. Whereas the Java sugar producers felt themselves to be almost invincible in the Asian markets, manufacturers in Cuba relied on preferential access to the United States market resulting from a 20 percent reduction in import duties.3 Cuba’s sugar factories, most of which had in fact fallen into American hands in the course of the 1920s, felt confident they could use part of the profits from their sugar sales to the United States to undercut the position of competitors around the world for the rest of their production. Yet in Pollit, “The Cuban Sugar Economy,” p. 3.

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1926, Cuba was no longer able to sell its entire stocks of sugar and was left with no option other than to cut back its production. In early 1927, the president of Cuba, Gerardo Machado, sent prominent Cuban businessman Colonel Miguel Tarafa to Europe in an effort to get the three largest sugar exporters in the world (Czechoslovakia, Java, and Cuba) around the table to limit their production to stabilize world sugar prizes. Tarafa first went to Paris and was then received in Amsterdam at the NHM headquarters by three representatives of the United Java Sugar Producers. However, they remained impassive to the Cuban’s arguments and expressed to their guest that shrinking the acreage of cane planted in Java for 1929 was out of the question. Their position was that Cuba should return to its production level of 1924, before it had made a hike of almost 20 percent to five million metric tons, which was in their view the root of the problem.4 The Cuban argument that Java’s sugar output had increased even more following the war was rejected by the Java sugar producers, who insisted that Cuba and Java served different parts of the world and that Java would only sell sugar in Europe in retaliation to the European dumping of beet sugar in British India. The Java sugar producers reiterated that Cuba should curtail its sugar exports. At the same time, they proposed a (secret) price setting, also aimed at preventing Cuba from enlarging its share of the world market for sugar by undercutting prices. They feared Cuba would use its gains from the preferential duties in the United States, paid for by American consumers, to reduce its prices in other parts of the world.5 Cuba did not agree to price setting and merely curtailed its output. In October 1927, it put a ceiling on its production before embarking on another attempt to come to an agreement with the other producers. However, it also announced it would fight for its position on the world market, if necessary by selling certain quantities at reduced prices through a national marketing board.6 Armed with this carrot and stick, Tarafa again pursued a settlement with the other major sugar producers in the world. In November 1927, an agreement was reached among Cuba, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland about production cuts, but without the signature of the Java producers the deal was practically For production figures of Cuba after 1850, see Prinsen Geerligs, Handboek iv, p. 228. NA, VJP, inv. no. 240, “Protocol van de vergadering van de Commissie van Drie der Vereenigde Javasuikerproducenten dd. 27 november 1927,” pp. 3, 5. 6 To this end a special legal entity was created, the “Cuban Sugar Export Cooperation,” to which the producers were obliged to subscribe. See “O,” “Cuba and the United States,” p. 239. 4 5

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worthless and Cuba therefore decided to abolish its self-imposed production ceilings.7 The Java factories, mostly family property and generally in excellent financial condition, supported their three representatives in Europe in their intransigency, informing them they were prepared for a fight if Cuba started dumping. Cuba did not confine itself to dumping on European markets but also started to worm its way into the Chinese market.8After the Java sugar producers had withdrawn once again from an international agreement that had been in the making in early 1929, the Cuban government renewed its attempts to enter the Chinese market. A few months later, Shanghai newspapers announced a joint Cuban-Chinese refinery in their city, for which Cuba would provide part of the capital and the technological expertise. Local business circles saw it as an ominous sign that Cuba was no longer willing to leave the Chinese market to the Java sugar producers.9 The planned refinery did not materialize, but rumors persisted. The leader of the Cuban sugar syndicate had allegedly approached the Japanese owners of the Ming Hwa refinery, which up to then had only refined Java sugar, and offered to deliver Cuban sugar to them. The local representative of the Dutch Trading Society (NHM) suspected its old partner, the Swire Taikoo refineries in Shanghai, had received a similar offer. Furthermore, the International Sugar Corporation was established in Havana to promote the export of Cuban sugar to China.10 In the meantime, little or no progress was made at the negotiating table. Throughout 1929, the Java sugar producers were deaf to pleas for compromise, under the impression that their Cuban competitors were the ones in the more desperate position. Cuba had incurred serious losses in 1928 because of overproduction, whereas the Java sugar producers still trusted their growing markets in China and India. Cuba made a final step toward a compromise by embracing a proposal aired by widely respected Dutch sugar expert Prinsen Geerligs to revive the Brussels Convention of 1902. However, it took until 1932 before this new scheme was adopted. This was after the economic crisis had set in and the government of India Chalmin, The Making of a Sugar Giant, p. 151. In 1928, an article featured in the Havana newspapers reported Cuba was embarking on negotiations with the Chinese Nationalist Government for the delivery of large quantities of sugar. NA, VJP, inv. no. 283, Havana Morning Post, August 17, 1928. 9 NA, VJP, inv. no. 192, O. Steenstra aan Vereenigde Javasuiker-producenten in Amsterdam, 15 juli 1931, 18 juli 1931 and 22 juli 1931. 10 NA, VJP, inv. no. 192, O. Steenstra aan Vereenigde Java-Suikerproducenten, August 17, 1931. 7 8

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had imposed a protective tariff for sugar that was to create havoc among the Java sugar producers. It was only then that they would come to the negotiating table. Absorbed by their conflict with Cuba, the Java sugar producers had no inkling of the damage they were inflicting on their relationships with the import trading houses elsewhere in Asia. The dumping practices they employed to keep Cuba out of the Asian markets in particular led to serious problems with the importers and refiners that had always been loyal to Java sugar. In 1929, the Java sugar producers had shipped large quantities of cheap sugar “West of Suez” in retaliation to Cuba’s dumping practices on the European market. This dramatically backfired, because a large amount of this sugar found its way back to British India and China, where it competed with the Java sugar delivered earlier to the local trading houses at the normal prices. In Shanghai, for example, the Swire Taikoo Refineries were confronted with cheap sugar brought back from Europe by Japanese traders. With an unshaken degree of understatement, the leaders of Swire impressed on the Dutch that they would have preferred to have received the cheap Java sugar directly. After all, they had been customers since the agricultural crisis of 1884, when Maclaine & Co in Batavia had begun to sell sugar to their refinery.11 In Calcutta, the arrival of sugar dumped on the market led to outrage among importers and a boycott of Java sugar by the INC.12 At a meeting of the Economic Committee of the League of Nations in Geneva in June 1929, convened to discuss the problems of the global sugar market, the representative from British India pointed to the dumping practices of the Java sugar producers.13 Yet the Java sugar producers were still not fully aware of the imminent danger to their industry. In 1931, the grievances about dumping by the Java sugar producers were submitted as testimony to the Indian Tariff Board, which at the same time was considering protective measures for sugar. Another sensitive issue was raised that also deserves a mention. In the late 1920s, the Java sugar factories had refused to have Indian management trainees in their factories, for the unspoken but obvious reason that this would NA, VJP, inv. no. 192, O. Steenstra aan Vereenigde Javasuiker-Producenten Amsterdam no. 19, Shanghai, September 2, 1931. 12 NA, VJP, inv. no. 191, J. C. F. Schor, Rapport no. 16, “Notities i/z Cawnpore, 27–30” and Rapport no. 33 “i/z bezoeken aan diverse suikerimporteurs, vergadering van Calcutta Sugar Importers Association.” 13 NA, VJP, inv. no. 240, Verslag Prinsen Geerligs Eonomisch Comité Volkenbond 4–6– 1929 in Genève. 11

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blur the racial divisions on their estates.14 A trip by a representative of the United Java Sugar Producers was organized in 1931 for the purpose of damage repair, to become more familiar with the Indian market, and last but not least to carry out an assessment of the state of development of the Indian sugar industry. It was too little too late, as the representative could see with his own eyes how the entire infrastructure for Java sugar sales in India was crumbling. This was also a result of the financial depression, which was severely hitting global trading networks. By the end of 1931, even Ralli Bros. had closed its offices in India.15 In 1932, the sugar trade in India became even more derailed and local branches of the Indian Congress were pressuring merchant houses, for example those in Karachi, not to import Java sugar anymore. This request was somewhat overdue, since the government of India had already raised the import duties on refined sugar by 25 percent, which amounted to a prohibitive tariff on Java sugar.16 Given their status as the prime sugar exporters to Asian markets, the Java sugar factories had made surprisingly little effort in fostering public relations with their markets. The colonial government had never been involved in marketing and the Dutch diplomatic corps was completely out of sync with the vital commercial interests of the Dutch Empire. The Java sugar producers behaved in an astonishingly nonchalant, if not parochial, manner toward the trading houses that could have helped them maintain their markets, including the Kian Gwan house that had such good contacts in China.17 However, this only partly explains how in the course of a few years, the Java sugar producers lost almost the entire Indian and half their Chinese markets.18 Even if the Java sugar producers had been more prudent salespeople and more adroit diplomats, they would still have been helpless in the face of the rapidly shifting political and economic balances in Asia. The Indian National Congress (INC) NA, VJP, inv. no. 191, J. C. F. Schor, Rapport no. 20, “Bezoek aan Sugar Bureau te Pusa,” p. 6. 15 About the suspension of Ralli Bros. activities in India, see the firm’s own website http:// www.rallis.co.in/aboutus/history.asp (accessed November 26, 2012). 16 NA, Archief Vereeniging Javasuiker-Producenten, inv. no. 289, “Extract brief van V.J.P. Soerabaja aan V.J.P. Amsterdam, no. 697,” March 21, 1932. The additional duty was 25 percent for all sugars of grade 23 and higher. See NA, Archief Vereeniging Javasuiker-Producenten, inv. no. 289, “Circulaire VJP aan de leden,” no. 416. 17 Knight, “Exogenous Colonialism,” p. 509. 18 Sugar exports from Java to India fell from 933,000 metric tons in 1929 to 176,000 metric tons in 1934. Over the same period, the exports to China declined less sharply, from 250,983 metric tons in 1930 to 116,948. Gebhardt, Die Zukunftsentwicklung der Java-Zucker-Industrie, pp. 84, 89. 14

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began to take co-responsibility for India’s economic policies, and it had no sympathy for the colonial and, as it had learned, racist sugar complex of Java. Japan had become the most powerful state in Asia and had maintained connections with the Java sugar industry through its ownership of five factories, but had its own nationalist agenda. By 1929, it had a fully developed sugar sector on Formosa producing 730,000 metric tons of sugar per year that began to drive out Java sugar from China.19 Only after the Java sugar producers had lost most of their Asian markets were they prepared to agree to terms with their Cuban counterparts. This resulted in the Chadbourne Scheme, concluded in 1932, that allotted fixed export quotas to the major sugar producers. This was not much of a relief for Java, since it did not return its lost markets or open up new markets in the West,20 this in spite of the fact Java could produce sugar at a lower cost than Europe or the United States. Other cane sugar producers faced the same economic injustice, as was noticed with regret by the United Kingdom Sugar Inquiry Committee of 1935 when it investigated the desperate situation of the sugar plantations in the West Indies.21 However, in the aftermath of the First World War, when the shipping lines all over the world were in disorder and European beet sugar annihilated, many states had become aware of the advantages of being self-reliant to a large extent.22 Moreover, the beet sugar industries lobbied their governments to keep the borders closed to cane sugar. This even happened in the United States, which had a strategic interest in encouraging sugar imports from its newly acquired territories of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, as well as from its semi-dependency, Cuba. The U.S. beet sugar industry succeeded, however, in obtaining a reduction of the import quota for cane sugar.23 As a result, Cuban exports to the United States diminished from 3.8 million metric tons in 1929 to just 1.4 million in 1933. The social unrest in Cuba that followed this drastic reduction led to the ousting from power of President Machado in 1933. This sugar baron, who had been working hard to put ceilings on Cuban sugar production, became a victim of the global sugar battles he had desperately tried to pacify.24 Rosenfeld, “Een en ander omtrent de suiker-industrie in Formosa,” p. 1020. See also Knight, “Exogenous Colonialism,” pp. 494, 502. 20 Gebhardt, Die Zukunftsentwicklung der Java-Zucker-Industrie, p. 135. 21 Cited in Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, p. 14. 22 Cottrell, Beet-Sugar Economics, p. 27. 23 Pollit, “The Cuban Sugar Economy,” p. 15. 24 Ibidem, pp. 4, 15; Carr, “Identity, Class and Nation,” p. 84. 19

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This economic war hardly resulted in any winners among the cane sugar producers, but the Java industry was probably the biggest loser. The large share of the world market it had carved out following the major sugar crisis of 1884, and at the expense of the poorest layers of Java’s rural population, had crumbled. By 1935, its production had dwindled to half a million metric tons – one sixth of its production in 1930 – and would only partially recover to 1.6 million metric tons in 1940. Moreover, after 1929 prices had fallen by almost 50 percent.25 The Indian market had been lost for good, and the emergence of Formosa as the key sugar supplier for both its home market and the expanding Japanese empire foreclosed the comeback of Java sugar in East Asia. Meanwhile, the Chinese market itself had been ruined by the full-scale war that broke out between Japan and the Nationalist Republic of China in 1937.26

Suffering from the Collapse of the Java Sugar Industry In the early 1930s, warehouses filled with sugar at Java’s harbor towns were set on fire by the colonial authorities to prevent the sugar entering the market. This was a deep humiliation for the arrogant Java sugar conglomerate, which in fact was no longer functioning as a unified body. The Java sugar producers had dissolved their joint selling agency because of internal disagreement in 1931. By that time, three-quarters of the Java sugar factories had discontinued their operations. A third of the sugar factories were dismantled, and some were sold to China and India. Indonesians could see how many of the powerful European employees lost their jobs, fell on hard times, and had to give up their houses and sell their cars. They usually lost their savings too, since as a rule these were invested in shares that became worthless after the Wall Street crash of 1929. Selling their properties did not help either, because houses and motor cars had become equally worthless. However, the consequences for the rural Javanese workers were more dramatic and painful, primarily because the total sum of land leases paid by the sugar factories to Javanese peasants declined from 133 million guilders in 1928 to a mere 16.5 million in 1936. Wages and profits for Indonesian Gebhardt, Die Zukunftsentwicklung, iii, p. 56. When in 1936 a new sugar deal had been hammered out between the Indies government and Japan, it only held for one year, because in 1937 a full-scale war broke out between Japan and the Chinese Nationalist Government. See Knight, “Exogenous Colonialism,” pp. 503–508.

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(excluding European) households dropped by 40 percent on average, but the crisis hit most severely in the sugar districts, where total financial incomes shrank to a quarter in absolute figures.27 The loss of income for the Indonesian population was somewhat mitigated by a drastic drop in prices, but the weight of the crisis was unevenly spread. The production of food crops could have been expanded, as less land was under cane, but poverty and hunger awaited landless sugar workers. Data on rice consumption can provide a good indication of this. In 1885, rice consumption per capita in Java had fallen by 10 percent, but remained more or less stable afterward. During the depression years, rice production stagnated, imports declined, and the population increased considerably, resulting in another decline in per capita rice consumption of about 10 percent.28 Unskilled workers saw their earnings diminish from an already meager thirty to forty cents per day to a bare minimum of twenty cents, only being increased by an abysmal four or five cents as late as 1937.29 The living conditions of the workers continued to be grave and for that reason the government ordered an extensive investigation into household incomes at a sample of twenty-two plantations, four of which were sugar factories.30 It was an immensely detailed exercise conducted between 1939 and 1940; for the four sugar plantations alone it involved no less than 540 households. Separate records were kept for each household for one month to follow consumption patterns, working hours, income, debts, number of persons sharing in consumption, and so on.31 The conclusion of this report was that thanks to the fact that about two-thirds of the field and factory workers at least had some land, the majority had been able to cope with the crisis. However, another investigation in the late 1930s presents a picture of the conditions for the others who had no land to fall Scheltema, Food Consumption, pp. 58–61; O’Malley, Indonesia in the Great Depression, p. 191. 28 See Patnaik, The Republic of Hunger, p. 28. Her conclusion that rice consumption drastically diminished is not entirely justified, however, since the declining rice output per capita on Java was partly compensated for by increased rice imports. See Booth, Agricultural Development, p. 34, and Mansvelt and Creutzberg, Changing Economy, vol. 4, Rice Prices, pp. 16–18. 29 NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 4, Personeel, Administrateur to Tiedeman en Van Kerchem, no. 13, April 13, 1932. The compensations for the use of the sawahs increased from 26.84 guilders per bau in 1938 to 31.72 in 1939. NA, Archive of the Klattensche Cultuurmaatschapij, inv. no. 105, Vertegenwoordiger van de Klattensche Cultuurmaatschappij aan de directie van de Japarasche Cultuurmaatschappij, December 7, 1938. 30 Coolie Budget Commission, Living Conditions of Plantation Workers, pp. 4–5. 31 Ibidem, p. 11. 27

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back on. Those dependent on cash incomes, many of whom were workers in the sugar industry (often more than one member of the family), must have been hard hit, as one contemporary expert described: Those no longer receiving an income in cash from the sugar or other source were forced to fall back on the native community and in many cases went to strengthen the group of so-called “kampong coolies” (casual labourers working around the villages), persons in the villages living from hand to mouth doing odd jobs as they may appear . . . Again, it is probably principally this group whose state of nutrition has fallen off in the past few years . . . Real symptoms of a deterioration in the diet of some groups of the people are furnished by reports that locally now and then the emergency foodstuffs are being eaten, such as cassava refuse and the pith of banana stems, which were formerly eaten in the more remote districts. Other unfavourable phenomena are the higher death rate in 1934, and the fact that the workers are becoming exhausted more rapidly, which was observed among those set to preparing the soil again for the planting of sugar cane in 1935.32

The Final Years of Java’s Colonial Sugar Industry The hesitant recovery of the Java sugar industry in the late 1930s was completely undone by the Japanese occupation of Indonesia from 1942 to 1945. Japan’s capitulation was followed by Sukarno’s promulgation of the Republic of Indonesia, an act that was not recognized by the Netherlands. Four violent years followed, during which Republican troops and the Dutch army each held part of Java. In districts under Dutch control, sugar factories were able to resume operations in 1946 and the Republic also tried to get factories milling again. By 1949, all that remained of the proud sugar complex was a pitiful 15 percent of the factories: 31 out of what had once been 180.33 In contrast to its colonial predecessor, the Republic of Indonesia in its early years was not biased in favor of the factories. For example, while smallholder cane growing had been prohibited in 1923, it was promoted by the Sukarno government. Ratooning was anathema in colonial days, but was encouraged by the Indonesian authorities. The sugar factory workers, whose union had been banned in 1923, returned to collective action in the 1950s. Yet in spite of these important changes, the continuities proved of greater consequence in the long term. Primarily, the collaboration between factories and village elites, as well as the Indonesian Scheltema, Food Consumption, p. 62. Lindblad, Bridges to New Business, p. 61; Brown, “The Politics of Trade Union Formation,” pp. 78–79.

