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Java

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Java

The British Interregnum and the Invasion of 1811

Java, the largest island of the Indonesian archipelago, occupies a central position in the history of European colonial engagement with Southeast Asia. The island’s strategic location, agricultural productivity, and complex indigenous political structures made it a focal point of imperial competition between the Dutch and the British during the Napoleonic Wars. The British conquest of Java in 1811, the subsequent five-year occupation under Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Stamford Raffles, and the restoration of Dutch sovereignty in 1816 constitute a period of profound administrative, economic, and cultural transformation that attracted sustained scholarly attention from the Straits and Malayan Branches of the Royal Asiatic Society. The island’s history extends far beyond this colonial interlude: the Majapahit kingdom of the fourteenth century, the Java War of the 1820s–30s, and the Dutch culture system of the 1830s all feature prominently in the Society’s literature, while the natural history, ethnography, and legal administration of Java provided recurring subjects for investigation from the 1880s through the 1970s and beyond.

The British Conquest and Occupation (1811–1816)

The British invasion of Java was executed as a major expeditionary operation from the Bengal Presidency. Lieutenant W.G.A. Fielding’s diary, edited by C. Skinner and published in 1971, provides a ground-level account of the campaign. The expedition departed Bengal in March 1811, with Fielding embarking on the transport ship Mary alongside dismounted members of the Governor-General’s Body Guard [1, p. 1]. The journey to Malacca was marked by logistical difficulties, including cramped quarters—the between-decks space on the Mary measured only 3 feet 11 inches, significantly lower than other ships of similar tonnage—and concerns over the competence of the convoy’s commanders [1, pp. 1–3]. Upon arrival in Malacca, the force waited for Lord Minto and the remainder of the fleet, enduring a wet season that caused sickness among troops stationed at Tanjong Clin [1, p. 4].

The landing at Batavia occurred in early August 1811 without opposition, followed by a series of engagements culminating in the Battle of Meester Cornelis on 26 August [1, p. 12]. The Franco-Dutch defensive position at Meester Cornelis featured 17,000 men and approximately 250 pieces of large-calibre artillery, yet was defeated by a British force of fewer than 5,000 men [1, p. 25]. British casualties included 93 men killed or wounded, with specific officers such as Lieutenant Monro and Captain Cameron listed among the dead and wounded [1, p. 18]. The battle was characterised by chaotic fighting, including the explosion of a powder magazine in Redoubt No. 1 [1, p. 23]. The campaign concluded with the surrender of Governor-General Janssens at Semarang, where the town was taken with minimal loss, contrasting sharply with the heavy fighting at Cornelis [1, p. 38]. The expeditionary force comprised over 12,000 men, including British infantry regiments, Bengal Volunteers, and artillery units [1, p. 44].

The occupation that followed was marked by significant administrative reform. Raffles’ government introduced a ryotwari land revenue system in 1814, requiring cultivators to pay approximately one-fourth of their rice or maize produce as rent; Dr. Joseph Arnold, a naval surgeon and Fellow of the Linnean Society who visited Java in 1815, noted that “probably a million of people” paid money into the treasury, making collection extremely laborious [2, pp. 14–15]. Raffles reported to Arnold that Java’s annual revenue stood at “5 or 6 millions of dollars,” though Bastin’s annotation corrects this against official figures of less than 6 million Java rupees in 1813–14 and slightly over 7.5 million in 1814–15 [2, p. 14]. The local administration under the preceding Governor-General Daendels had been characterised by summary punishment and harsh discipline, which Fielding noted was universally detested by the European inhabitants [1, p. 30].

The political character of the British interregnum has been the subject of significant revisionist scholarship. Jordaan and Carey (2017) argue that Raffles’ membership of Dutch masonic lodges was not merely a personal interest but a structural feature of the interim government. They demonstrate that the simultaneous initiation of Raffles and his Dutch Council colleague Muntinghe, performed in the presence of Lord Minto and Colonel Gillespie at the lodge on Engelhard’s estate, constituted the foundational act of a deliberately constructed Anglo-Dutch administrative partnership [3]. The authors contend that the Java Council and the broader British interim government were in practice a “supranational masonic government,” in which shared membership of the Order functioned as both a selection criterion and a bond of trust between British and Dutch officials across the judiciary, finance, public works, and cultural institutions [3]. By early 1814, 20 of the 61 members of Lodge La Vertueuse in Batavia were British, including Raffles [3, p. 13]. Of 59 Dutch jury members appointed in Batavia and its environs in April 1812, 30 could be identified as Masons; of 78 newly registered members of the Batavian Literary Society, at least 43 Dutch members were Masons [3, pp. 28].

