Speaking of the system Professor Keller says:30 "It looks philanthropic, but was in reality mercenary; in its application all the features which interfered with revenue speedily dropped away. For example, the fifth of the people's working time which was put under requisition lengthened out indefinitely, and they often bore the land tax besides, from which the system was supposed to free them. Moreover the government evaded shouldering the losses, both by a specious use of the proviso attached and otherwise; and paid the natives, if at all, in the scantiest and stingiest manner. The system was unworkable in any way profitable to all parties." Gradually information as to the treatment of the Javanese found its way to Europe, and the publication of a popular novel dealing with the abuses of the culture system, prepared the public mind for the legislation which followed the introduction of constitutional government after the revolution of 1848.31 The enforcement of the provisions of the Colonial Constitution of 1854 for the protection of the natives meant the end of the culture system. In 1870 it was formally superseded by the system of "free labor" which, as usual, soon degenerated into credit bondage. In 1903 the States General enacted a law under which all the income of the Indian government was required to be expended in the islands, and from that time until the present Holland has governed her dependencies under a system which is worthy of the modern age. 30 Keller, Colonization, p. 475. 32 31 This story, entitled Max Havelaar, or The Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company, was published in 1860, and its influence upon the culture system may be compared to that of Uncle Tom's Cabin upon the slavery question. The repute which the culture system formerly enjoyed in England and America was due largely to a book by Mr. J. W. B. Money entitled, Java, or How to Manage a Colony (London, 1861). Doctor Day (p. 254), calls attention to the influence this book had on the opinion of such writers as Ireland (Tropical Colonization) and Wallace (Malay Archipelago) and says, “No one at all conversant with the actual conditions in Java, as they are known to us on unimpeachable evidence, can retain the slightest respect for Money's authority after reading his book." Ibid., p. 253. 32 See Cabaton, Java and the Dutch East Indies, p. 152. Until recently the Dutch denied the Indians Western education. Considerable attention is now being devoted to the education of the natives. Generally separate schools are maintained for the natives and white children, but in For almost two centuries France contended for territory and colonies on equal terms with England. The opening days of the nineteenth century found her in possession of only a few scattered islands. Her old colonial empire was never real; it was all appearance. She had few real colonists. Her people were facile and could accommodate themselves to all conditions. They were sympathetic with natives but they rarely took root in the land. France furnished audacious and intrepid adventurers but few colonists. Leroy-Beaulieu attributes her failure to defects in the national character as well as in her political system. Her people were too ready to assimilate with the natives.33 Her trading companies induced monopoly and trade restrictions. In the East, Dupleix, Labourdonnais, and other brilliant leaders sought glory instead of commercial advantages. The extravagant spirit of adventure and desire for immediate results on a large scale led to a scattering of energy. Empires are neither built nor consolidated by voyageurs or gentleman adventurers. The stolid Englishman or the phlegmatic Dutchman stays. In the beginning England was distanced by Spain, Portugal and Holland. Each of these countries had secured the control of vast territories while England possessed not a foot of land beyond the British Isles. It requires an effort to realize that in those days England was in fact a very small and rather insignificant country. Not until the time of Elizabeth did Englishmen wake to the fact that empires were to be won beyond the narrow seas which swept her shores. Then came those wonderful years during which Drake and his like won for England the control of the seas,34 when Ternati in 1911 I saw Dutch and Javanese children sitting on the same benches in schools where the text-books and the instruction were in the Dutch language. 33 Leroy-Beaulieu. De la colonisation chez les Peuples Modernes (Sixième edition), Chap. 5. 34 In the hall of Buckland Abbey there is preserved an old drum said to have been used on Drake's ship. Newbolt's stirring ballad makes the old hero say: "Take my drum to England, hang it by the shore, If the Dons sight Devon,-I'll quit the port of Heaven, And drum them up the Channel, as we drummed them long ago." Speaking of the system Professor Keller says:30 "It looks philanthropic, but was in reality mercenary; in its application all the features which interfered with revenue speedily dropped away. For example, the fifth of the people's working time which was put under requisition lengthened out indefinitely, and they often bore the land tax besides, from which the system was supposed to free them. Moreover the government evaded shouldering the losses, both by a specious use of the proviso attached and otherwise; and paid the natives, if at all, in the scantiest and stingiest manner. The system was unworkable in any way profitable to all parties." Gradually information as to the treatment of the Javanese found its way to Europe, and the publication of a popular novel dealing with the abuses of the culture system, prepared the public mind for the legislation which followed the introduction of constitutional government after the revolution of 1848.3 31 The enforcement of the provisions of the Colonial Constitution of 1854 for the protection of the natives meant the end of the culture system. In 1870 it was formally superseded by the system of “free labor" which, as usual, soon degenerated into credit bondage. In 1903 the States General enacted a law under which all the income of the Indian government was required to be expended in the islands, and from that time until the present Holland has governed her dependencies under a system which is worthy of the modern age.32 30 Keller, Colonization, p. 475. 