competition, Brazilian and Central American coffees began to command
a place in the European market and to reduce prices; and then the
blight, which reached Sumatra in 1876, attacked Java plantations in
1879, and spread slowly over the island, ruining one by one all the
plantations of the choice Arabian or Mocha coffee-trees. As the area
of thriving plantations decreased, and acres and acres of the white
skeletons of blighted trees belted the hillsides, vain attempts were
made at replanting. Only the tough, woody, coarse African or Liberian
coffee-tree, with its large leaves and large, flat berries,—a plant
which thrives equally in a damp or a dry climate, and luxuriates in the
poorest, stoniest ground,—seems to be proof against the blight that
devastated the Ceylon and Java coffee-plantations so thoroughly at the
same time. Many of the old coffee-plantations in Java, as in Ceylon,
were burned over and planted to tea; yet in many places in the Preangers
one sees the bleached skeletons of Arabian trees still standing, and the
abandoned plantations smothered in weeds and creepers, and fast relapsing
to jungle. The virgin soil of Sumatra has so far escaped the severest
attacks of the blight, and the center of coffee-production there is near
Padang, on the west coast, whence the bulk of the crop goes directly to
England or America in British ships.
The blight forced the Dutch government to begin its retirement from the
coffee-trade, and but the smallest fraction of the coffee exported now
goes from government plantations or warehouses. Nearly all the Sumatra
plantations are owned or leased by private individuals, and the greater
part of coffee lands in Java are cultivated by independent planters, who
sell their crop freely in the open market. With the wholesale replanting
of the Liberian tree in place of the Arabian, and the shipping only of
the large, flat Liberian bean instead of the Mocha’s small, round berry,
it is questionable whether the little real “government Java” that goes to
market is entitled to the name which won the esteem of coffee-drinking
people for the century before the blight. The Dutch government still
raises and sells coffee, but under strong protest and opposition in
Holland, and as a temporary concession during these times of financial
straits.
Public opinion was gradually aroused in Holland, and opponents of the
culture system at last spoke out in the States-General; but not until
the prices of sugar and coffee had fallen seriously, and the blight
had ruined nearly all the government coffee-plantations, did the
stirring of Holland’s conscience bid the government retire from trade
and agriculture, and leave the development of the island’s resources,
in natural and legitimate ways, to the enterprise of the many European
settlers then established in permanence in Java, who had begun to see
that the government was their most serious rival and competitor in the
market.
The common sense and cooler vision of these days since its abandonment
have shown that the culture system was an inspiration, a stroke of
administrative genius of the first order, accomplishing in a few decades,
for the material welfare of the island and its people, what the native
race of a tropical country never could or would have done in centuries.
The American mind naturally puzzles most over the idea that twenty odd
millions of people of one race, language, and religion should ever
have submitted to be ruled by a mere handful of over-sea usurpers and
speculators. Considering the genius and characteristics of all Asiatic
people, their superstitions, fatalism, self-abasement, and continuous
submission to alien conquests and despotisms, which all their histories
record and their religions almost seem to enjoin, and remembering the
successive Buddhist, Brahmanic, and Mohammedan conquests and conversions
of Java, and the domestic wars of three centuries since Islam’s invasion,
the half-century of the culture system’s prosperous trial seems a most
fortunate epoch and the cause of the admirable and surprising conditions
existing to-day in that model garden and hothouse of the world.
It was much regretted later that some part of the culture system’s
enormous profits was not devoted to railway construction and the making
of the new harbor for Batavia at Tandjon Priok, as, immediately after
the system’s abandonment, railways and the new harbor became more urgent
needs, and had to be provided for out of the current revenues, then taxed
with the vigorous beginning of the Achinese struggle—Holland’s thirty
years’ war in the Indies, which has so sadly crippled the exchequer.
In order to provide a crown revenue in lieu of the sugar and coffee
sales, a poll-tax was imposed on the natives in place of the seventh
of their labor given to culture-system crops, and increased taxes were
levied on lands and property; but through the extensive public works,
the long-continued Achinese war in Sumatra, and the little war with the
Sassaks in Lombok (1894), the deficits in the colonial budgets have
become more ominous every year since 1876. The crown of Holland no longer
receives a golden stream from the Indies, and is pushed to devise means
to meet its obligations.
The culture system brought to Java a selected lot of refined,
intelligent, capable, energetic colonists, who, settling there in
permanence and increasing their holdings and wealth, have become the
most numerous and important body of Europeans on the island. The great
sugar and coffee barons, the patriarchal rulers of vast tea-gardens,
the kina and tobacco kings, really rule Netherlands India. The planters
and the native princes have much in common, and in the Preangers these
horse-racing country gentlemen affiliate greatly and make common social
cause against the small aristocracy of office-holders, who have been
wont to regard the native nobles and the mercantile communities of the
ports from on high.