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civil servants and the regional heads (the bupati) that had been so crucial in colonial times, remained intact. Further, though the European colonial civil servants disappeared, their role was taken over by the high-ranking military, which would become the backbone of the Suharto regime that ruled from 1965 to 1997. The village elites played a pivotal role in the resurrection of the postcolonial Java sugar industry. This is apparent, for example, from the regular reports by the administrators of the East Java factories Wonolongan and Wringin Anom in the late 1940s. In military terms, the situation was very confused, with a variety of guerrilla groups fighting the Dutch and pressuring village heads, mandurs, and other key local Javanese figures to stop working for the sugar factories. When the administrator of Wonolongan went into the desas at the end of 1947, people hid from him.34 The first sugar harvests would have been a complete failure if the administrator of Wonolongan and many of his colleagues all over Java had not been able to rely on the Javanese landed elites and Indonesian civil servants still loyal to Dutch rule. At Wonolongan, the wedono (district head) convened the cultivators to pressure them into leasing out their land to the factory. As a result, this estate succeeded in mobilizing 1,800 laborers to carry out preparatory groundwork for planting cane in early 1949.35 Whereas the local government officials were a familiar agency, new to the scene was the Indonesian army, which was acutely aware of the economic importance of the sugar sector. In the final months before the transfer of sovereignty in December 1949, the sugar factories were able to count on the army for the safety of their staff and field workers. To his surprise, one Dutch administrator was offered assistance by the local commander of the Indonesian Republican Army to get people to plant the cane.36 The army’s protection was more basic after Dutch troops launched a rather desperate military campaign to wipe out the Republican strongholds in Java during December 1948. As a result of this, guerrilla attacks flared up, scaring workers and mandurs away from the fields.37 The guerrilla NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 158. Letter by the administrator of Wonolongan to the NHM, Confidentieel no. 6, February 12, 1948. 35 NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 158. August 5, 1948, Dossier aanplant. 36 NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 158. Letter by the administrator of Wonolongan to the NHM, November 23, 1949, no. 198 and December 15, 1949, no. 206. 37 NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 158. Letter by the administrator of Wonolongan to the NHM, confidentieel, no. 4, 18 Januari 1949 and 7 Februari 1949, 19 Februari 1949. This phase of the colonial conflict is called the Second Police Action, launched on December 19, 1948, which became a military success but a political disaster. 34

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gangs did not immediately disappear after the formal independence of Indonesia in December 1949. In East Java, for example, Indonesian soldiers were based at some of the sugar factories’ compounds for protection in the early 1950s.38 At least in the case of sugar, the well-recorded role of the Indonesian army in economic life after 1965 can be traced back to the very early years of the Republic of Indonesia. In the 1950s, the leaders of the Java sugar factories were pragmatic enough to raise the red and white flag on their factory compounds and to shake hands with the officers of the Republican army. For their part, the Republican government, the army, the bupati, and even the labor unions that emerged in the late 1940s were glad to see the factories in operation again.39 However, many new realities required a great deal of flexibility on the part of the sugar factory managers, whose mindset was still very much colonial. In the old days, the government had practically outlawed Indonesian labor unions in the event of only the remotest threat to the sugar factories’ interests. Moreover, while the colonial sugar industry had been strong enough to depress wages and to coerce landowners into releasing their land at uneconomic rates, after independence the situation almost reversed. Even though the Indonesian government desperately wanted to raise sugar exports, it had to reckon with its parliament, which insisted on giving workers and cultivators their fair share. The 1918 regulations still in force in 1950 had never been enough to compensate the peasantry for having to relinquish their land. To ensure sufficient land for the factories, the minister of the interior intervened in 1951 by setting central tariffs and new conditions for land leases. These were fairer to the cultivators and proved instrumental in increasing the available acreage for sugar.40 Meanwhile, the Indonesian trade unions obtrusively started to appear in the sugar factory compounds. In 1946, a sugar workers’ union (Sarekat Buruh Gula, or SBG) was established. It took a firmly nationalist stance and advocated the nationalization of the sugar industries, but its membership numbered barely more than 3 percent of the factory workers.41 Furthermore, labor had become much more vocal than in colonial times and strikes took place anyway, with or without the SBG. In this turbulent NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 160. Letter by the administrator of Wonolongan to the NHM, March 1, 1951. 39 Knight, “The Sugar Industry of Colonial Java,” pp. 233–234. 40 Sutter, Indonesianisasi, pp. 707–712. 41 See Brown, “The Politics of Trade Union Formation.” 38

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context, the SBG was quite often just a follower of the spontaneous actions of labor rather than the leading agency among the workers.42 Bereft of the colonial power to suppress labor unrest and with no unions effective enough to channel discontent, the result was, according to one administrator, that frequently “one’s western sense of justice was seriously tested.”43 While the factory administrators complained about the workers on their compounds, they were quite satisfied with the continued support of local officials and village elites. Sometimes the local bupati would curb labor unrest at the factory in the interests of the cultivators who wanted their cane milled.44 Good contacts with the village heads helped greatly in preventing cane thefts and obtaining sufficient sawah land to be planted with cane. In the early 1950s up to a third of the harvest was still usually lost because of cane fires and theft, but as local officials and police often sided with the factory administrators in cases of theft or other irregular behavior, the situation drastically improved over a few years.45 In the early 1950s, the central Indonesian government usually maintained a middle way between the pressures of leftist parliamentarians toward rapid nationalization and smallholdership on one hand, and the need to earn foreign exchange on the other. However, exports were impeded by soaring domestic demand and declining productivity in the Java sugar industry, while wages were rising. With the levels of sales, sugar factories could barely cover their running costs. The Indonesian government was forced to abolish export taxes to prevent larger losses by the sugar factories. After a glut in sugar prices in 1953, however, prospects began to look much brighter the following year when exports increased NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 160, Administrator of Wringin Anom to NHM, Dossier Confidentieel, August 14, 1951. 43 NA, Klattensche Cultuurmaatschappij, inv. no. 62, Mirandolle, Voûte & Co to Directie Klattensche Cultuurmaatschappij, October 7, 1954. 44 NA, Klattensche Cultuurmaatschappij, inv. no. 62, Mirandolle, Voûte & Co to Directie Klattensche Cultuurmaatschappij, Arbeidsaangelegenheden, Semarang May 18, 1955. 45 NA, Klattensche Cultuurmaatschappij, inv. no. 62, Brief R. W. van Duinen aan Mirandolle, Voûte & Co. Vertegenwoordigers der Klattensche Cultuurmaatschappij c.s. in Semarang, December 22, 1953; NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 160, Administrator of Wrining Anom to NHM, November 24, 1950; NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 160, Administrator of Wonolongan to NHM, March 17, 1951; Kraal, Indonesië en suiker, p. 10; NA, Klattensche Cultuurmaatschappij, inv. no. 62, Arbeidsaangelegendheden, nr. 8, October 4, 1955. The improving security situation was also noted by Kraal, Indonesië en suiker, p. 11. 42

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to 220,000 metric tons. Furthermore, Indonesia expected Japan, which had lost its colonies, to return as a large customer.46 Meanwhile, the Indonesian government was exploring ways to produce sugar that were less burdensome for sawah agriculture and less labor consuming. It pressured the sugar factories to apply ratooning, which the factories were more likely to undertake when sufficient labor or land were hard to obtain.47 Another major break with the colonial days was that the Indonesian government insisted the sugar factories should also mill cane grown by farmers on their own account (bevolkingsriet). As a result, the share of smallholder cane milled by the factories rose rapidly from a few percent in 1950 to 20 percent in 1954.48 This indeed was a new development, as in colonial times the Java Sugar Syndicate had always vehemently opposed smallholder growing of cane for factories, and had even wrestled a formal prohibition from the colonial government in 1923.49 The Indonesian government was also aided in its aim to produce more sugar against less social cost by the first successful experiments with new cane varieties that could be farmed on dry (tegalan) lands.50 However, just when a new balance between cultivators and factories was about to emerge and the Java sugar industry was recovering at an unexpectedly rapid pace, political clouds were forming. Indonesia and its former colonizer were at loggerheads concerning West New Guinea, a part of the former Netherlands Indies the Dutch were unwilling to transfer to the Indonesian Republic. These tensions had direct repercussions for the Dutch-owned factories, which found it increasingly difficult to rent sawahs.51 In the first days of December 1957, factories in East Java were closed, and on December 5 the Dutch were declared personae non gratae in Indonesia. The entire Dutch-owned plantation economy was nationalized and sugar production entered a new era under government supervision. Kraal, Indonesië en suiker, pp. 15–24; Fryer, “Recovery of the Sugar Industry in Indonesia,” p. 180. 47 NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 164, Administrator of Wonolongan to NHM, July 31, 1955. 48 Fryer, “Recovery of the Sugar Industry in Indonesia,” p. 173; NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 163, Administrator of Wonolongan to NHM, March 11, 1954; NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 164, Administrator of Wonolongan to NHM, June 21, 1956. 49 Crince le Roy, Opkoop van bevolkingsriet, p. 1. 50 NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 163, Administrator of Wonolongan to NHM, January 17, 1955. 51 NA, Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan, inv. no. 166, Administrator of Wonolongan to NHM, December 1957. 46

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The Reappearance of the Sugar Plantation in Java Decolonization had paved the way for more collective action in the ­factories and more equitable relations between cultivators and factories, but it did not end the role of the village elites in providing land, and nationalization brought back heavy government involvement in the sugar sector. Neither did decolonization end inequalities at the local level, and the concomitant skewed land distribution. After the sugar factories had been taken from their Dutch owners and their Dutch management expelled, the daunting task of forming equitable relationships and increasing efficiency rested practically entirely on the shoulders of the government.52 The state now owned all the sugar factories, with the exception of ten mills in the north Java plain that were the property of Kian Gwan, the company that had played such an important role in Java sugar exports in the early decades of the twentieth century. The Indonesian government was determined to restore the Java sugar sector to its former position as an exporting industry. Under Sukarno (1945 to 1965) and Suharto (1965 to 1997), different models were tried, but the outcome of this convoluted trajectory bore remarkable similarities to colonial days. Nevertheless, there is one important difference because Indonesia, once a major sugar exporter, is a sugar importer today. Suharto’s New Order inherited a severely diminished sugar sector from the Sukarno years. The relationship between factories and landholders was back to the same unhealthy financial basis as during colonial days. A survey conducted in 1960 found that 84 percent of cultivators were leasing out their land involuntarily.53 The situation would only worsen because the new tariffs for land leasing imposed around 1950, which had appeared an immense improvement for the peasantry, were washed away by inflation in the early 1960s. Farmers gave their worst plots of land to the factories, while trying to hold on to them as long as they could for rice production. Delays in vacating the land for use by factories sometimes jeopardized the entire sugar season.54 Moreover, the complexity of agricultural relations had increased considerably since colonial times. An average factory owned 17 percent of the land it needed. The remainder had to be leased from thousands of minor cultivators, because collective Fryer, “Recovery of the Sugar Industry in Indonesia,” p. 173. Mubyarto, “The Sugar Industry,” p. 45, n. 14. 54 Ibidem, p. 46. 52 53

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arrangements for land rent with villages (standard in colonial times) had been outlawed by the Republic. The output of sugar per hectare had fallen by 36 percent after Dutch colonial rule, and total production was about half a million metric tons.55 The only figure that had not dwindled since colonial days was the number of laborers employed per factory, either as casual or as regular workers. Meanwhile, the Indonesian government had imposed price control, levied taxes, and placed a heavy administrative superstructure, burdened by political appointments, on the sugar industry. As a result, factory production costs in Java became probably the highest in Asia.56 The fifty-five sugar factories, of which forty-eight were government owned, made considerable losses. The challenge for the Suharto regime was both to enhance the efficiency of the factories and to radically change the relationship between field and factory. The principle of individual contracting between cultivator and factory was laudable, and a century earlier Minister of the Colonies Fransen van de Putte had tried to implement the same relationship. In practice, it had not worked in the 1870s and would not work in postcolonial times either because the factories needed large plots of land. It was no surprise, therefore, that in 1975 the Indonesian government completely abandoned land leasing and shifted to what is termed smallholder production. In spite of its name, the Intensified Smallholder Cane (Tebu Rakyat Intensifikasi, or TRI) imposed in 1975 was something of a return to colonial times, if not the Cultivation System proper. It brought the civil service back to the field, as the bupati had to assign the fields to be planted with cane.57 Moreover, the responsibilities as well as the power of the sugar factories vis-à-vis the farmers were considerably strengthened. The factories had to provide the cultivators with improved cane and were made responsible for the coordination of the harvesting in collaboration with the farmers’ cooperatives. Although the TRI gave an important role to cooperatives, in practice it disempowered minor cultivators. The coordinating role of cooperatives during the harvest provided ample opportunity to favor the more powerful cultivators at the expense of the poorer ones. The fact that farmers Mubyarto, “The Sugar Industry,” pp. 38, 42–44, 52. The output had fallen from 8.2 metric tons of sugar per hectare in 1930 to 5.2 metric tons in the 1960s. 56 Selosoemardjan, Social Changes in Jogjakarta, p. 330. In fact, in the mid-1970s, the production costs of milling sugar were much higher than in India and the Philippines. Whereas India produced 17.54 metric tons per worker per annum, in Indonesia it was just 9.3 metric tons. Soetrisno, Farmers, Millers and Sugar Production in Indonesia, p. 123. 57 Brown, “The Intensified Smallholder Cane Programme,” p. 40. 55

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were paid according to weight and sucrose content harbored another risk of unfair treatment, as it was not an independent chemist but a factory employee who assessed the quality of the cane delivered to the factory gate. Although this assessment had to be carried out in the presence of the farmers’ representatives, these people might be appointed by the bupati, which further reduced the chance of fair treatment.58 The bupati was not the only official to have returned in a formal capacity to facilitate sugar production. The other key figure was the village head, who became a government official in 1979 and in that position directly subordinate to the chain of command from the central government downward.59 The state structure placed the village heads under pressure to ensure the peasants grew cane. Even though the head of the cooperative (the ketua kelompok) was elected, it was often the lurah or another village official who assumed this position. This was performed in the role of a government agent, and often as the employer of gangs of migrant laborers, rather than as a representative of the interests of the village peasantry.60 The village elites, whose common interests with the factories had kept the sugar industry alive beyond decolonization, greatly benefited from the TRI, which exacerbated the divide between rich farmers and poor peasants. In the early 1980s, cooperatives emerged that pooled land to get substantial blocks of cane of roughly ten hectares to facilitate work. Yet, in practice, these cooperatives became the vehicles of the richer cultivators and village heads. The same would happen in postcolonial India. They acted as the “invisible force,” the heavy hand of the cooperatives. Moreover, land ownership became increasingly skewed, whereby village elites leased out part of their land, usually for sharecropping.61 The TRI of the Suharto era in fact created a class of indigenous plantation holders who owned up to 200 hectares, which by the standards of Java were immense landholdings.62 The leading members of the cooperatives enjoyed easy access to capital and bought entitlements to cheap credit at half price from the poorer tani who were desperately in need of cash. The latter became more or less wage laborers on their own land and on top of that bore the risks of lost harvests, which, in contrast to the colonial days, were no longer the risk of the factories.63 In addition, and again as Ibidem, p. 57. Elson, The End of the Peasantry, p. 223. 60 Brown, “The Intensified Smallholder Cane Programme,” p. 51. 61 Hüsken and White, “Java: Social Differentation,” p. 258. 62 Mackie and Malley, “Productivity Decline,” p. 735. 63 Ibidem, pp. 736–737. 58 59

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in colonial days, large teams of migrant cane cutters worked in the fields. They sometimes came from nearby villages, but quite often from farther away as was the case in East Java. Like the old colonial days, there was intensive recruitment of migrant labor from Madura. Meanwhile, less time was invested in cane cultivation itself, the upshot of which was a sharp reduction in the number of female workers in the cane fields. Declining household income for smallholders forced members of families to become increasingly engaged in off-farm activities to make ends meet or to seek work as migratory laborers departing for destinations throughout Southeast Asia and the Arabian peninsula.64 As regards the actual results of the TRI, a dramatic increase in sugar production did take place in the 1970s, but predominantly as a result of the expansion of acreage to the old level of the 200,000 hectares under cane in the late 1920s. The yield per hectare was slightly over half of what it had been in those days.65 Following the 1980s, the lack of coordination between harvesting and milling, as well as the outdated factory equipment, stretched the milling season from what had been 90 days in colonial times to 153 days. This long milling season led to a considerable loss of sucrose because of the cane standing in the field waiting to be harvested. This was a problem that could not be solved by refurbishing the factories, which were more than fifty years old and obsolete, though this was attempted with the assistance of the World Bank in the 1980s.66 The high level of coordination between the harvesting schedules and milling process of the colonial days had gone, in spite of the formal responsibility of the cooperatives and factories in this regard. Large parts of the colonial infrastructure for haulage, the once extensive railway tracks, had been broken up. As in India, cane was loaded onto motor trucks, often to arrive at the factory gates only after considerable delays. The inefficiencies were a great burden on the cultivators, but the rich and powerful among them were not hurt as they usually rented their land out and acted as moneylenders to poorer peasants. Because of the lengthy time the cane stood and the risks involved, it was easy for smallholders to lose control of the proceeds from the cane and accumulate debts.67 See Spaan, “Labour Circulation”; Spaan and Hartveld, “Socio-Economic Change and Rural Entrepreneurs.” 65 Mubyarto, “The Sugar Industry: From Estate to Smallholder Cane Production,” p. 31. 66 Mackie and Malley, “Productivity Decline,” pp. 728–731; Brown, “The Intensified Smallholder Cane,” pp. 44–45; Soetrisno, Farmers, Millers and Sugar Production in Indonesia, p. 124. 67 Brown, “The Intensified Smallholder Cane Programme,” p. 51; Soetrisno, Farmers, Millers and Sugar Production in Indonesia, p. 46. 64

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In contrast to the early Sukarno years, which had held real prospects for smallholder cane growing, the Suharto era brought back the plantation in the disguise of “intensified smallholdership.” In addition to this plantation system, the share of factory-owned land increased considerably. In 2010, about 57 percent of sugar production was “smallholder plantation,” while the remainder was roughly equally divided between government-owned and private plantations. The emergence of large-scale sugar plantations was partly a concomitant of the expansion of sugar production to other Indonesian islands. In 2010, 37 percent of the 1.77 million metric tons of Indonesia’s white sugar came from outside Java. This percentage is expected to rise in the coming years, because the acreage on Java has been shrinking under pressure from an endemic shortage of land on the island.68 Plantations are being developed in South Sumatra, Kalimantan, and the Moluccas. In Irian Yaya, an immense plantation complex of 200,000 hectares has been planned by Singapore agro-industrial giant Wilmar, which is now diversifying from palm oil and fertilizer into sugar, and has recently bought the Australian sugar business Sucrogen to acquire refining capacity and market access.69

India: Price Control, Zones, and Cooperatives The postcolonial trajectories of sugar production in Indonesia and India share important similarities. In both countries, the nationalist movements that took over from the colonial rulers wanted better for the smallholders, as well as for the workers in the factories. For good reasons, nationalists rejected the plantation as a colonial production model and the Republic of Indonesia under Sukarno sought to promote smallholdership. Even under Suharto, the word “smallholder” was still used, although rather as a cover up for a return to the plantation model. While the plantation turned out to be resilient in Java, it has been applied without qualms on the other islands of the Indonesian archipelago. Much of what happened in Java also featured in sugar production in postindependence India. In the old sugar belts of colonial times, the yield of cane per hectare and Extract from the Indonesia Sugar Annual Report 2011, by USDA Foreign Agricul­ tural Service, on http://gain.fas.usda.gov/Recent%20GAIN%20Publications/Sugar%20 Annual_­Jakarta_Indonesiaa4–28–2011.pdf (accessed November 5, 2012). 69 “Development of Sugar Plantations toward Sugar Self Sufficiency,” Indonesian Commercial Newsletter, May 2010, http://datacon.co.id/Agri–2010Sugar.html (accessed November 5, 2012); http://www.sucrogen.com/about/history (accessed November 5, 2012). 68

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the sugar extraction from cane declined dramatically. Obsolete factories overloaded with staff as a result of clientelism became a burden on the sugar sector. Like Indonesia, India would see a return to the plantation, which partly coincided with a relocation of sugar production from the old colonial sites to new regions where conditions were more conducive to industrial sugar. It was again a major shift, comparable to the one after the abolition of slavery that had set in motion a relocation from the French and British West Indies, most notably to Asia and Cuba. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a new development is the ascendency of the vertical integration of sugar plantations into large agro-industrial business, both in Indonesia and India. Like its Indonesian counterpart, the nationalist movement in India was keen to find a method of industrial sugar production that would ensure self-sufficiency, but without the colonialist vices. Actually, the tariff wall that had protected the Indian sugar industry since 1932 was the result of a coalition between the Indian Congress and sugar interests. The boycott of Java sugar announced in mid-1930 by the INC was initiated in Cawnpore, the center of India’s industrial sugar production. The Begg Sutherland concern that owned two factories in Cawnpore and five elsewhere in India – particularly in Bihar – was sitting on unsold stocks of sugar.70 Notwithstanding the initial support of the INC, the emergence of an industrial sugar conglomerate in India brought about many of the tensions that also existed around the Java sugar industry at the height of colonial rule. However, the crucial difference was that in the 1930s, India headed toward independence and produced for its home market, which created the political conditions to strike a balance between the interests of the factories and the cultivators. This was still not an easy task though, because sugar industrialists such as Begg Sutherland, Parry, and Birla had become powerful actors. Within a few years following the enactment of the tariff wall, 100 new sugar factories emerged in India.71 This even provided business opportunities for the Dutch companies and engineers that had been engaged in supplying and maintaining the machinery for the Java sugar industry. A handful of Java sugar factories were dismantled and transported to

NA, Archief Vereeniging Javasuiker-Producenten, inv. no. 289, (w.g.) Vermey, Nederlandsch Indische Landbouw Maatschappij N.V. aan Vereenigde Javasuiker-Producenten, August 8, 1930. 71 Their numbers increased from 27 in 1929 to 130 in 1935, and stabilized at 150 from 1940 onward. Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, p. i. 70

