Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Klaberen, J. J. ban

Titel

Exploitation Replaces Tributation (1870)

Ist Teil von

• The Dutch Colonial System in the East Indies, p.148-164

Ort / Verlag

Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Land legislation in Java and Madura (Gov.-territory): It was 1870 before there came a minister whose solution of the land-legislation problem was accepted by the parliament. This was minister De Waal. Curiously enough, De Waal succeeded because he evaded the point. His “Agrarian Law” consisted only of one article and announced that uncultivated land could be given out in “long lease” (erfpacht) and that the natives could let their land to entrepreneurs. He, however, carefully neglected to determine the conditions, rules etc. but left that to lower legislative organs. The “Agrarian Law” was approved of. The details were to be set forth in a Royal Decree (K.B.) called the “Agrarian Decree” of 1870 (Agrarisch Besluit). This decree evaded the point whether the natives were owners of the land. It simply reversed the position and said that all land on which others could not prove property-rights, belonged to the domain of the government. A division was now made between a “free domain” on which no rights whatever were exercised by others, and an “unfree domain” also called “landrente-areaal” on which others had rights though they were no property rights. The natives could have a hereditary right of possession at most. Yet these rights were quite respected as if they were property so that the government was not entitled to dispose of the unfree domain. As this would make the C.S. impossible, the Agrarian Law had already laid down that the G.G. could only dispose of the natives’ land for the government’s cultures (Art. 1, section 3). In spite of the general opinion, it was nowhere laid down that foreigners could not acquire native land. This had never been doubted on account of the jurisprudential views just expounded. It was not until in 1875, to make an end to all doubts, that the G.G. laid this rule down in an intentional decree. De Waal stipulated, that only those lands could be counted to the unfree domain which were permanently cultivated (Nolst, 77). It is too little noticed and stressed by jurists that this stipulation was directed against ladang-cultivation. Yet this had been explicitly expressed by De Waal in his ministerial dispatch of 25-VII-1870 to the G.G. It was not the intention to respect all customs and usages as such. Ladang-culture was considered predatory. Moreover, it made the drawing of a clear division between the two domains impossible and the issue of long-lease parcels difficult. Important for the annual plain crops was art. 5 in which the G.G. was ordered to determine the conditions under which natives would be able to let their land to non-natives. As this difficult question had been delegated to the G.G., the second chapter about the transfer of land only applied to the issue in long lease of land out of the free-domain. The duration was fixed at 75 years (art. 9). Coffee-gardens, though belonging to the free domain could not be issued. Even extra land annex had to be reserved for its possible extention. That meant that the Coffee-culture of the government was retained. In his dispatch, De Waal recommended to exclude Chinese from the long-lease issue because of their notorious extortionate practices, this in spite of the fact that the danger was far less here than with private estates or the landleases of the Vorstenlanden.