The colonial government has never welcomed aliens to the isles, whether
those bent on business or on pleasure. Dutch suspicion still throws as
many difficulties as possible in the way of a tourist, and it took strong
preventive measures against an influx of British or other _uitlander_
planters when the abandonment of the culture system made private
plantations desirable, and the opening of the Suez Canal brought Java
so near to Europe. As a better climate, better physical conditions of
every kind, and a more docile, industrious native race were to be found
in Java than elsewhere in the Indies, there was a threatened invasion of
coffee- and tea-planters, more particularly from India and Ceylon. The
Boer of the tropics, like his kinsman in South Africa, found effectual
means to so hamper as virtually to exclude the uitlander planters.
Land-transfers and leases were weighted with inconceivable restrictions
and impositions; heavy taxes, irksome police and passport regulations,
and nearly as many restraints as were put upon Arabs and Chinese, urged
the British planter to go elsewhere, since he could not have any voice in
local or colonial government in a lifetime.[3] Six years’ residence is
required for naturalization, but the Briton is rarely willing to change
his allegiance—it is his purpose rather to Anglicize, naturalize, annex,
or protect all outlying countries as English.
The governor-general of the colony may revoke the toelatings-kaart of
any one, Dutch as well as alien, and order him out of Netherlands
India; and a resident is such an autocrat that he can order any planter
or trader out of his domain if it is shown that he habitually maltreats
or oppresses the natives, or does anything calculated to compromise the
superior standing or prestige of the white people. The Dutch are severe
upon this latter point, and the best of them uphold a certain noblesse
oblige as imperative upon all who possess a white skin. The European
military officer is sent to Holland for court martial and punishment,
that the native soldiers may remain ignorant of his degradation, and the
European who descends to drunkenness is hurried from native sight and
warned. While the conquerors hold these people with an iron grasp, they
aim to treat them with absolute justice. Many officials and planters have
married native wives, and their children, educated in Europe, with all
the advantages of wealth and cultured surroundings, do not encounter any
race or color prejudice nor any social barriers in their life in Java.
They are Europeans in the eye of the law and the community, and enjoy
“European freedom.” No native man is allowed to marry or to employ a
European, not even as a tutor or governess, and no such subversion of
social order as the employment of a European servant is to be thought of.
There is a romance, all too true, of governmental interference, and the
dismissal from his office of regent, of the native prince who wished to
marry a European girl whose parents fully consented to the alliance. The
laws allow a European to put away his native wife, to legally divorce
her, upon the slightest pretexts, and to abandon her and her children
with little redress; but fear of Malay revenge, the chilling tales of
slow, mysterious deaths overtaking those who desert Malay wives or return
to Europe without these jealous women, act as restraining forces.
The Dutch do not pose as philanthropists, nor pretend to be in Java “for
the good of the natives.” They have found the truth of the old adage
after centuries of obstinate experiment in the other line, and honesty in
all dealings with the native is much the best policy and conduces most to
the general prosperity and abundant crops. Fear of the Malay spirit of
revenge, and the terrible series of conspiracies and revolts of earlier
times, have done much, perhaps, to bring about this era of kindness,
fair dealing, and justice. The native is now assured his rights almost
more certainly than in some freer countries, and every effort is made to
prevent the exercise of tyrannical authority by village chiefs, the main
oppressors. He can always appeal to justice and be heard; the prestige
of the native aristocracy is carefully maintained; the Oriental ideas of
personal dignity and the laws of caste are strictly regarded, and, if
from prudential and economic reasons only, no omissions in such lines are
allowed to disturb the even flow of the florin Hollandward.
Already the spirit of the age is beginning to reach Java, and it is
something to make all the dead Hollanders turn in their graves when it
can be openly suggested that there should be a separate and independent
budget for Netherlands India, and that there should be some form of
popular representation—a deliberative assembly of elected officials
to replace the close Council of India. In fact, suggestions for the
actual autonomy of Java have been uttered aloud. There are ominous signs
everywhere, and the government finds its petty remnant of coffee-culture
and grocery business a more vexing and difficult venture each year. The
Samarang “Handelsblad,” in commenting on it, says:
“The Javanese are no longer as easily led and driven as a flock of sheep,
however much we may deplore that their character has changed in this
respect. The Javanese come now a great deal into contact with Europeans,
the education spread among them has had an effect, and communication has
been rendered easy. They do not fear the European as they did formerly.
