1861 | Page 14

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Dutch East Indies

The Dutch East Indies was a Dutch colony which is now known as Indonesia. The relationship between the Netherlands and Indonesia mostly consisted of the trade called the Dutch East India Company. The trade was so special because in Indonesia there were a lot of unknown products like spices, lain, silk, satin, sables, gold and turtles, in which the Dutch were very interested. It was formed from the nationalized colonies of the Dutch East India Company, which came under the power of the Dutch government in 1800.

Tempo Doeloe was a very important subject around the year 1861. This was the period were Indonesia was part of the Dutch East Indies. Where a lot of Indonesian people had to work for the Dutch. The jobs they had to perform were, for example: working on the land or cleaning the house of the owner. This period began around the year 1870 and ended in 1914.

In 1830 the Culture system was established by Johannes van de Bosch in the colonies of the Dutch East Indies. This system was introduced to have more profit from the colonies. The farmers which were now part of the Dutch East Indies, particularly in Java, had to plant one fifth of their land with products that the Dutch government choose. The yields or the products from this went to the government. Products like indigo, sugar, tea and the most important on coffee were taken to Europe to get sold there. Farmers who didn’t had suitable land for growing these things had to work 66 days a year for the government. For the Netherlands this Culture System was very lucrative, but the native population suffered from poverty and famine. But there were also some benefits for them. For example, the many wars had finally ended and because the government made much money with this system, the infrastructure and railways were improved. Because there was still too much poverty among the citizens, the Minister Engelbertus de Waal decided that there had to change something. A new system was established named the Agrarian law (or also called the Sugar Act). He did this because he wanted to help the Javanese with economic benefits, and wanted to allow more private initiative. The Agrarian law ensured that there were property rights, and it also allowed the establishment of private companies in the Dutch East Indies. The Agrarian law is often called the Sugar Act because they said it had the same purpose.