Cultivation System

Requiring a portion of agricultural production to be devoted to export crops, it is referred to by Indonesian historians as tanam paksa ("enforced planting").

The Cultivation System was implemented only on land controlled directly by the colonial government, thus exempting the Vorstenlanden (princely states) and the particuliere landerijen (private domains).

[7] 'An ingenious device for increasing the Government profit was devised by General Van-der Bosch at the same time as he initiated the culture system.

It brought the Netherlands back from the brink of bankruptcy and made the Dutch East Indies self-sufficient and profitable extremely quickly.

As early as 1831, the policy allowed the Dutch East Indies budget to be balanced, and the surplus revenue was used to pay off debts left over from the defunct VOC régime.

[9] The cultivation system is linked, however, to famines and epidemics in the 1840s, firstly in Cirebon and then Central Java, as cash crops such as indigo and sugar had to be grown instead of rice.