The time is gone when the entire population of a village could be driven
to a far-off plantation with a stick; the pruning-knife and the ax would
quickly be turned against the driver in our times. The Javanese to-day
does not believe that you are interested in his welfare only; he is well
aware that he is cheated out of a large proportion of the value of the
coffee that is harvested. Some people may think it a pity that the time
of coercion is coming to an end in Java, but that cannot change the
facts. The dark period in the history of Java is passing away, and every
effort to prevent reforms will call forth the enmity of the natives.”
The state committee on government coffee-plantations says in its latest
reports:
“It cannot be denied that the intellectual status of the Javanese at the
present day is very different from that during the time when the coffee
monopoly was introduced. The reforms which we have introduced in the
administration of justice, the education according to Western methods,
and the free admission of private enterprise have all brought about a
change. If the native has not become more progressive and more sensible,
he is at least wiser in matters about which he had best be kept in the
dark, unless the government means to remove coercion at the expense of
the exchequer.”
[Illustration: JAVANESE COOLIES GAMBLING.]
The Amsterdam “Handelsblad” remarks that, “as far as the Dutch
possessions are concerned, coercion and monopoly indeed must go. People
who cannot see this betimes will find out their mistake rather suddenly.”
That sage socialist, Élisée Reclus, remarks that “once more it appears
that monopoly ends in the ruin not only of the despoilers, but of the
state.”
X
SINAGAR
Scientists and lay tourists have equally exhausted their adjectives in
laudations of Java, Miss Marianne North calling it “one magnificent
garden of luxuriance, surpassing Brazil, Jamaica, and Sarawak combined”;
and Alfred Russel Wallace epitomizing it after this fashion: “Taking it
as a whole, and surveying it from every point of view, Java is probably
the very finest and most interesting tropical island in the world.... The
most fertile, productive, and populous island in the tropics.” Lesser
folk have been as sweeping in their superlatives, and all agree that, of
all exiled cultivators in the far parts of the world, the Java planter
is most to be envied, leading, as he does, the ideal tropical life, the
one best worth living, in a land where over great areas it is always
luxurious, dreamy afternoon, and in the beautiful hill-country is always
the fresh, breezy, dewy summer forenoon of the rarest June.
The most favored and the most famous plantations are those around
Buitenzorg and in the Preanger regencies, which lie on the other side
of Gedeh and Salak, those two sleeping volcanoes that look down upon
their own immediate foot-hills and valleys, to see those great, rolling
tracts all cultivated like a Haarlem tulip-bed. Above the cacao limit,
tea-gardens, coffee-estates, and kina-plantations cover all the land
lying between the altitudes of two thousand and four thousand feet above
the level of the sea. The owners of these choicest bits of “the Garden
of the East” lead an existence that all other planters of growing crops,
and most people who value the creature comforts, the luxuries of life,
and nature’s opulence, may envy. The climate of the hills is all that
Sybarite could wish for,—a perpetual 70° by day, with light covering
required at night,—the warm sun of the tropics tempering the fresh
mountain air to an eternal mildness, in which the human animal thrives
and luxuriates quite as do all the theobromas and caffein plants in the
ground. In the near circle of these two great peaks there is no really
dry season, despite the southeast monsoon of the conventional summer
months. Every day in the year enjoys its shower, swept from one mountain
or the other; and the heavy thunderstorms at the change of the monsoons
and during the winter rainy season are the joy of the planter’s heart,
shaking out myriads of young tea-leaves by their jar and rushing winds,
and freshening the coffee-trees like a tonic. As every day has its
shower, each day has its tea-crop gathered and cured in this favorable
region; and that profitable industry is as continuous and unchanging as
the seasons on the Preanger hillsides, and paramount there, now that
coffee is no longer king.
The two great plantations of Sinagar and Parakan Salak, principalities of
twelve and fifteen thousand acres respectively, that lie in the valley
between Salak and Gedeh, are the oldest and the model tea-gardens of
Java, the show-places of the Preangers. Parong Koeda and Tjibitad, an
hour beyond Buitenzorg, are practically private railway-stations for
these two great estates. The post-road from Tjibitad to Sinagar follows
the crest of a ridge, and gives magnificent views between its shade-trees
over twenty miles of rolling country, cultivated to the last acre. Blue
vapors were tumbling in masses about the summit of Salak the afternoon
we coursed along the avenues of shade-trees, and the low growls of
distant thunder gave promise of the regular afternoon benefit shower
to the thirsty plants and trees that ridged every slope and level with
lines of luxuriant green. The small ponies scampered down an avenue
of magnificent kanari-trees, with a village of basket houses like to
those of Lilliput at the base of the lofty trunks, and, with a rush and
a sudden turn around tall shrubbery, brought up before the low white
bungalow, where the master of Sinagar sat in his envied ease under such
vines and trees as would form a _mise en scène_ for an ideal, generally
acceptable paradise. A sky-line of tall areca-palms, massed flame-trees,
and tamarinds, with vivid-leafed bougainvillea vines pouring down from
one tree-top and mantling two or three lesser trees, filled the immediate
view from the great portico-hall, or living-room, where the welcoming
cups of afternoon tea were at once served.
