Indonesia from the Fall of the V.O.C. to the Recall of Raffles, 1799–1816

The disappearance of the ‘Kompenie’ made at first little difference to the management of affairs in Indonesia. No matter how loudly the Batavian Republic might echo the French revolutionary doctrine that liberty and equality were the inalienable rights of men, it was not prepared to do anything calculated to destroy the value of its East Indian empire to the home country. The security of that empire, it was firmly convinced, depended upon keeping its peoples in strict subordination. Hence while Dirk van Hogendorp, an ex-governor of the North-East Coast Province of Java and a determined opponent of Nederburgh, pleaded for the separation of trade from government and the abolition of forced deliveries and of the economic servitude known as heerendiensten, Nederburgh’s theory, that the native peoples were naturally lazy and compulsory labour was therefore essential for their own welfare as well as for Dutch commercial profits, was assured of the stronger support.

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