The occupation ended with the restitution of Java to the Dutch in 1816. Arnold’s journal records the Sepoy mutiny at Surakarta on 5 December 1815, arising from native princes’ dissatisfaction at the restitution, which involved a discovered conspiracy among sepoys to murder their officers; the garrison numbered not above 1,800 soldiers [2, p. 72]. The treaty by which sovereignty was ceded to the British in 1811 was subsequently held in the Museum at the Cape, having been acquired by Sir George Grey and later presented to the institution; its existence was not generally known until H.T. Haughton reported on its location in 1887 [4, p. 152].

The Dutch Colonial System and Indigenous Governance

The Dutch colonial administration of Java, which resumed after 1816, was governed by a formal legal framework that preserved significant indigenous judicial autonomy. A.M. Skinner’s 1883 article in the JSBRAS provides a critical examination of this system through a review of Dr. C.P.K. Winckel’s 1880 French-language legal essay on the administration of justice in the Dutch East Indies [5]. The 1854 Government Regulation, comprising 132 articles, formally codified a dual judicial system: European subjects received justice under general legislative acts concordant with Dutch law, while indigenous subjects were governed by their own religious and customary laws unless specifically subjected to European law [5, pp. 160–161]. Article 69 stipulated that regency succession in Java followed a hereditary principle—“as far as possible, one of the sons or relatives of the last regent”—subject to qualifications of capacity, zeal, honesty, and fidelity [5, p. 159].

Winckel’s account reveals the practical operation of this dual system. In indigenous courts, members merely guessed the presiding European’s intentions, and when a sentence of twenty years’ forced labour was reduced to six months, the court responded with touan pounja souka (the good pleasure of monsieur), revealing the performative rather than substantive nature of native judicial participation [5, pp. 164–165]. Winckel’s conclusion was unambiguous: “there is nothing more detestable than this indigenous judicial autonomy,” and he called for its complete cessation under Dutch authority [5, p. 163]. Slavery was abolished throughout the Dutch East Indies by 1 January 1860, and debt-slavery was specifically prohibited in Java and Madura, with the condition of debt-captivity barred from passing to the debtor’s children [5, pp. 161–162].

The “culture system” of Governor-General Van den Bosch (1832) represented a major fiscal reorientation. Skinner notes that while the financial results were “most successful,” and the abolition of the ryotwari tenure may be conceded as an improvement, it is questionable whether Van den Bosch’s successors paid too much regard to fiscal aspects and too little to other considerations [5, pp. 155–156]. The Dutch mother country’s political apathy toward colonial welfare was attributed by Winckel to fiscal dependence on colonial surpluses: the nation “cannot bring itself to the idea of renouncing” colonial revenue and therefore “shrinks from the great measures” that would cost money [5, p. 157].

The Java War of the 1820s–30s, fought between Dutch forces and the Javanese prince Dipanagara, produced one of the most significant artistic and historiographical subjects in the Society’s literature. Peter B.R. Carey’s 1982 article examines Raden Saleh’s 1857 oil painting of Dipanagara’s capture at Magelang on 28 March 1830, cross-referencing the artwork against three primary eyewitness accounts: Lieutenant-General H.M. de Kock’s Magelang diary, Dipanagara’s own autobiographical chronicle (Babad Dipanagara), and the reminiscences of Ali Basah Ngabdulmahmud Gandakusuma [6]. Carey demonstrates that De Kock’s ostensibly friendly conduct towards Dipanagara during the preceding weeks was a calculated strategy designed to lull the prince into a false sense of security while ensuring the full submission of his principal army commanders before moving against him [6, pp. 7–9]. On the morning of 28 March, De Kock abruptly demanded that all outstanding political matters be settled immediately, and when Dipanagara reiterated his demand to be recognised as Head of the Islamic Religion in Java, De Kock ordered his troops to surround the Residency House and the prince was taken into custody [6, pp. 13–19]. Carey’s most significant argument concerns Dipanagara’s state of mind: drawing on Gandakusuma’s testimony that the prince “already knew beforehand that it would turn out thus,” and on the language of the Babad Dipanagara itself—particularly the key phrase comparing Dipanagara to “gold being carried along by water”—Carey contends that the prince had long since given himself up (pasrah) to his destiny and was subconsciously prepared for arrest [6, pp. 10–11]. It is precisely this quality of calm acceptance that Raden Saleh failed to capture in his painting, which instead shows Dipanagara in a “determined and defiant posture” that “accords ill with the prince’s real emotions at the time” [6, p. 2].