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India.72 India’s industrial sugar production mushroomed from 158,000 metric tons in 1931 to 1.1 million metric tons in 1937. This was impressive, but also implied that three-quarters of the cane grown in India was still not processed by factories. Even in Bihar, where the highest percentage of cane was industrially milled, there was still stiff competition from gur manufacturing.73 Modern two-, three-, or even five-roller mills driven by engines were introduced. Improvements were made to the furnaces, pans, and hand centrifuges. Although gur making demanded much more time than industrial sugar, it was the spare time of farmers’ households and should not be counted as equivalent to wage labor. Gur undoubtedly had its disadvantages, most notably that much of the sucrose was spilled during the manufacturing process and that it deteriorated within three months, but consumers continued to love its taste. Mahatma Gandhi praised its nutritional value, and it maintained a robust presence in the countryside. The khandsaris suffered more than gur through competition from industrial sugar manufactured in India after the imposition of the tariff wall, but they did not disappear. These manufacturers had been economizing on their labor input and benefited from the fact that as small businesses they were exempt from the taxes the sugar factories had to pay. From 1957 onward, khandsari production even experienced a new phase of modest growth.74 The imposition of the tariff wall did not solve the long-standing difficulty faced by factories in convincing cultivators to cane to them and stop making gur, let alone persuading them to plant in larger blocks. Not much had changed since the early nineteenth century, when Dwarkanath Tagore had pioneered his factories in Bengal. Once again, the basic solution was more or less plantation-like. As long as factories had no fixed arrangements for deliveries of cane, or fixed circles as in Java from where they could draw cane, chaotic scenes on Indian railroads occurred, with Government of Bihar, Dept of Industries, From development and revenue, File No. 18–218/1938, Typed Extract, p. 2. 73 Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, pp. v, vi, 226. 74 Kiyokawa and Ohno, “Technology and Labour Absorption,” p. 345; Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, pp. 130, 132–134. Khandsari production declined from about 250,000 metric tons to 125,000 between 1931 and 1936, and further to about 85,000 metric tons in 1945. In the 1930s, per capita consumption of refined sugar ranged between 2.7 and 3.2 kilograms, and gur consumption between 7.7 and 11 kilograms. Gur still had an important share in this growth, since its volume had been rising slowly from about 2.5 million metric tons in 1913 to about 3.8 million metric tons in 1930, but rapidly increased in the years afterward to more than 5 million metric tons in 1934. See Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, pp. ii, v, vi. 72

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cane carried back and forth over dozens of miles. The director of agriculture in Bihar noted in 1938, “In north Bihar it is not unusual at a railway station to see large quantities of cane moving in opposite directions.”75 Assigning labor and land to the factories was the most straightforward way to create a viable sugar industry. This was done in Mysore in 1933, for example, where the provincial government launched the Mysore Sugar Factory at Mandya to process cane grown at the newly constructed Irwin Canal irrigation works. Here, the government worked using a mixture of persuasion (advances, seedlings, improved plows, and fertilizer) and compulsion, by putting wasteland at the disposal of the factories.76 However, creating plantation-like conditions in this manner was not an option in North India, where hardly any suitable wasteland was available. Moreover, subsidizing cultivators to deliver to factories would have required immense investment, given the size of the existing sugar sector, without solving the main problem of factories competing for cane. The most serious option to achieve better coordination between field and factory in North India was through the zoning system the Indian Sugar Committee had been able to study in Java. Wynn Sayer, the sugar expert from the experimental sugar station at Pusa, had become its main advocate. In the early 1930s, highly esteemed expert on sugar production Noel Deerr (the technical leader of the Begg Sutherland sugar factories) joined Sayer in his struggle to convince the government of India it should enact the possibility of establishing zones around factories from where they could draw their cane. However, the idea as such was politically contested, by the Indian National Congress in particular. Even though the INC had embraced the objective of an Indian sugar industry and had joined forces with the Indian sugar millers against imported sugars, it would not readily support the sugar factories on this issue. In the United Provinces and Bihar, where INC governments were installed in 1937, its politicians had already accused the sugar factories of exploiting cane cultivators.77 The INC felt zoning would place the growers in a disadvantaged position, as it would force them to sell cane to only one particular factory. Even in the prevailing situation where factories had to compete for cane, the cultivators found themselves in a Government of Bihar, Dept. of Industries, From development and revenue, File No. 18–218/1938, Typed Extract, p. 4. 76 See Coleman, Development of Sugar Industry in Mysore. 77 Baru, “State and Industrialisation,” p. 7. 75

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disadvantaged position as they were anxious to get rid of their cane.78 Once they decided to grow cane for a factory, they were more or less at the mercy of its middlemen. The sugar factories nevertheless had a point when they argued that establishing zones was a means of eliminating the cane-purchasing middlemen. Without zones, each sugar factory relied on dozens of middlemen to purchase cane from the peasants. Using challans, or indents, the middlemen ensured the peasants would deliver via them to the factory. This dependency made it difficult for factories to get around the middlemen and zamindars and pay cultivators directly.79 In fact, some factories found it more convenient to pay through the middlemen than to hire staff to make payments directly to the peasants. The usual practice was that farmers got receipts on delivery at the factory gate and then had to turn to their middleman to exchange these for money or to sell their receipts at a discount at “the bazaar.” Powerful sugar entrepreneurs such as Begg Sutherland & Co. wanted to eliminate the middlemen, both to improve their relations with the cultivators and to reduce transaction costs. Some experts feared, however, that a direct relationship would bring farmers under the sway of the sugar factories without releasing them from the thralls of the moneylenders.80 Indeed, the government of India and the provincial governments had enough reason to worry about the weak position of the cultivators, whose position was expected to deteriorate further once the rapid spread of improved varieties resulted in an overproduction of cane. For that reason, the government of India passed the Sugar-cane Act in 1934, which enabled provincial governments to fix cane prices, usually at 50 percent of the production costs, which was more or less the international standard.81 In fact, this also removed a major objection to zoning. Nevertheless, it took another six years before the governments of Bihar and the United Provinces promulgated the Sugar Factories Control Act, giving each factory its own circle from where it could purchase cane. This had to wait for the emergence of cultivators’ cooperatives, the first of which appeared in 1937. The two provinces devised the zoning in such a way that it encouraged cultivators to form cooperatives to act as a countervailing power to the sugar factories. Meanwhile, the factories became increasingly powerful and had organized themselves into a national sugar Agarwala, Sugar Industry & Labour, pp. 63, 65; Amin, Sugarcane and Sugar in Gorakhpur, pp. 187–190. 79 Amin, “Peasants and Capitalists in Northern India,” pp. 319, 321, 322. 80 Agarwala, Sugar Industry & Labour, p. 64. 81 Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, pp. 86–87. 78

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syndicate, uniting two-thirds of the 150 Indian sugar factories.82 In Bihar and the United Provinces, however, the factories had convinced their governments that membership of the syndicate should be made mandatory, particularly with regard to sugar sales. Soon this formal recognition was abused to shore up sugar prices. Attempts by the governments of the United Provinces and Bihar to break the power of the syndicate to bring down sugar prices proved disastrous. Both governments quickly realized their decision had “set loose the forces of disorder” that might cause the total breakdown of the sugar industry in their states. They felt compelled to renew their recognition of the sugar syndicate, which was reestablished in 1941 with its headquarters in Cawnpore, the base of Begg Sutherland & Co.83 It is a story that is illustrative both of the power of the factories and of their contentious relationship with the provincial governments. It was therefore not out of sympathy with the sugar factories that the governments of Bihar and the United Provinces established the principle of zoning in 1940, but to eliminate the purchasing agents.84 Excluding the middlemen widened the profit margins and bolstered the competitiveness of the Bihar sugar industry, which exported 80 percent of its sugar to other states in India, to Bengal and Madras in particular.85

The Sugar Syndicate, Sugar Factories, and Congress By the late 1930s, the United Provinces and Bihar had succeeded in reconciling the needs of the sugar industry, which provided an increasingly important source of revenue, with the interests of the cultivators. However, the issue of competition between gur and industrial sugar remained and became a bone of contention within the Indian Central Sugar Committee (ICSC) established in 1941 to bring together government officials, millers, and to some extent the cultivators’ interests. The committee recommended, for example, that the government ban the manufacture of gur and khandsari within the factory zones. If accepted as a policy, this would have weakened the position of the cultivators considerably. Tensions became high and INC members representing the cultivators opposed the ICSC as a vehicle for millers’ interests that ignored the needs of farmers. Ibidem, pp. 205–206; Sinha, Sugar Industry in India, p. 32. Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, pp. 164–169. 84 Government of Bihar, Dept. of Industries, From development and revenue, File No. 18–218/1938, Typed Extract, p. 32. 85 Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, pp. 192–197. 82 83

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The government of Bihar considered, but refused to enact, a prohibition against gur making within factory zones, whereas the United Provinces did so, but here gur manufacturing was apparently less prominent or already encapsulated by the refineries.86 State interference was also required with respect to the problem of molasses. Since the early nineteenth century, industrial sugar production in India had been in a disadvantaged position against the khandsaris with regard to the sale of molasses, unless they had a license to produce liquor. The problems of industrial sugar producers in India only increased in the 1930s, as their production of molasses doubled, while their consumption of this by-product had fallen by 75 percent after the 1920s.87 Molasses were less in demand for tobacco curing, since biri or bidi (traditional Indian cigarettes not using molasses) and cigarettes had become increasingly popular at the expense of chewing tobacco. Moreover, the Indian liquor market did not have a large enough capacity to absorb molasses, as almost prohibitive taxing by the government of India impeded the drinking of country spirits. In addition, the Indian noncooperation movement campaigned against the use of alcohol. Using molasses for cattle fodder was problematic because it was hard to dispose of on small-scale markets, farmers were used to grazing cattle, and the use of molasses for yeast was practically unknown in India. Meanwhile, the Indian authorities began to realize it was impossible to throw the large amounts of industrially manufactured molasses squarely in the rivers.88 In the 1930s, the vacuum pans in the sugar factories of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar produced 300,000 metric tons of molasses per year, of which two-thirds were “mixed with factory effluent and discharged into neighbouring fields and water courses as waste, thereby polluting the local sources of water supply, giving rise to offensive odours and causing numerous complaints from local inhabitants.”89 Nevertheless, while in colonial Java the problem of molasses had to be solved through exports, in India the creation of a home market was a realistic prospect. Experts in India were in agreement that the best destination for the molasses was alcohol, to be mixed with heavy petrol as a fuel. Speeded up by fuel shortages during the war, the state of Mysore took the lead in making the mixing of fuel Amin, Sugarcane and Sugar in Gorakhpur, pp. 94–96, 220. In the 1930s, the production of molasses more than doubled, from 269,000 metric tons in 1930–1931 to 625,000 metric tons in 1939–1940. Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, p. 101. 88 Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, pp. 100–101. 89 Ibidem, p. 115. 86 87

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with ethanol mandatory, an initiative followed by the United Provinces and Bihar.90 This solution to environmental and energy problems led to a firmer embedding of the sugar factories in the industrialized sectors of the Indian economy, which were expected to increase their leverage over the peasantry. Countervailing powers did emerge, however, after independence in 1947 (and the introduction of general suffrage in 1950 in particular), which gave the cultivators more electoral power. Their interests were accordingly better addressed, and within a few years the power of the millers in the Indian Central Sugar Committee was substantially reduced in favor of the cultivators.91 In response to this, the sugar factories set up their own body, the Development Council for the Sugar Industry, in which the large British and Indian sugar conglomerates (Begg Sutherland, Parry, Birla, and Hirachand) were represented, and which strongly opposed the government’s predilection for cooperative sugar production.92 Meanwhile, struggles between factory workers and their employers had been flaring up. Whereas the congress in general defended the interests of the cultivators, its attitude toward the industrial workforce varied from one province to another. The government of Bihar, for example, pressured the factories to implement a minimum wage, as the Tariff Board had already observed in 1938 that for a protected industry, the wages it was paying were far from satisfactory.93 The situation was markedly different in Madras, however, where the Parry concern – active in sugar production since 1799 – exerted a virtual monopoly over commercial sugar processing and distilling in South India.94 Nellikuppam, the most profitable though outdated factory, was located several miles from Pondicherry and employed 1,500 workers. When a strike broke out in 1937, Parry & Co. received the backing of the congress prime minister of Madras, who was solidly in the camp of business and major cultivators.95 Nonetheless, the factory workers had become a force to be reckoned with, as the presence Ibidem, pp. 109, 113, 118, 120. Baru, “State and Industrialisation,” pp. 15–16. 92 Ibidem, p. 16. 93 Government of Bihar, 1947, Development & Employment Department, Dept. File. No. 15–92/4. 94 In 1902, it had taken over the Deccan Sugar and Abkhari Company established by the Binny company in 1897 as a refinery and distillery for the British market. The factory was not well managed and ran into trouble because of the dumping of Austrian and German sugar in Indian ports. See The House of Binny, pp. 128–129. 95 Arnold, “Labour Relations,” p. 30. 90 91

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of unionism among the Madras sugar factories continued to be high.96 In general, organized labor would become increasingly powerful within the congress, particularly after the introduction of universal franchise in 1950. It would also make state governments more susceptible to the interests of the sugar factories.

Factory Zones, Cooperatives, and Gur in West Champaran Since Cuba’s revolution in 1962, India and Brazil have competed for the position of the world’s largest sugar producer. Even though in India this position has been “popularly acclaimed as an outstanding achievement of the policy of ‘discriminating’ protection which has literally revolutionized the industry,” it was far from a straightforward development.97 In Indonesia and India, farmers’ cooperatives were embraced as a solution to the problem of fostering a viable sugar industry while protecting cultivators from abuses by the factories. The cooperatives in postcolonial Indonesia had not enhanced equity in the sugar sector, and eventually the sugar sector was transformed in a way that bore striking resemblances to the colonial plantation. In India, meanwhile, a variety of configurations around cane growing and processing became discernible, but none of these offered an economically viable model without exploiting cultivators. Bihar, Champaran in particular, harbored a sugar belt created by British capitalists on the basis of large zamindari holdings, but also with capital from major landowners who took leading roles in the cultivators’ cooperatives.98 After independence, the Bihar sugar industry struggled to cope with the new situation and it became a visibly waning sector in the 1970s. Politicking held the factories hostage, particularly those that had changed hands from British to local Bihari ownership, and peasant production that had always remained resilient in India gained ground at the expense of the factories. In the south, in the Bombay Deccan that had been part of Maharashtra state since the 1960s, the cooperative factories portended to be the final solution to overcoming the colonial contradictions between cultivators and industrialists. Here, farmer oligarchies that owned factories via

In 1946, it was reported that 1,147 of the 1,700 workers were members of their labor union. See Mukhtar, Report on Labour Conditions, p. 89. 97 Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, p. 1. 98 Interview by Masoom Reza, December 20, 2010. 96

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Percentage of total production

100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%

1950

1955

1960 1965 Year

Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka Bihar

1970

1975

1980

Maharashtra & Gujarat

Uttar Pradesh

Figure 6.1.  Distribution of sugar production over India, 1950–1985. Source: Baru, The Political Economy, p. 82.

cooperatives brought about the Asian plantation as a relentless exploiter of the most vulnerable workers, the cane cutters. However, first the story of Champaran (Figure 6.1). In postcolonial India, the center of gravity of sugar production would slowly shift to the south, where much higher yields per hectare could be obtained. Nevertheless, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar had a considerable advantage over other parts of India because 65 percent of the sugarcane there was obtained from within a sixteen-mile radius of the factories. The balance came by train over a maximum distance of 125 miles, which was considerable but still acceptable. Quite often it was a deliberate policy of sugar factories to go farther away to “tap new areas” where the cane fields were less infested with pests and diseases. In the old areas, cane growing without rotation and proper manuring continuously diminished the harvests. Located between the great river Gandak and the hills of Nepal, one of the concerns in West Champaran was going to Nepal to take in large quantities of cane. By doing so, the factories evaded the challenge of convincing the cultivators in their own zone

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and direct vicinity to raise the quality of the cane and to diminish the frequency of ratooning.99 The collaboration between farmers, factories, and agronomists improved considerably after the reserved zones had been introduced and cooperatives began to act as the interface between cultivators and factories.100 In the 1940s, the number of cane growers’ cooperatives in Bihar rose to five thousand, accounting for 35 percent of cane supplies to the factories (52 percent of the reserved area supply). These cooperatives not only represented the cultivators at the factories, but were also entrusted with the task of carrying out development work such as disseminating improved cane varieties (in collaboration with the sugarcane specialists at Pusa) and manures from Credit Agricole. The spread of improved varieties was particularly important after 1946, when serious cane diseases affected sugarcane in South Bihar.101 The emergence of the cooperatives and the exclusion of the middlemen also gave the cultivators a larger share in the revenues from sugar production. While in Bihar in the early 1930s the share of the cultivators in terms of overall production costs was less than 50 percent, after independence the figure rose to 70 percent.102 This suggests an improvement to the position of the cane cultivators, and one that might have been tangible, as one of our older informants in West Champaran observed. One should nonetheless be careful of assuming a drastic amelioration for all cultivators, since over time the cooperatives usually fell into the hands of the rich peasants, cart owners, moneylenders, and landlords, who skimmed off substantial amounts.103 As in Java, sugar cooperatives would perpetuate rather than narrow inequalities. After 1957, the decline of gur and khandsari had been reversed into a new period of growth, this in spite of the predilection in urban quarters for industrial sugar, which was held to be more hygienic.104 In the mid-1980s, Government of Bihar, Dept. of Industries, From development and revenue, File No. 18–218/1938, pp. 46, 85. In the valleys of Nepal, sugarcane was usually raised for local consumption, mostly to be eaten fresh and partly for making sugar. A. Campbell, “Notes on the Agricultural and Rural Economy of the Valley of Nepaul,” Transactions of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India Vol. IV (1837), pp. 58–175, pp. 134–136. 100 Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, p. 213. 101 Government of Bihar, Development & Employment Department, Industrial Branch, Sept. 1947, File no. 25–61/47 and Dec. 1949, File No. 25–92/49. 102 The 70 percent includes transport (which initially made up 15 percent of the costs) and commission for the cooperative. Prasad, Economics of Industrialization, p. 426. 103 Baru, “State and Industrialisation,” 11. For information about the perceived improvement of the cane cultivators’ lot, see Masoom Reza, Interview, December 19, 2010. 104 In postcolonial India, the consumption of refined sugar increased from 3.5 kilograms in 1950–1951 to 12 kilograms in 1987–1988, while gur production more or less stabilized around 10 kilograms. Tyagi, Problems and Prospects, p. 71. 99

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about 54 to 58 percent of the cane was used for gur or ­khandsari, and only 30 to 35 percent for sugar, leaving a remaining 12 percent for cattle feed, chewing, and seeding.105 Bihar, Champaran in particular, is a case in point of how gur making, and thus peasant production of sugar, remained competitive with industrial sugar production, particularly in the 1980s when global sugar prices were low and the Indian government had abandoned the policy of fixed sugar prices. Most factories were in a difficult position and unable to fend off the challenge from gur makers by offering better cane prices. Like Java, and Negros in the Philippines for that matter, Bihar was struggling with outdated equipment. In these years, its sugar industry was virtually the lowest in India in terms of output per hectare, with production a mere 30 percent of what had been achieved by the Begg Sutherland factories in Champaran in the 1920s.106 That gur making had always been present as an alternative might have saved this part of India from the fate of Negros, which fell prey to deep poverty and malnutrition and earned the title “Asia’s Ethiopia.”107 Particularly in Bihar, where gur remained the dominant type of sugar in the state’s households and where gur as a cash crop had become even more popular after poppy and indigo disappeared, the sugar factories always had to compete with gur.108 At that time, the Indian Sugar Syndicate tried to obtain a legal prohibition against cane growing for gur production within the reserved areas for industrial sugar production. However, the Development Department of the government of Bihar strongly advised against following Uttar Pradesh in banning gur production in the factory zones or reserved areas. Large numbers of cultivators were expected to abandon the cultivation of cane entirely in response to such a ban, since they knew that without the opportunity to produce gur they would be at the mercy of the factories.109 After the 1940s, the Bihar government tried to keep the middle ground by opposing the ban of gur production on one hand and “checking undue diversion of cane into gur manufacture” on the other. It felt that as long as gur stayed within village confines it should be tolerated, but that it should be banned from regional or national trading networks. The Bihar government was aided in this Sinha, Sugar Industry in India, pp. 109–110. Ibidem, p. 78. 107 Jagan and Cunnington, Social Volcano, p. 3; Billig, “Syrup in the Wheels of Progress,” p. 128; Billig, “The Rationality of Growing Sugar,” p. 164. 108 Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, pp. vi, xi; Mishra, Agrarian Problems, p. 115. 109 Government of Bihar, Development & Employment Department, file 15–23 of 1947, “Ban on Gur production in the reserved areas of the Sugar Factories,” p. 5. 105 106