With the nearest neighbor ten miles away, and the thousand workmen
employed upon the place settled with their families in different
villages within its confines, Sinagar is a little world or industrial
commune by itself, its master a patriarchal ruler, whose sway over these
gentle, childlike Javanese is as absolute as it is kindly and just. The
“master” has sat under his Sinagar palms and gorgeous bougainvilleas
for twenty-six out of the thirty-three years spent in Java, and his
sons and daughters have grown up there, gone to Holland to finish their
studies, and, returning, have made Sinagar a social center of this part
of the Preangers. The life is like that of an English country house,
with continental and tropical additions that unite in a social order
replete with pleasure and interest. Weekly musicales are preceded by
large dinner-parties, guests driving from twenty miles away and coming
by train; and, with visitors in turn from all parts of the world, the
guest-book is a polyglot and cosmopolitan record of great interest. Long
wings have been added to the original bungalow dwelling, inclosing a
spacious court, or garden, all connected by arcades and all illuminated
by electric lights. The ladies’ boudoir at the far end of the buildings
opens from a great portico, or piazza, furnished with the hammocks, the
ratan furniture, and the countless pillows of a European or American
summer villa, but looking out on a marvelous flower-garden and an
exquisite landscape view. To that portico were brought the rarest flowers
and fruits for our inspection,—such lilies and orchids and strangely
fragrant things!—and we cut apart cacao-pods, and those “velvety,
cream-colored peaches” inclosing the nutmeg, and dissected clove-buds
with a zeal that amused the young hostesses, to whom these had all been
childhood toys. The telephone and telegraph connect all parts of the
estate with virtually all parts of the world; and with the great news
of Europe clicking in from Batavia, or “helloed” over by some friend at
Buitenzorg, one could quite forget the distance from the older centers
of civilization, and wonder that all the world did not make Java its
playground and refuge of delight, and every man essay the rôle of Java
planter.
While we sat at tea that first afternoon, two brilliant scarlet minivers
flashed across the screen of shrubbery like tongues of flame, followed
by crimson-and-black orioles; while at the master’s call a flock of
azure-and-iris-winged pigeons came whirling through the air and settled
before us in all the sheen and beauty of their plumage. A great wire
house full of rare tropic birds was the center of attraction for all the
wild birds of the neighborhood, and gorgeously feathered and strangely
voiced visitors were always on wing among the shrubbery. In that big
aviary lived and flew and walked in beauty the crested Java pigeon, a
creature flashing with all intense prismatic blues, and wearing on its
head an aigret of living sapphires trembling on long, pliant stems—one
of the most graceful and beautiful birds in the world. Other birds of
brilliant plumage, wonderful cockatoos, parrots, long-tailed pheasants,
and beauties of unknown name, lived as a happy family in the one great
cage, around which prowled and sat licking its whiskers a cat of most
enterprising and sagacious mien—a cat that had come all the way from
Chicago, only to have its lakeside appetite tormented by this Barmecide
feast of rainbow birds.
We were led past flower-beds nodding with strange lilies, past
rose-gardens and oleander-hedges, down a paved path that was a steep
tunnel through dense shrubbery and overarching trees, to a great white
marble tank, or swimming-pool, as large as a ball-room; though few
ball-rooms can ever have such lavish decorations of palms, bamboos, and
tree-ferns as screen that pool around, with the purple summit of Salak
showing just above the highest plumes and fronds—a landscape study
just fitted for a theatrical drop-curtain. We might swim or splash,
dive or float, or sit on marble steps and comfortably soak at will in
that great white tank, the clear spring water warmed by the sun to a
soothing temperature for the long, luxurious afternoon bath, and cooled
sufficiently through the night to give refreshing shock to early morning
plungers. Only the approaching storm, the nearer rumbles of thunder, and
finally the first small raindrops induced us to leave that fairy white
pool, deep sunk in its tropic glen.