Natural History, Economy, and Daily Life

The natural history and economic life of Java attracted sustained attention from European observers during and after the British occupation. Dr. Joseph Arnold’s 1815 journal, edited by John Bastin and published in 1973, presents the only surviving contemporary account by a European naturalist of daily life in British-occupied Java during the final months of that occupation [2]. Arnold’s observations range across the full spectrum of colonial Java—administrative structures, revenue systems, native court ceremonies, Chinese religious practices, Dutch merchant society, tropical medicine, and natural history [2]. His 250-mile horseback tour through the regencies of Tjiandjur, Sukabumi, and Bandung during the rainy season documented the physical geography of the Priangan highlands, culminating at the twin craters of Tangkuban Perahu, where he recorded one crater containing a boiling lake surrounded by reticulated sulphur and the other a cold lake tasting of diluted sulphuric acid, separated by a natural mound of cinders [2, pp. 52–66].

The economic significance of Java as a plantation economy is evident in the practical literature of the period. R.A. Kerkhoven, a European coffee planter in the Sinagar district of the Preanger region, published in 1887 an account of his systematic use of a plant-based poison (wali kambing, Sarcolobus spanoghei) to eliminate tigers and wild dogs preying on his livestock [7]. In his first four years of residence, Kerkhoven lost 14 horses and karbouws (buffaloes) to tigers and wild dogs before adopting the wali kambing method [7, p. 269]. Since the beginning of 1863, he and his hunters destroyed 40 royal tigers and panthers plus a large number of wild dogs [7, p. 275]. The active poisonous constituent of Sarcolobus spanoghei was identified by Boscha as coniine, the alkaloid of Conium maculatum (hemlock) [7, p. 271]. The article contrasts the Javanese tracking method, which relies on footprints, vomit, and trained dogs in steep, densely overgrown ravines, with the elephant-backed howdah hunts familiar from Bengal, arguing that the latter is impractical in the Preanger terrain [7].

The pre-colonial economy of Java is documented through external travel accounts. B.E. Colless (1975) systematically cross-references twelve external travel accounts—Chinese, European, Muslim, and Russian—spanning 1225 to 1510 against Pigeaud’s foundational synthesis of Javanese textual sources to reconstruct the geography and ethnology of East Java during the Majapahit period [8]. Tome Pires reports that the Javanese used Chinese copper cash as their currency with no gold or silver coinage of their own; Wang Ta-yuan additionally mentions Javanese alloy coins (silver, tin, lead, copper) used in exchange for Chinese cash [8, pp. 133–134]. Ma Huan (1433) records that rice ripened twice per year in Java with small kernels; barley and wheat were entirely absent, while principal fruits included banana, coconut, sugar-cane, pomegranate, mangosteen, watermelon, and lansium domesticum [8, p. 136]. The Tralaya cemetery, located near the Majapahit palace site, contains ten dated Muslim gravestones using the Javanese Saka calendar rather than the Islamic Hijra, with dates ranging from 1376 CE to 1611 CE, demonstrating the presence of native Javanese Muslims in the capital during the Majapahit period [8, p. 141].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on Java spans more than a century and encompasses a remarkable range of methodological approaches, from the publication of primary diaries and journals to forensic bibliographical analysis, legal critique, and art-historical reconstruction. The earliest contributions, such as Skinner’s 1883 review of the Dutch judicial system and Haughton’s 1987 note on the 1811 treaty, reflect the direct professional interest of Straits Settlements administrators in comparative colonial governance [5], [4]. The publication of Fielding’s diary (1971) and Arnold’s Java Journal (1973) represents a deliberate programme of recovering and contextualising previously unpublished primary sources from the British occupation period, filling gaps in the documentary record that complement the better-known journals of Travers, Taylor, and the official correspondence of Raffles and his staff [1], [2].