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respect by the government of India, which tried to curb the interprovincial trade of gur, although with mixed success. A lively black market had developed, particularly in Bengal where gur prices were rising. Meanwhile, the sugar industry of Bihar not only had to cope with increasingly obsolete factories, but also with the social legacies of colonialism. Social inequalities, leading to apathy and also to sharp social conflicts, drawn out labor disputes, and poor public services also explain why Champaran was not able to substantially raise the yields per hectare and the quality of the cane. That Champaran is a region prone to floods and droughts makes it a suitable location for the cultivation of cane in principle, but for good harvests, irrigation and drainage are crucial. These facilities were wanting, which made cultivators chary of relying on them.110 Although investments were made to expand irrigation, maintenance may well have been deteriorating following the end of British rule. At any rate, in the 1960s and definitely in the 1970s, the irrigation system was showing signs of falling apart.111 Meanwhile, the performance of the cooperatives with respect to improving the quality of agricultural practices became increasingly bleak. Particularly detrimental to the quality of the cane was the growing acreage under ratooning, almost half in the 1970s, while supervision to ensure only healthy plants were kept for the next harvest was absent. The quality and frequency of agricultural expansion and of the dissemination of new cane varieties probably deteriorated even further in the 1980s.112 Again, part of the problems the sugar factories faced in postindependence Bihar were the result of centuries of social injustice and poverty, which could be not redressed simply by introducing universal suffrage and the formal abolition of the zamindari system.113 When the Bihar Land Reform Act was finally adopted in 1952, it had been heavily contested by the zamindars for five years and their stalling tactics had given them ample time to ensure once the legislation was passed, it would no longer have any practical impact. In fact, the zamindars systematically denied any claims by cultivators to the land they might have tilled for generations, in the absence of documents substantiating the property rights of the ryots. In 1982, almost 60 percent of cultivating households leased land in share cropping (acting as bataidars), paying half their produce Singh, Sugar Industry, p. 106. Masoom Reza, Interview, December 19, 2010. 112 Directorate of sugarcane development, Report on Sugarcane Development in Bihar State, pp. 13, 20, 28. 113 Jannuzi, “An Account of the Failure,” p. 210. 110 111

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as rent. Production for the market was carried out under constant threat of the debt trap, or even worse, debt slavery. Propertied interests were solidly entrenched and hardly interested in improving agricultural conditions.114 In this state of poverty, the position of the factory workers was an envied one, even if they were only employed during the relatively short milling period.115 As usual, factory workers came in through connections, particularly the tenured employees who were often sons of old employees. The seasonal laborers camped on the factory premises, which were often very dirty and from where a pungent smell welcomed visitors. It was the permanent workers, however, who succeeded in obtaining a privileged position at a rather early stage. In 1949, labor disputes broke out in all the sugar factories of Bihar over a long list of grievances. Particularly contentious were the rights of the seasonal laborers. The governor of Bihar had to intervene by appointing an industrial tribunal to settle the dispute, but even though the interests of the seasonal laborers did not escape his attention he directed his prime concerns toward the tenured workers.116 Collective action by the permanent staff at the factories in North India was successful enough to reverse the wage discrepancies between North and South India that had existed in colonial times. In terms of labor costs, the sugar factories in the north had lost their competitive edge over the south.117 The sugar factories not only had to cope with staggering labor costs, they also had trouble keeping their aging equipment operating. Frequent mechanical breakdowns caused long stoppages in crushing, and poor maintenance of the machines led to declining recovery rates of sugar from cane to about two-thirds of what is usual in cane sugar-producing countries. The majority of the factories in Champaran and elsewhere in Bihar had not been upgraded since their construction in the first decades of the twentieth century, and became too small to be run efficiently in the 1980s. British managing agency houses had been important in setting up Ibidem, pp. 214–224; Prasad, Dimensions of Development, pp. 378–379; Singh, Uneven Development, p. 51. 115 Bihar and the United Provinces could only mill between November and April (three to five months), and as a concomitant of that, more than 75 percent of the factory workers were seasonal against less than 50 percent in Southern India, where thanks to the warmer climate the milling season was extended to six months. Mukhtar, Report on Labour Conditions, p. 96. 116 Mukhtar, Report on Labour Conditions, p. 57; The Bihar Gazette. Extraordinary. Published by Authority. Patna, Wednesday, November 30, 1949, pp. 11–12. 117 In 1957, the wages of workers in the sugar factories were set at the national level. 114

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the sugar industry in Bihar in the early years of the twentieth century, but they did not expand their position in the 1930s and instead lost ground to Indian houses like Birla, which entered the scene in those years when sugar manufacturing was extremely profitable. In the 1950s, the managing agency houses in Calcutta, Cawnpore, and Bombay undercapitalized, if not fleeced, their factories in Bihar. Funds for new equipment and expansion had to be attracted on an ad hoc basis, usually from local financial resources, as share capital was barely available. Moreover, key financial institutions, such as the Life Insurance Corporation of India, for example, invested disappointingly little in the Bihar sugar industry. State assistance schemes to industries in Bihar did exist but were not very competent in assessing applications for investment capital.118 While capital was difficult to obtain, the labor unions insisted on providing work for more people than was reasonable.119 As a result, thirteen of the forty-one factories in Bihar were closed in 1976 and another fifteen came under the control of the Bihar State Sugar Corporation. State ownership, rather than diminishing overstaffing, made the factories even more prone to clientelism.120 Whereas wages had absorbed 20 percent of the factory’s share of the sugar prices in 1960, the figure had risen to almost 50 percent by the early 1990s. Investments and reorganizations were hard to push through, since the industry had become a tool in the hands of the political establishment.121 In contrast to the cane farmers in Suharto’s Indonesia, who had no choice but to accept the mismanagement of the factories, in Bihar the cultivators shifted to gur making or to growing other crops. As consequence cane supplies diminished, which in turn drove up the cane prices to the factories. As a result, factories like Chanpatia that survived the reorganization of 1976, imploded under the threefold pressure of overstaffing, declining sugar prices, and increasing cane prices.122 The declining sugar prices were the consequence of the abandonment in 1978 of the price Sharma, Institutional Finance, pp. 28, 83, 168; Misra, “Business Culture,” p. 336; Tomlinson, “Colonial Firms,” pp. 457, 463. 119 Sinha, Sugar Industry in India, pp. 166, 175, 177. See also, Directorate of sugarcane development, Report on Sugarcane Development in Bihar State, 17. Some factories had applied for a license to extend their milling capacity, which was not always granted, however. Government of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, File No. 25(598) L. C. 63, Subject: Application for a license under the Industries (Development and Regulation) Act 1951, effecting a substantial expansion/undertaking for the manufacture of sugar. 120 Prasad, Economics of Industrialization, p. 434. 121 Ibidem, p. 431. 122 Masoom Reza, Interview, December 20, 2010. 118

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regulations that had been in place since 1965, intended to be fair to both the growers and the consumers. A dramatic decline of industrial sugar production in India, from 6.5 million metric tons in 1977–1978 to 3.6 in 1980, was the result. In the latter year, India became a sugar importer again.123 However, against the performance of the Indian sugar market, in Champaran cane cultivation expanded in the 1980s. The natural conditions resulting from the regular flooding of the Gandak River impeded the cultivation of wheat, and of course the tradition of gur making was not affected by the sugar slump. On the contrary. At first, the cane not bought by the factories was purchased by khandsari and gur makers for a pittance, but these manufacturers gradually went back into business and offered prices for cane that were almost twice as high as the sugar factories could afford. In the 1980s, more than half of the cane harvested in Bihar went into gur or khandsari making.124 Factories such as the aforementioned Chanpatia were kept running by government loans, but this could not rescue them from closing down in 1994, leaving behind huge arrears in wages. According to one of the many employees who lost their jobs, the labor unions collected money to fight in court for the salaries due, but “the money went into their own pockets.”125 Even if the court ruled in favor of the workers, they had to wait for many years and commit themselves to loans or mortgage their possessions to finance migration. They went to towns in Bihar or even as far as Mumbai or Delhi, where they tried to eke out a living as street vendors, for example. Others took up a batai or worked as rickshaw pullers or journeymen. Many former workers in the cane fields became seasonal labor migrants, heading for Punjab, Kashmir, Pune, and Gujarat. While the Bihar agricultural economy remained behind and the agricultural economy of Punjab grew, hundreds of thousands went back and forth between the two states every year.126

Vertical Integration With 34,000 hectares under cane, in the 1980s the main sugar belt of Bihar, West Champaran, was hard hit by the declining sugar prices, although less Sinha, Sugar Industry in India, pp. 39–41, 120; Baru, “Sugar Crisis,” pp. 1152–1156; see Baru, “Structural Changes.” 124 Singh, Sugar Industry, pp. 124, 126. 125 Masoom Reza, Interview, December 16, 2010. 126 Masoom Reza, Interview, December 21, 2010. With regard to Bihari migrants to Punjab, see Chandan, “Plight of Migrant Labour,” p. 755; Singh, Uneven Development, p. 35. 123

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than might have been expected. On average, the factories there did better than elsewhere in Bihar.127 The Chanpatia and Loriya factories had to close down in 1994, but the other four factories survived. Established concerns from outside Bihar were among the owners, which may have contributed to their survival. The New Swadeshi factory, for example, belonged to the Birla group, and the Harinagar factory was owned by businessmen from Mumbai, who had established the mill in 1932.128 The two factories were operated under “expatriate” managers, who in fact had a bad reputation and reportedly cheated farmers, particularly during the difficult 1980s. The assessment of the sucrose content and the weighing of the cane the farmers delivered to factories were both bones of contention. In 1980, the gate of the Harinagar mill was blocked for twenty-two days by cultivators who felt cheated at the weighbridge and wanted their fair share.129 There was also an illegal trade in the weighing receipts handed out by the factory staff to the cultivators. In practice, cultivators could only get their money from the factory through intermediaries, who took a substantial share of the payments. The embittered atmosphere around the mills escalated into a shooting incident at Harinagar.130 One informant said about this mill that it was “crushing cane and cultivators.” In his recollections, at the Majhaulia factory favoritism existed toward the more powerful farmers, whereas the weaker farmers had to wait for hours at the factory gate, sometimes up to seventy-two hours. This situation worsened further after the closure of part of the factory, forcing cane cultivators to carry their cane over longer distances to the factory, where they sometimes had to wait for days at the gate before their cane was taken in. After the Loriya factory had closed, for example, cane growers from the zone that belonged to the factory had to take their cane to the Harinagar factory, about twenty-four miles away, where cultivators sometimes had to wait for up to five days. This of course, was ruinous for the cane. Obviously, it also explains why farmers were ready to return to gur making. For their part, sugar factories like the New Swadeshi or the Birla Company tried to set up their own cane farms, Whereas in 1950 the entire district of Champaran yielded 22 percent of Bihar’s sugarcane, in 1989 Champaran East delivered 10 percent and Champaran West 45.6 percent of Bihar’s sugarcane. Prasad, Dimensions of Development, p. 67. 128 The New Swadeshi Mill, established in 1932, had been owned by the Birla group; the Harinagar factory had been owned by a Bombay group since its start in 1932 and operated under managers from Maharashtra. See also Singh, Sugar Industry, pp. 96–97. 129 Masoom Reza, Interview, December 19, 2010. Similar stories about ruthless behavior by private mills New Swadeshi and Majhaulia are recorded. 130 Ibidem. 127

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attempting to transform themselves into plantations to detach themselves from the cane supplies of the cooperatives.131 It is to a certain extent ironic that it was only after the government of Bihar stopped subsidizing the factories and disbanded the farmer’s cooperatives that a new, improved relationship between factories and cultivators emerged.132 With recovering sugar prices and with fewer factories left, it became more attractive for the remaining ones to purchase new equipment and improve their relationships with the farmers. After having invested in new machines with larger milling capacity, the factories undoubtedly had a higher stake in ensuring sufficient cane supplies. Without the corrupted cooperatives, the factories were compelled to deal with the planters directly.133 According to our informants, the large factories in Champaran at present are managed better and more honestly than in the past, and have experts to help farmers increase the yield of cane per acre.134 The factories employ agronomists who organize and supervise classes and seminars for cultivators and provide them with new cane varieties, pesticides, and fertilizer. The helpful attitude of the large factories in Champaran stems not just from their need for cane, but also the requirement to sell fertilizer and chemicals to the farmers. The Birla group, today owning two factories in West Champaran, is a large agro-industrial conglomerate involved in producing pesticides, which are abundantly applied to the cane fields in Champaran.135 The closed Loriya factory, which is still government property, has recently been leased by the Hindustan Petroleum Company Limited (HPCL), which is interested in sugar factories for producing ethanol from molasses rather than for sugar. Since 2000, the government of India has Baru, The Political Economy, p. 123. The Harinagar factory, for example, doubled its crushing capacity after the early 1990s to 11,000 metric tons per day and realized this increase with fewer factory workers. Harinagar today employs just 1,100 factory workers, while the New Swadeshi mill employs 700 people during the crushing season to process 7,500 metric tons of cane per day, and even the relatively small Majhaulia factory grinds 4,600 metric tons of cane per day. For the current crushing capacity of the New Swadeshi Sugar Mill, see http://www.birla-sugar.com/osugar/about/about_osml.php, (accessed November 17, 2012). The figures for the number of employees and crushing capacity of Harinagar are derived from Masoom Reza, Interview, December 19, 2010. For the crushing capacity of the Harinagar factory in the early 1990s, see Prasad, Economics of Industrialization, p. 431. 133 Masoom Reza, Interviews, December 18 and 19, 2010. 134 Masoom Reza, Interview, December 19, 2010. 135 The Majhaulia factory was also acquired by the Birla group in early 2010. See http://new. biharfoundation.in/birla–group–to–acquire–majhaulia–sugar–mill, (accessed November 18, 2012). 131 132

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set the objective of blending 10 percent ethanol with fuel in a selected number of Indian states, while in 2007 it made the mixing of fuel with 5 percent ethanol mandatory for all of India.136 Hindustan Petrol has bought another company in Bihar, and considered buying four factories in Andhra Pradesh, of which former Madras is part.137 Though these plans were deferred, they reveal a broader pattern in which the economic interests of owners such as Birla and Hindustan Petrol are no longer confined to sugar, but extended to all phases of the commodity chain following the example of globally operating agro-industrial complexes. Meanwhile, results on the ground appear convincing. The yield per hectare in Bihar is up again, from thirty metric tons in the 1980s to forty-eight metric tons currently.138 Enveloping the cane cultivators in an extended commodity chain can be seen as a sophisticated variant of the plantation, which might eventually give agro-industries full control over land and labor. In the year 2000, about 80 percent of the population was engaged in agriculture and 75 percent of the rural population was practically landless, owning less than one hectare. In practice, they owned just their yards.139 In some villages, the bataidar system may have gone into decline, but sharecropping continues to dominate, with slightly varying arrangements in respect of sharing the costs involved. Even though sharecropping on a roughly fifty-fifty basis is in violation of the law that sets a maximum land rent of 25 percent of gross output, with rising cane prices the bataidars may still be satisfied with this arrangement.140 Moreover, their position may have improved after the 1990s, as one informant pointed out, because there are barely enough hands during the growing season. Apart from labor migration, which might affect about a third of all rural households in the state of Bihar, this is also the positive result of the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which helps to combat rural unemployment and to spread awareness of the agricultural minimum wage standards.141 See http://www.hindustanpetroleum.com/en/UI/BioFuels.aspx (accessed November 18, 2012). 137 Kalpana Pathak, “HPCL defers plans to buy 4 AP sugar mills,” www.business–standard. com (accessed October 4, 2012). 138 World Bank, Bihar – Towards a Development Strategy, p. 28. 139 Ibidem, pp. 14–15. 140 Ibidem, p. 15. 141 With regard to the minimum agricultural wage in Bihar of 109 Rs., see http://www.paycheck.in/main/officialminimumwages/bihar (accessed November 1, 2012). According to an interview by Masoom Reza on October 11, 2011, the daily male wage was Rs. 120 & Food, or Rs. 150, and the daily female wage Rs. 70 & Food, or Rs. 100. Both Rodgers 136

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Over the past ten years, tractors have started to fill the streets and the fields are littered with irrigation pumps.142 No doubt, haulage has become easier through the use of tractors, the earnings of the bataidars have gone up thanks to higher yields, and new unemployment and wage policies have been implemented. However, in spite of these improvements, one may still wonder whether the hired labor doing the hard work in the field has benefited, in particular the men who do the cane cutting and the women who clean the stalks from the leaves. There are indications that the position of the class of sharecroppers may indeed have improved. Currently, it is not unusual in families that one member takes a batai whereas others leave for Punjab, Delhi, or Kashmir as migrant laborers to return home in the course of September to help first with the paddy harvest and then move on to cutting cane. Relatives of the bataidar expect to share in the rising cane prices, and, according to one of our informants, they are paid slightly more than the official minimum wage for unskilled agricultural laborers in Bihar. Female harvest workers, who rip the leaves off, are paid 70 percent of the male wages.143 In the early years of the twenty-first century, sugar factories made a new start in Champaran, a district where sugarcane always grew abundantly, but had been “diverted” to gur because of a lack of investment and rationalization by the existing sugar factories that were an inheritance from the colonial days. Currently, agricultural-petrochemical investors are more or less enveloping the sugar sector in a new commodity chain by providing pesticides and fertilizer for the fields and by processing the molasses into ethanol.144 Nevertheless, it remains to be seen whether the vertical integration of sugar factories into the oil industry will finally determine 200 years of struggle between industrial sugar producers and gur makers in favor of the factories. Although the share of traditional sugars seems to have declined somewhat since the early 1990s, gur producers

and Rodgers, “Inclusive Development?” and one of the informants of Masoom Reza (Interview, December 20, 2010) consider the NREGS an important factor in bringing wages on par with the minimum level. The information about the extent of outward migration is from Poverty in Bihar, p. 4. 142 Masoom Reza, Interview, December 17, 2010. 143 Masoom Reza, Interview, December 17, 2010. With regard to wages, see Masoom Reza, Interview, October 13, 2011. 144 Although bagasses are used for paper manufacturing, I have not come across a diversification into the paper industry by the vertically integrated concerns that became involved in sugar production in Bihar.

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and traders still find new markets.145 In recent years for example, the gur producers of Uttar Pradesh were still able to pay higher prices for cane than the factories. Gur is still popular among consumers and can even attract new consumers, aided by renewed interest in its healthy qualities. What particularly helps gur on the market, however, is that it contains molasses. While the industrial molasses trade is strictly controlled, this is not the case for gur that is in high demand for its molasses content, from which illicit liquor can be distilled.146 In the future, the vertical integration of the Bihar sugar industry may lead to firmer control by the factory over the field, but so far the Bihari peasantry by and large has escaped from being “subsumed under the plantation.” In that respect, the situation in West India has been very different.

