Cultivation System
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The Cultivation System (Dutch: cultuurstelsel) was a Dutch government policy in the mid-nineteenth century which required that a portion of agricultural production in the colonial Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) must be devoted to export goods.
It was primarily implemented in Java, then the center of the colonial state. Generally, about one-fifth of village production was required to be produced for export. In order to allow the enforcement of these policies, Javanese villagers were more formally linked to their villages, and were sometimes prevented from travelling freely around the island without permission.
First implemented in about 1830, the mandate was able to produce substantial income for the formerly unprofitable colony, including substantial levels of export growth, averaging around fourteen percent. It was widely linked, however, to greatly increased hunger and poverty on Java in the late nineteenth century. Political pressures in the Netherlands resulting from these problems eventually led to its abolition (circa 1870) and replacement by what the government termed the Ethical Policy.
The impact of the cultivation system on the standard of living of indigenous Javanese has in recent years been disputed. R.E. Elson, among others, has argued that the cultivation system directly contributed to the impoverishment of Javanese peasants, but indirectly improved their standard of living.