A significant historiographical thread concerns the interpretation of Raffles’ administration and its legacy. Schrieke’s 1930 address, delivered at the presentation of Raffles’ bust to the Royal Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences, argued that Raffles was the first to articulate the principle that Java should be governed for its own benefit rather than for the commercial advantage of the mother country, tracing the intellectual lineage from Dirk van Hogendorp’s radical critique of the Company system through Raffles’ implementation of landrent and free trade to the eventual reversal under the culture system of the 1830s [9]. Schrieke also noted the paucity of published primary sources on the British occupation period and proposed joint publication efforts between the two Societies, including the complete set of the Java Government Gazette held by the Batavian Society [9, p. 305]. Jordaan and Carey’s 2017 article extends this line of inquiry by demonstrating that the British interregnum possessed a “supranational masonic government” character, correcting a persistent error in Dutch masonic scholarship that had dated Raffles’ initiation to 1813 rather than September–October 1811 [3].

The methodological contribution of Colless (1975) is particularly notable for its systematic use of external evidence to correct and supplement the internal Javanese textual record. By cross-referencing twelve foreign travel accounts against Pigeaud’s synthesis of the Nagara-Kertagama and other court texts, Colless demonstrates that foreign observers, writing from a position of cultural difference, record precisely those everyday details that native court poets considered too obvious to mention, thereby resolving gaps and correcting errors in Pigeaud’s reliance on arguments from silence [8]. This approach—treating external sources not as a chronological sequence but as a body of comparative evidence—has become a model for subsequent work on pre-colonial Java.

The publication history of early nineteenth-century colonial literature on Java has also attracted scholarly attention. Bastin’s 1985 bibliographical note on Stockdale’s Sketches, civil and military, of the Island of Java reveals the publisher’s opportunistic rush to capitalise on military news before it officially reached London: the first edition was completed before news of the British victory at Meester Cornelis arrived in England, and the maps within the book bear dates of 24 September and 5 October 1811, indicating the text was prepared before the British landing in August 1811 [10]. The book was published in November or December 1811, yet news of the victory did not appear in the London press until 16 and 17 December 1811 [10, pp. 91–92]. This case illustrates the complex relationship between military events, commercial publishing, and the construction of historical narrative in the early nineteenth century.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. W.G.A. Fielding (1971). An eye-witness account of the invasion of Java in 1811 — the diary of Lt. W.G.A. Fielding JMBRAS 44(1): 1–51.
  2. J. Arnold and J.S. Bastin (1973). The Java journal of Dr Joseph Arnold. .S. Bastin JMBRAS 46(1): 1–92.
  3. R. Jordaan and P.B.R. Carey (2017). Thomas Stamford Raffles’ Masonic career in Java: a new perspective on the British interregnum (1811–1816 JMBRAS 90(2): 1–34.
  4. Haughton H.T (1887). Treaty with Java JSBRAS 19: 151–152.
  5. A.M. Skinner (1883). The Java system JSBRAS 11: 155–166.
  6. P.B.R. Carey (1982). Raden Saleh, Dipanagara and the painting of the capture of Dipanagara at Magelang (28 March 1830 JMBRAS 55(1): 1–25.
  7. R.A. Kerkhoven (1883). A tiger hunt in Java JSBRAS 12: 269–281.
  8. B.E. Colless (1975). Majapahit revisited: external evidence on the geography and ethnology of East Java in the Majapahit period JMBRAS 48(2): 124–161.
  9. Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1930). Delegation to Java: presentation of Sir Stamford Raffles’ bust to the Royal Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences JMBRAS 8(2): 289–306. Read on JSTOR
  10. J.S. Bastin (1985). Stockdale’s sketches, civil and military, of the island of Java: a bibliographical note JMBRAS 58(1): 91–94.