The Factory Cooperatives in the Bombay Deccan (Maharashtra) In the 1930s, sugar cooperatives emerged in Bihar, the United Provinces, and the Bombay Deccan, but they differed both in genesis and character. Whereas in North India the cooperatives had served the objective of getting rid of the intermediaries, in the south of the country, they were a means for thriving sugar growers to put together sufficient capital to build factories. The Bombay government was keen to convert gur manufacturing into a sugar industry, which would also make its investments in irrigation more profitable. It therefore encouraged Bombay capitalists to establish sugar factories in their hinterland.147 The highly active and competently led Department of Agriculture of Bombay stepped up its investments in research and experiments in the canal district in the 1930s and tried to learn lessons from the sugar industry in the United Provinces and Bihar.148 In 1932, it even considered assigning plots to be leased out to factories under compulsion, a kind of neo-Cultivation System. This plan was abandoned, and instead a zoning system similar to that in North India was introduced.149 Some sources claim that today about one-third of Indian sugar is gur and khandsari. See http://www.sugarindustry.com/sugarindustry.htm (accessed November 28, 2012). But this may be a deliberate underestimation by the Indian sugar industry. 146 Harish Damodaran and Mamuni Das, “Gur Factor May Hit Sugar Output this Year,” The Hindu, Business Line, January 14, 2005, http://www.thehindubusinessline.in/ bline/2005/01/14/stories/2005011400611000.htm (accessed November 2012). 147 Attwood, Raising Cane, p. 86. 148 NA, VJP, inv. no. 289, transcript of Times of India, May 4–5, 1938. 149 Jugale, Sugarcane Pricing, p. 22. 145

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After failed attempts in the 1920s, out of which only the Belapur estate survived, thirteen factories were established in the Bombay Deccan in the 1930s and 1940s, some of which were able to lease large tracts of land from impoverished local peasants.150 These factories were furnished with capital by Bombay investors, except for one exclusively owned by the Saswad Malis, the pioneer cane growers who created the Bombay Deccan sugar frontier. Cooperative factories emerged from 1949 onward to become the dominant mode of ownership in West India after the government of India decided to only give new licenses to cooperative factories in 1954.151 During his visit to Maharashtra in 1960, Jawaharlal Nehru hailed the state’s cooperatives as exemplary for the rest of the country.152 No doubt, the cooperative was embraced as the protector of the smallholder and as signaling a clear break with plantation capitalism as a colonial vice, but it did not develop in that way. We have seen that the Java sugar industry in many ways returned to its colonial roots. Champaran, where village elites and plantation interests had been engaged in a sharp conflict during the decline of indigo, went through a long and painful trajectory of reestablishing a postcolonial sugar industry, which largely ended up in the hands of agro-industrial conglomerates from outside the state. I would argue that in West India the trajectory was one from peasant to plantation production, in a way more or less comparable with Java in the nineteenth century, but in this case without colonial interference. What emerged in the Bombay Deccan was the same configuration of powerful coalitions between village elites and factories, and the marginalization of poorer peasants as well as the exploitation of a growing number of migrant workers, much as in colonial Java. Both sugar belts harbored the most efficient sugar industries of their day, keeping peasants on small plots of land as their labor was needed for planting. For both locations, scholars have discussed and rejected the applicability of the concept of agricultural involution – for good reasons, as the limitations of industrial sugar production in Java and the Bombay Deccan are the classical limitations of plantation conglomerates, namely ecological degradation and lack of cheap labor. As in colonial Java, the Bombay Deccan sugar factories eventually resorted to mechanization, a development hardly conceivable under the spell of agricultural involution. According to D. R. Gadgil, there were three sugar factories in the area irrigated by the Pravara and Godavari Canals in the 1930s. See Gadgil, Economic Effects of Irrigation, p. 87. For the figures for 1950, see Attwood, Raising Cane, p. 87. 151 Attwood, Raising Cane, p. 189. 152 Bakshi, Sharma, and Gajrani, Sharad Pawar, p. 178. 150

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Yet the discussion about involution is not entirely irrelevant in the context of irrigated cane growing in India. West India, and to a lesser degree Punjab, have often been cited as agricultural success stories that have been held against the Brennerian notions of the imperviousness of traditional agricultural societies to economic stimuli.153 This issue also has a bearing on the question of whether irrigation can bring about sustained economic growth, or whether sooner or later, patterns of marginal landowning and indebtedness will resurface. Scholars examining the Bombay Deccan have argued the economic stimuli of irrigation did create a bustling “sugar frontier” and articulated social stratifications that already existed. Self-sustained agricultural growth did occur in the Bombay Deccan and did take the form of “rich peasant capitalist farming.” This contradicts the argument made by Mridula Mukherjee in her study on Punjab that, in spite of extensive irrigation works, colonial conditions sooner or later engendered a process of agricultural involution; an increasing number of laborers per hectare with declining returns per worker.154 From a Brennerian perspective, however, conditions in Punjab and the Bombay Deccan were very different. While in Punjab rules of inheritance led to excessive fragmentation, in the Bombay Deccan land was a commodity, enabling the creation of larger holdings. Yet it would be a distortion of the facts to speak about peasant capitalism in the Bombay Deccan, since marginalized farmers were kept on the land. Rich farmers who allied themselves with industrial sugar interests did not expel them, because they were not interested in owning the land. Conversely, legal ownership did not protect small peasants from exploitation, something that had already become abundantly clear in the 1860s and 1870s, when liberal Dutch ministers such as Fransen van de Putte addressed the Cultivation System’s gross disrespect for peasants’ property rights. These ministers wanted nothing less than a return to Munro’s land rent principles, based on the conviction that true peasant capitalism could only exist where property rights were respected. 153 154

Attwood, “Capital and Transformation of Agrarian Class Systems,” pp. 20–22. Mridula Mukherjee argues: “The lack of an integrated, structural perspective combined with the tendency to study select aspects in a disaggregated and static fashion has led to the view that developments in Punjab agriculture did not follow the colonial pattern, that perhaps some kind of self-sustaining agricultural growth was actually occurring, and further, that this growth took the form of some variety of rich peasant capitalist farming. This is also argued for parts of western UP, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.” Mukherjee, Colonializing Agriculture, p. xxvi.

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Various authors on agrarian conditions in Bombay emphasize that the plots held by landowners in the Bombay Deccan became smaller and smaller, which particularly happened with regard to the land closest to irrigation canals,155 yet these authors have explicitly rejected the applicability of the notion of agricultural involution.156 They apparently have not been aware of the fact that historians in Indonesia have discarded Geertz’s assumptions as ahistorical and glossing over the social inequalities within Javanese rural society, otherwise they could have made the point that the concept of agricultural involution might be too flawed to explain what happened in the industrial sugar belts. Both in Java and West India, societies were not egalitarian to begin with, but were already socially stratified by the eighteenth century.157 Industrial sugar cultivation fortified the position of the rural elites, who became stakeholders in a rising sugar conglomerate at the expense of the majority of the rural population. Industrial sugar production on irrigated land did not lead to agricultural involution, but put an end to upward mobility and engendered an increasingly skewed distribution of land.158 This was the general picture for Java, for the Bombay Deccan, and also for the Aska region of Madras, for that matter. In the Aska region, land leasing is still very widespread today and tenants are often at the mercy of the landholders, who can be village heads or powerful in some other way.159 While in Java and Madras old rural elites became stronger and closed the doors to newcomers, the Bombay Deccan may have been exceptional in the sense that new elites, the Saswad Malis, did emerge thanks to the introduction of commercial agriculture.160 For the general trend, this did not matter at all, since their success brought about the marginalization of other groups of peasants.161 One piece of detailed research about villages in the Bombay Deccan was conducted between 1913 and 1915 by eminent agricultural expert Harold Mann. It showed that only 35 percent of villagers could live from their own landholdings.162 Members of this large group of marginal peasants Mann, The Social Framework, pp. 90–91. Charlesworth, Peasants and Imperial Rule, pp. 297–299. 157 In the mid-nineteenth century, about 40 to 55 percent of the Deccan population was considered registered landholders, and another 20 to 35 percent tenants or laborers, leaving 25 percent nonagricultural laborers. See Charlesworth, Peasants and Imperial Rule, p. 21. 158 Chithelen, “Origins,” pp. 604–605. 159 Das, Peasant Economy and the Sugar Cooperative, p. 61. 160 Attwood, Raising Cane, p. 79. 161 Mann, The Social Framework, p. 329; Chithelen, “Origins,” p. 606. 162 Mann, The Social Framework, p. xxiii. 155 156

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might have migrated, but many found seasonal employment in the cane fields. Similar to Java, secondary employment enabled them to stay on their marginal holdings, but on increasingly unfavorable terms.163 As early as the 1930s, the rich farmers of the Bombay Deccan began to bring wages down by employing migrant laborers from outside the villages. The sugar factories also engaged recruiters to bring in casual laborers.164 In contrast to colonial Java, industrial sugar production was not commanded by metropolitan capitalism, but by Bombay capitalists and rich farmers. Nonetheless, there were the same features when a concentration of factories appeared: a layer of wealthy cane growers and poor migrant laborers, which in some ways resembled the pattern in Java. The results of irrigation in the Bombay Deccan are impressive, and formerly very poor regions have become rich and prosperous. However, this is at high ecological and social costs, to which for a long time scant attention had been paid. The successful cane farmers of the Bombay Deccan became the “sugar barons” of the new state of Maharashtra, which was forged in 1960 by uniting Bombay with a huge chunk of the South Indian hinterland. In the previous decade, the sugar cooperatives had formed a federation to further their interests with the state and the central governments. The bosses of these cooperatives rose to political power in the course of the 1960s. Their industry furthermore received an enormous boost in the 1970s, when the World Bank invested heavily in irrigation works.165 While the sugar industry in North India waned in the 1980s, the Maharashtra sugar industry was able to raise the yield of cane per hectare to over 225 metric tons, at that time the highest in the world. The area under cane expanded to 536,000 hectares in the Deccan plateau, more than two and a half times the acreage under cane in Java at the time. As a result, Maharashtra accounted for 36 percent of India’s sugar production in 1990.166 Guha, The Agrarian Economy of the Bombay Deccan, p. 140. These unfavorable conditions may not yet have existed in the 1920s. McAlpin, Attwood, and Keatinge even perceive a rise in real agricultural wages in the Bombay Presidency between the 1880s and 1920s, thanks to rising prices for export crops, better transportation, and increased food security. Their view is not uncontested, however. Whereas Chithelen perceives improving wages only in the gur sector, Krishnamurty sees no improvement at all. McAlpin, Subject to Famine, p. 157; Keatinge, Rural Economy, pp. 72–76; Krishnamurty, “Real Wages of Agricultural Labourers,” p. 87; Chithelen, “Origins,” p. 608; Attwood, “Capital and Transformation,” pp. 35–36. 164 Gadgil, cited by Chithelen, “Origins,” p. 608. 165 Vandana, Water Wars, pp. 10–11. 166 Bakshi, Sharma, and Gajrani, Sharad Pawar, pp. 177–178. 163

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That Maharashtra became known as the “land of the sugar barons” seems at odds with the wide membership of the cooperatives, which counted a membership of 700,000 farmers in total.167 However, like their counterparts in Java and Bihar, the cooperatives were solidly undemocratic and governed by powerful farmers who called the shots. The positions on the boards of the Maharashtra cooperative factories were extremely lucrative and benefits did not trickle down to the 87 percent of the growers who owned less than three acres each. Even if cooperatives brought stability to village life and mitigated caste divides, the landless and the lowest classes were still excluded.168 In theory, in the setting of Maharashtra the cane growers remained in a strong position because they could always shift to gur if they felt mistreated by the factories. However, in practice that was even more reason for the elites to force the minor growers into compliance. It was in their interests that in 1984 the government of Maharashtra imposed a zoning system intended to assist the cooperative sugar industries hit by declining sugar prices. The zones made it easier for the powerful and wealthy farmers to take measures against any poorer peasant who wanted to divert to gur making. Individual cultivators came under the sway of the factories even if they were not members of the cooperative, and were sometimes forced to sell their cane below market prices.169 Much as in Bihar and Java, in Maharashtra the powerful farmers had their ripe cane milled quickly, while their poor neighbors, often coerced into a sugar cooperative, had to wait for months to have their cane processed. To make yet another comparison with the sugar industry in colonial Java, cane standing in the field until the end of the season ran the risk of being burned by cultivators, who wanted their land back for their own crops.170 The very long milling season was most to the detriment of the more minor growers, but favorable to the factory workers. The unskilled workers in the factories usually came from the poorer peasantry, who were under the patronage of prominent members of the cooperatives. Given the relatively privileged position of the factory workers, labor unionism capable of uniting factory and field labor hardly stood a chance.171 This is yet another analogy with the colonial and postcolonial Java sugar industry. Jugale, Sugarcane Pricing, p. 30. Abraham, “Sugar Workers,” p. 2037; G.O., “Sugar Factories Strike,” pp. 1942–1944. 169 Wadhwa, “Zoning for Sugar Co-operatives,” pp. 2155–2170. 170 Breman, Wage Hunters, p. 223. 171 Matson, “Class Struggles,” p. 25. 167 168

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The Plantation and the Cane Cutters The Deccan system, where the cooperative factory is in charge of the agricultural aspects of the process, closely approaches the plantation model. Not for nothing, it actually has been labeled a plantation by Jan Breman. It is a model that not only emerged in the Bombay Deccan, but also in South Gujarat, adjacent to Maharashtra. In many respects, the Bombay and Gujarati factories impose similar rules on their environment as the colonial and Suharto-era sugar complexes did in Java.172 One of these conditions is that the most arduous work is done by migrant labor from poorer, usually dryer, regions. From the 1940s onward, the cane cutters of the Bombay Deccan were no longer impoverished or marginal peasants, but migrant laborers who came from the dry areas outside the Ahmednagar district. Through seasonal employment, they were able to survive their dry season. These seasonal treks are part of the imbalances in agricultural development. Accordingly, we see peasants from the waning cane districts in Bihar leaving for the irrigated districts of Punjab, or in the other direction as far as Burma. Elsewhere, migrants leave from Guntur and Krishna to go to the West Godavari district, or from the dry Khandesh region to South Gujarat, or from Java to South Sumatra. In 1957, the government of India established countrywide norms for wages in the sugar industry, but cane cutters and transport workers, who were usually migrant laborers, were not included and this contributed to the severe exploitation of these laborers in the sugar belts of West India.173 The circumstances of the cane workers in Maharashtra, as well as in Gujarat, has attracted considerable interest among human rights advocates and concerned social scientists. Widely known is the role of Jan Breman, who resided among cane cutters and described how whole families were working in gangs under mukadams, the recruiters and foremen of the cane cutters. They could read at least a little, acted as overseers of the work, and received a commission of 10 percent of the wages paid by the factories to the migrant workers. According to a report in the Economic and Political Weekly of 1988, the workers’ pay was only sufficient for the family “to maintain itself at the barest animal level of subsistence.”174 Whole families lived and worked in the cane fields: the men to cut the cane, the women and children to rip off the leaves. In Breman, Wage Hunters, pp. 214, 221–222. Abraham, “Sugar Workers,” p. 2035. 174 D. N., “Migrant Workers,” p. 1153. 172 173

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recent years, 40 percent of the 500,000 cane workers in Maharashtra were children, who missed school for months, thereby transferring the cycles of bondedness and poverty to the next generation.175 The conditions in camps in the fields, hardly more than heaps of rags around fires, have been terrible. Food has been inadequate, both in terms of quantity and quality, the drinking water polluted, and a considerable number of cane cutters have been ill. Breman found that 10 percent had to stay in the camps because they were too sick to work.176 There are larger and smaller groups of cane cutters and bullock carts arriving under the supervision of the mukadams and usually driven by indebtedness.177 In South Gujarat (and there is no reason to assume the situation is different in the Bombay Deccan), the advances paid by the mukadams are borrowed from moneylenders who charge 100 percent interest over the eight months of the cane harvest. During the season, the debts increase, because wages are only paid at the end of the season, forcing the cane cutters to borrow from the mukadams. According to estimates, at the end of the season the cane cutters only receive a third of their forced deposit, the rest going to their creditors. Quite often, not all of the debts are settled at the end of the season, which forces workers to renew their engagement in the next sugar season.178 In fact, the workers are completely bound to the mukadams, a situation that resembles the worst cases of nineteenth-century indentured plantation labor. Obviously, the mukadams are merely middlemen, working under the close supervision of the sugar factories, and in many ways resembling the mandurs of colonial Java. For that reason, the Bombay Industrial Court ruled in 1974 that cane cutters should be considered wage workers hired by the sugar factories and therefore entitled to the minimum wage. The effect of this ruling was undone, however, by employers bribing the labor unions involved.179 Factories also formed separate trusts or societies, undertaking the cutting and haulage, or announced that these parts of the production process were the exclusive responsibility of the cane growers, stating that the factory’s role would be merely to assist in the process.180 Stalling and backtracking from major improvements in the payments to “Sugar Schools,” www.southasia.oneworld.net/fromthegrassroots/sugar–schools (accessed September 9, 2012). 176 Breman, Wage Hunters, p. 255. 177 Kasar, Economics of Seasonal Migration, pp. 48, 87, 201. 178 Breman, Wage Hunters, pp. 242, 245, 249. 179 Matson, “Class Struggles,” p. 27. 180 Jugale, Sugarcane Pricing, pp. 36–37. 175

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cane cutters and cart drivers were standard practice in the late 1970s, because the sugar barons were aware it was practically impossible to mobilize these workers into collective action.181 The migrant laborers, meanwhile, were hardly in any position to strike, being severely in debt and also physically dependent on the harvest. The cows, bullocks, buffalo, and goats they brought with them were fed from the green cane leaves.182 As a result of Jan Breman’s field research, the labor unions filed and won a case against the South Gujarat sugar barons, who were no longer able to deny that the cane cutters were working under their direct command.183 Yet the barons were politically so well entrenched, and the position of the migrant workers so weak, that they could easily resist any attempts by labor inspectors to impose minimum wages. It should be noted that indebted labor migration is part of contemporary large-scale sugar plantations, not only in Asia but also in Latin America.184 In Peru, for example, the enganche (the hook) system in the late nineteenth century began to gradually replace the use of indentured labor from China and Japan. The enganche laborers were mainly cane cutters and cane loaders.185 They had been hired by recruiters financed by the sugar estates to make advance payments to debt contractors (peons). The recruiters were often cattle traders too. In Peru as well, labor unionism was blocked by “a deliberate strategy of ‘casualising’ the field-labour force, particularly in cane cutting.”186 In other parts of the world, cane cutting was considered even worse than slave labor. In the early decades of the twentieth century, American sugar companies forced the Cuban borders to open up to cheap labor from other Caribbean countries, such as Haiti. These immigrants had to do the arduous work of cane cutting under conditions that would not be accepted by native Cubans.187 In the early 1980s, the Anti-Slavery Society – established in 1823 by James Cropper’s friend Zachary Macaulay – reported that more than 10,000 Haitian cane cutters were “sold” every year by their president Jean-Claude Duvalier to government-owned plantations in the Dominican Republic.188 The fate of cane cutters in Colombia is another example of gross exploitation, Abraham, “Another Patchwork Agreement,” pp. 2007–2008. Kasar, Economics of Seasonal Migration, pp. 142–144. 183 Deshingkar, Extending Labour Inspections, p. 23. 184 Breman, “Seasonal Migration II,” p. 190. 185 Scott, “Peasants, Proletarianization,” p. 326. 186 Ibidem, pp. 327, 338–339. 187 Fraginals, “Plantation Economics,” pp. 220–221. 188 Plant, “Sugar and Modern Slavery,” p. 1. 181 182

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and in 2008 about 10,000 cane cutters went on strike, demanding to be hired directly by the factories.189 About 200,000 cane cutters are suffering in Brazil under the worst possible labor conditions, and here too it has been reported that labor laws are evaded massively through the use of labor contractors (empreiteiro).190 West India is just part of a broader pattern covering the major cane sugar-producing regions in the world, with the notable exception of Cuba, which has been rather precocious in its mechanization of fieldwork. As a rule, however, in Asia there was little urgency to reduce labor costs in the field, since these had already been reduced to a fraction of the total costs of cane production.191 Recently, sugar union workers in India have raised the level of organization from the factory and state level to the national level. Union leaders seem less dependent on political parties and better capable of uniting field and factory workers.192 While the unions have become more militant, the position of the sugar barons has waned over the past twenty years, mainly because of declining sugar prices. In the 1990s, only 31 out of the 138 Maharashtra sugar factories made a profit. If the government had not stepped in to support the industry financially, the majority of the sugar factories would have collapsed and factory workers are still confronted with substantial wage arrears from their insolvent employers.193 Even though the position of sugar barons may have weakened, the labor unions still face resourceful cooperatives that recently resorted to mechanization in the field in response to demands for better pay for the cane cutters. Since the year 2000, cane cutting machines have been entering the fields in West India, following the example of Cuba, which has mechanized 75 percent of its cane cutting.194 Each cane mower makes 300 cane cutters superfluous.195 Behind the misery in the cane fields of West India lies the betrayal of the Ricardian promise that once inspired abolitionists to call upon East http://www.ituc–csi.org/colombia–sugar–cane–harvesters.html?lang=de (accessed Sep­ tember 9, 1012). 190 Pereira, “Agrarian Reform and Rural Workers,” p. 175. 191 According to Breman, the share in total production costs of cutting and haulage was 15 percent, whereas cutting and haulage roughly amounts to half the work involved in the entire cycle from tillage to the delivery of cane to the factory. Moreover, expenses have been included in this rubric that are not wages for workers. See Breman, Wage Hunters, pp. 237–238. 192 Guru, “Working Class Militancy,” pp. L27–L31. 193 Government of India, Maharashtra Development Report, p. 115. 194 Breman, Wage Hunters, p. 280. 195 Bunsha, “Machines that Mow down Migrants,” in: www.dionnebunsha.com/content/ Maharashtra –sugarcane–workers (accessed September 9, 2012). 189

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India sugar in their struggle against slavery. Beet sugar in combination with European bounty regimes has created fierce downward pressure on sugar prices worldwide. In the 1990s, the costs of sugar production in Europe were higher than those in India and other cane sugar producers. However, thanks to subsidies (part of which were in violation of WTO agreements196) and highly protected consumer prices, producers in the European Union were able to compete on the world market. In 2003, the export price for EU sugar was allegedly one-third of its domestic price.197 Even under protected conditions, cane sugar factories lost much of their power in the 1990s. This was not only the case in India, but also in Indonesia and the Philippines.198 The most effective way to shore up the position of the sugar sector is to integrate it into national energy policies. This has been most extensively done in Brazil, but the government of India also moved further along this road by making 5 percent blending of fuel with ethanol mandatory in 2007. The government of Maharashtra used this ruling in 2010 to force the oil companies to buy ethanol from its “troubled mills,” pushing up the price of this alcohol.199 Even if Hindustan Petrol is a government enterprise, it remains to be seen whether the sugar barons will be able to enforce their will on the oil barons. It is more likely that sugar growing will evolve into a rationalized plantation enterprise and begin to resemble a mining company geared toward getting the energy out of the soil at the lowest price. Burning cane fields announce the arrival of the cane mowers and the leaves can be disposed of, as these are no longer necessary to feed the animals that came with the migrant harvesters. Regardless of whether they are located in Latin America, India, or Papua New Guinea, cane fields will all offer the same black scene of desolation.

