Sugar Capitalism in Colonial Indonesia

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[moldytexas]

I sometimes forget that this channel is not only about semiconductors.

[dika_]

This history of sugar empire of java is rarely mentioned in Indonesian School. Fun fact some of the sugar factories are still operating to this day, just a mile from my home and it is completely true that the area near Dutch sugar factory tend to be more advance than the rest of the island. During dry season (when the sugar harvested), the road is completely jammed by massive trucks transferring sugar cane to the factories and there is always at least one accident of these truck every year (which made the traffic worse).

[lelekelelep]

In today's Indonesian schools, the "abusive local elites" part do not appear in our history books, and the word "sugar" only appear <10 times in our textbooks. They sure know to leave out the most important parts, so thank you for publishing this!

[davidferris]

I love this channel. I'm 65 and enjoy learning about all of the different things that i knew little or nothing about... Thank you Jon for broadening my horizons.

[Dfathurr]

Other impact regarding sugar plantation affect Javanese cuisine. Since most of sugar planted on central Java, most of their cuisine tend to be sweeter there because they use Kecap Manis (sweet soy sauce) with sugar from such factories. Compared to their eastern and westerm counterpart which tended to be spicy

[AlphaWhiskey_Haryo]

from my father's side, I am one of the descendants of Sentot Alibasyah Prawiradirdja, Diponegoro's last commander to surrender to the Dutch.

he was forced to surrender bcs the Dutch was threatening his family.
so he gave in, as long as the Dutch staying clear from his family, then the Dutch gave his family some land called "tanah perdikan", means "free land".


even until now, my family still managing these land, which now already turned to paddy field by my grandfather.

[matjojo]

Cool video! Being dutch I've read Max Havelaar, (as has every high school student here) but I've never really learned about the scope of the system. I didn't choose to do history in HS, but still it seems like a very important part of our history.

Great video.

[dennis]

Worth looking for a book Called White Debt, by Thomas Harding. It's about the British colonial slaves after the UK made it illegal to use or own slaves in the British Isles, neglecting to include the colonies. This book covers the slaves that never get spoken about in the Caribbean islands farming Demerara sugar.

[youcantata]

Sad but fascinating story of colonial Indonesia. Well-studied and more informative than many history Youtubers which repeats well-known political or war history of Western, Arab or Chinese. I admire your passion for the down-to-earth history of less-known countries and industries.

[margaastajaya]

The worse impact is the hate towards chinese descendants that still exist today. The Javan worked so hard on the field, while the chinese collaborated with the european. And they got rich off it. On one occasion, the dutch asked the chinese to collect land taxes from the Javan. This bolted hate towards them untill today.

[lolololowbx]

Multatuli real name is Eduard Douwes Dekker

[BlaBla-pfmf]

What the dutch used in Java was corvée (forced labor) that at the time was also used in France, the Austrian Empire, the Balkan states and many other places. In China corvée was practiced in rural areas until the 1990's.
Usually corvée was used to build and maintain public infrastructure like roads, canals and fortifications but the dutch and the javanese elite used it and abused it to boost cash crop production.

[maidenheaven]

As an indonesian and specifically javanese, i can saying your explanation is almost perfectly accurate. iam not fully blaming the dutch as the colonialism, but sometimes they can conquest on my homeland is because the problem with gap prosperity between local civilization and the land owner. on the past while this condition happen, there is so many conflict between regional figures on many villages. the dutch always has the intel and they can correctly know whose group is the strongest among those who are fighting. the intel isn't just the european, but sometimes is also from native javanese. we called them 'londo ireng' means the black dutch. This nickname was given to a local person who was known to be a traitor who sided with the Dutch

[ThePhiphler]

It's interesting how all the European colonial projects faced stiff critcism during their time from their own peoples, and only a really small group of Europeans ultimately benefited from the systems.

[youxkio]

You could have mentioned that village leaders still persist today with some level of competitive authoritarianism, reminiscent of colonial dictatorship and decentralized power, where it was identifiable.

Today, Indonesian village chiefs are socially biased and expand clientelism, tasked as party brokers and elite co-opted accomplices of bribing with major family-owned private companies extracting resources with redundant middlemen, all connected, independently of the political party preference.

[video_game_is_for_children]

The Dutch barely exist in 1500s
First voyage is 1595 and just a ship landed in Bantam/Westmost of java, not even on Jayakarta main port
This 1:42 Jayakarta circa 1605, before VOC set their trading bases (from the description in wikimedia, its repainted of original work from 1605)

[the-quintessenz]

I wonder if those plantation workers were much worse off than the average coal miner in Europe of the same time.

[chickenfishhybrid]

Maybe it's just because i dont see it or understand the language, but it surprises me how you seem to hear pretty little about slavery done by the Netherlands, Portugal, etc, compared to the US. The way some people talk about it, you would think slavery was invented by the British colonists in America.

[fawwazzaini]

Dutch Agriculture in Colonial Indonesia was so massive, even when Indonesian govt nationalize the industry somewhere in the early 60's, it was split into 20-ish companies. I think 14 remains until 1998 financial crisis, nowadays it is united under one holding company.

[cva]

Subject of video - why did the UK give back what is today Indonesia to the Netherlands at the end of the Napoleonic Wars?

Netherlands were captured by Napoleon early, at which point the UK took over the Dutch colonies. At the end of the war, they gave most of the colonies back to the Dutch, with the exception of South Africa, which was viewed as strategic for UK shipping to the Far East, since the Suez Canal was not yet a thing.

The Brits gave the Dutch East Indies back, essentially to ensure that the Netherlands remained a healthy buffer state. Which is kind of remarkable. Imagine a colonial (then) future in which the UK also controlled today's Indonesia, as well as India. As if the UK wasn't powerful enough already in the wake of Napoleon's defeat.