31 This story, entitled Max Havelaar, or The Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company, was published in 1860, and its influence upon the culture system may be compared to that of Uncle Tom's Cabin upon the slavery question. The repute which the culture system formerly enjoyed in England and America was due largely to a book by Mr. J. W. B. Money entitled, Java, or How to Manage a Colony (London, 1861). Doctor Day (p. 254), calls attention to the influence this book had on the opinion of such writers as Ireland (Tropical Colonization) and Wallace (Malay Archipelago) and says, “No one at all conversant with the actual conditions in Java, as they are known to us on unimpeachable evidence, can retain the slightest respect for Money's authority after reading his book." Ibid., p. 253. 32 See Cabaton, Java and the Dutch East Indies, p. 152. Until recently the Dutch denied the Indians Western education. Considerable attention is now being devoted to the education of the natives. Generally separate schools are maintained for the natives and white children, but in For almost two centuries France contended for territory and colonies on equal terms with England. The opening days of the nineteenth century found her in possession of only a few scattered islands. Her old colonial empire was never real; it was all appearance. She had few real colonists. Her people were facile and could accommodate themselves to all conditions. They were sympathetic with natives but they rarely took root in the land. France furnished audacious and intrepid adventurers but few colonists. Leroy-Beaulieu attributes her failure to defects in the national character as well as in her political system. Her people were too ready to assimilate with the natives. Her trading companies induced monopoly and trade restrictions. In the East, Dupleix, Labourdonnais, and other brilliant leaders sought glory instead of commercial advantages. The extravagant spirit of adventure and desire for immediate results on a large scale led to a scattering of energy. Empires are neither built nor consolidated by voyageurs or gentleman adventurers. The stolid Englishman or the phlegmatic Dutchman stays. In the beginning England was distanced by Spain, Portugal and Holland. Each of these countries had secured the control of vast territories while England possessed not a foot of land beyond the British Isles. It requires an effort to realize that in those days England was in fact a very small and rather insignificant country. Not until the time of Elizabeth did Englishmen wake to the fact that empires were to be won beyond the narrow seas which swept her shores. Then came those wonderful years during which Drake and his like won for England the control of the seas,34 when Ternati in 1911 I saw Dutch and Javanese children sitting on the same benches in schools where the text-books and the instruction were in the Dutch language. 33 Leroy-Beaulieu. De la colonisation chez les Peuples Modernes (Sixième edition), Chap. 5. 34 In the hall of Buckland Abbey there is preserved an old drum said to have been used on Drake's ship. Newbolt's stirring ballad makes the old hero say: "Take my drum to England, hang it by the shore, If the Dons sight Devon,-I'll quit the port of Heaven, And drum them up the Channel, as we drummed them long ago." "They diced with Death. Their big sea boots Of their heroic deviltries.' Her first colonies were planted in temperate climes where Englishmen could live and establish permanent homes. They were settlement colonies. By the middle of the seventeenth century they had passed the experimental stages and become permanencies. The enactment in 1651 of the first of the Navigation Laws35 opened a century of trade expansion3 during which it was held that the colonies existed solely for the benefit of the socalled mother country-a period dominated by "that baleful spirit of commerce that wished to govern great nations on the maxims of the counter." It was the same theory which controlled the Dutch in the management of their colonies down almost to the present time. In a paper written in 1726 by Sir W. Keith it was said, “All advantageous projects or commercial gain in any colony which are truly prejudicial to and inconsistent with the interests of the mother country, must be understood to be illegal, and the practise of them unwarrantable, because they contradict the end for which the colonies had a being." 37 This system led to the loss of the American colonies. It "involved the theory," says Egerton,38 "that the colony was to be always the producer of the raw material which the industries of the mother country should work up. By implication it denied the equality of colonial Englishmen with Englishmen at home and by this means poisoned the wells of common patriotism.” But India was under the control of the East India Company, and there Clive and Hastings had laid the foundations of the Empire. During the Napoleonic wars England, to some extent, 35 The navigation laws were not passed in any spirit of hostility to the colonies. They were directed at the naval supremacy of Holland and their effect on the colonies was incidental. Egerton, History of British Colonial Policy, p. 62. 36 For the mercantile system, see Egerton, Origin and Growth of English Colonies, Chap. 6; Day, History of Commerce, pp. 167-172. 37 Cited by Egerton, History of British Colonial Policy, p. 72. 38 Origin and Growth of English Colonies, p. 118. |