See WTO, European Communities – Export Subsidies on Sugar. Gawali, “Distortions in World Sugar Trade,” p. 4514. 198 Billig, “Syrup in the Wheels of Progress,” p. 146. 199 “Centre gets oil firms to revive sugar mills,” Hindustan Times, April 8, 2010, http:// www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Mumbai/Centre-gets-oil-firms-to-revive-suga r-mills/Article1–528507.aspx (accessed November 5, 2012). 196 197

Conclusion

The grim sight of gargantuan mowers slowly rolling through scorched cane fields is the terminus of the long journey of the plantation model across four continents. Over the last eight centuries, the plantation has been a model that facilitated a chain of innovations to keep pace with growing global demand. Originating in North India, the art of sugar manufacturing made long detours via Central Asia, China, the Mediterranean, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Enhanced by steam and chemical technology, it returned to Asia. The emergence of the abolitionist movement encouraged attempts to revive existing sugar production in Asia and started the search for entirely new locations in which to establish sugar plantations. This began in the late eighteenth century and was followed in the early nineteenth century by the first serious attempts to introduce steam technology into sugar manufacturing. At the time of the first attempts at relocating sugar production for the European market from the West to the East, the plantation was the business model of the day. It had resisted the ravages of time while being transferred from island to island across half the globe. In Asia too, sugar production showed a preference for islands such as Mauritius and Réunion, and later Negros (the Philippines), or colonial enclaves such as the Chinese sugar colonies in Southeast Asia. Southern Bengal, Madras, and East Java provided excellent natural conditions required for growing cane, but none of these locations possessed the sea-locked conditions needed for the smooth transfer of the Caribbean plantation model. Meanwhile, the Indian art of growing cane and making sugar could easily compete with imported methods of West Indies sugar manufacturing. 262

Conclusion

263

Since time immemorial, gur making had been deeply embedded in rural North Indian life, where it filled the slack winter months. Far from idealizing Indian village life with its horrendous inequalities, I have stressed the role of gur as a currency to pay for services and settle debts. Contradicting the image of a stagnant sector, considerable improvements in cane processing had been accomplished by the end of the nineteenth century, whereas in the early twentieth century, high-yielding cane varieties boosted the output per hectare. This clearly contradicts perceived binaries between the traditional and the modern, and is an understudied example of the successful implementation of applied technologies. Contrary to expectations for sugar exports from India, gur not only maintained its position in the face of industrialization, but actually reclaimed terrain during the 1980s, a decade marked by globally declining sugar prices. This is a recurrent theme within the history of the emerging sugar industry in India. Its position was structurally fragile. On one hand it had to cope with a strong peasant production system of gur, and on the other with the downward trend of world market prices, from which price setting on the Indian market was not entirely immune in spite of the tariff walls surrounding it. Against the backdrop of an existing vibrant sugar sector in India around 1800, it is hardly surprising that the East India Company did not want to put its faith in the industrialization of sugar production. Some attempts were made, however, and conditions seemed particularly promising in South India. The ryotwari land rent system, devised by Alexander Read and his assistant Thomas Munro in the Madras Presidency, appeared conducive to the growing of cane for industrial sugar production. As did many of their contemporaries, Read and Munro believed fiscal policies were instrumental in creating the necessary conditions for deliveries of cane to industrial plants producing for the world market. However, these conditions were not sufficient, as the case of South India demonstrated. Relatively high wage levels and a lack of technology impeded industrial cane sugar production in this part of India. By the late nineteenth century, the scale of the Madras and Orissa sugar industries were modest and had meanwhile switched to processing palm gur. At first sight, conditions in Java seemed the most favorable for industrial sugar production. Sugar plantations existed, and in contrast to India or China, a local cane sugar market was absent. However, the potential for growth in West Java was limited. That Java nonetheless stands out as an early nineteenth-century adopter of industrial sugar production was the result of audacious colonial intervention in irrigated

264

The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia

rice agriculture in East Java. The Cultivation System deeply encroached on existing property rights, successfully burdening village heads with the task of supplying blocks of land and recruiting labor. It shifted power from cultivators to factories, connected metropolitan banking with village economies, and supplied rural Java with an influx of money, thereby laying the foundations for a sugar plantation conglomerate based on wage labor. The result was the acquisition of large blocks of land set against ever-declining prices and growing quantities of dependent labor. This made industrially manufactured Java sugar competitive on the European, and later the Asian, markets. The areaal, or zone encircling each factory, from where the factory could take its cane, was pivotal. Once the Indian sugar industry had gained enough muscle as an interest group, it succeeded in importing this model from Java and implemented it in a modified form. The circles or zones around factories were an Asian approximation of the control over the field exerted in the classical Caribbean plantation model. The plantation conglomerate that emerged in Java during the course of the nineteenth century was heavily reliant on the cooperation of the village elites. The establishment of sugar plantations on wasteland did occur in both Java and India, but such plantations were exceptions to the rule. These were truly modern plantations, where the factories owned the land or held it on long-term leases. The usual model for the factories was to rule via a group of privileged cultivators, absentee farmers, or moneylenders. As long as the industry did not own the land on which cane was grown, its success was reliant on the symbiosis between rich farmers and factories. Production of sugar for the world market required massive amounts of labor, which could only be recruited and exploited because of widespread indebtedness. The industrialization of cane processing reiterated the need for the subordination of the agricultural part of the process to the manufacturing, and was not easily accomplished. Moreover, the factories could only survive if they were able to prevent the cultivators from diverting into gur making. Conversely, as soon as a sugar factory was able to control labor and land, it assumed many of the features of a plantation. In Java, smallholder sugar production was advocated by Indonesian nationalists in late-colonial society and attempted under the presidency of Sukarno. However, after these experiments failed, the Suharto regime introduced heavy government intervention to restore the synchrony between field and factory, though with mixed results. Meanwhile, in India the Maharashtra sugar barons built their plantation conglomerate in West India, whereas

Conclusion

265

the Bihar sugar factories lost their grip on land and labor from the 1970s onward, precisely because they were not able to prevent cane growers returning to the production of gur. For both India and Indonesia, sugar cooperatives were a way to transfer the plantation model into the new era of independence. However, the cooperatives could not mitigate the inequalities that existed at the village level in Java and West India. Asian societies were not egalitarian prior to the arrival of industrial sugar production in their villages. In contrast to what a long line of authors on rural society, from Van den Bosch to Geertz, have written about communalism and shared poverty, the realities were not egalitarian, and divisions were only sharpened under the pressures of the sugar industries. On the same grounds, historians writing about sugar production in West India rejected Geertz’s concept of “agricultural involution.” These agricultural societies were also not immune to external economic stimuli, as the Brenner theory would suggest. The Cultivation System was not imposed because Java’s rural society lived outside the world of Adam Smith, but to change the rules of the market economy and make the cultivators subservient to the nascent sugar industry. Meanwhile, social inequalities within Javanese villages were of paramount importance in creating plantation-like conditions that facilitated industrial sugar production. Today, the factories rely on rich and powerful farmers capable of extracting land and labor from poorer peasants. For Java, it has been demonstrated how this alliance, forged in the 1840s and 1850s, easily withstood nationalist pressures during the late colonial era and survived Indonesia’s war of independence to be reinvigorated during the Suharto era. In the Bombay Deccan, smallholders had to rent out their land under pressure from powerful farmers and under conditions that were uneconomical. In Bihar, sharecroppers had to carry out the work, including most of the harvesting. In all three cases, the viability of industrial sugar production hinged on a political alliance between the management of the factories, the landholding rural elites, and the state; regardless of whether the latter was colonial or postcolonial. This process was facilitated by a growing percentage of landless agricultural laborers in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Land ownership had become increasingly skewed in Java, Bihar, and Maharashtra, which we compared in colonial and postcolonial times: in the 1980s, about 80 percent of the rural populations in these three locations were either landless or in possession of just a yard, which was a far higher percentage than in the early nineteenth century.

266

The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia

In that respect, the situation in India and Indonesia was not that different to late-colonial Cuba. Studying the social consequences of sugar production for the world market, Ayala observed for the 1930s that the distribution of land ownership of the cane farms (colonias) was heavily skewed.1 Ibarra points out that the number of independent cane farmers (colonos) who owned their land declined from 36 percent in 1904 to 10 percent in 1933. In his view, this points to the increasing power of the factories over the cane planters.2 The Philippine sugar island of Negros followed the same path. The picture of a small group of wealthy landowners who have a stake in industrial sugar processing and exploit the poorer rural population is rather a global one and not confined to Java and West India. The Asian plantation is very much embedded in a global pattern. In many ways, sugar provided additional income to a rural workforce that would have been pushed out to the urban areas anyway. Sugar in general has not been able to alleviate poverty, not only because of continually declining prices on the world market and rapid demographic growth, but also because factories had the option to choose from a labor-saving repertoire, including haulage and ratooning. Conversely, with sufficient supplies of (immigrant) labor, ratooning could be diminished or even eliminated. The cutting was left to migrant laborers brought in from the arid hinterlands of sugar cultivation in Gujarat or the Bombay Deccan, or from the dry islands off the coast of East Java. If and when, after many years of exploitation these immigrant cane cutters stood up for their rights, they would see the cane mowers coming into the fields. Sugarcane traditionally held the position of a rich peasants’ crop in Asia. Its cultivation required some investment, and it was highly valued at the local level as a means for farmers to obtain extra-agricultural services. Sugar was associated with wealth, even though the moneylenders were never far away to exert pressure on the cane cultivators. In a global context, sugar has been devalued from a luxury to fuel to be procured in bulk at the lowest possible price. At the same time, it became a strategic commodity that every nation wanted to produce for itself at considerable costs, and could produce for themselves once the Europeans discovered how to make sugar from beet. Under these conditions, the plantation model developed in the Mediterranean region and in Southeast Asia proved the resilient business model, a model that, through many changes Ayala, America Sugar Kingdom, pp. 122–123. Ibarra, Prologue to Revolution, p. 75.

1 2

Conclusion

267

and relocations, kept the basic characteristic of full control over all the industrial and agricultural aspects of production. What the history of the emerging sugar industry in Asia finally demonstrates is that control over the trading and banking infrastructure, which supports the production and marketing of sugar, is equally as crucial as control over land and labor. Both the persistence of gur and the success of the Cultivation System in their way underscore this point.

Appendix I Notes on Labor Input in Sugar Production in India between 1850 and 1930

Notwithstanding the paucity of data, a number of indications make it plausible that in India the output of sugar per unit of labor doubled in the eighty years from 1850 to 1930. I am not including any estimates about the consequence of possible changes in ratooning practices, since hardly any relevant data is available. The assumption is that until 1930, this was more or less a stable factor and that ratooning only drastically increased during the massive industrialization of sugar manufacturing after 1932. According to estimates and figures by Pouchepadass, Hadi, and Gandhi in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the cultivation of one acre of cane on nonirrigated land involved one household for 80 to 100 days per year.1 This would mean the 880,000 acres under cane in 1850 – I take the figures of Sykes here – required at least the same number of households.2 Estimates by Porter of the labor input for the pestle-and-mortar mills in the mid-nineteenth century suggest 1.7 million men, and probably women, and 2.5 million bullocks had to work for 100 days to clear the same 880,000 acres of cane and grind it.3 Based on these figures, it seems a safe assumption that by the mid-nineteenth century, 2.5 million households were involved for 80 to 100 days per year to produce gur or the equivalent of jaggery. To this figure, we need to add the workforce of the khandsari makers and the factories. I assume that in the mid-nineteenth century, the number of khandsari manufacturers was

Pouchepadass, Champaran and Gandhi, p. 124; Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, p. 263; Hadi, The Indian Sugar Industry, pp. 39–42. 2 Sykes, “Contribution to the Statistics,” p. 15. 3 Porter, Nature and Properties of the Sugar Cane, p. 219. 1

269

270

Appendix I

more or less the same as in the 1920s, namely 250 each employing forty workers on average. Together these 10,000 workers produced 100,000 metric tons of sugar per annum.4 Next there were a few dozen factories that together produced 20,000 metric tons in the mid-nineteenth century, involving a workforce of roughly 150 workers per factory to run the mills and vacuum pans, amounting to a total workforce of 12,000.5 All in all, the total number of households involved in the Indian sugar sector in 1850 might have amounted to 2.6 million. In 1930, about 3.5 million acres were under cane. Applying the same assumption of one household per acre – the actual figure would be lower rather than higher because the area under irrigation had drastically increased  – this would amount to 3.5 million households involved in cultivation. According to Kiyokawa and Ohno, in the 1930s an average of 1.8 million workers were involved in cane processing for gur, khandsari, and industrial sugar.6 To this, we should add the workforce needed for clearing each acre of cane and ripping off the leaves. Relevant data is scarce, though for Java in the 1920s we know that the figure was 1.4 cutters and transporters per acre for approximately 100 days. In present-day Champaran, the figure stands at ten men and forty women for one day per acre, which equates to 0.5 people for 100 days per acre.7 Both figures are, however, based on considerably higher cane yields per acre, which consequently involve more work than India’s cane fields required in 1930. We therefore consider the 1.4 million harvesters (men, women, and children) a conservative estimate. This means that in 1930, a maximum of six million households were involved in the cane sector, producing 2.7 million metric tons of gur, 160,000 metric tons of factory sugar, and 250,000 metric tons of khandsari.8 The output of sugar more than quadrupled, with only twice the amount of labor. The four most important factors in this increasing labor output For the total exports of khandsari sugar, see Ratledge, “From Promise to Stagnation,” p. 293, and for the approximate number of khandsaris, see Agarwala, Sugar Industry & Labour, p. 99. 5 Ratledge, From Promise to Stagnation, p. 286. 6 Kiyokawa and Ohno, “Technology and Labour Absorption,” p. 345. 7 According to Levert, 250,000 workers were involved in clearing and transporting 140,000 hectares of cane. Levert, Inheemsche arbeid, p. 130. Masoom Reza, Interview, October 13, 2011. For early nineteenth-century Java, it was estimated it would take one man 100 days to cut 3.5 acres of cane. However, this was an estimate by Governor-General Van den Bosch, who was rather optimistic in his assessments of the amount of labor involved in his Cultivation System. See GB, March 28, no. 1. 8 Gandhi, Problems of the Sugar Industry, pp. i, ii. 4

Appendix I

271

can easily be identified, namely irrigation, the Beheea improved cane varieties, and the centrifuge. According to Hadi, watering one acre of cane would take ten to twelve men two days, and this had to be repeated at least twelve times after each round of plowing, involving more than a third of the total labor input for cultivation.9 For all of India, irrigation might have reduced the work involved in cane cultivation by 15 percent. The introduction of the Beheea mill halved the labor input for milling compared to traditional implements, whereas it extracted about 20 percent more juice.10 Finally, the introduction of improved cane varieties in the early twentieth century led to another 12.5 percent increase by 1930 for all of India. According to our estimate, in 1850 it took about thirty working days to produce one metric ton of khandsari from rab (ten metric tons per worker per year), whereas according to Kiyokawa and Ohno this was about seven to eight working days in the 1930s. This amounted to an increase in labor efficiency of over 400 percent.11

Hadi, The Indian Sugar Industry, p. 44. Kiyokawa and Ohno, “Technology and Labour Absorption,” pp. 333–335. 11 Ibidem, p. 344. 9

10

Appendix II Notes on the Costs of Producing and Shipping Sugar to European Markets

Table AII.1 below presents a comparison of the factor costs for sugar production in different parts of the world. We have no data regarding the transport of Madras muscovados around this time, for the simple reason that obtaining refined sugar in South India was much too expensive, as is illustrated by the range of gur prices mentioned by Buchanan. Furthermore, the underdeveloped khandsari market resulted in extremely high prices for traditionally refined sugar.1 Buchanan’s three-volume Journey from Madras quotes gur prices in different parts of Madras, Mysore, and present-day Kerala mostly ranging from £0.24 to £0.45 per maund (37.22 kilograms).2 Gur in South India was 40 percent more expensive than in Bengal, which would theoretically result in a difference in cost price of £2,690 per 250 tons of sugar, all other things being equal. This sufficiently explains why South Indian cane sugars could not compete with those from Bengal. In fact, sugar factories in Madras preferred palm gur, which, according to Buchanan, could be obtained at £0.17 per maund, which was still 20 percent more expensive than cane gur in Bengal (Table AII.1).3

Buchanan, Journey from Madras, vol. i, p. 340. Buchanan, Journey from Madras, i, pp. 101, 157–162, ii, pp. 195, 300, iii, pp. 146, 311, 451. 3 Buchanan, Journey from Madras ii, p. 195. 1 2

273

274

Appendix II Table AIi.1.  Costs of producing and shipping 250 tons of sugar to European markets

Location (Year)

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(4+5)

Labor (£)

Capital Land Local costs Transport and Total (£) (£) rent (£) (molasinsurance (£) ses sales deducted) (£)

Batavia (1780) Penang (1836) West Indies (1828) Suriname (1828) Bengal (1830)

4,243

3,872

–4

5,623

3,099

503

–

1,633

5,280

3,719

–

8,228

2,500

10,729

4,509

4,194

–

8,063

2,435

10,498

1,917

3,892

807

5,148

2,340

  7,488

4,500–6,500 10,123–12,123

Note: Land rent included but other taxes and import duties excluded. Sources: Batavia: Columns 1–4 are based upon Teisseire, Verhandelinge, pp. 86–124, assuming a six-month milling season and an exchange rate of one Rijksdaalder for £0.224. For the annual production, I have taken the average mill in 1786 according to Leidelmeijer, Van suikermolen tot grootbedrijf, p. 72. I have added 7 percent interest to the total capital given by Teisseire. Column 5 is based on Van den Bosch, “Nota van den gewezen kommissaris-generaal,” pp. 275–276. Penang: Low, A Dissertation, pp. 52–58 and assuming the same exchange rate of one Rijksdaalder for £0.224. There are no further details on freight, since this sugar was very rarely shipped to European markets. West Indies: MacDonnell, Colonial Commerce, pp. 128–131, whose figures are more recent, but still in line with the more often quoted figures from Edwards.5 For the £31,000 invested in the purchase of slaves, I accounted for 7 percent (£2,170) interest and £2,066 annual replacement, assuming that on average a slave could not endure plantation work for more than fifteen years.6 In addition, MacDonnell gives £1043.55 for other labor costs (European supervisors, smiths, carpenters, etc.), whereas for fixed capital he gives £20,000, or £1,400 against 7 percent interest. For circulating capital, he provides figures that amount to £2,319. The total figure for labor and capital amounts to £8,998, from which £770 should be deducted for molasses sales. Suriname: Van den Bosch, “Advies van den luitenant-gouverneur-generaal,” p. 302. Here, we assume an exchange rate of ten Dutch guilders to one British pound. For the slave stock, Van den Bosch suggests £25,000, or £1,460 against 7 percent interest. For replacement, I used the same calculation as for the West Indies, which makes £1,666. An additional £1,383 is involved for other labor costs, which amounts to a total for labor of £4,509. As regards capital requirements, Van den Bosch does not provide figures for Included in the rent of the mill. See Leidelmeijer, Van suikermolen, p. 76 for the increasing land rents by 1800. 5 Edwards, The History, pp. 295–299. 6 Bengal Sugar, p. 28. 4

Appendix II

275

Table AII.1.  Sources (continued) circular capital and wear and tear to equipment and buildings; here I applied MacDonnell’s figure of £2,319. Over the total of fixed capital of £12,500, 7 percent interest had to be paid, bringing the costs of invested capital to £1,875. The figure for capital is therefore £4,194. For molasses, £640 can be deducted. Bengal: Here I applied a conversion rate of ten rupees to one pound. Gur was obtained at £0.15 per maund, and for 1,000 metric tons to produce 250 tons of sugar the total cost would be £4,035. This figure can be divided into 40 percent labor, 20 percent interest on advances,7 20 percent land rent, 10 percent cuttings, and 10 percent manure and bullocks.8 To calculate the costs of processing this amount of gur into muscovado, I used Buchanan, Dinajpur, pp. 303–304, estimating fixed capital at £538, labor at £304, and circular capital £1,040. Total labor costs would therefore amount to £1,917, total capital (fixed and circular) to £3,192, and land rent £807. Buchanan gives an additional revenue of £1,500 for molasses, which can be deducted from the costs of the production of sugar. Total production costs for 250 tons of muscovado sugar would therefore be £4,416, which is within the range of the existing local market prices of between six and seven rupees per maund EIC officials had to pay.9 The freight cost along the Ganges to the harbor of Calcutta amounted to an estimated 0.4 Rs. per maund (see [Macaulay], East India Sugar, p. 13), to which 5 percent should be added for wastage. Freight and wastage together amount to £440. Based on local market prices in Bengal, the cost price in Calcutta therefore ranged between £4,475 and £5,148, but the real price of eight rupees per maund was a little higher. For the freight costs from Calcutta to British ports, I took the figure of six pounds per ton mentioned in the records of the Board of Trade in 1830, to which I added 3.5 percent insurance and 5 percent wastage. Total freight costs from khandsaris to British ports would therefore be £2,340.

For interest rates in different sectors of the Indian economy, see also Roy, “Factor Markets,” p. 158. 8 This fraction is derived from MacDonnell, Colonial Commerce, p. 143; Bengal Sugar, p. 84; Buchanan, Dinajpur, p. 304. 9 BoT, September 14, 1830, Commercial Department No. 10, London May 12, 1830, Letter by W. Astell et al. to the Governor General in Council at Fort William, in Bengal. 7

Weights and Measures

1 acre 1 bau 1 cwt

=   0.4 hectares =   0.71 hectares = hundredweight = 50 kilograms (20 cwts in one metric ton) 1 maund = 82.28 lbs = 37.22 kg (i.e. 26.9 maunds in one metric ton) 1 picul =  61.7613 kilograms (16.6 picul in one metric ton) 1 pucka beegah =   2750–2760 square yards (1 yard = 0.9144 m2) =  2518. 17 m2 = ¼ hectare 1 quintal =  100 kilograms 1 metric ton =  1000 kilograms

277

Glossary

adat  Indonesian common or customary law ampas  cane from which the juice has been pressed and that is used as fuel arrack  distilled drink made from coconut flowers, cane, rice, or fruit bania  banker, moneylender bataidar  sharecropper bekel  headman or headwomen bel  set of boiling pans for making rab bhadralok  Anglicized middle and higher classes in Bengal bhaoli  grain-paying system or sharecropping system in Bihar bibit  cane stalks or seedlings biri/bidi  Indian cigarette filled with leaves from a tendu (Coromandel Ebony) tree bujang  bachelor (Malay) bupati  regent challan  written request for payment colonos  cane farmers desa  village empreiteiro  labor contractor (Brazil) gogol  independent farmer gumastha  agent of a zamindar gur/gul  unrefined cottage sugar ingenios  sugar mill (in Spanish colonies) jaggery  sugar in which crystals and molasses have not yet been separated

279

280

Glossary

kampung  urban neighborhood kanchi  sugar refining using waterweed ketua kolompok  head of a cooperative khai  roller mill modeled on a cotton mill khandsari  nonindustrial refinery producing white sugar. Also white sugar produced by a khandsari khaur  Indian variant of muscovado kolha  pestle-and-mortar sugar mill loppor  cane cutter mandur  recruiter/foreman manjiri  planting cane at a large distance mantri  Javanese civil servant mouzawar  village-based land rent system mukadam  recruiter/foreman muscovado  unrefined brown sugar nawab  Muslim ruler of a princely state in South Asia pagger  fence poligar  chieftain puasa  Eid, or the end of Ramadan rab  massecuite rajakayriya  corvée ryot/rayat  cultivator ryotwari land rent  land rent directly collected from cultivators sawah  irrigated land sikep  independent farmer slametan  feast meal tagai  intermittent loan tani  peasant thikedar  holder of a thika, which is a lease of intermediate tenure for a defined period at a fixed rent tinkathia  system of cultivation obliging a tenant to sow indigo on 15 percent of their holding in return for a fixed payment by the plantation trassen  ripping off leaves from cane udjong  Madurese game of two men trying to whip each other on the back with a rattan volksloods  people’s shed wedono  district head (Java) zamindar  aristocratic and hereditary landholders zamindari land rent  land rent collected by zamindari

Abbreviations

AVS BoT GB HPCL HTK

HVA ICSC ILO INC NA NHM PFB PKI SBG TRI VJP VSTP WTO

Archief voor de Java-suikerindustrie Board of Trade of the East India Company Gouvernementsbesluit (Decision by the governor-general of   the Netherlands Indies) Hindustan Petroleum Company Limited Handelingen van de Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal   (Proceedings of the Second Chamber of the Dutch   Parliament) Handelsvereniging Amsterdam (Trading Society of   Amsterdam) Indian Central Sugar Committee International Labour Organization Indian National Congress National Archive, The Hague Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (Dutch Trading Society) Personeel Fabriek Bond (Sugar Factory Workers’ Union) Partai Kommunis Indonesia (Communist Party of Indonesia) Sarekat Buruh Gula Tebu Rakyat Intensifikasi (Intensified Smallholder Cane) Vereenigde Java-suiker Producenten (United Java Sugar   Producers Vereeniging van Spoor en Tramwegpersoneel (Union of Rail   and Tramway Workers) World Trade Organization

281

Archives

National Archive of The Hague (NA) Ministry of Colonies Mail reports (Mail rapporten) Archive Klattensche Cultuurmaatschappij Archive Cultuurmaatschappij Wonolongan Archive of the Vereniging Vereenigde Java-suiker Producenten (VSJP), 1918–1939 Collection De Vriese Collection Schneither National Archives of India, Delhi Government of India Revenue Department Revenue and Agricultural Department Finance and Commerce Department State Archives of West Bengal, Kolkota East India Company Board of Trade Revenue Department Government of West Bengal Tamil Nadu State Archives, Chennai Government of Madras Board of Revenue Revenue Department

283

284

Archives

Bihar State Archives, Patna Government of Bihar Administrative Reports Development Department Oral sources: transcripts (translated from Hindi into English by Masoom Reza) and tapes located at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam): Interviews held by Masoom Reza with thirteen informants in Champaran in December 2010 and two additional short interviews in October 2011. References are made anonymous.

Bibliography

Journals Allen’s Indian Mail and Register of Intelligence for British and Foreign India, China and all parts of the East. London: Wm. Allen and Co. 1843–1891. Archief voor de Java-suikerindustrie (1893–1935), then reappearing as Archief voor de suikerindustrie in Nederland en Nederlandsch-Indië (1940–1942) [AVS]. Publications A Britisher in the Philippines or the letters of Nicholas Loney. With an Introduction by Margaret Hoskyn and Biographical Note by Consul José Ma. Espino. Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1964. Abraham, Amrita, “Sugar Workers Draw a Blank,” Economic and Political Weekly, 14(50), 1979, pp. 2035–2037.   “Another Patchwork Agreement for Sugar Workers,” Economic and Political Weekly, 15(48), 1980, pp. 2007–2008. Abridgement of the Minutes of Evidence taken before a Committee of the Whole House to whom it was referred to consider of the slave-trade, 1789. Agarwala, R. D., Sugar Industry & Labour in the United Provinces. With a foreword by R. C. Srivastava, Esq. Sugar Technologist, Imperial Council of Agricultural Research India. Allahabad: Krishna Ram, Leader Press, s.a. [1933]. Aguilar, Filomeno V., Clash of Spirits: The History of Power and Sugar Planter Hegemony on a Visayan Island. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1998. Algemeen Syndicaat van suikerfabrikanten in Nederlandsch-Indië, Grondhuurprijzen bij de suikerindustrie op Java. Resultaten der in December 1910 gehouden enquete. Soerabaia: Furhi & Co., 1911.

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Index

abolition debate, 58, 59 of slavery, 6, 26, 28, 44, 47–48, 57, 65–66, 73, 232 of the slave trade, 4, 6, 44, 47, 73, 92–93, 94 abolitionist movement, 6, 44, 47–48, 50, 57, 59, 60–63, 64, 77, 93, 260, 262 pamphlets, 76 petitions, 48 absentee capitalism, 25 Aden, 133 Afghanistan, 12, 70 Africa, 84 East Africa, 23 East Coast, 13 African and Anti-Slavery Association, 60 Agrarian Law (1870), 27, 117, 130 agricultural conference, 156 exhibition, 132, 138 Agricultural and Horticultural Society of Bengal, 70 Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India, 69, 132, 142 agricultural involution, 102, 214, 252 Agricultural Society of the Indies (Indisch Landbouwgenootschap), 132, 157 Aguilar, Filomeno, 28, 128 Ahmednagar, 257 alcohol, 3, 80, 83, 134, 175, 237, 261

Alexandria, 23 Algemeen Syndicaat van Suikerfabrikanten in Nederlandsch-Indië. See Java Sugar Syndicate American Civil War, 94, 148, 170, 172 American Declaration of Independence, 47 Amin, Shahid, 5, 38 Amsterdam, 11, 15, 17, 158, 215 Andhra Pradesh, 249, 253 Anti-Slavery Society, 59, 259 Arab world, 11, 24, 34 Arabia, 133 Arabian agricultural revolution, 23, 34 Arabian peninsula, 230 Arbeidscommissie. See Labor Committee Arbuthnot & Co., 80, 84, 85 areaal (factory circle), 121, 192, 264 arrack, 80, 132 Asia Minor, 133 Aska, 254 Aska sugar factory, 80, 83–84, 134–135, 138 Assam, 27, 145 Atlantic plantation complex, 1 plantation system, 17, 22, 24 world, 2, 10, 13, 15, 22, 26, 47, 139 Attwood, Donald W., 148, 255 Australia, 1, 166, 197, 231 Austria, 145, 166, 170 Austro-Hungarian Empire, 164, 167 Ayala, César J., 266

313

314

Index

Baden Powell, H., 137 Bagchi, Amiya Kumar, 31 Bahia, 64 Baines, Edward, 73 bananas, 2 Bandepollium sugar factory, 83 Bantam, 14 Barbados, 22, 23, 25, 50, 147 plantation model, 25 plantation revolution, 23, 26 sugar revolution. See Barbados: plantation revolution Barripore, 69 Batavia, 13, 14, 15–16, 27, 41, 46, 48, 64, 90, 93, 95, 100, 103, 107, 115, 128, 130, 149, 172, 217 Baud, J.C., 113 beet sugar, 7, 8, 19, 86, 105, 107, 164, 165, 166, 167–170, 173, 193, 215, 219, 261 industry, 7, 19, 76, 87, 150, 164, 165, 173, 183, 214, 219 Begg, David, 196 Begg, Dunlop & Co. See Begg Sutherland & Co. Begg Sutherland & Co., 163, 166– 168, 196–197, 200–201, 232, 234–236, 238, 242 beggar colonies, 91 Beheea, 139 Beheea mill, 139–140, 142, 146, 150, 271 Bekasi, 89 Belapur Company, 205, 208 Belgium, 170 belna, 206 Bengal Commercial Society, 46 Bengal Sugar Company, 62 Benkulen, 47 Besuki, 99, 103, 104, 107, 154, 155, 156 Bettiah, 47, 202 bhadralok renaissance, 132 bhaoli system, 70 Bihar State Sugar Corporation, 245 Bimlipatam, 80 Binny company, 238 Binny family, 80, 83, 85 Binny, John, 83 biri/bidi, 237 Birla group, 232, 238, 245, 247–249 Black Sea, 24 Boedoean sugar factory, 104, 154–156 Boeke, J.H., 42

Bombay Deccan, 36, 110, 133, 136–137, 147–150, 205, 208, 213, 239, 251–255, 257, 258, 265, 266 Bombay Medical Establishment, 67 bone charcoal, 133–134, 170 Boomgaard, Peter, 2 Botanical Gardens at Calcutta, 49, 51, 69 botany, 3, 43, 130, 142, 146, 147 Botham, Henry, 47, 48 Bourbon cane, 142 Bovell, John Redman, 147 Braudel, Fernand, 22 Brazil, 14, 22, 26, 67, 84, 93–94, 239, 260, 261 Breman, Jan, 2, 30, 127, 257–259, 260 Brenner, Robert, 35 thesis, 42, 71, 91, 117, 128, 253, 265 British Molasses Company, 175 British Parliament, 4, 47–48, 54, 64, 76, 79, 85 Broadberry, Stephen, 63 Brussels, 167 Sugar Conference of 1898, 166, 196 Sugar Conference of 1902, 167–168, 196, 214 Sugar Convention of 1902, 8, 165, 168, 170, 175, 193, 212, 214, 216 bubonic plague, 25, 149 Buchanan, Francis (Hamilton), 11, 12, 40, 63, 273, 275 Buitenzorg (Bogor), 153 Bukhara, 12, 165 Burdwan, 71 Burma, 173, 257 Butterfield & Swire Taikoo, 169, 216 Calcutta, 12, 49, 51, 63, 64, 67, 69, 71, 78–79, 80, 86–87, 89, 131, 132, 133, 144, 145, 170, 200, 217, 245, 275 Campbell, Edward, 55, 56 Campbell, Robert, 55 cane fire, 177–180, 183, 190, 225, 256 Canton, 13 Cape of Good Hope, 142 Cardin, Richard, 51 Cardin, William, 49 Caribbean world, 2, 6, 15–17, 22, 28, 62–63, 66, 71, 90, 93, 105, 166, 262 Carnatic, 55 Catanach, I.J., 148 Cauvery, 136 Cawnpore, 163, 172, 196, 232, 236, 245

Index Ceded Districts, 53 Ceylon, 15, 27–28, 41, 44, 73–74, 94, 128, 131, 133, 173 Chadbourne Scheme, 219 Chamberlain, Joseph, 167, 193 Champaran, 47, 51, 52, 68, 99, 119, 196–204, 208, 213, 239–243, 244, 246, 247, 248, 250, 252, 270 Channock, 12 Chanpatia sugar factory, 245–246 Charlesworth, Neil, 35, 148 Chaugáchhá. See Ghowgutcha Chhattisgarh, 139 Chidambaram, 56 China Sea, 26 China trade, 51 Chinese Sugar Traders Association, 171 Chithelen, Ignatius, 148, 255 Chowgutcha, 77 cinchona, 2 cinnamon, 94 Cirebon, 15, 16, 90, 111, 127, 152 citrus, 2 Clarence-Smith, William, 98, 99 claying of sugar, 14, 25 climate, 4, 5, 7, 19, 22, 25, 32, 33, 54, 69, 72, 138, 146, 173, 209, 244 Cobdenism, 76, 167 Cochin China (Vietnam), 13, 18 cocoa, 2 coconuts, 2 coffee, 2, 7, 18, 75, 89, 93, 94, 106, 118, 134, 205 blight, 126, 154 cultivation, 12, 74, 75 plantation, 27, 54, 74 Coimbatore, 147, 157 Cokroaminoto, 181, 183 Colley, A.D.J., 56, 57 Colombia, 259 Comal (Tjomal) sugar factory, 111 communal, 207 arrangements, 55, 56, 91, 101, 207 landholding, 34, 36, 42, 72, 91–92, 95, 102, 112, 117, 119–122, 127–129 taxation, 56 communalism, 112, 265 Constantinople, 24 Continental System, 19 cooperative banking, 148

315

cane cultivators’, 8, 30, 190–191, 212–213, 228–230, 235, 239, 241, 243, 248, 251 society, 149 sugar, 251, 265 sugar cooperative, 27 sugar factory, 30, 38, 43, 213, 239, 240, 241, 251–252, 255–257, 260, 265 sugar production, 238 cooperative credit. See credit Cooperative Credit Act, 147 Corn Law, 77 Cornwallis, Charles, 36, 51, 53 Coromandel Coast, 44–45, 56, 67, 85, 132 corvée Arab world, 24 Java, 35, 36, 37, 92, 100, 102, 108, 111–112, 118, 125, 128 rajakariya (Ceylon), 73 Cossipore sugar, 80 sugar factory, 71, 80 cotton, 2, 7, 19, 21, 53, 65–66, 74, 148, 172, 204 cottonseed mill, 139 Cramer, Charles G., 190–191 Crawfurd, Robert, 53 credit, 70 cooperative, 147, 148 system, 35, 123, 136, 147, 149–150, 206, 214, 229 Credit Agricole, 241 Crete, 25 Crofts & Lennox, 47 Crooke, Arthur, 67 Cropper James, 59–60 Cropper, James, 59, 66, 93, 259 Crusaders, 24 Cuban Sugar Export Cooperation, 215 cultivation bonuses, 120 Cultivation Law, 119 Cultivation System, 28, 35, 37, 40, 43, 89–91, 94–95, 98–102, 103, 105–107, 108, 110, 113, 115–120, 128–129, 131, 152, 156, 177, 186, 207, 213, 228, 251, 253, 264, 265, 267 Curtin, Philip D., 22, 24 Curzon, Lord George, 167 Cyprus, 25 Czechoslovakia, 215

316

Index

Dai Nihon Company, 172 Darbhanga, 68 Das, Keshabananda, 83 date gur, 213 sugar, 72, 80 date gur, 80 De Maas sugar factory, 104, 155 De Vries, Jan, 18 Deccan Sugar and Abkhari Company, 168, 238 Declining Welfare Investigation, 176, 177 Deerr, Noel, 196, 234 Delhi, 136, 246, 250 Demerara, 58, 66, 71 Derosne & Cail. See vacuum pan Development Council for the Sugar Industry, 238 Dhobah sugar factory, 71, 77, 78 Djamiatoellah-Hassanah, 184 Djatiroto sugar factory, 155, 174–175 Djatiwangi sugar factory, 152 Dominican Republic, 259 Du Bus de Gisignies, Leonard, 89, 93, 98 Dutail, Gaudin, 16 Dutch East India Company. See Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) Dutch East Indies Company (VOC), 13, 14–16, 27, 45, 47, 101 Dutch Parliament, 119–120, 126–127, 159 Dutch Republic, 14 Dutch Trading Society (NHM), 99, 100, 106, 128, 151, 152–153, 158, 215, 216 Duvalier, Jean-Claude, 259 East India Company (EIC), 13, 36, 45–46, 47, 49–52, 57, 58, 62–63, 64, 84–85, 88, 99, 128, 198, 263 Board of Trade, 49–52 Charter of the, 53 Court of Directors, 49, 52, 53, 55, 57 Court of Proprietors, 48 warehouse, 66 East Sumatra, 130, 159 Eastern Salient (Java), 27, 95, 99, 110, 116, 125, 177 ecology, 4, 5, 7, 16, 21, 22, 25, 30, 32, 33, 57, 74, 98, 115, 132, 143, 144, 151, 175, 197, 252, 255 Edwards, Thomas Jeoffries, 152

Elgin, Lord James Bruce, 166 Elson, Bob, 6, 95, 100, 177, 189 Elyseram River, 54 enganche (the hook) system, 259 English poor law, 91 Enklaar van Guericke, F.A., 153–154, 156–157 Enklaar, Riphagen & Co., 153 ethanol, 238, 248, 249, 261 Ethical Policies, 42, 177 Etty, Charles, 107 European Community, 7 European Sugar Union (Suikerbond), 185 European Union (EU), 7, 261 experimental sugar station, 132, 157, 197, 234 Fabriekenordonnantie (factories ordinance), 174 factory white, 21 famine, 30, 46, 48, 106, 113, 136, 143–144, 148, 149, 150 Fenoaltea, Stefano, 24 Fernando, Radin, 102, 110, 111, 179 fertilizer, 115, 146, 153, 213, 231, 234, 248, 250 First World War, 131, 162, 164, 168, 173, 181, 193, 201, 206, 214, 219 Fitzmaurice, William, 49 Fock, Dirk, 188, 189, 193 Fraginals, Moreno, 114 France, 17, 18, 19, 72, 76, 164, 165 Fransen van de Putte, I.D., 104, 112, 117, 118–122, 124, 129, 228, 253 Free Sugar Company, 62 French Revolution, 48, 72 Fujian, 18 Gadgil, D.R., 252 Galle, 74 Galloway, J.H., 10, 22, 25, 34 Gandak River, 199, 240, 246 Gandhi, Mahatma, 21, 201, 233, 269 Ganges, 46, 275 Canal, 136 delta, 190–191 Gangetic plains, 136, 139 Ganjam, 57, 80 gasoline, 3 Geertz, Clifford, 42, 102, 254, 265 Germany, 20, 164, 165, 166, 167, 170, 215

Index getuigengeld (witness money), 123 Ghowgutcha, 71 Gibson, Alexander, 67 Gladstone Wylie sugar factory, 71 Gladstone, John, 58, 59–60, 66, 71, 72, 77, 78, 86 Gladstone, William Ewart, 77 Glasgow, 65 global capitalism, 5, 10, 23 Global South, 6, 7, 43 Godavari, 54, 136, 257 Godavari Canal, 252 Goodridge, J.P., 143 Gopalpur-on-Sea, 57, 80 Gorakhpur, 12, 38, 67, 79, 199, 213 grapes, 18, 165 Great Convergence, 4 Great Depression, 191 Great Divergence debate, 63 groundnuts, 2 Guadeloupe, 90 Guangdong, 169 Guilliland house, 198 Gujarat, 139, 246, 253, 259, 266 Gulf, the, 46 Guntur, 257 Gupta, Bishnupriya, 63 Hadi, Khan Bahadui, 271 Haiti, 62, 259. See also Saint Domingue Hamburg, 145, 166 Harinagar sugar factory, 247, 248 Harrison, J.B., 147 Hastings, Warren, 46 Havana, 216 Hawaii, 219 hemp, 2 Henley, T.F., 69, 70 Herat, 12 Heyrick, Elizabeth, 60 Higman, B.W., 26, 59, 65 Hindu Kush, 12, 86 Hindustan Petroleum Company Limited (HPCL), 248, 249, 261 Hirachand, 238 Hoadley, Mason C., 37 Hoernel, Robert B., 28 honey, 18 Hong-Kong, 145, 166, 169 Hooghly, 12 Horsby, F., 50, 57, 58

317

house of Binny. See Binny family Howard, Edward Charles, 31 Huangpu, 169 Hume, A.O., 142, 143 Hunter, W.W., 79 Ibn Battuta, 12 ILO (International Labour Office), 188 ILO (International Labour Organization), 2, 181, 188 indentured labor, 22, 24, 66, 72–74, 81, 258, 259 Indian Agricultural Service (Pusa), 208, 210, 234, 241 Indian Bhargava Committee, 183 Indian Central Sugar Committee (ICSC), 236, 238 Indian National Congress (INC), 43, 142, 203, 212, 217–218, 232, 234, 236, 238–239 Indian Ocean, 13, 46, 72 Indian Sugar Committee, 206, 207–208, 211, 234 Indian Sugar Producer’s Association, 206 Indian Tariff Board, 182, 204, 205, 209–210, 217, 238 indigo, 23, 27, 38, 46, 51, 66, 74, 75, 78, 79, 86, 89, 94, 101, 118, 196, 198–199, 200–201, 202–203, 242, 252 cultivation, 51, 103, 106, 197, 199, 201 estate, 46, 79, 163, 177, 196, 199–202 industry, 198, 201 manufacturer, 51, 68, 196 plantation, 27, 53, 200, 201 planter, 46, 62, 67, 69, 168, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201–203 indigo-sugar estate, 197 Industrial Revolution, 18–19, 31 industrious revolution, 18, 92 Intensified Smallholder Cane (TRI), 228, 229, 230 Internatio Rotterdam, 158 International Sugar Corporation, 216 Irian Yaya, 231 Italy, 165 jaggery, 70, 82, 83, 84, 138, 141, 171, 206, 269 Jamaica, 49, 51, 55, 64, 65, 66, 79, 90 Jamaica train, 16, 26, 89

318

Index

Japan, 1, 13, 20, 166, 169, 172, 219, 220, 222, 226, 259 Japanese occupation of the Netherlands Indies, 211, 222 ownership of sugar factories, 216 sugar traders, 217 Japara, 152, 153 Jardine & Matheson, 169 Java Sugar Syndicate (Algemeen Syndicaat van Suikerfabrikanten in Nederlandsch-Indië), 158–159, 169, 180, 182, 184–185, 190, 192, 207, 226 Java War (1825–1830), 94 Jessen & Trail, 89 Jessore, 71, 86, 141, 145 Jesuits, 13 jowar plant, 142 Jumma, 136 Jummoah, 67 jute, 2, 27, 144, 172, 204, 209 cultivation, 144 industry, 144, 166 Kabul, 12 Kadhipatten sugar factory, 152 Kalimantan, 231 Kalimati sugar factory, 155 Kallakurichi, 83 kanchi method (waterweed), 11, 12, 24, 141 Kandahar, 12 Kanta Ray, Rajat, 40 Kantoor van Arbeid. See Labor Office (Kantoor van Arbeid) Karachi, 171, 218 Kashmir, 17, 246, 250 Keatinge, Gerald Francis, 255 Kediri, 156, 179, 181, 190 Kemshead, mr., 78 Kerala, 273 Kew Gardens, 146, 147 khai (sugar mill), 139 Khandesh, 257 khandsari factory, 41, 45, 51, 75, 78, 80, 85, 86, 141, 204, 206, 210, 233, 237, 246, 269, 270 sugar, 12, 21, 50, 66, 67, 70, 76, 78, 79, 85–86, 88, 131, 132, 142, 160, 163,

197, 204, 206, 207, 209, 211, 233, 236, 241, 242, 251, 270–271, 273 Kian Gwan, 171, 218, 227 Kiyokawa, Yukihiko, 270, 271 Knight, Roger, 6, 91, 99, 110, 122 Krajenbrink, J.A., 157 Krawang, 157 Krishna, 257 Krishnamurty, Sunanda, 255 Labor Committee (Arbeidscommissie), 187 Labor Office (Kantoor van Arbeid), 188 Lambert, Ross & Company, 51 Land Acquisition Act (1894), 205, 208 landleasers (European), 118 Lang 152 See sugar factory Latin America, 259, 261, 262 League of Nations, 188, 217 Levert, Philip, 176, 270 Life Insurance Corporation of India, 245 Liverpool, 58, 59, 67 London, 49, 55, 65, 66, 75, 78, 85, 86, 89, 134–135, 146, 163, 164, 204 Loney, Nicholas, 74 Loriya sugar factory, 247–248 Louisiana, 28, 183 Ludden, David, 70 Luzon, 14 Lyall, Marshall & Co., 167 Macaulay, Colman, 145 Macaulay, Zachary, 259 Machado, Gerardo, 215, 219 Maclaine, Gillian, 172 Maclaine, house of, 172, 217 MacLeod, William, 53 Madagascar, 73 Madeira, 22, 24 Madras Horticultural Society, 81 Madura, 95, 160, 187, 230 Maharaja of Bettiah, 198 Maharashtra, 139, 214, 239, 247, 252, 253, 260, 261, 264–265 Maharatha, 148 Majhaulia sugar factory, 247, 248 Malabar Coast, 53 Malang, 190 Malaya, 173 Malaysia, 28 managing agency house, 244, 245

Index Manchester, 65 Mandaya, 234 Mangkunegara, 185 Manila, 13, 14 Mann, Harold, 148, 254 Mansurkota (near Gopalpur-on-Sea), 57 Marks, Daan, 98 Martineau, George, 31 Martinique, 90 masters and servants act, 126 Mataram, 37, 95 Empire of, 37 Mauritius, 1, 4, 5, 14, 15, 16, 20, 28, 33, 41, 44, 62–65, 67, 69, 72–74, 78, 81–82, 84, 90, 132–135, 140, 142–143, 145, 152, 153, 166, 262 Mazumdar, Sucheta, 1, 2, 6, 17, 20, 31 McAlpin, Michelle Burge, 255 McCoy, Alfred M., 28 Mcleod, William, 53 Mecca, 189 mechanical plowing, 156, 162 mechanization, 114–115, 131, 151, 152, 154, 156, 161–162, 252 Mediterranean sugar industry, 25, 26 sugar production, 22, 24 world, 4, 11, 13, 22, 23–26, 47, 139, 190, 262, 266 Melbourne, 134 Michigan, 183 Minchin, Frederick James Vivian, 83, 134, 135, 138, 156 Mintz, Sidney, 2, 18, 19 mission civilisatrice, 42, 177 molasses, 11, 12, 25, 31, 50, 80, 141, 169, 171, 175, 204, 237, 248, 250, 251, 274, 275 Moluccas, 12, 28, 231 Motipore sugar factory, 47 Mozambique, 133 Mughal canal works, 136 Mughals, 12, 68, 139 Mukherjee, Mridula, 35, 253 Munro, Thomas, 53–54, 56, 89, 92, 116, 128–129, 143, 253, 263 Murtha canals, 148 muscovado, 14, 21, 46, 50, 85, 86, 133, 171, 273, 275 Muzaffarpur, 68 Mysore, 11, 17, 72, 234, 237, 273

319

Napoleon, 15, 19, 58 Natal, 79 National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, 249 Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (NHM). See Dutch Trading Society (NHM) Negros, 28, 74, 242, 262, 266 Nellikuppam sugar factory, 83, 208, 238 Nepal, 240, 241 Netherlands, 170 Netherlands Indische Agricultural Society (NILM), 158 New Institutional Economic History, 34 New Swadeshi Mill. See New Swadeshi sugar factory New Swadeshi sugar factory, 247, 248 New World, 4, 10, 13, 22, 24–26, 165 Nile delta, 23 Nira canals, 148–149 Nizma, 17 Norfor, Benjamin Thomas, 82, 83 North Western Provinces, 17, 135, 147 O’Brien, Patrick, 7 Ohno, Akihiko, 270, 271 opium, 13, 38, 50–51, 62, 86, 107 Orissa, 44, 50, 57, 80, 83, 134, 136, 138, 208, 263 Otaheite cane, 69–70, 89, 132, 142 Oudh, 17, 135 paddy, 26, 39, 57, 74, 114–115, 153, 156, 160, 162, 177, 178, 183, 250. See also rice palm gur, 44, 45, 70, 80, 83, 85, 132, 145, 263, 273 jaggery, 82, 84 oil, 2, 231 sugar, 14, 63, 71 Pangka sugar factory, 152 Papua New Guinea, 261 Paris, 19, 134, 164, 215 Parry & Co., 80, 82–83, 85, 208, 232, 238 Parry sugar factories, 80, 82, 208 Parry, Thomas, 55 Parthasarathi, Prasannan, 63 Pasuruan, 95–99, 103, 104, 105, 107, 116, 120, 148, 174, 177 Paterson, John, 52

320

Index

Patna, 12, 51, 86 Pattamabakam, 83 Peckham Ladies, 60 Peel, Robert, 66, 76 Pekalongan, 103, 111, 153 penal sanctions, 126, 130, 158 Penang, 33, 41, 48, 79, 141 People’s Council (de Volksraad), 182, 190 pepper, 94 colony, 47 Pernambuco, 64 Persia, 11, 12, 70, 133 Peru, 259 pestle-and-mortar mill, 138, 139–140, 269 petrol, 175, 204, 237 Petterson, John, 51, 52 Philippines, 1, 4, 5, 13, 17–18, 28, 74, 128, 172, 219, 228, 242, 261, 262 Pijnacker Hordijk, G., 126 pineapple, 2 PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia), 188–189 plantation complex, 1, 3, 10, 22, 28, 74, 116, 162, 192, 212, 219, 222, 231, 257 conglomerate, 28, 106, 129, 130, 150, 189, 252, 264 model, 1, 2, 3, 9, 21–23, 25, 26, 28, 33, 43, 46, 89, 90, 99, 128, 190, 211, 213, 231, 257, 262, 264–265, 266 system, 2, 6, 28, 43, 116, 231 plantation white. See factory white Plantations Convention, 2 Poland, 19, 164, 215 Pomeranz, Kenneth, 18, 20 Pondicherry, 238 Pope, William, 49, 52 poppy, 27, 50, 198, 201, 242 Porter, George Richardson, 269 Portonovo (Port of Cuddalore), 82 Pouchepadass, Jacques, 68, 198, 269 Pravara Canal, 205, 252 Priangan, 27 Principalities (Java), 68, 99, 115, 118, 119, 132, 159, 179, 185, 188, 198, 199, 200 Prinsen Geerligs, H.C., 170, 182, 216 Prinsep, John, 46 Probolinggo, 103, 104, 107, 156 property relations, 4, 8, 33–35, 37, 42, 52, 88, 117, 212

rights, 34–35, 36, 52, 54, 56, 71, 112, 137–138, 212, 253, 264 Prussia, 164 puasa (the end of Ramadan), 123 Puerto Rico, 219 Pune, 205, 246 Pune Sugar Works, 134 Punjab, 12, 17, 34, 136, 137–138, 147, 208, 246, 250, 253, 257 Pure Cane Molasses Company, 175 Pursa sugar factory, 202 Pusa, 197. See also Indian Agricultural Service (Pusa) Quaker Society, 47 Quakers, 47, 60 Queensland, 197 Raffles, Thomas Stamford, 14, 37, 54, 88, 89, 92, 100, 116, 129, 143 railway, 67, 79, 86, 127, 133, 136, 152, 162, 174, 180, 184, 189, 199, 207, 230, 234 Raiput, 17 Rajah Birkeshwar Sing, 52 Rajamundry, 80 Ralli Bros., 172, 197, 218 Ratledge, Andrew, 65, 78 ratooning, 16, 57, 107, 114, 115, 174, 222, 226, 241, 243, 266, 269 Read, Alexander, 52, 54, 263 Recollects, 74 Red Sarekat Islam, 183 relocation of sugar production, 3–4, 6, 26, 44, 232, 267 Réunion, 73, 262 revenue system, 33, 36, 37 mouzawar, 56 ryotwari, 37, 38, 42, 53–54, 56, 88, 128, 147–148, 150, 263 zamindari, 36, 37, 147, 150, 243 Reynoso system, 153–156, 162, 209 Reynoso, Don Alvaro, 153 Ricardo, David, 6, 7, 60, 260 rice, 40, 72, 98, 106, 115, 121, 144, 151, 160, 176, 177, 181, 221, 227, 264 Rochussen, J.J., 106 Rohilkand bel, 141–142 Rosa sugar factory, 71, 80, 170 Rosa Sugar Works & Distillery. See Rosa sugar factory

Index Ross, Gilbert, 55 Roxburgh, William, 49, 52, 55, 56, 138 Royal Interocean Lines, 169 rubber, 2, 19 plantation, 27 rum, 47, 57 Rundall, Mr., 80 Russell, John, 77, 81 Russia, 165, 170 Saint Domingue, 15, 16, 48 Salem and Baramahal, 52–53, 54 Salsette, 53, 57 Sambalpur, 143 Santipore, 51 Saran, 68 Sarekat Buruh Gula (SBG), 224, 225 Sarekat Islam, 179, 180, 181, 183–184, 189 Sastrowidjono, 183 Saswad Malis, 149–150, 205, 252, 254 Satyagraha movement, 201–202 Say, Jean-Baptiste, 60 Sayer, Wynn, 197, 208, 210, 234 Schrauwers, Albert, 91 Schwartz, Stuart B., 22 Scott, Helenus, 57 Second Police Action, 223 Second World War, 7 Semarang, 16, 41, 153, 157 Semaun, 183, 188, 189 Serbia, 165 sereh disease, 130, 151, 157–158, 162 Shahabad, 138, 139 Shahjahanpore, 71, 80 Shahjahanpur. See Shahjahanpore Shanghai, 216 Shantou (Swatow), 169 Shervaroy hills, 74 Siam, 13, 14 Sibinga Mulder, J., 182 Sicilian trapetum, 25 Sicily, 24, 25 Siculi trapetum. See Sicilian trapetum Silesia, 19 Singapore, 171, 231 sisal, 2 slave, 62, 274 slave labor, 10, 25, 27, 48, 59, 62, 63, 259 slave trade, 24, 73 slaveholders, 60, 62, 65

321

slavery, 22, 24, 26, 48, 59–61, 65, 81, 92, 94, 126, 244, 261 slaves, 3, 6, 22–23, 24, 45, 47, 59–60, 65–66, 73, 76, 84, 93, 108, 114, 274 Sleeman, Captain, 69 smallholder cane, 226, 231 smallholder cane (bevolkingsriet), 190–191, 213, 222, 226 Smith, Adam, 59, 265 Smith, Woodruff D., 18 Sollewijn Gelpke, J.H.F., 101, 111 Soltwedel, F., 147, 157 Sone Canal, 136 Soonamooky, 51 sorgho imphee. See sorghum sorghum, 134, 142 South Arcot, 56, 80 Spain, 24 Spanish Caribbean islands, 84 Spanish-American War of 1898–1899, 172 spices, 12, 13, 134 Sri Lanka. See Ceylon Staats Spoorwegen, 152 Straits Settlements, 141, 166 Sucrogen, 231 Suez Canal, 165, 217 sugar beet, 20, 21, 183 sugar central, 28, 34, 204, 208 sugar complex. See Atlantic: plantation complex sugar enquiry committee (suiker enquêtecommissie), 123, 181 sugar exports from Ceylon, 73 from China, 169 from France, 165 from Germany, 165 from India, 1, 3, 4, 12, 44, 48, 66–67, 76, 86, 87, 90, 144, 263 from Indonesia, 224, 227 from Java, 8, 14, 162, 169, 172, 211, 215, 218, 227 from Madras, 80 from slave plantations, 65 from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 165 from the Coromandel Coast, 56 from the Philippines, 14 Sugar Factories Control Act (1938), 235 Sugar Factory Workers Union (PFB), 184–186, 189 sugar frontier, 4, 28, 95, 205, 252, 253

322

Index

Sugar Law (1870), 120, 122 sugar syndicate (India), 236, 242 Sugar Union (Suikerbond), 186 Sugar-cane Act (1934), 235 Suharto, 213, 223, 227–228, 229, 231, 245, 257, 264, 265 Sukarno, 222, 227, 231, 264 sulphur, 21 Sumatra, 27, 28, 126–127, 188, 190, 192, 231, 257 East Coast, 27 Sumenep, 160 Surabaya, 41, 99, 104–106, 107, 120, 152, 187 Surakarta, 132, 152, 157 Surat, 13, 33 Swadeshi movement, 171 Swatow. See Shantou Sweden, 170 Sykes, W.H., 17, 75, 269 tagai (intermittent loan) system, 148 Tagore, Dwarkanath, 69–70, 72, 78, 88, 233 Tagore, Rabindranath, 69 Taiwan, 1, 4, 5, 14, 15, 17, 18, 28, 172, 219, 220 Tamil Nadu, 74, 157 Tandjong Modjo sugar factory, 152 Tangerang sugar factory, 155 Tarafa, Miguel, 215 Tate and Lyle Company, 175 tea, 2, 13, 18, 58, 66, 75, 86, 93, 94, 134, 205 plantation, 27 Tebu Rakyat Intensifikasi (TRI). See Intensified Smallholder Cane (TRI) technology, 3, 4, 5, 22, 25, 30–32, 57, 71, 99, 107, 130, 132, 138, 141, 147, 262, 263 Tegal, 152 The Hague, 130, 158 thikedar, 68, 198, 200, 201, 203 Third World, 7 Thomson and Mylne, 138–141, 143, 156 Thomson, Mylne & Co. See Thomson and Mylne Tibet, 12 tinkathia, 201, 203 Tirhut, 67–68, 79 tobacco, 2, 27, 38, 75, 80, 94, 118, 196, 197, 198, 199, 201, 237

plantation, 27, 94, 99 Trading Society of Amsterdam, 174–175 tramway. See railway Travers & Sons, 67, 204 tributary labor. See corvée Trieste, 166 Tulungagung, 190 Turner, Morrison & Co., 167 Umbgrove Commission, 111, 115, 117, 153 investigation, 113, 115 report, 111, 113, 114, 116 Union Bank (Calcutta), 78 Union of Rail and Tramway Workers (VSTP), 183–184, 185–186, 188, 189 Union of Workers in the trading houses (Handelsbond), 186 United Java Sugar Producers (VJP), 171, 215, 218 United Kingdom Sugar Inquiry Committee, 219 United Provinces, 67, 80, 137, 146, 196, 199, 208–210, 234–237, 238, 244, 251 United States, 62, 93, 94, 131, 170, 173, 214, 215, 219 urban, 20 urbanization, 5, 19–20, 31, 165, 169, 193, 205, 211, 266 Uttar Pradesh, 237, 240, 242, 251, 253 Uzbekistan, 12, 165 vacuum pan, 45, 67, 71, 84, 85, 86, 107–108, 237, 270 Derosne & Cail vacuum pan, 107, 108 Van Baardewijk, Frans, 126 Van den Bosch, Johannes, 35, 37, 42, 43, 89–101, 113, 117, 128, 265, 270 Van der Eng, Pierre, 127 Van Geuns, M., 178 Van Hinloopen Labberton, D., 176 Van Hoboken, 110 Van Hoboken company, 110 Van Hogendorp, D., 37 Van Limburg Stirum, Johan Paul, 181–182, 186, 187–188 Van Soest, J.H., 98 Van Vollenhoven, C., 42 Van Zanden, Jan Luiten, 98 Vereenigde Java-suiker Producenten. See United Java Sugar Producers (VJP)

Index Vereeniging Personeel Fabriek Bond. See Sugar Factory Workers Union (PFB) Veth, P.J., 117 Virginia, 94 VOC. See Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) Voelcker, John August, 146 Wall Street crash, 220 waterweed. See kanchi method (waterweed) Webster, Anthony, 78 West New Guinea, 226 Wetzell evaporator, 85 White Man’s Burden, 177 Wilberforce, William, 58–59, 60 Williams, Eric, 59 Wilmar, 231

323

Wolff, Eric, 2 Wolters, Willem G., 14 Wonolongan sugar factory, 104, 107, 160, 223 Wonopringgo, 152 World Bank, 230, 255 world sugar production, 3 World Trade Organization (WTO), 7, 261 world-systems theory, 4 Wringin Anom sugar factory, 155–156, 223 Yogyakarta, 118, 132, 152, 156, 159, 177, 198, 200 Zanzibar, 23, 133 zone/zoning, 111, 192, 208, 211, 234, 235, 236, 237, 240–241, 242, 247, 251, 256. See also areaal (factory circle)